Album Reviews
Album Review: Killswitch Engage – Incarnate
After Killswitch Engage set the bar incredibly high with their last release, Disarm the Descent, the iconic metal core quintet had an extremely difficult task in living up to expectations. Unfortunately, on this new album, entitled Incarnate, the band have seemingly gone a few steps backwards. To firstly clarify this statement, Incarnate is by no …
Album Review: Kano – Made In The Manor
Kano was part of a wave of new British urban artists who came from the underground, and put the UK on the map. Hip hop had always been a genre pretty much exclusively owned by our US cousins. For the first time, we held our ground and matched anything that was being done across the …
Album Review: Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – A Man Alive
I’ve always been a big fan of girls with guitars. The nineties brought us a whole new generation of ladies who could rock out. The likes of PJ Harvey, Kristin Hersh and Courtney Love with her band Hole introduced us to those big fuzzy guitars that defined an era, all with added oestrogen. Twenty odd …
Say Psych: Album Review, Live in Berlin by Dead Skeletons
I’ve only managed to see the Dead Skeletons live on one occasion, an amazing double-header with Follakzoid (see here) at the now sadly closed Kazimier Club in Liverpool. It was my first time for both bands, a great night in which the Liverpool PsychFest team had pulled out all the stops to make that small …
Album Review: LNZNDRF – LNZNDRF
Once in a great while a record comes out and completely catches me off guard. Sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse. With the debut record of LNZNDRF it’s definitely for the better. It’s one of those debuts that comes out of the gate and grabs you instantly. Part euro pop, part Krautrock …
Album Review: They Might Be Giants – Phone Power
The third album to be compiled from tracks that They Might Be Giants released on their rebooted Dial-A-Song service on YouTube during 2015, Phone Power has been released as a pay-what-you-want download, and will be released in more traditional formats in the future. So far, so Radiohead. TMBG fans knew that a third album of …
Album Review: Låpsley – Long Way Home
Holly Lapsley Fletcher (aka Låpsley) is from Merseyside, but it’s easy to imagine she’s from Scandinavia based on the icy electronica melting under the warmth of her soulful vocals on debut album ‘Long Way Home’. This contrast of hot and cold is an interesting juxtaposition on album opener ‘Heartless’ and it’s a theme that continues …
Say Psych: Menimals by Menimals
OK so here’s a new album from Riot Season records, so be prepared to be sonically blasted sphincter first into the next universe. Right? Well actually, wrong because this is a Riot Season release like none other that I can remember. Instead of the usual rush of blood to the fret there’s an easy avant …
Album Review: Raleigh Ritchie – You’re a Man Now, Boy
Jacob Anderson is without doubt a talented young man. As an actor, he is known to many as the second most famous (but definitely the most fearsome and endearing) eunuch in “Game of Thrones” where he plays loyal warrior Grey Worm, leader of the Unsullied army and servant to Daenerys Targaryen, the show’s Queen of …
Album Review: Jack Garratt – Phase
Jack Garratt at first sight and listen is a swirling mass of contradictions. Aged just 24, he’s the latest recipient of both the BRIT award Critics’ Choice (previously won by Sam Smith, Tom Odell, Emeli Sande, Jessie J, Ellie Goulding, Florence + the Machine, Adele) and the BBC Sound of… (previously won by (Years & …