Mastodon (Band)

Pink Floyd's 10 Best Pre-Dark Side of the Moon Tracks

In anticipation of the upcoming 40th anniversary of Dark Side of the Moon, originally released in March 1973, we here at Rocks Off would like to remind you all that Pink Floyd existed for some years before that monumental album. While the band experienced some success, they of course never saw anyth ... More >>

Friday Night: Hell City Kings and Burn the Boats at Fitzgerald's

Hell City Kings, Burn the Boats Fitzgerald's Januarary 4, 2013 Rocks Off was able to catch the middle chunk of American Fangs' record-release lineup, and while I didn't have a chance to see the headliners support their long-awaited release, Burn the Boats put on a strong enough show to make the qui ... More >>

Omotai's Terrestrial Grief Shows Daring Steps Towards Masterpiece.

Even though Omotai is always on the list of Houston's top metal acts, this is the first time I've really had the opportunity to check them out. Seeing as how their live prowess is always shouted from the rooftops, I was curious how that energy translated into their first full-length and oft-delayed ... More >>

Dave Grohl Releases Trailer for Nerd-Boner Doc Sound City

While the Foo Fighters have been on hiatus, lead singer Dave Grohl has been putting the finishing touches on his cinematic love letter to Sound City Studios in Los Angeles. Today the full trailer for Sound City was released online. You can check out the studio's discography here. The studio's du ... More >>

Talking to James Moody, Co-Captain of HMS Fun Fun Fun Fest

In Texas, only a few major music festivals cater to the punk and indie subcultures. Houston's own Free Press Summer Fest, Chaos In Tejas, 35 Denton, maybe the free and freaky day parties of SXSW, and Fun Fun Fun Fest, put on by Transmission Entertainment in Austin. REWIND: Fun Fun Fun Fest Releas ... More >>

Venomous Maximus Readies Beg Upon the Light For Wide Release

This Saturday night at Fitzgerald's, Houston's Venomous Maximus releases what is the best metal album to come out of Texas in a long, long time. Maybe too long. Beg Upon the Light has already begun to wash upon the metal music press in the past few weeks. This is the band's first full-length LP, c ... More >>

Last Night: Skeletonwitch, Havok & Legion at Walters

Skeletonwitch, Havok, Mutilation Rites, Legion Walters Houston October 17, 2012 Wednesday night's Skeletonwitch show at Walters was one I'd been looking forward to since it was announced. The speedy Ohio metallers nearly eviscerated a Warehouse Live crowd back in April opening for Nile and Black Da ... More >>

Melvins + Scion = ???

Are corporate-sponsored free records a good move?

Forget Kraftwerk, 5 Acts We'd Like To See In Houston Museums

Next week, German electronic-music pioneers Kraftwerk will perform eight of their albums in their entirety, from 1974's Autobahn through 2003's Tour de France, at New York City's Museum of Modern Art. The album that spawned the closest thing duo had to a "pop hit," the title track of 1977's Trans-Eu ... More >>

Boy Bands Are Back In Fashion, But Did They Ever Go Away?

One Direction, the newest UK pop import to make it to colonial shores, announced a full-scale summer tour Tuesday, including a Houston date on June 24 up at The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion. Pretty big venue for a group that is just now breaking in America, and the Brit-Irish boy band just sold ... More >>

Women On Top: 10 Female Artists We're Way Into Right Now

March is Women's History Month, and Rocks Off has been thinking a lot lately about the indelible contributions to popular music made by women over the last few decades. After all, where would Elvis Presley be if it weren't for Big Mama Thornton? Probably still dead, we guess, but you get the point. ... More >>

Free Download: "The Sun and Moon" from Cursive's New Album

Photo via cursivearmy.com​Via Rolling Stone, the Saddle Creek princes Cursive have released, for your free listening pleasure, the first single titled "The Sun and Moon" from their forthcoming seventh album I am Gemini out February 21. The concept album is described on the band's site as "th ... More >>

2011 Music Awards Showcase

Your guide to the bands and venues.

