Rising from the ashes of Creed in 2004, Alter Bridge have the somewhat bizarre distinction of being an arena band who don’t like arenas and have also never had what you might call a hit to their name. They have won numerous awards over the last 22 years both as a band and individually, somewhat unusually kept the same original lineup, sold millions of albums, and are highly acclaimed as a live act ..
Read MoreIf you look at the posters for this year's Radar and ArcTanGent festivals, they are littered with performers that simply would not exist without Sikth. Call it mathcore, call it tech-metal or even call it, if you dare, djent. The simple fact is that Sikth birthed a sound and approach that now paths the more interesting of metal’s byways. Like all good innovators, they have been overtaken by ...
Read MoreRebellion is rammed tonight. Not in a passive “oh it’s busy” rammed, more like “can I not even stand at the back of the room by the merch” or “please stop breathing near me” rammed. It’s the busiest I’ve seen it in Rebellion for ages, and there’s a distinct hipster‑who‑doesn’t-go-to-gigs vibe in the room. I guess that’s what you get when you have genre-busting mainstream darlings like The Callous Daoboys headlining and an undercard of the excitingly novel Knives and Love Rarely. Let the games begin!
Read MoreTonight is a story of quality over quantity. For a tour that will move into arenas when it arrives on the continent, Academy 2 is criminally underpopulated. However, the sparse attendance enhances rather than detracts from the evening. Every member of the pit pushes harder and faster, creating a hurricane of havoc that quite simply elevates the atmosphere. Those of us unwilling or unable to sprint …
Read MoreGenuinely, heavy metal on a Saturday night at the O2 Ritz is a treat you should never pass-up on. Tonight we have an array of bands at different stages of musical development. Life Cycles bring the sharpened edge of modern crossover, Distant arrive armed with the kind of deathcore brutality we delight in, Revocation represent the old‑guard technical thrash lineage still fighting away, and Sylosis …
Read MoreJohn Corabi must have a lot of friends. It’s been 35 years since he first came to public notice as vocalist in The Scream and since then he’s played with all sorts of people. He replaced Vince in Motley Crue for a single album that was possibly one of the best they ever made, he joined with Bruce Kulick in Union, he’s been in and out of The Dead Daisies since their inception and as well as his ...
Read MoreAvatar: noun; (from Hebrew) a manifestation of a deity or released soul in bodily form on earth, an incarnate divine teacher. Ho hum. Also a rather stunning melodic death metal band from Sweden whose iconic corpse-painted lead singer probably imagines that he is all of the above! Here on this earthly plane his bodily form (and those of his bandmates) is celebrating some 25 years and 10 albums ...
Read MoreThere is a point during Drug Church's opening set when the monumental shift in Deftones popularity and support base suddenly makes sense. Patrick Kindlon decides to undertake a census of the tribes within the enormous aircraft hangar that is the Co-op live. His call out for old-skool metalheads elicits some sporadic cheers. When he asks for nu-metallers, there is more recognition but still ...
Read MoreImagine the scene. Two guys walk into a bar near their homes. One is a founding father of British Heavy Metal, having been a guitarist in Iron Maiden more or less since 1980 (with a short hiatus in the 90’s to pursue other interests and play in frontman Bruce Dickinson’s band). The other is s stalwart of American Glam, having replaced CC Deville in lipstick rockers Poison, briefly joined Mr Big ..
Read MoreRebellion feels cold in temperature but hot with anticipation tonight with three bands all wired with intent, all pushing their own flavour of atmospheric progressive metal. Headlined by the phenomenal MØL, what links them all is precision - three drummers playing like they’re chiselling their names into stone, three vocalists pulling emotion from both ends of the human register, and three ...
Read MoreThe ascension of Lorna Shore has frankly been astonishing. It is astonishing that a band this extreme, this heavy and this uncompromising has connected so easily with the mainstream. They do not deal in watered-down, commercial-friendly variations. This is full-on ball-breaking and boundary-splitting deathcore. Yet here we are in a massively oversold warehouse complex with an audience that ...
Read MoreMetal has persevered because of its innate ability to simultaneously seek inspiration from the past and the future. Tonight’s two acts build on what has come before and the muses of nu-metal and grunge are obvious. However they are also forcefully challenging the confines that metal exists within. They are reaching up to grasp the zeitgeist and seem undeterred by the notions of what is or isn’t me…
Read MoreThis is no ordinary gig. There is a positive feeling of refinement about the usually lowbrow surroundings of Rebellion. Chamber music pumps out pre-bands, and a tall lad stands reading a book at the front of the stage. During Patrick Walker’s solo acoustic 40 Watt Sun set you can hear a pin drop. There are no sounds of unruly rabble attempting to drink the bar dry. Instead, there is a deathly ...
Read MoreIf there is an act that truly deserves the opportunity to step into the big league of enormodome arenas, that band is Motionless in White. They have worked tirelessly to build up the rapid and expectant fanbase large enough to fill a good proportion of this 22,000-capacity room. Their following has been accumulated through blood, sweat and rampant omnipresence. This is their eleventh show in ...
Read MoreThere is a fallacy that metal is a consistent whole. It is not. It is a vast tower of Babel of interlinking sub-genres. One of the most idiosyncratic of these many differing components is folk metal. It is born from a desire by, mainly, Scandinavians to combine the forbidden fruits of metal with the traditional folk music of their ancestry. It itself has grown into its own complex catacomb of ...
Read MoreI asked AI to define “retro” for me. This is what it said: “It signifies a nostalgic, old-fashioned aesthetic, often seen in clothing, music, and home decor. Unlike true antique or vintage, ‘retro’ items are frequently modern, contemporary reproductions”. It could have saved a huge amount of word salad by just saying retro is what went down on Thursday night at the Tivoli.
Read MoreTonight is a farewell to Resolve. Well, to some of Resolve. Ok, to some of the songs of Resolve. It’s the end of the cycle for ‘Human’ and with it they are looking to shelve the majority of the songs from both that album and ‘Between Me And The Machine’. In the future it will be the new album and sound that they’ve showcased in the three new tracks on ‘Extended Cut: Human’. But before all that ...
Read MoreAs Roy Schediour once proclaimed “We are going to need a bigger boat”. The Ritz is not just heaving; it is positively bulging at the sides. Whilst the box office inexplicably still seems to be trying to flog the last remaining tickets, there is scant room inside to breathe, let alone move. Jinjer have firmly graduated from potential to being a thing. What is really interesting is that the crowd ..
Read MoreThere’s an anticipation for tonight’s hardcore gig showcasing four very hungry bands. There’s London’s bleeding‑heart hardcore, New Zealand’s beatdown exports, Britain’s thrash‑soaked troublemakers, and Alabama’s genre‑smashing heavyweights all crammed into one room. It’s a conflation of sub-styles and attitudes, and the crowd filtering in seems fully aware they’re about to be thrown around by ...
Read MoreIf you can find the right match-up, a co-headlining tour is veritable box office gold. Whilst increasingly big draws in this country, neither Epica nor Amaranthe are on their own ready to headline the cavernous confines of the Manchester Apollo. Yet here we are with the sold-out sign firmly in place and a venue that is packed from top to bottom.
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