rock and roll fables

music, comics, and media in a rock'n' roll world

20 for ’20: An Exhausting List Of Our Favorite Music That Got Us Through A Truly Exhausting Year

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It’s an understatement that 2020 was a pretty fucked up year, right? Machine Head was the last live band I saw back in February and a few days after that I found myself in an emergency room with some unexpected surgery to be had (Don’t worry, I’m fine now!) followed by the shutdown across the country. There’ve been ups, downs, and everything in between in 2020 but one constant has been the music. Artists have adapted with some keeping those schedules and releasing new albums despite not being able to tour behind them while others are holding off altogether. Some have done well with the new norm of livestreamed concerts and while I’ve checked out a few, personally they’re just not my cuppa.

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Magnetic Eye Records Celebrates 10 Years With Day Of Doom Live Concert Albums

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I could either completely exhaust myself and do four separate reviews of the albums that represent 2019’s Day Of Doom live showcase at Brooklyn’s Saint Vitus Bar heading towards the end of releases in 2020 when most are shifting their focus to year end lists and preview pieces…or just do one MASSIVE review of all the releases. Take a guess where we’re going with this one, won’t you?

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Magnetic Eye Records’ Vol. 4 [Redux] Reimagines Black Sabbath’s Underrated Classic For A Modern Era

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Delays are inevitable yet sometimes delays work for the greater good producing some unprecedented magic like Magnetic Eye Records has had as of late. Whether it’s pandemic or production-related, there’s been a slew of releases from MER affected by recent events but the silver lining in this story is that it’s caused a flood of material to come out one after another as of late bringing us to Vol. 4 [Redux] (Following Zakk Sabbath’s Vertigo and the Alice In Chains [Redux] both released last month) focusing on the iconic Black Sabbath album as reinterpreted by a bevy of current legends, legends on the rise, and legends-in-the-making.

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Magnetic Eye Records Unleash Latest Redux And Target Alice In Chains’ Legendary Sophomore Opus

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Alice In Chains is one of my all-time favorites. To the point of being almost sacred. So when Layne Staley tragically passed away, I like so many others believed that Alice In Chains was done. They weren’t and today continue to honor the legacy of Staley while cementing their status as living legends in the upper echelons of Hard Rawk and Metal. Speaking of that legacy, it was 1992’s Dirt that helped to catapult the Seattle quartet into those hallowed halls and almost twenty years later Magnetic Eye Records is paying tribute to the iconic record with their latest [Redux] release.

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Brume Close Out A Stellar 2019 From Magnetic Eye Records With Fittingly Stellar Rabbits

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There’s a lot happening in the five tracks that make up Rabbits, the latest from San Francisco’s Brume. Like, a lot. Dense and downtrodden but still downright delightful, Brume bring light to the dark with their unique brand of Doom for their Magnetic Eye Records debut.

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Caustic Casanova Transcend Trends On Genre-Defying Hard Rawker God How I Envy the Deaf

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Caustic Casanova is a band you need to pay attention to. It’s as simple as that! On their new full-length, God How I Envy The Deaf, the quartet from D.C. unleash a rawk fury that’s epic, anthemic, and downright awesome. We became aware of them thanks to their incredible and ambitious trio of Pantheon EP’s which was conveniently combined to create an unstoppable rawk and/or roll Frankenstein which seemingly could not be beat. That is, until God How I Envy The Deaf came along.

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Ghastly Sound Help Listeners Have A Nice Day On Rawk Solid Debut Full-Length

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Easily one of our most anticipated releases of 2019 (It was number twelve on our “19 for’19” preview, Read that here), Ghastly Sound is finally ready to astound and amaze with their debut full-length coming at you through Magnetic Eye Records in September. But is the magic still there? Can this three-piece from Vermont hold your attention beyond three or four songs? Why are we treating this opening paragraph like the closing of a Batman episode from the ’60’s? Tune in next week at the same RNRF time and the same RNRF channel to find out! Or you could just keep reading below…

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Leather Lung Lay Down A Righteous Metal Groove On Magnetic Eye Records Debut, Lonesome, On’ry and Evil

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“An album sure to hit the sweet spot for fans of Weedeater, Transnational Speedway-era Clutch, and the dream of 90s Relapse bands surviving years of meth and finally downshifting to whiskey”

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Mike Vitali Has Started A Patreon (And Why You Should Care)!

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Personally, I’ve subscribed to a few Patreon accounts and they can be a mixed bag. One I subscribe to gives the goods very frequently with informative updates, fun observations, etc. while another one I recently unsubscribed from couldn’t even provide the tee shirt promised with the tier I subscribed to let alone regular content.

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Low Flying Hawks Create A Delightful Rumble Within Desert Rawk Meets Doom EP, Anxious Ghosts

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Trevor Dunn and Dale Crover are two names that, if you follow avant-garde, indie, or underground types of music, should be familiar to you already. Separately they’ve provided the building blocks for a lot of those aforementioned genres through their work with Nirvana, Mr. Bungle, Fantomas, and Melvins (in which the two managed to intersect) to name a few. Together they are the rhythm section of Low Flying Hawks who inadvertently continue that forward trend to push the boundaries of desert rawk and psychedelia alongside multi-instrumentalists and songwriters AAL and EHA once again.

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