Innholdsfortegnelse for March 2024 i Classic Rock

TONY IOMMI HAS revealed that not only is he writing new music, but also that the long-awaited boxed set of Black Sabbath’s Tony Martin-fronted is set to be unveiled in May. Sabbath with Martin released three albums between 1987 and 1990 – The Eternal Idol, Headless Cross and Tyr – which at the time were under-appreciated. Iommi has long talked about packaging them all together, but said: “That was held up with paperwork and legal stuff, but it’s coming out now if you’re interested, and I hope you are.” It’s still unclear whether the controversial Forbidden album – produced by Ernie C, guitarist with Body Count and released in 1995 – will be included as part of the package. Tony Martin has said he would also like some unheard jams…

IF EVER THE story of a group has grown in the telling, it is that of The Doors. Robby Krieger, the band’s guitarist and principal writer of many hits including Light My Fire, has since made his way primarily as an instrumental artist. His new group the Soul Savages started playing together “for fun” two years ago. Their self-titled debut album is a seductive collection of “cinematic groove music”, which pulls together inf luences from soul, jazz, blues, psychedelia and more. How did the Soul Savages get together? Well, I have a new studio down in Glendale in Los Angeles. And I had some studio musicians come down there to do some gigs. One of them, Ed Roth [keyboards], happened to know Kevin Brandon [bass] who played on one of…

Formed in 1979, Minnesota power trio Hüsker Dü came up through the early-80s hardcore punk scene and gained a following in 1983 when their EP Metal Circus, with its yinyang combination of ferocity and melody and mostly two-minute tracks, started picking up college radio play. Then when Zen Arcade landed in July 1984 it caused a mighty, alt.rock splash. Although it included some of their most thrilling punk rock speed-rides, it was a hugely ambitious double-vinyl concept album. Written and recorded quickly, and with most of the basic tracks put down in one take, Zen Arcade was based on a personal rite-of–passage story, from youth to manhood. It encompassed acoustic strums, piano miniatures, Indian-inspired psychedelia, and the 14-minute instrumental Reoccurring Dreams. Both drummer/vocalist Grant Hart and guitarist/vocalist Bob Mould were…

Whitesnake entered 1984 on a high, having headlined the Monsters Of Rock Festival at Castle Donington the previous summer, where their backstage area was decked out in the style of M*A*S*H, complete with barbed wire, sandbags, and security staff wearing army khaki. The band – David Coverdale’s so-called ‘Whitesnake Commandos’ – were leaving blues rock behind, and their sixth studio album, Slide It In, introduced some new faces in former Trapeze guitarist Mel Galley, bassist Colin ‘Bomber’ Hodgkinson and drummer Cozy Powell. By the time Slide It In was released in the UK in January ’84, Neil Murray, Whitesnake bassist 1978 to 1982, had replaced Hodgkinson. At Donington, Murray had been discreetly sounded out over his availability after Coverdale witnessed him playing with Gary Moore and wondered, as the singer…

The Pretenders might easily have folded after lead guitarist James Honeyman-Scott’s sudden death in June 1982 – two days after the sacking of bassist Pete Farndon (who would also expire within months). But Honeyman-Scott’s influence continued to shape the band’s immediate future. “For a long time afterwards, I had such a strong sense of him,” Chrissie Hynde explained to Classic Rock in 2014. “All my musical decisions were still based on what he would do. ‘Who would Jimmy get to play this? He’d get Billy Bremner.’ I always knew the kind of thing Jimmy would like.” So ex-Rockpile guitarist Bremner was duly commandeered to play on both sides of comeback single Back On The Chain Gang/My City Was Gone, alongside Big Country bassist Tony Butler. And while a further makeshift…

