Frankly, the many-membered Boston act Big D and the Kids Table were not, at their inception, among the front-runners for survival of ska’s so-called “Third Wave” in the ’90s. The band started a little too late – 1995 – to be seen as truly authentic at the movement’s peak, around…

​This past weekend I made a belated first visit to Pulp Live, the venue on Oakland Park Boulevard that was known previously as the Metal Factory. I went to see friends play, so I won’t review the actual music that night. When I go to a show to support a…

To the uninitiated, the Massachusetts quartet Converge can be downright terrifying. And it’s not because they appear clad in face paint or leather and chains — this underground punk-bred foursome would never waste time on costume-like trappings. Rather, part of the reason they are so scary is because they are…

​It’s enough to make metalhead purists wail and gnash their teeth. Half of the producer/DJ duo Mixhell is Iggor Cavalera, who co-founded seminal Brazilian groove-metal act Sepultura when he was just 15 years old. For the next 20 years, he toured the world and sold out stadiums as the band’s…

Here’s a last-minute heads up: Tomorrow night is the local screening of Hori Smoku Sailor Jerry, the new documentary about the life and times of the tattoo legend. Born Norman Keith Collins, he became the go-to ink man in Hawaii, where he developed his singular style on the bodies of…

Heard of her? Neither had we. But a little birdie told us the London-based “jungle-punk” performer was scheduled to perform at this year’s installment of the annual free “Art Loves Music” show, as part of Art Basel Miami Beach. A call to Basel offices found a flustered phone-answerer hemming and…

Brooklyn’s Drop the Lime has been nothing if not prescient. For the past few years, while everyone else has been running around to overly processed, overly happy so-called blog house, the DJ/producer born Luca Venezia has carefully stuck to his own thing. In the face of that neon glare, Venezia…

In the post-hardcore pantheon, the New Jersey guys of Thursday are millennial gods. Led by the unapologetically erudite frontman Geoff Rickly, in the late ’90s and early ’00s, their early loud-soft aesthetic helped define what would later come to be known — often pejoratively — as screamo. That accomplishment has…

The little “influences” box on a musician’s MySpace page is usually a repository for unfunny irony or complete BS. Shit Robot’s, however, is as sincere and accurate as this one-man-act’s moniker is not. Name-checked are early electronic heavyweights such as Carl Craig, Andrew Weatherall, Derrick May, and Juan Atkins. And…

Now based in British Columbia, of all places, singer-songwriter Alex Cuba is surely a long way from the homeland reflected in his stage name. Born in the town of Artemisa some 35 years ago, he grew up on the island with a guitar player father, Valentin Puentes, and took up…