Nine Inch Nails

The Secret of NIN

Drenched In Blog: Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails Cry "Freedom"

Review: Nine Inch Nails, The Slip

The Spread: Penthouse Club on Winrock

Aftermath: Nine Inch Nails at Toyota Center

XM Nation: Catching Up and Moving On

Mail Call: Post-AC/DC Edition

AC/DC may be gone (sniff), although the ringing in several of Rocks Off's friends' ears (and his own) lingers on, but the mail goes on... Waylon Jennings & the .357s (Littlefield/Nashville, R.I.P.), Waylon Forever (by request): "'I'd been playing my dad the music I was inspired by at the tim ... More >>

Nail Noise

AC/DC may be gone (sniff), although the ringing in several of Rocks Off's friends' ears (and his own) lingers on, but the mail goes on... Waylon Jennings & the .357s (Littlefield/Nashville, R.I.P.), Waylon Forever (by request): "'I'd been playing my dad the music I was inspired by at the tim ... More >>

Press Picks

AC/DC may be gone (sniff), although the ringing in several of Rocks Off's friends' ears (and his own) lingers on, but the mail goes on... Waylon Jennings & the .357s (Littlefield/Nashville, R.I.P.), Waylon Forever (by request): "'I'd been playing my dad the music I was inspired by at the tim ... More >>

Puke Sick

Thoughts of Sonic Youth, kid's shows and animal testing with sick body and warped mind

Halloween Hangover

NIN was an unexpected treat, but Hole was a sorry trick

Tight, Shiny and Abrasive

NIN was an unexpected treat, but Hole was a sorry trick

The Lame and the Great

Lists you've been waiting all year for, in no particular order

King of the Mild Frontier

Adam Ant is still dressed up, and now has somewhere to go

Man Over Machine

Stabbing Westward masters the art of human noise

Nine Inch Nails: The Slip

Stabbing Westward masters the art of human noise

Genghis Tron, with Converge, the Red Chord and Coliseum

Stabbing Westward masters the art of human noise

Nine Inch Nails: Ghosts I-IV

Stabbing Westward masters the art of human noise

Black Math Experiment, La Sed, MK Ultra

Stabbing Westward masters the art of human noise

Pop Rocks

Ten albums that'll snap and fizz in your ear buds all winter long

Trent Reznor, Supersize

Nine Inch Nails, live in San Francisco: Hilarity. Guilt. Nostalgia. BALCO.

Gel

Box of Toys (Z-Lab)

Industrial Revolutions

When the synth dust settles, Nine Inch Nails is the band left standing

Local Rotation

Bamboo Crisis

Defending The Buzz: Does 94.5 FM Really Suck That Bad?

What with Creed reuniting, BuzzFest coming up in a couple of weeks and, hell, maybe even the swine-flu scare - As in: What's worse than coming down with swine flu? A Houston radio that only tunes in 94.5 FM - Rocks Off sure has been thinking a lot about The Buzz lately. Probably too much. I mean, it ... More >>

Can't Join 'Em? Sue 'Em or Quit 'Em!

Tony LaRussa and Trent Reznor are bona fide weenies. Yup. Weenies. As flaccid and dejected as they come. So to speak. In an embarrassing showing of overinflated celebrity egos, the Lifestyles of the Rich and Social Media Clueless has had the interwebs all atwitter as of late. As a result, both ... More >>

Pay for Play

Superstar session drummer and Dadaist marketing genius Josh Freese (Devo, A Perfect Circle, the Vandals) sells himself, his famous friends and all-you-can-eat shrimp at Sizzler to promote his new album.

Bulls On Parade: Our Favorite Songs About Livestock

​It's almost Houston Livestock Show & Rodeo time again. Our annual celebration of sub-par country music and pissed-off bovines stomping poor fools' nuts in the dirt kicks off March 2 and runs for almost three weeks. During which Houstonians will enjoy traffic-delaying wagon trains and more dou ... More >>

Top 5 Bands That Should Relax For A Bit

Craig Hlavaty​Wednesday, Rocks Off got an e-mail from the Dave Matthews Band PR team saying that the group would be taking 2011 off so they could come back in 2012. Whether or not this is to hasten the coming Apocalypse that year or just to live a normal life for a bit remains to be seen. God ... More >>

FAIL: The Entire City Of Seattle, Bachman Of BTO, The Scissor Sisters

​Seattle Knows How Great Music Is Made Three years after it was originally dreamed up, the Seattle Music Commission convened for the first time on Monday, featuring representatives from such musical mainstays as Starbucks, Amazon and Microsoft. There are also several record label reps on the ... More >>

Ten Songs You Never Want To Get Caught Singing Out Loud

The absolute worst version of "You Are So Beautiful" you've ever heard. Trust us.​Some songs are catchy as hell, yet if you're one of those people who sometimes unconsciously sings out loud to yourself in public, there are some you'll want to avoid. Here are a few tunes which, when sung aloud, ... More >>