Would Appetite for Destruction have happened without Two Steps From The Move? Axl Rose became enamoured of Hanoi Rocks in the early 80s while piecing Guns N’ Roses together and he took particular note of this, Hanoi’s fifth album. After all, the chorus of one standout song, Underwater World included the lyric, ‘Welcome to the jungle/Deep inside of me.’ Formed five years earlier in their native Finland, Hanoi seemed for a moment to have it all, only for everything to be spirited away from them in the cruellest of circumstances. They, too, were blessed with a magnetic frontman (teetotal Michael Monroe with his cut-glass cheekbones) and a trailblazing lead guitarist (Andy McCoy, the ragged look of Izzy Stradlin married to the chunk of Slash’s playing). Their stock in trade was…

It was a golden year for melodic rock. In January 1984 came the debut album from a young band out of New Jersey named Bon Jovi, and in the months that followed, so many other great albums arrived. Survivor, with new singer Jimi Jamison, hit a new peak with Vital Signs. Bryan Adams released Reckless, the album that would make him a superstar. Pat Benatar’s Tropico was a thing of beauty. There were also fine albums that somehow flew under the radar or slipped through the cracks, but which later become cult classics – Dakota’s Runaway, and self-titled debuts from Giuffria, White Sister and Boston spin-off Orion The Hunter. At the other end of the spectrum there were huge hit singles for Night Ranger with Sister Christian and John Waite…

Marillion’s debut album, 1983’s Script For AJester’s Tear, which had muscled its way into the Top 10, had turned them into one of the most talked-about new bands in the UK. Big things were therefore expected of the follow-up, not least from their label EMI. “We were riding on the back of Script, we’d done our first American tour, it was all wonderful,” says Fish, Marillion’s original singer and lyricist. “And then we hit Fugazi.” The band’s second album, Fugazi was a lesson in how not to make a record. “We used up all the material we had on Script,” says keyboard player Mark Kelly. “We needed to come up with an album’s worth of material, and we pretty much had to start from scratch.” Marillion’s approach to songwriting involved…

Once more back to basics, dear friends. Green Day may have strayed a little from the path to Welcome To Paradise over the past three decades – into punk opera, grandiose rock balladry or, as on 2020’s last album Father Of All Motherfuckers, garage rock’n’roll – but eventually they always steer back into their melodic punk hammer lane. Frontman Billie Joe Armstrong has described ‘Saviors’, their fourteenth album, as bridging the gap between 1994’s Dookie and 2004’s American Idiot, and there it certainly sits, part hurtling punkarama, part political rock drama. It’s a style that Green Day pioneered and epitomise, and they don’t wander too far from it. Opener and first single The American Dream Is Killing Me, held over from Father to avoid making that album too political, firmly…

In the words of former 10cc man Kevin Godley: “People like their rock stars to live like rock stars. 10cc didn’t wear make-up, kill anyone, do smack… or commit suicide. No dysfunctional mythology equals unmemorable. That’s how it is.” 10cc didn’t live the clichéd rock-star life, and this 14-disc, 145-track collection shows that, musically, they dealt in clichés only for the sake of parody. Otherwise their arty, progressive and beautifully produced English pop-rock was richly diverse, melodically/lyrically imaginative and vividly memorable. 20 Years: 1972-1992 covers all their album releases from the self-titled debut to …Meanwhile, their damp-squib reunion record from ’92. Completists may whine that their final LP Mirror Mirror, released three years later, isn’t here. But two discs of single edits, alternative mixes and B-sides are. 10cc’s catalogue is…

Rod Stewart once paid a beautiful tribute to Frankie Miller, an acknowledgment from one great singer to another. “He’s the only white guy that’s ever brought a tear to my eye,” Rod said. “He was that good.” It’s a long time since Frankie Miller has been able to sing. That wonderfully soulful, gritty voice was lost for ever when he suffered a near-fatal brain aneurysm in 1994. But Miller always considered himself lucky to have survived it, and what remains is a rich legacy in the albums he made in his pomp in the 70s and early 80s. Born Francis John Miller in 1949 in Bridgeton, an impoverished district of Glasgow, his education in music came via the rhythm-and-blues classics in his mother’s record collection. After stints with various local…

