Mike Dean, Woody Weatherman, Reed Mullin. It’s been 27 years since the album credits on a Corrosion of Conformity record were so simple. The Raleigh thrash meal outfit’s turnstile lineup has made a handful of classics over the years, all depending on who you ask.

The Malamondos will support Southern Culture On the Skids at the Blind Tiger this Saturday, St. Patrick’s Day..

Joe Thompson left this Earth only a week before the fourth album by his young protégés the Carolina Chocolate Drops, Leaving Eden,.

Carolina Chocolate Drops co-founder Justin Robinson’s outright split last year from the Grammy-winning string band might have been surprising on some level, but it’s hard to blame for going out on top.

blues and boogie is like caging a bull with chicken wire; sooner or later they’re gong to bust out. Pianist and music professor Dave Fox self-interned for his quirky but fun album with his new project the Meldavians. Entitled Farewell Arigemon,.

Let this be a lesson: Early incarnations of band bios are about as trustworthy as election year rhetoric. Searching for the early- to mid-’90s alt-rock and post-rock influences that the Quiet Brace assert are present on their self-titled debut EP is about as fruitful as the search for water on Mars.

The rear cover of American Gonzos self-titled debut album gives almost as much insight into their story as the music itself does: three bros chilling on an anatopic couch in a setting that’s somehow both an example of bucolic country living and urban stagnation.

Economy of both music and words abound in Mebane duo Be the Moon’s debut release, creating an absorbing, if somewhat uneven blanket of warm, familiar Americana to wrap up in.

You know the truly great R&B and soul singers have a way of distinguishing themselves on record in a way that there’s no mistaking them. Bobby Womack’s plaintive melisma at the beginning of Across 110th Street.

In their attempt to run away screaming from the pop-punk status quo of music so empty and insincere that anyone could write it, the Radio Reds made an EP last spring that was dogged primarily by the unwieldy, inscrutable themes it tackled.

Seven mixtapes. That’s a fairly impressive discography for a veteran rapper, but it’s mindboggling to consider that’s what DC emcee and Guilford College student Beau Young has done before even hitting the legal drinking age with yet another on the way.

“Quiet Friends� starts off like the soundtrack to a gondola ride in Venice and quickly turns into the melody from Johnny Cash’s “Ring of Fire� set to Gregorian chants.

Given how quick the music press has been to stigmatize rock-reggae hybrids in recent years, it’s fitting that the genre experiences a mini resurgence thanks to the introduction of a few new ideas. Among the bands making the strongest music is the Silver Springs, Md.

For all the ways that John Howie, Jr. has divided his creative attention in the past year, one would think that it would dilute his efforts toward his principal band the Rosewood Bluff, but that’s absolutely not so.

Casual Curious will perform with Burn Doordoordoor and the Old One-Two at Artistika on Dec. 12..

The sound that results is loud and urgent, yet crunchy and a little bit shambolic at the same time, but it’s no accident. The members of Estrangers are all music vets in their own right.

In all seriousness, sometimes contemporary folk and stringband music can take itself too seriously. One album after another that can be described as “gorgeous� or “moving� eventually deadens the senses to all of it. Then, something like The Last Night of the Revels,.

It’s likely that just about every reasonably large metropolis has one: a prolific singer, songwriter and performer who perpetually flies under the radar, never really getting his or her due, but very quietly being great anyway. Bruce Piephoff is that to the Triad.

Given the moniker adopted by songwriters Stephanie Morgan and Chuck Lichtenberger, it’s a safe assumption that the evolution of Stephaniesid from barroom folk to glistening dream-pop has been driven purely by the pleasure principle. It could have been assumed that the Asheville band’s last album, Warm People,.

The first and last sounds one hears on Future Islands’ captivating third album On the Water.