The 10 Most Fun Musical Instruments To Destroy

​A company in Japan is making disposable guitars expressly made for smashing. At around $60 a pop, you won't be too terribly sad about hacking up the stage with it or clocking your bastard bassist or dullard drummer over the head at the end of the gig. Hell, at these prices you could open the ... More >>

King Lear

Shakespeare goes heavy metal

Walmart's Greatest Hits... Or Maybe Not (NSFW)

​Growing up in Pearland, Craig's Hlist didn't know anything was inherently wrong with Walmart. We didn't see it as trashy. How could a place where we got baseball cards and metal magazines every Saturday be trashy? But when we got older and heard the tales of Walmart's wrongful business prac ... 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 >>

Ten Country Covers That Top The Pop Originals

​Our copy must still be in the mail, but Rocks Off figures we have heard enough songs from Jamey Johnson's new album The Guitar Song on Sirius/XM's Outlaw Country to know that we like it a whole lot. But none that we've heard so far are our favorite new Johnson song. It's close. No flies on G ... More >>

Top 10 Double Albums That Should Have Stayed Single

​Not all double albums should have been double albums, just as some albums had to be double albums in order for their point to be made. Each case is different with each band or artist. The Who's Tommy and Quadrophenia had to be double albums to tell their stories of teenage wastelands and po ... More >>

If Your Life Were A Movie, Which Song Would Be The Trailer?

​It started as a whim on Twitter, asking friends what songs would soundtrack the trailer of the movie of their life. Would their life's tale be a rollicking drug-fueled, love-filled adventure backed by the Rolling Stones' "Jumping Jack Flash", or would it be a morose and somber drifting story ... More >>

Five Songs That Huck Finn Guy Should Censor Next

gutenberg.org​As many of you probably already know, Alabama publisher NewSouth Inc. plans to release censored versions of Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, replacing the words "nigger" and "Injun" with "slave" and "Indian," respectively. That's ... More >>

The Seven Ages Of Goth

​This is not meant as a complete history of goth, as that would be a huge book. Instead, we're aiming to give a simple overview of the musicians, songs and albums that have most defined the genre. Many deserving artists have been left out, and some that we're sure some people feel are not wor ... More >>

Lost '90s Songs Houston's The Zone Should Play

​A few weekends back, Craig's Hlist spent his whole weekend driving around town running errands listening to 106.9 The Zone, Houston's newest "alternative gold" radio station. In those 48 hours, our entire adolescence flew into our ears, reminding us of most every good and bad moment, at least ... More >>

The 25 Most Influential Bands Of The '90s

Trent Reznor, you know, before the Oscar and all the weightlifting. ​As a music writer, we are asked constantly to compare the new with the old, to decipher the periphery where modern bands' influences come from to understand where we are going and what we are seeing. We can hear everything Ke ... More >>

Forrest Gump & Other "Generation-Defining" Soundtracks

​The Forrest Gump soundtrack debuted on June 28, 1994, a week ahead of the film itself, which would go on to smash box-office records, win numerous awards and become one of the most beloved movies of the past 20 years. It is still endlessly quotable, emotional, and entertaining, and the soundt ... More >>

Apocalypse Now: 2 DJs' Playlists For The End Of Days

Lee E. Wright/Sweaty. Sultry. Sandy.​Sand, surf, carnival - and the apocalypse. It sounds like a lead-in to "One of These Things is Not Like the Others" (although probably a little heavy for the Sesame Street crowd), but that was the theme of Sweaty. Sultry. Sandy., an art/fashion show held ov ... More >>

Friday Night: AWOLNATION & Wallpaper At Warehouse Live

Photos by Mattthew Keever​AWOLNATION, Wallpaper Warehouse Live August 5, 2011 How can one appropriately describe AWOLNATION? Truthfully, we're still asking ourselves that very question this morning. And we haven't made too much progress since Friday night's sold-out show at Warehouse Live's s ... More >>

10 Great Pictures Of Johnny Cash

​Do you remember where you were when you found out that Johnny Cash passed away, on September 12, 2003? This member of Rocks Off was in our tiny S-10 pickup, delivering pizzas somewhere in Pearland, when one of the country stations he was flipping through delivered the news that the Man In Bla ... More >>

Libra Soul: The Singing Voice Of The 99 Percent

Photos courtesy of Aiton Extea/Libra Soul​Around this time last year, Rocks Off told you about a man named Aiton Etxea and his quest to find "reason-filled musicians" for the purposes of forming a band. His use of the term "reason-filled" caught our attention because we were regular trollers o ... More >>

Vinyl vs. Digital, a Side-by-Side Face Off

​With all due respect to my audiophile friends, the end-of-year sales numbers for vinyl albums (up 39 percent from last year) are still just a blip on the radar. Vinyl sold 3.9 million copies according to SoundScan and that is a formidable number considering it is quadruple over what it was ju ... More >>

The Jesus And Mary Chain Hitting Houston On March 13 During SXSW Swing

​Known best for their 1985 album, Psychocandy, the Jesus And Mary Chain have been called one of the most influential British bands of the '80s. With the wall of crushing reverb, drenched in pop hookiness, their sound foretold bands like the beloved My Bloody Valentine, the cultish Black Rebel ... More >>