On February 22 and 23, 2023, billed as The Return Of The Caped Crusader, Rick Wakeman and his band the English Rock Ensemble played a pair of concerts at London’s Palladium. The keyboard wizard’s set mixed classic Yes standards with material from his solo albums The Six Wives Of Henry VIII and The Myths And Legends Of King Arthur (on the first night) and, 24 hours later, Journey To The Centre Of The Earth. Things worked so well that Wakeman is now taking something similar around the country. You rested the Grumpy At Christmas routine in Decemberrd 2023. My management and agent both thought it would be beneficial to skip a year and come back bigger and better in 2024, and who am I to argue? Nevertheless, your November blog…

Tony Clarkin, the guitarist, songwriter and producer of Birmingham band Magnum for more than 50 years, has died at the age of 77. At press time no cause had been announced. In December 2023 Magnum cancelled all immediate touring plans, scheduled to have kicked off in Germany on April 4 and with UK dates to follow. After suffering pains in his neck and head for the past year, Clarkin had paid a visit to his doctor. The news wasn’t good. “I’ve developed a rare spinal condition,” he revealed in a statement. “It’s not life-limiting, but it can be degenerative, and sadly it’s not curable. Treatments may help, but we don’t know how good they’ll be. It’s gonna mean some changes.” Clarkin could no longer support the weight of an electric…

THE STORIES BEHIND THE SONGS WANNA JOIN IN? The concept of the rock album with loads of guest artists was launched in the early 80s, and the credits for The Boys Of Summer’s parent album Building The Perfect Beast read like a Who’s Who of famous friends and strangers, including Lindsey Buckingham, Belinda Carlisle, Sam Moore and Patty Smyth. Henley, a selfdescribed “good casting director”, said: “I have a lot of nerve. I’ll call anybody. I didn’t know Patty, Sam and some of the others. I was afraid they weren’t going to be into an old guy from the mellow seventies. Patty said: ‘Are you kidding? I used to sing [the Eagles’] WitchyWomanwhen I was fifteen.” The early 80s were a time of uncertainty for Don Henley. “I felt tremendous…

In January 1984, when Iron Maiden arrived at Le Chalet Hotel in Jersey, in the Channel Islands to begin writing material for their next album, they were five men on a mission. The previous 12 months had seen them accomplish a successful career transition from standard bearers for the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal into internationally recognised rock stars with their first headline tour of America, including prestige shows at New York’s Madison Square Garden and Los Angeles’s Long Beach Arena – and their first US Top 20 album with Piece Of Mind. Now it was time to bring the hammer down. “For me, Piece Of Mind was the best album we’d done up to that point,” Maiden bassist and founder Steve Harris told me. “People still talked about…

Metallica weren’t just expanding their musical boundaries on their gamechanging second album. Lyrically they were rising above the juvenile concerns of Kill ’Em All, engaging with political and literary topics. They tackled the destructive potential of the arms race on Fight Fire With Fire, and capital punishment on Ride The Lightning itself; Call Of Ktulu wore the influence of horror author HP Lovecraft, while For Whom The Bell Tolls took its title and subject matter from Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 Spanish Civil War novel of the same name. Metal Militia it wasn’t. Metallica’s Ride The Lightning album was released on July 27, 1984. The majority of their fans were thrilled by the growth that had taken the band from the adolescent thrash of the debut to this newer, more complex sound.…

Prior to The Replacements making Let It Be, the basic blueprint for American alt rock was set in stone. It was unrelentingly fast, loud and hardcore, as embodied by the likes of The Replacements’ Minneapolis hometown rivals Hüsker Dü, Black Flag, Minor Threat and many more. The Replacements had started out along the very same path. Their debut album for local indie label Twin Tone, 1981’s Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out the Trash, was a mess of breakneck songs, all conceived in the basement of frontman Paul Westerberg’s parents’ house. That much might have suited guitarist Bob Stinson, his younger brother Tommy Stinson on bass and drummer Chris Mars just fine, but it was too confining for Westerberg. “I never really liked being part of a group or a…

