rock/metal
A buyers guide to The Hold Steady
It’s October 2007 and it’s a time of change for me. I’d recently come out of a medium-term relationship, my career was stagnating and I spent a Saturday evening with a drunken and bullish jazz musician friend once again declaring at great length that because I prefer rock and roll to the stuff he makes …
News: Surrey rock outfit Arcane Roots Spring European and UK Tour news
Oh, we’re getting a shiver of excitement about Surrey’s new rock heroes Arcane Roots. Not just because they’ve announced a whole host of new tour dates across both the UK and Europe, but because they’re in serious danger of exploding into being one of the biggest rock bands in the country. Their album, Blood & …
A buyers guide to Jethro Tull
Jethro Tull are a band who are special to me. They’re the first band I saw live, the first band that I felt a genuine connection to, the first band where my adolescent mind went ‘Yep, this is for me’. Given that my peers at the time were obsessing over Nirvana or the contemporary hiphop …
News: Canadian metal band Cauldron announce European Tour
It’s been a while since we heard anything from Canadian heavy/thrash metal trio Cauldron, nothing in fact since their fourth album, 2012’s Tomorrow’s Lost, but that was enough to convince many of their qualities – good old fashioned Heavy Metal, with plenty of pretension and no little amount of theatrics. So, if any persuasion were …
News: Paul Weller announces five ‘Forest Live’ dates
The ‘Modfather’ is getting back to nature again this summer. Following the success of last years ‘Forest Live’ gigs, Paul Weller, in conjunction with the Forestry Commision, has just announced a string of live dates all set in beautiful woodland surroundings. “It will be good for me to be back in the woods. I really …
Track: Kagoule make Adjust the Way available on free download, plus tour dates
In a world where more and more seems to be coming neatly packaged and conforming to an accepted norm, it is nice to find that there are still people out there prepared to steer away from the mainstream flow. Nottingham trio Kagoule have been around a few years now. Early demo’s ‘Monarchy’ & ‘Made of …
Album Review: New Model Army – Between Dog And Wolf
It’s a deeply unfair position to put any band in, waiting so long to listen to new material. How can any fan fail to build up an unreasonable degree of expectation and an unsurpassable association that makes the sound of THAT favourite album become the only possible sound for the band, ever ? It’s not …
See: Royal Blood release new video for ‘Out Of The Black’
Royal Blood seem to want to get our attention. They just released their new single “Out Of The Black” a couple weeks ago and I must say it’s filled with chunky riffs and exploding drums that would make 1970-era Black Sabbath tear up. There’s a sense of menace and anger in the track that pummels …
News: Morbid Angel reissue Covenant, plus US tour dates
I once read a review of some music that claimed that it was ‘a crass monster, a hideously writhing wounded dragon, which refuses to expire, and though bleeding in the Finale, furiously beats about with its tail erect.’ It illustrates two things, it shows that not everybody understands or likes new music, but also it …
See: Wet Nuns release new video for Hanging
We’re all older, wiser than we were days ago, never mind months or years. Every 24 hours is another experience or set of experiences, feelings, happenings. The the famous saying goes ‘time waits for no man’, and so it is that just months after we first (admittedly belatedly) came across Sheffield Punk Death-Blues duo Wet …