Last Night: Five Finger Death Punch, Hateebreed, All That Remains at House of Blues

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Confidence in our domestic brand of capitalism may be approaching new lows these days, but Five Finger Death Punch rolled into the House of Blues on Tuesday night riding high on the American dream. The L.A. headbangers' new album, American Capitalist, debuted at number ... More >>

Drinking With Drinkify: Website Concocts Cocktails For You Based On Your Musical Tastes

​The website Drinkify combines your musical tastes with your booze tastes, with sometimes hilarious and dangerous results. The site does what we have been doing since we first took our first sip of the hard stuff, and that's finding the right music for your liver-killing. Though, if you foll ... More >>

Our Top Ten Picks For Fun Fun Fun Fest 2011

Photo By Marc BrubakerBest Coast at Fun Fun Fun Fest 2010​This weekend the Rocks Off team will cover their third Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin, at the festival's new home Auditorium Shores. Each year this fest seems to get bigger and better, without losing it's grimy luster. Is it the Austin City ... More >>

Last Night: Mastodon At Fitzgerald's

Photo by Marco TorresMastodon gets the devil horns.​Mastodon, Black Tusk, Venomous Maximus Fitzgerald's October 27, 2011 Mastodon on the stage upstairs at Fitzgerald's is like a bull in a china closet, an anaconda in a cage full of mice, or at least John Travolta in a room full of handsome me ... More >>

Wild Flag

Mastodon

Last Night: The Black Angels At Fitzgerald's

Photos By Marc Brubaker​Rocks Off hopes that this observation is wrong, but we don't think that people give the Black Angels enough due credit as a Texas band, even though everything about them encapsulates the 50 years of Texas rock. The spookiness of everything Roky Erickson touched, the swi ... More >>

New ZZ Top Tribute Disc Frightens, Titillates, And Confuses Us

Photo By Jim Bricker​If you don't know that Rocks Off is a ZZ Top-friendly place, then you have probably only been reading the blog for the past two or three hours. The two men who run this blog love Billy, Frank, and Dusty with the energy from one thousands suns, and their whole catalog runs ... More >>

Kyuss Lives!, The Sword

Happy Birthday Joseph Merrick: An Elephant Man's Playlist

​Today would be the the Elephant Man's 149th birthday. Born Joseph Merrick (sometimes erroneously listed as John Merrick), the Elephant Man suffered from an illness that, although still inconclusively proven, caused enlargement of various parts of his body. His grotesque appearance led to his ... More >>

R.I.P. Phil Lynott: Top 10 Thin Lizzy Songs

​Thin Lizzy bassist and front man Phil Lynott passed away 25 years ago today due to drug and alcohol dependency in Salisbury, England. The hole Lynott, who was 36, left in the rock world has never been filled. First off, we should just post Lizzy's entire Jailbreak album right here to honor t ... More >>

Songs For Our Brother's 21st Birthday

Craig HlavatyLemmy (left, duh) and Jake Hlavaty​Today is the 21st birthday of one of Craig's Hlist's biggest musical influences: Not the Pixies' Doolittle, Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine, or even Operation Ivy's Energy LP. It's an actual person, our little brother Jake. The kid came of l ... More >>

Still Fun Fun Fun, Festival Is On The Cusp Of Change

Photos by Marc Brubaker​Miss the bands in Austin this weekend? See as many as we could squeeze into our handy slideshow. Fun Fun Fun Fest in Austin is on the cusp of change. A renovation to its home base, Waterloo Park, is due within the next year, so come next November the festival more than ... More >>

Four Loko = Elton John: A Day In Alcoholic Energy-Drink Hell

​Last week for the Hair Balls blog, Craig's Hlist drank three cans of Four Loko to research just what has had all the kids freaking the hell out and going to the hospital in droves. It was a hellish experience, and we passed straight out after drinking three cans out of the four we originally ... More >>

The Top 10 Rock-Musician Film Scores

​David Fincher's Facebook creation tale The Social Network has been the No. 1 film in America the past two weekends, and no doubt it will continue that streak this weekend, barring an assault by Jackass 3-D which comes out today. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone is already hailing Network as a ... More >>

Bartender Chat: D'Neta Cavazos of Liberty Station

​Liberty Station is the kind of chill bar that makes you want to enjoy a cocktail with some friends while tossing around a bean bag or two. And D'Neta "Jet Setta" Cavazos is exactly the bartender you want to see smiling at you from behind the bar. You can tell she's edgy - she's got facial pie ... More >>

Devo, MGMT, Mastodon, Devin, Black Congress Head Fun Fun Fun Lineup

GroovehouseMGMT at House of Blues in June​The official lineup for this year's Fun Fun Fun Fest, set for November 5-7 at Waterloo Park in the heart of downtown Austin, was released moments ago. In terms of firepower, this year's Fun Fun Fun roster arguably brings the festival within striking di ... More >>