Springsteen originally meant for a version of what became his signature album to come out two years earlier than it did. In January 1982, he assembled the E Street Band at Power Station studios in midtown Manhattan to begin work on his sixth album. Over the next five months they put down the motherlode of material that Springsteen had demoed at his New Jersey home on a four-track tape recorder. Among these were all but four of the songs destined to comprise Born In The USA (My Hometown, No Surrender, Bobby Jean and Dancing In The Dark were recorded during sessions the following year). The problem back then, as far as Springsteen saw it, was that he had two very different records going on. One was spare and spooked, the…

The last time Justin Sullivan sat down and listened to Vengeance, the debut album from his band New Model Army, he was surprised to realise “I sound like I’m about fifteen years old”. The guitarist, singer/songwriter is now sixty-seven, but while his voice would inevitably mature, the searing resonance of Vengeance has diminished little. In those days, Sullivan operated under the handle of Slade The Leveller to protect his unemployment benefits. “In the punk scene back then, many musicians used other names, but you’re right, the last thing we wanted was for the dole office to see our names in the local paper,” he explains. “‘You appear to have done a gig, Mr Sullivan’. None of us wanted that so we used pseudonyms. I didn’t get caught, but I signed…

R.E.M. were the band to watch come the turn of 1984. Issued the previous April, debut LP Murmur had put the Athens, Georgia quartet at the forefront of a new strain of alternative American guitar-rock: raw, mysterious and strangely melodic. On one level, R.E.M. were leftfield classicists, drawing from The Velvet Underground, Patti Smith and 70s postpunk. But they were also markedly different, refracting their influences through a murky Southern prism that involved disjointed narratives and, in the case of enigmatic singer Michael Stipe, inscrutable lyrics. Despite selling less than 200,000 copies, Murmur made R.E.M. darlings of US college radio. Critics tended to adore the band too, with Rolling Stone declaring them winners of both Best Album and Best New Artist in their end-of-’83 polls. Their profile was further spiked…

Rush’s sound had evolved and transformed over the course of their first eight albums, but 1982’s Signals was a clean break with the past, pivoting away from the great guitar epics of the 70s towards a state-of-theart keyboard-oriented sound – to the chagrin of some of their hard-core fans. Not that Rush themselves were concerned. Rather than retreat to familiar ground, the trio instead doubled down on their controversial new approach and fully embrace new sounds and technologies. And it really took hold with 1984’s Grace Under Pressure, taking them far from their roots. It was also the first album where longtime producer and mentor Terry Brown wasn’t behind the desk. “We had to start right from the ground up in making things as different as we could,” said Neil…

John J Presley Chaos And Calypso GOD UNKNOWN It takes a certain mental fortitude to listen to John J Presley’s second album on headphones, the Brighton multi-instrumentalist coming as close to the sound of apocalypse as any artist out there. But there’s beauty in the darkness here too. The glib comparison is Nick Cave, Presley also favouring a well-cut suit and intoning vocals in fathoms-deep spokenword style, like a Southern preacher gone rogue. But the music is all over the map. On Silhouette the horns are so pulverising they threaten to shatter your bones, before the track melts into plaintive piano. The claustrophobic Sinnerman is a highlight, Presley’s vocal coiled with that of Blood Red Shoes’ Laura-Mary Carter, while Gold is a hypnotic death march. More chaos than calypso, then,…

The story of how Terri Hooley eschewed the prejudice, violence and killings of The Troubles during the Northern Ireland conflict and instead helped create the 70s Belfast punk scene is already well documented – the 2010 biography Hooleygan, and the 2013 biopic Good Vibrations (later adapted into a stage play). Seventy-Five Revolutions, described by Hooley in his foreword as “the definitive account of my life”, takes the form of an extended photo-book, with illuminating and in-depth interviews with the scenesters and bands Hooley championed, to describe how he was instrumental in the careers of The Undertones, The Outcasts, Rudi and Belfast’s wider live scene. Put simply, there’s no one better to write it than Belfast music journalist and ex-NME writer Stuart Bailie, who’s been a friend of Hooley for 40…

