In our never-ending quest to give you the best music available, we present the Revolver Bootleg series. Throughout each month, we’ll post cool, new, and often-exclusive tracks right here for you to hear before anyone else.

This installment is HORSE the Band’s “A Partidge,” a song recorded for a Taste of Chaos compilation, called A Taste of Christmas, a few years back, but wasn’t used. It doesn’t appear on any other album. Guitarist David Isen fills us in on the song below.

REVOLVER What’s “A Partridge” about?

DAVID ISEN The realization of our singer's wildest Christmas fantasies.

And what was the inspiration?
Santa taught Nathan an important lesson about the meaning of Christmas. I'm not sure where the santa on a harley bit came from.

Which part of it did you come up with first?
We started with the keyboard part at the end of the song, the rest of the job was to just build up to that point somehow.

Was this an easy song to record?
Well we wrote and recorded the whole thing from scratch in one day, finishing in time to play a show that same night. It was the complete opposite of how we usually write music.

Why did this song not make the Taste of Christmas comp or one of your albums?
They said the lyrics were too offensive to be on the comp. It was the explicit references to the male and female anatomy during the “12 Days of Christmas” a cappella interlude. Instead of putting it on one of our albums, we elected make it available on Christmas only, on our MySpace…Until now.

Have you played it live?
We actually played it at our show in Philly the same day that we recorded it. Never since then, though. It is heavily requested by those in the know, though.

HORSE the Band: "A Partridge"

Photo: Sarah Hamilton

Hatchet director Adam Green made this bloody parody of the "Slap Shot" infomercial just in time for Halloween!

We had so much content in Revolver’s December issue, we didn't have space for these reviews. As such, here’s the skinny on the upcoming records by Russian Circles, Pelican, Switchfoot, Saviours, and Wolfmother!

RUSSIAN CIRCLES
Geneva
(Suicide Squeeze)
* * * *
The third record from post-rock triumvirate Russian Circles demonstrates the band’s progression and desire for artful experimentation. Throughout Geneva, the Chicago instrumentalists create a virtual wall of sound, skilfully using layered guitars, as well as cello and violin. The album fluctuates seamlessly between aggressive metal, led by Mike Sullivan’s crunching guitar riffs, and atmospheric introspection, which is where the album separates itself from the band’s previous efforts. Throughout, these various components are expertly conducted by drummer Dave Turncrantz. While Geneva is not wholly without fault, the sheer ambition of it makes this instantly forgivable. JASON LE MIERE

PELICAN
What We All Come to Need
(Southern Lord)
* * * ½
Chicago instrumental metallers Pelican return to their riff-heavy roots on their fourth full-length and first for new label Southern Lord. Where shorter songs and an urgent guitar attack dominated 2007’s somewhat impatient-sounding City of Echoes, What We All Come to Need benefits from guitarists/defacto frontmen Laurent Schroeder-Lebec and Trevor de Brauw laying back in the cut and digging into the snaking lines and glacial progressions that gave Pelican’s debut full-length, Australasia, its epic feel. Sure, the limitations of instrumental rock are present (foremost, the lack of a human voice to connect with), but What We All Come to Need proves that these guys can still build-and-release with the best of them. BRAD ANGLE

SWITCHFOOT
Hello Hurricane
(Atlantic)
* *
Mainstream rock crooners Switchfoot return, promising some of their most aggressive tones to date, but judging from this, they should stick to their tried and tested soft-rock formula. Songs like “Mess of Me” and “The Sound” have heavier riffs and drum sounds than the San Diego five-piece have displayed to date, but the band never really convinces, or seems comfortable with this shift in mood. As a whole, the album is not an entirely unpleasant listen; it’s just kind of there, almost unnoticeably. The type of sound you expect to hear on a morning caffeine fix at your local Starbucks. JASON LE MIERE

SAVIOURS
Accelerated Living
(Kemado)
* * * ½
For those who dream of a time when metal meant Iron Maiden and not much else, Saviours might just live up to their name. The Oakland-based quartet, which formed out of the ashes of the screamo outfit Yaphet Kotto, has filled its latest with rip-roaring riffs and harmony-rich leads reminiscent of Murray, Smith, and Gers. Guitar is what this band is all about, and, as such, the axes tend to overwhelm vocalist Austin Barber, who, like High on Fire’s Matt Pike, shouts hoarsely over the live-wire licks. But still, of all the bands that party like it’s 1981, Saviours sound like the band that parties hardest. BRENT BURTON

