STCBM043: The Dawn of Man

Tonight’s Sounds That Can Be Made playlist:

La Chinga - The Dawn of Man (from Freewheeling’)
Amplifier - Outsider (from Residue)
Kingbathmat - Book of Faces (from Truth Button)
OSI - Cold Call (from Fire Make Thunder)
Also Eden - The Test (from [REDACTED])
The Mute Gods - Praying to a Mute God (from Do Nothing Till You Hear From Me)
MAGNUM - Twelve Men Wise and Just (from Sacred Blood “Divine” Lies)
HAKEN - 1985 (from Affinity)

The Eighties at 8: 
Jethro Tull - Farm on the Freeway (from Crest of a Knave)
Jon & Vangelis - The Friends of Mr. Cairo (from The Friends of Mr. Cairo)

Nine Stones Close - Leaves (from Leaves)

Hope you enjoyed it…
(repeats on Progzilla.com Friday at 1.30pm)

Next week’s edition of Sounds That Can Be Made on Progzilla.com will be a chilled out Bank Holiday acoustic special featuring music by Marillion, Threshold, Arena, The Reasoning, Green Carnation, Saul Blease, Joey Eppard, The Pineapple Thief, Frost*, Pendragon, Shadow Gallery, Spock’s Beard, Porcupine Tree, Tiger Moth Tales, Anathema and Savatage with our Eighties at 8 tracks from Jethro Tull and Guns & Roses…

STCBM028: The Point of No Return

Tonight’s Sounds That Can Be Made playlist:

Haken - The Point of No Return (from Aquarius)
Fish - The Great Unravelling (from A Feast of Consequences)
O.S.I. - Go (from Free)
Pure Reason Revolution - Valour (from Hammer and Anvil)
Gazpacho - Splendid Isolation (from Missa Atropos)
Porcupine Tree - The Moon Touches Your Shoulder (from The Sky Moves Sideways)
Unto Us - Plan B (from The Human Landscape)
Muse - Knights of Cydonia (from Black Holes and Revelations)

Hope you enjoyed it…
(repeats on Progzilla.com Friday at 2pm)

Haken Unto This...

Last night was a bit of first for me - the first time I've walked out on the headline act at a gig... :-(

Alatyr getting our evening off to a cracking start at The Fleece

We went to see Haken last night at The Fleece and kudos to the band, not only did they have Maschine and Leprous as support but also three local bands opening ahead of them. This meant an early start to the night and unfortunately we missed the first two but caught the end of the set by Alatyr, a Bristol based melodic metal band who, mixing female vocals and cookie monster sounds were pretty good.

Maschine - hello and goodbye!

I wasn't sure what I was going to make of Maschine, I wasn't as wowed by their debut album as everyone else seemed to be and they didn't get off to a great start with a major keyboard malfunction resulting in the loss of over half their allowed set time. When they did start (with a witty "Hello Bristol, this is our last song") I must say they were very, very good and what a shame it was that we only got about 15 minutes of them.

Leprous at The Fleece - stunning!

Norwegian Prog Metal band Leprous came next and were not one I was overly familiar with before last night. I think bloody amazing sums them up. I wasn't sure what t expect as Scandinavian prog metal bands are ten a dozen, but they were superb, and I had to pick their latest album Coal up off the march stand. Check them out, they are just going to get bigger...

Haken 0 Sound Engineer 1

And then there was Haken. I loved their debut album and was really looking forward to seeing them as everyone tells me they are a superb live band but they sound awful. I guess it was the sound engineer's fault but it was just a wall of distorted noise and even Cockroach King sounded meh. I have no explanation why they sounded so awful when the previous two bands didn't but... So after four tracks I headed home to play Coal.