As their 40th-anniversary tour for debut album The Crossing is coming to an end, a similar tour for second album Steeltown is not far away, kicking off in February. Straight from one anniversary into the next. Those first three albums came in quick succession. Time goes so fast; I still remember touring for the twentieth anniversary of Steeltown and thinking: “Bloody hell.” Steeltown was recorded during the miners’ strike of ’84. Your father was a miner. The Crossing had been the first bit of success I’d had, and that made things difficult. My dad was a miner on strike and so were many of my mates. It was a strange time to be in Dunfermline. Half of the people I knew wanted to pat me on the back, and the…

EVEN AFTER EIGHT solo albums, umpteen sideman gigs (including a bunch of albums with Melissa Etheridge) and untold air miles, Philip Sayce has never sounded happier to be packing for the road (“I wish you could see the living room right now, because I have shit everywhere” ). Partly, says the Welsh-born, Torontoraised, LA-based bluesman, this is because international touring still feels like a blissful release post-pandemic. But mostly it’s down to the prospect of a set-list bolstered by his raging new blues-rock album The Wolves Are Coming. How would you describe the musical vibe of The Wolves Are Coming? Alot of times I’ll call it ‘earth music’ – y’know, music that comes from the soil. It’s definitely an album to get you pumped up to go out on a…

THE UNSINKABLE AL Jourgensen has captained industrial rockers Ministry for more than 40 years now, and has survived severe drug and alcohol addiction to emerge as a voluble campaigner for social justice and systemic change. Ministry’s new album HOPIUMFORTHEMASSES, featuring cameos from Jello Biafra, Gogol Bordello’s Eugene Hutz and Corrosion Of Conformity’s Pepper Keenan – is boisterous and ballsy, covering dirty politics, climate change, corporate bullies, media misogyny and much more. There’s a lot of socio-political venom in the songs on the new album, a prime example being Goddamn White Trash. As the world gets crazier and crazier, HOPIUM is trying to address societal changes we’re going through. Pepper [Keenan] sang back-ups on Goddamn White Trash. He’s from the Deep South, and we had a really long, deep conversation before…

ROGER DALTREY IS to end his 24-year stewardship of the successful Teenage Cancer Trust charity gigs with a series of bumper shows at the Royal Albert Hall. The Who will headline two nights at the iconic London venue, March 18 and 20, supported by Squeeze. Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds will headline on March 21, while Young Fathers and The Chemical Brothers will play on March 22 and 23, respectively. The final night of the season, March 24, will see Daltrey, Pete Townshend, Robert Plant with Saving Grace, Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, Stereophonics’ Kelly Jones, Paul Weller and more return to the West London venue for a special curtain-closer billed as ‘Ovation’ -ACelebration of 24 Years of Gigs For Teenage Cancer Trust’. Daltrey described his stewardship of the long-running concert…

Bangkok. Barcelona. Beijing. Berlin. Bedford?! Deep Purple have always been a contrary band but this is pushing contrariness to the limit. It’s October 1984 and I’m travelling in cackling PR Roland Hyams’s knackered old Saab 900 up the M1 to the markedly unremarkable capital of Bedfordshire, namely Bedford. My mission is to interview all five members of the reunited Deep Purple Mk II. In a pub. In Bedford. The official word is that they want to rehearse their live show in an unassuming location, away from big-city scrutiny. So it is that I find myself loitering inside a Berni Inn (Google it), with the scent of cremated steaks and exotic gateaux lingering in the air. Hyams ushers me into an annexe full of mock Tudor beams, horse brasses and paintings…