WOLFMOTHER
Cosmic Egg
(DCG/Interscope/Modular)
* * *
With an all-new lineup (save frontman Andrew Stockdale), Australian quartet Wolfmother is back with a second helping of the reverential proto-metal that made their 2006 self-titled debut such a convincing argument for recycling. On the best songs of their sophomore effort—“New Moon Rising,” “California Queen,” “Cosmic Egg”—they still swagger like AC/DC and revel in Led Zeppelin’s heavy guitar fuzz and Black Sabbath’s syrupy stomp. But even Stockdale’s sinewy, Ozzy-like keening can’t save the warmed-over power ballads that rudely interrupt the chugging, bombastic anthems and sexy, slow-burning romps. Lesson learned: these Wolves sound best when they run wild. REBECCA RABER

Metalcore group Eyes Set to Kill, which features sisters vocalist-guitarist Alexia and bassist Anissa Rodriguez—two of Revolver's Hottest Chicks in Metal—recently performed at radio station KFMA's Fall Ball at the Pima County Fairgrounds in Arizona last weekend. The band played on the same stage as such heavyweights as Misfits, Flyleaf, and the Used. They were kind enough to send us this footage.

Rollins Band and onetime Black Flag frontman Henry Rollins is a proud world traveler who likes to see things from the natives’ perspective. On a trip some years ago to Antananarivo, Madagascar, he visited the city’s food stalls and was shocked to see flies covering the food, kids running around naked, and general ill health. That’s when he started thinking seriously about the hunger crisis. “It makes me mad at the situation,” he says, looking back. “The food was, for me, inedible, and it made me see that there’s no way you could drop me off in that city and go, ‘OK, here’s some money, go eat.’”

Rollins brings his outrage about the food crisis to the new film H for Hunger (Adventure), in which he portrays an enraged victim of world hunger, pulling no punches in describing both the effects of his plight and why current living conditions across the globe aren’t sustainable. Rollins also co-financed the film, which was written and directed by Neil Hollander, who previously examined China’s “one child” policy in Birds of Passage. The pair will work together again in the upcoming documentary about military dictatorship in Myanmar, Under the Radar: Burma, which the always-busy Rollins made in between his spoken-word engagements, a DJ show on KRCW, and acting in the TV biker series Sons of Anarchy. H for Hunger will be screened as part of the Royal Flush Festival in New York City on October 17 at 5:30, followed by a Q&A with Hollander. In the meantime, Rollins shares his thoughts on the film.

REVOLVER Why did you want to participate in a film addressing world hunger?
HENRY ROLLINS It is one of the most disgusting ways to die, because it is so slow and there are so many witnesses, not necessarily up close and personal, but the world is moving on and doing things and there’s this person starving to death, day after day. It’s not like, Whoops, got hit by a car. It’s on our watch, and it kind of taps into every aspect of global warming, our foreign policy, and sheer gluttony in how the West lives differently than the rest of the world. You share a planet with all of these starving people, and it really taps into, well, What do you do about it? Nothing? Something?

In the film, you have a very in-your-face approach to talking about the causes of world hunger. How much of your own personality is in that?
Well it’s Neil’s film, I mean Neil wrote it; it’s Neil’s shot. I brought the anger and the outrage that the script certainly lends itself to, but all the anger that you see is not me acting. I’m pissed. I didn’t want to act, because then you’re acting like you’re angry about hunger. I’m not acting. It’s quite real; it’s very sincere.

What did you learn during the making of the film?
Well I didn’t know about the death chain of the food at night in New York: the thrown-out food, and I didn’t know what the body goes through as it starves to death. I thought you just get hungry—I didn’t know that the body systematically shuts down things just trying to stay alive, that the body is a very efficient machine that wants to live. I learned a whole lot, but just what I learned mostly is having a real full awareness of famine, of global famine—that really did a number on me.

In America, we have lots of kids. That whole thing is coming from either not knowing how the [sexual] parts work or some weird Christian thing. Like the world needs more white people, like the Sarah Palin model, this joyless sex, where we need five or 10 kids ’cause we’re building a white Christian army! People just need to cool it. Like, stop breeding so much, which is a hard thing to tell people ’cause you come off as the antichrist. If someone has five kids, after two—so one can keep the other one company—what do you need five kids for? Are you a farmer? What are you growing? That’s five cars, that’s five cell phones, that’s, you know, five needs for the toilet, why?

What feelings do you hope and expect the movie will invoke in those who see it?
Well, hopefully a true human emotion is sparked where they go, Wow, I’m not exactly partly responsible for this, but I share a planet with these people, so I have to think bigger than my own area code and my own county line and get into that whole global village idea. Which is kind of “Kumbaya,” but it’s kind of what needs to happen and it’s truly how I consider myself.

What needs to happen is normal people need to get a clue and see themselves as part of the solution, not part of the problem. You can’t guilt someone into action, but you can encourage them to see that they can be part of a better solution for these people and that’s what I’m hoping people walk away from.

