Stadium Arcadium?

Joey 'Haircut' Eyebank Ramone gets down with the kids, daddio.

Red Hot Chilli Peppers : Stadium Arcadium www.redhotchilipeppers.com

Red Hot Chilli Peppers have long been a cause for debate and disagreement in the normally happy family that is R*E*P*E*A*T, so here's my contribution to row.

The Chilli Peppers are a talented foursome who should be respected for the music they have produced over the past 20+ years. They have written and recorded songs that have been heard all round the world, and have survived the fatal attractions of drugs, death, sex, super stardom and blood.

However I fear that I can not give them a good review. As middle aged men, how are they still droning on about the same old Californian crap that they begun with in the 80s? And how come they have produced this rather tedious double album with repetitive sounds and familiar melodies. It seems that all the band can do in their musical old age is to rehash their past glories like an old man talking about what he did in the war at the same time as inspiring hoards of horrible spotty slap bass copyists - yuk!

'By The Way' should have been the end, so why bother trying to repeat the past? It's history.

So, if you are new to this band and want to hear them in their full glory, I suggest you listen to their old albums such as 'Californiacation' and 'Blood, Sex, Sugar, Magic' and leave 'Stadium Arcadium' on the shelf.

3 / 10

Ipanema : Me, Me, Me (Boss Tuneage) ipanema.riffafterriff.co.uk

Although this band was around in the 80s and 90s, they have a very similar sound to some of the bands around now. In fact they're an aural collage of these decades: if Blur did some Nirvana covers with Kinesis doing the sound, you'd get close to the Ipanema sound.

6 / 10

iForward Russia : Twelve
www.forwardrussia.com

The indie scene is currently rather disappointing, consisting of far too many bands of Frankensteins wearing knitted jumpers, white collars and black trousers pulled up to their nipples with their hair parted winsomely to the side, Smiths fashion.

This band is another bunch of indie crap pulled from the media feeding trough and regurgitated as this month's new thing. To quote Richard Bull on this very website, "basically, they're terrible".

2 / 10

Anti Flag : For Blood and Empire
www.anti-flag.com

I'd have to say that I don't like American punk bands because they have no power or strength in their music, seeing 'punk' as being more about a haircut or a make of trainers than anything more substantial and thus ending up sounding like a load of 7 year olds singing about being dumped (honourable exceptions - The Ramones, NOFX).

But this has to be one of the best truly punk albums to come out this year. With a powerful political front cover, and powerful, melodic melodies beating along to a metallic thrashing guitar, this has to be a highlight of this month's bunch. Buy it!

10 / 10

Tool : 10,000 Years
//www.toolband.com

The introduction of the first song seemed to last 10,000 years on its own, as it went on and on and lacked any changes in dynamics or rhythm or anything. But the second track is based round a monstrous riff, not normally the sort of thing I like but Tool carry it off brilliantly and unite it to a killer, melodic chorus. The inspirations are obvious - Killing Joke and Metallica are fused together with the unique Tool geometry to make every song sound like a Tool song, without ever getting dull.

9 / 10

TBC

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