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4 Magazines Delivered to Your Door

VICE Album Reviews, August 7: Overmono, Twenty One Pilots, and More

Other new releases from John Carpenter, Dresden Dolls, and Man/Woman/Chainsaw are also on the chopping block this week.

By Adam Christopher Smith

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Music journalism is going to the wall, and places for sensible, well-informed, nuanced takes on the latest releases are dwindling. So we thought we might as well put the final nail in the coffin.

I’m a dog for new music, sometimes I’m cocking my ear with curiosity, other times I’m raising a leg to mark my territory. There are so many new releases dropping every week, how can your possibly be expected to sniff out what is or isn’t worth your time?VICE magazine’s joyous comeback has meant the much anticipated return of record reviews. But this business is too important to deal with on a quarterly basis, so we’ll now be giving out praise and beatings every week.That said, please do subscribe to the magazine, you wouldn’t want to miss out on all the absurdist noms de plume and band names inspired by the making of the issue—some of them are as Good/bad/idk as Man/Woman/Chainsaw. 

The London six-piece’s debut is this dog’s main bone of contention today, though we start with something a little more engagement-friendly.

OvermonoPure DevotionXL Recordings

Famously, rave music makes it possible for thousands of strangers to enter a dark room late at night and, due to some alchemical mix of blinding lasers and deafening bass weight, emerge from there as brothers, bound together by the strength of their experiences and common chemical choices. This sleek, rapturous second album from Overmono is glorious confirmation of that, although anyone who’d ever been to one of Tom and Ed Russell’s live shows (reconstituted unerringly here) could’ve told you as much already. What’s special about Pure Devotion is the way that it casts the same spell without the aid of pills and party atmospherics. The unbearable beauty of “Knight In Shining Prada”—poet John Joseph Holt’s rending tribute to his own brother,........

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