What drives you to work so much on so many diverse projects?
It’s because I come from the minimum-wage working world, I come from parking cars and serving food, and so everything I’ve got to do is kind of like this amazing ride and its been a very interesting thing so far. I’m very motivated to get up in the morning, get out there and do things, and not sit back. As I get older and older I find more and more things to be interesting, I get more and more angry and more and more curious and I also acquire the means to go more places and do more things and you think it would be disrespectful to kind of turn away from all of that.

Do you ever worry that you might be spreading yourself too thin?
That’s how I live. I live to spread too thin.

Interview by Jason Le Miere

The rosaries are made of chains, the Bibles covered in denim, and the congregation headbangs to death metal. This is your new church.

In our never-ending quest to give you the best music available, we present the Revolver Bootleg series. Throughout each month, we’ll post cool, new, and often-exclusive tracks right here for you to hear before anyone else.

This installment is “Vanity,” a song we’re premiering from the forthcoming album Agents of the Underground (Fat Wreck), by punks Strung Out. It’s the seventh full-length by the group, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year; it comes out next Tuesday. As an added bonus, we’ve also included a song that has previously hit the internet, “Black Crosses.” Vocalist Jason Cruz fills us in on “Vanity” below.

REVOLVER What’s “Vanity” about?
JASON CRUZ The truth is that sometimes I don’t know what the hell these things mean they just come out…I know I was personally going through a serious life-changing event at the time, and for what it’s worth, I don’t even remember writing a single word. I think the best songs are songs like that; they seem more pure and uncompromising, sincere.

Why do you think that is?
It seems when you overthink something and try to plan on how you want it to affect someone or something, it gets inhibited and becomes something else. I still listen to “Vanity” and learn something different every time about myself and what I was going through at the time. I do remember the melody coming right away, but the rest I couldn’t tell you.

What kind of feedback have you gotten bout the song so far?
Well, the rest of the band likes it a lot, and we think that everyone else will like it, too. The things that I’m most proud of with Strung Out are how completely honest and non-bullshit our music is to me, as well as our longevity and of course the loyal support we receive from our fans.

Enter to win a guitar and CDs from Strung Out here!

Strung Out: "Vanity"

Strung Out: "The Black Crosses"

In our never-ending quest to give you the best music available, we present the Revolver Bootleg series. Throughout each month, we’ll post cool, new, and often-exclusive tracks right here for you to hear before anyone else.

This installment is “The Watchful Eye (Demo),” an early version of the song that appears on Serpents (Translation Loss), the debut album from stoner-metal crew Struck by Lightning. Vocalist-guitarist Gregory Lahm fills us in on the song below.

REVOLVER What’s “The Watchful Eye” about?
GREGORY LAHM “The Watchful Eye” is about life as we know it coming to an end.

Why did you want to write a song about that?
Everything is fucked. Why wouldn’t I want to write a song about the end of humanity?

Fair enough. Which part of it did you come up with first?
The music was written first and the theme came after. I really like lyrical themes that stir up imagery when you are listening to a song and for me the idea of nature reclaiming the earth and destroying everything in the process fit the mood of the song.

Was this an easy song to write?
I would say it was a pretty painless song to write. It was the first out of all the songs on the record to see completion and it sort of set the pace for what was written after.

How did the song change from the demo to the version on Serpents?
Honestly the song didn’t change other than the production and recording quality on the record is far superior to that on our demo.

What sort of feedback have you gotten on “The Watchful Eye” so far?
We haven’t had too much feedback in general as our record isn’t out yet, but I’d say the few that have our demo or those who have seen us live definitely have given us positive feedback on “The Watchful Eye” and others.

Struck by Lightning: "The Watchful Eye (Demo)"

Photo by Amy Atwell

In Revolver’s November issue, we interview Emmure vocalist Frankie Palmeri and guitarist Jesse Ketive about their band’s new album, Felony (Victory). For those of you who didn’t get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here’s the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

REVOLVER Your new album, Felony, hit stores in August. How long did it take you guys to write this album?
FRANKIE PALMERI Me and our guitar player, Jesse, we pretty much spent a good solid three months writing this record. It was done in sections. We would come home off a tour and get ideas together, then we’d go back on tour and let everything stew for a while, then go back and revisit it. A lot of 2009 was spent writing the record. We recorded it in June of 2009. It’s the kind of thing where I feel like it’s not even over yet. But we’re all honestly relieved and real proud of the final product and looking forward to everybody checking it out. Usually, the way it used to go is we would crunch down to the minute but this time we had a little time and that gave us some leeway.
JESSE KETIVE It’s less stressful when there’s less people controlling what you’re gonna do or putting their two sense into what’s going on. There were less people to get involved so it was a little easier. We had more time to work on it, too. We worked on it for a little bit then went on tour, got a chance to think about what we were doing and came back to it and got to work on it a little more, which is a little more of an advantage than we normally get to do.