Ialways wanted our songs to pop and kick,” The Cars’ Ric Ocasek told me in 2005. And on the band’s fifth album, Heartbeat City, they did just that. You might think of the pop in Pop Art terms: bold colours, sleek lines; bangvroom choruses, the kick of a lyrical subversion that sneaks up on you, hinting at fragile mental states, with elliptical drug references and some kinky S&M. Of that contrast in his songs, Ocasek said: “One kind of holds you down to earth, while the other takes you somewhere else.” After running the album-tour track annually from 1978-81, The Cars were looking to go somewhere else. The title of their fourth album, Shake It Up, hinted at just what they needed to do. The first major shake-up for Heartbeat…

In 1997, 10 years before David Lee Roth rejoined Van Halen, the singer recalled in his autobiography Crazy From The Heat a nasty little episode that occurred some time around the early 80s, when he overheard a conversation between Eddie Van Halen, his brother Alex and an unnamed music-business figure. Roth wrote of this in the bluntest of terms: “I once heard somebody say to the Van Halens: ‘You guys play the music; the Jew sells it.’ Well, you’re fucking right.” Those words spoke volumes about the dynamic in the band during that era. And for British rock fans there was no greater exhibition of Roth’s showmanship than when Van Halen played at the Monsters Of Rock festival at Donington Park on August 18, 1984. When video footage of this…

Growing up in the 60s and early 70s, all the future Bangles were mad for The Beatles. And they were no ordinary fans. Susanna Hoffs used to pose in front of the mirror, pretending she was on stage with the Fabs. Michael Steele wore a mop-top wig and did skits in school. Sisters Debbi and Vicki Peterson dreamed of forming a band that would be the next Beatles. “As I grew up, instead of wanting to marry Paul McCartney, I wanted to be him,” guitarist/ vocalist Vicki Peterson tells Classic Rock. “And it was kind of magical that the four of us found each other, because we all shared the same obsession with the British Invasion, and The Beatles especially. They were our musical school. Their songwriting structures, harmonising, and…

In January 1984, Judas Priest unveiled their ninth album, Defenders Of The Faith; long since acknowledged as a heavy metal classic, but at the time, judged a relative failure. Two years earlier, its predecessor, Screaming For Vengeance, had transformed the Brummie quintet into superstars, especially across the Atlantic where US audiences couldn’t get enough of their marauding, twin guitar-embellished anthems, voiced by the banshee-like Rob Halford, and a leather, studs, whips and chains image that – just like their music – would be copied and copied. But where do you go once you’ve crafted one the finest heavy metal albums of all time? Priest were seemingly on a creative roll, and with Tom Allom reclaiming the producer’s chair, Defenders Of The Faith adhered closely to the blueprint of Screaming For…

Recorded in spring 1984 at Caribou Ranch, high in the Rocky Mountains (made famous by Elton John who named his 1974 album after the studio) expectations around the second Dio album, The Last In Line, ran high. The debut Dio album, Holy Diver, was on its way to platinum status in the US and the feeling at the record label was that with just a little tweaking the follow-up could be huge. For that reason, the label chiefs wanted Van Halen producer Ted Templeman to oversee the recording. Ronnie James Dio, however, had other ideas. “We had done everything on Holy Diver, from production to promotion, even to the album sleeve. Because the label wasn’t interested. When that became so successful, now everybody wanted to get in on the action.…

Everything seemed to open up for Echo &The Bunnymen in the latter half of 1983. Singles success with The Cutter and Never Stop and gold-selling third album Porcupine had elevated them above their postpunk rivals, at least in commercial terms. But instead of taking the prescribed route into vast arenas, the Liverpool four-piece instead kept it relatively micro, opting to play tours that supposedly followed ley lines from their home town to Scandinavia and the Outer Hebrides. “We were at the peak of our powers as a group,” singer Ian McCulloch told us in 2013. “Everyone else was wearing cowboy hats and playing stadiums, while we were rocking the cobbled streets. It was significant that we’d play small islands on the west coast of Scotland rather than stadiums.” That attitude…

