Pages tagged “dead confederate”

Hometown: Athens, Ga.

Fun Fact: The band recorded its debut album in a compact, claustrophobic concrete box of a room in the same Austin, Texas studio where the sound effects for the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre were recorded.

Why It's Worth Watching: Epic hooks, rollicking guitars, febrile swells and tortured lyrics soaked in anger all coalesce into post-modern rock that places the emphasis back on rock.

For Fans Of: Nirvana, Sonic Youth, My Morning Jacket

Perhaps it's the fiery drawl and breathy croaks of frontman Hardy Morris. Maybe it's the painstaking, angst-ridden lyrics. It could be the boisterous jolts of the guitars and drums. Whatever it is, Dead Confederate has been drawing comparisons to Nirvana.

Athens, Ga., upstarts deconstruct Nirvana for the 21st century

An event sure to make any alumnus of the flannel revolution of ’91 feel a little old, Nirvana has undeniably passed into the classic-rock lexicon. But where they were once aped by a generation of bands that sprung up overnight with screechy-voiced frontmen and fuzz pedals, now their music is being strip-mined and reconfigured with other classic-rock references, leaving Dead Confederate in a position to create a viscerally imagined (if obviously indebted) hybrid on its full-length debut. As the band’s name implies, there’s a bit of doom-metal desperation and dark Southern psychedelia in Dead Confederate’s musical DNA, and the specter of Kurt Cobain is never far away, with vocalist Hardy Morris’ voice cracking and wounded as it struggles to pierce the imposing walls of guitar distortion and crashing cymbals. But, despite all the influences blowing through the ether, the resulting songs lack the dynamic range of their most obvious inspirations, each charting a familiar trajectory through a slow build and release of cacophonous guitars and caterwauling vocals that gets old around the five-minute mark.

Listen to Dead Confederate's "The Rat" from Wrecking Ball:

The members of the Dead Confederate are definitely anything but deceased. The Athens, Ga. rockers have had a rollicking 2008, which has included putting out an album (Wrecking Ball) and EP, launching a huge tour and making their TV debut on Conan O'Brien (just last week). And, perhaps most importantly, the boys have recently launched an official "blahg." 

Click above to listen to Wrecking Ball, available in stores now! 

Nashville - fairly or unfairly - is most often typecast as a country music city with the wacky sideshow that is the contemporary Christian genre sitting just down the aisle.  And that's not entirely incorrect.  Just take a stroll through Broadway in downtown Nashville.  There's enough cowboy hats and customized belt buckles, you might feel as if you've died and gone to a Brooks & Dunn video.  But, if the Nashville Convention and Visitors Bureau is to be believe, it's not Country Music City USA or Jesus Rock City USA, but rather Music City USA.

Luckily about three years ago, a group of Nashville rock enthusiasts set about to change that image.  What they created is called Next Big Nashville.

Paste favorites The Bridges are just one of the 250-some artists spanning a melange of musical genres gathered in Nashville for the third annual Next BIG Nashville festival, which kicked off today and runs through Sunday.

Following an Ice-Cream-Man-provided breakfast on Saturday morning, we reached the Ranch Arena, where Dead Confederate took the stage for an early-bird batch of haunted, shoegazing southern rock tunes. “Thanks for coming,” mumbled frontman Hardy Morris to the scattered audience. “We’re Vampire Weekend.”