The Lionetti brothers—guitarist Ben and drummer Joe—left while you guys were on the road. That had to be rough.
PALMERI When they left? No, it was actually awesome. We were all pretty stoked on it. They were holding us back from being the band we could be. It was really all for the better. I’m sure they’re both doing their own thing, whatever that may be. I really strongly believe that the culmination of things we’ve been through as a band is gonna lead to this record coming out.

Mike Mulholland stepped in on guitar and Michael Kaabe took over the drums. How are things working out with them?
PALMERI It’s working out really great. Mike is a friend of ours that we’ve had from over the years working on the road together. Michael Kaabe, he is actually just from around the way in my neighborhood. Me and Jesse grew up with him. It was a natural fit to have good friends and people that you’ve messed with come into a project like this. Musicianship-wise, they’re probably two of the most talented people I’ve ever gotten to meet. Just to have them be a part of this is very special to us.
KETIVE Yeah. Me and Mike Kaabe used to just jam and play every song we liked, everything from Lamb of God to Pantera and Metallica and anything or any death metal we were listening to. We were always very fluent with music. As far as recording the new record, Mike recorded very fast and the vibes were quick and what we wanted him to do.

You worked with producer Antoine Lussier, who plays guitar in Ion Dissonance. What was it like working with him?
PALMERI He would push us to work harder, but me, personally, I think I have a good work ethic when I’m in the studio. I’m usually all business. I wake up early. I go to bed early. I track as long as possible. I scream until I have a headache. That’s really all you can do, you push yourself until you can’t push yourself anymore. The whole recording experience with Antoine was something I’ll always look back on and be really proud of. We really busted our ass there. The studio space in Saint-Zénon was like two hours north of Montreal and two hours north of Montreal there’s nothing but woods. We were basically in the middle of nowhere with each other and we were running out of food, we were running out of weed. We basically had every reason to be stressed out up there. That kind of helps out in the long run. It was all hard work, but it was work that paid off.

Frankie, it sounds like you did more vocally on this album. You even do some singing on “Don’t Be One.” How do you handle the strain that puts on your vocal cords?
PALMERI It was really just conditioning myself. Like I said before, when I go into the studio I have a good work ethic. You have to really take care of yourself to be prepared to do stuff like that. You can’t just party all night, get a couple of hours of sleep and then go into the vocal booth the next day and expect to sound like a million bucks.

Interview by Valerie McQueen

In Revolver’s November issue, we interview Every Time I Die vocalist Keith Buckley about his band’s new album, New Junk Aesthetic (Epitaph). For those of you who didn’t get enough (or are too cheap to buy the magazine), here’s the best of the rest of our wide-ranging chat.

REVOLVER Have you spoken with your former drummer, Ratboy, since he quit?
KEITH BUCKLEY Nope. We used to practice in his basement, so we had to go over there to get all our gear out, and he wouldn’t even talk to us. He used an intermediary to relay us messages while we were there, standing, like, 10 feet away from him.

You’ve gotta be fucking kidding me.
[Laughs] Nope. Definitely not.

Did his departure throw you for a loop?
Yeah, kind of. I don’t know. To be honest, I hate to say it, but as I look back on all the years he was in the band, I never even knew the dude. I wasn’t friends with him off-tour; I never called him; we never had real-life conversations about anything meaningful. He was just a dude that I was in a business with. So I’m very much looking forward to getting someone in the band that actually cares about our personal lives and whose personal life I care about.

Your brother recently moved to California. Has that changed the dynamic of the band?
I think the distance has been good for everybody involved. I mean, we all spend so much time together—especially me and Jordan, being brothers. We have the same group of friends back in Buffalo, [New York], so we were essentially spending every minute of every day together even when we weren’t on tour. He’s doing really well out there and he’s really happy, so I think it’s added a new dimension of friendship to the band.

In immediate pop culture terms, the cover art seems to reference Pan’s Labyrinth—the hands with eyes—and the anthropomorphic trees of Lord of the Rings. Were those references intentional?
Definitely not Lord of the Rings, but the Pan’s Labyrinth thing came up when Jordan finished it. The cover art is very representative of the idea that there’s so much stuff everywhere that you don’t wanna look but you kind of can’t help but look—and can’t even comprehend what you’re seeing because it’s sensory overload. You try to block everything out, but you can’t. It’s like you’ve got eyes on the back of your hands. I don’t think that’s what Pan’s Labyrinth was going for, but it’s definitely what we were going for.

Interview by J. Bennett