A "National" Tour Is Not L.A. To San Francisco Or A Few Festival Dates

Pavement? Nope, not here.​Tuesday, Rocks Off was a busy beaver keeping up with all the concert announcements coming over the wire. Along with the Fitzgerald's news, it was hard to keep up with everything going on. Interpol, Stone Temple Pilots, Drake, and Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros all ... More >>

Last Night: Silversun Pickups And Against Me! At Warehouse Live

Photos by Faith SilvaAgainst Me!​Silversun Pickups, Against Me! Warehouse Live July 20, 2010 Against Me! opening up for Silversun Pickups would be like the Replacements opening up for My Bloody Valentine in 1991. Except that Against Me! isn't on the wane of their career and Silversun has way ... More >>

Twilight: Eclipse And Other Promising Summer Soundtracks

​Summer isn't just the time to look forward to astronomically budgeted, noisy, overproduced blockbuster films, it's also the time to look forward to astronomically budgeted, noisy, overproduced blockbuster soundtracks. Is Graeme Revell still dicking around with ProTools? He is? Oh, super! Anyway, ... More >>

Nature's Revenge: Tunes For A Vengeful Planet

Photo illustration by John Seaborn Gray​ We like to think of the planet we live on as "Mother" Earth, a caring, nurturing parent figure who we thoughtlessly abuse. Well, we at Rocks Off don't know if you've noticed, but Mom ain't exactly helpless. In fact, sometimes she seems less like a benevolen ... More >>

A Guide To Record Store Day 2010 In Houston, Cage Dancing And All

www.recordstoreday.com​ Vinyl fetishists, are you ready to be separated from your mortgage or rent money? Record Store Day is tomorrow, and indie record stores across the whole city will be sticking you up all day Saturday. Rocks Off gets paid today, so you will more than likely see us browsing sw ... More >>

Monoliths & Dimensions: The Best Metal Records of 2009, Part 2

5. Immortal All Shall Fall (Nuclear Blast) ​These Scandinavian black-metallers get ridiculed for their excessively KISS-like corpse paint and pro-wrestling poses in promo pics, but one listen to this astonishing comeback album, their first release since 2002, will call a halt to any and all snicke ... More >>

Aftermath: Stryper Shout At The Devil at the House of Blues

Photos by Groovehouse / Click here for a slideshow​This year, Aftermath has seen all strains of metal: From Slipknot and Mastodon's metallic beatdowns at Verizon Wireless Theater, to The Sword's kindly menacing sludge jams at the inaugural Summerfest, to the force of power that is Motorhead at ... More >>

Announcing Our Musical Turkey of the Year: You, the Concert-Going "Fans" of Houston

​Rocks Off was looking at a tour schedules recently when we realized that two artists we love, Danish band Mew and Swedish songstress El Perro Del Mar were planning trips to Texas. Trips that included stops in Austin, of course, and Dallas, and even San Antonio. But not Houston. Sometimes our favo ... More >>

Aftermath: We Do Not Choke Other People, Even at a Dethklok/ Mastodon/ Converge/ High on Fire Metalocalypse

Photos by Marc BrubakerDethklok​ If you were to tell any random music fan on the street that a tour with the four bands on the "Adult Swim Presents" would be happening, they would say "Oh sure, fuck it. Why not? It's all loud." But that's sort of where the tour planners alternately went wrong and ... More >>

Inquiring Minds: Converge's Jacob Bannon on the Metalcore Pioneers' Signature Sound

Ryan Russell/ www.myspace.com/converge​ Out of the four bands playing tonight's big "Adult Swim Presents" tour, Converge sticks out like a shard of bloody glass embedded in your foot. Opening doomers High On Fire and co-headliner Mastodon are both devastating bands who orchestrate monolithic walls ... More >>

Fall In

Ten Cover Songs So Bad They'll Shrivel Your Soul

Two nights ago, while carelessly patrolling the back alleys of the internet, Rocks Off stumbled across Hilary Duff's execrable cover of The Who's "My Generation". Well, what did you think, YouTube commenters? ​ You sure you're not being too harsh? ​ Yeah... ours too. Someday, when we ... More >>

Melvins

Mostly Metal: Isis vs. Mastodon

As you might read in the print edition of this week's Press, the experimental metal band Isis will be at the Meridian tonight. All of Isis' albums since 2002's Oceanic have explored similar territory: long, unhurried songs that blend doom-metal with the noodly, spacey guitar work characteristic of p ... More >>