For all their quintessential southernness, Blackberry Smoke have always hit on a universal level. Lyrical blends of observation and autobiography, their songs hinge on timeless themes: characters we’ve all known; feelings we’ve all had; the endlessly fascinating lives of others; incisive musings on divorce, bar fights, life on the road, sex, heartache, parenthood and more, their honeyed tones born in country, gospel and bluegrass, then marinated in the rock and metal records of the band’s teenage years. “But that story never really ends,” says Charlie Starr. “There will never stop being love songs, and there will never stop being songs about home, either going home or leaving home, men singing songs about women, and vice versa, and the relationship or lack thereof. I don’t know. The blues. I need it.…

Can it really be 20 years since Blackberry Smoke rolled up to the back porch looking like they’d just fallen off the back of a pick-up truck and were willing to work for food? As the adage goes, they’ve come a long way since then, although geographically they’re still based pretty close to the homes they grew up in. Which might go some way to explaining how and why they’ve retained their rootsy charm. That sounds like the most backhanded of compliments, but Blackberry Smoke take a term like ‘rootsy’, and reimagine it – country, folk, hard rock, a hint of gospel. It’s no surprise to find that they’re still one of the most unlikely looking arena acts tearing it up on whichever continent they happen to find themselves on.…

Kate Bush cut a peculiar figure in the early 80s – somewhere between post-punk and TV magazine programme Pebble Mill At One, between pop and prog. When Wuthering Heights was a hit in 1978, her vocals pitched way over the top, it would have been forgivable to predict one-hit-wonder status for her. Instead she made her histrionic style work, and by 1985 she was at the peak of her powers. Although they contain no new audio, the three new editions of Hounds Of Love are the Baskerville edition, with new artwork from design studio Timorous Beasties, with an LED light inside the gatefold, and two The Boxes Of Lost At Sea editions, each containing one side of the album, with UV illustration on white vinyl, and an LED to create…

GUHTS REGENERATION LP/CD/DL From New York, GUHTS are a unique musical proposition. Combining expansive post metal and doom, with shoegaze. A maelstrom of heavy and intense songs with a strong feminist streak. A formidable debut from one of the coolest new bands out there. SHOOTING . DAGGERS LOVE & RAGE LP/CD/DL/MC The much anticipated debut from these three London punks who have been tearing it up all year. Defiant, feminist hardcore. Catchy, kick ass shards of pent up fury and melody, infused with 90’s shoegaze and grunge. Meet SHOOTING DAGGERS your new favourite band. THEY . WATCH US FROM THE MOON CHRONICLE, ACT 1: THE ASCENSION LP/CD/DL Cosmic space metal outfit TWUFTM are a band with riffs as heavy as Osmium shot through with melodic lead guitar and sublime twin…

Guitarist and frontman Tristan Thomas checks in as the latest breakout band from Wales undertake their biggest headlining tour so far, in support of latest album Bed Of Nails, the follow-up to 2021’s Weight Of The World. How did you come to form the band, with bassist Jordan Evans and drummer Perry Davies? Perry and I met at infant school and started playing music together in covers bands, but it really all began when we found Jordan. It’s taken a while, but we’re finally making some movement. Who is, or was, Florence Black? She was a woman from a village called Aberfan, where the disaster happened [in 1996 a colliery spoil tip collapsed, killing 116 children and 28 adults]. She used to ride around on her bike carrying coal. My…

Some things just seem to get better. Halestorm have played UK arenas before, always with other slick, strapping American bruisers (Alter Bridge, Black Stone Cherry, Shinedown…). But can they hold their own as headliners? Tonight’s full house suggests they can. There are things about Halestorm that separate them from their fellow arena veterans. They’re weirder, in a good way. They can rage with the heaviest, and laugh at themselves. Lzzy Hale, now 40, has fronted Halestorm since she was 13, and tonight she feels like a rock star in a way that few of her contemporaries do. Opening with an acapella roar of Raise Your Horns, she sets a fiery, full-hearted vocal tone that never lets up. I Miss The Misery is big, snarky and fun. Love Bites (And So…