STCBM023: Wassail

Tonight’s Sounds That Can Be Made playlist:

Twelfth Night - Blondon Fair (from XII)
Big Big Train - Wassail (from Wassail EP)
All About Eve - Apple Tree Man (from All About Eve)
Spock’s Beard - Bennett Built a Time Machine (from The Oblivion Particle)
Maze of Time - Do Androids? (from Lullaby For Heroes)
Miosis - The Moth (from Carpito)
Hillward - Walls of Apathy (from Flies in Amber Stones)
Mystery - Wall Street King (from Delusion Rain)
Mr. So & So - Paperchase (from Truths, Lies & Half Lies)

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

STCBM003: ArcTangent Special

Tonight's Sounds That Can Be Made (ArcTanGent special) playlist:

The Dillenger Escape Plan - One of Us is the Killer (from One of Us is the Killer)
The Algorithm - Trojans (from Polymorphic Code)
Talons - St Mary Will Be The Death of Us All (from Hollow Realm)
British Theatre - Defeat Skeletons (from Dyed in the Wool Ghost)
The Fierce and the Dead - Ark (from Spooky Action)
Trojan Horse - Death and the Mad Queen (from World Turned Upside Down)
Helms Alee - Pretty as Pie (from Weatherhead)
65daysofstatic - Heat Death (from Wild Light)
Emma Ruth Rundle - We Are All Ghosts (from Some Heavy Ocean)
LITE - Echolocation (from Installation)
Cult of Luna - Ghost Trail (from Eternal Kingdom)

Hope you enjoyed it...

(the Podcast of this edition of Sounds That Can Be Made can be played/downloaded here)

STCBM002: Rising!

Tonight's Sounds That Can Be Made playlist:

Comedy of Errors - Disobey
HeKz - The Black Hand
Unto Us - Towers of Babel
Arcade Messiah - Sun Exile
Frost* - Pocket Sun
Harvest - In Debris
TesseracT - Lament
IQ - Road of Bones

Hope you enjoyed it…

STCBM001: ...Is Go!

Tonights' Sounds That Can Be Made playlist:

Rainbow - Stargazer
Orphaned Land - Norra El Norra
The Pineapple Thief - 3000 Days
Steven Wilson - Hand Cannot Erase
Porcupine Tree - Open Car
Cosmograf - White Car
Leprous - Foe
Marillion - Sounds That Can’t Be Made
Pink Floyd - High Hopes

Hope you enjoyed it...

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.

Bark At The Moon...

I had an interesting new musical experience last night - post metal! :-)

Blueneck, The Fleece, 13th August 2013

I have wanted to see Blueneck again for a while and saw they were playing at The Fleece. Ok it was a support slot for some band called Cult of Luna but it was still an opportunity not to be missed. Unfortunately they only had a thirty minute slot, an earlier thirty minute set wasted by a dreadful Noise/sludge/ambient/drone/doom metal band called Sonance.

Blueneck, The Fleece, 13th August 2013

That said after the unmitigated dross Sonance served up, three songs and thirty minutes of post rock from Blueneck was heavenly, even if the singer's mic did not work for half the first song. They were even better than the last time I saw them and I really want to see them as a headline act with an extended set.

Cult of Luna, The Fleece, 13th August 2013

So what of Cult of Luna? Well shouty/screamy vocals are not normally my thing but musically this was pretty decent heavy metal, with echoes of Slayer and Sabbath in parts, though you can see a progression to a more ambient sound. Not my normal cup of tea but hugely enjoyable, aggressively played and an excellent and imaginative lighting rig set up behind the band and for the most part at floor level.

Cult of Luna, The Fleece, 13th August 2013

I'd certainly recommend the more adventurous souls to check them out, especially if you like your music loud on occasion. I bought the entire back catalogue on the strength of what I saw last night...

Cult of Luna, The Fleece, 13th August 2013

Show Tits!

Some cheeky scamp at Donington made a cardboard signs with the words "Show Tits" written on it. Unfortunately One Direction were not at Download but a large number of young ladies (and bizarrely a worrying number of men) flashed their boobs at the camera on Saturday. Oh, and there were some bands performing...

It had been ten years since I last went to Donington, this time with seventeen year old son in tow, now tall enough not to want to sit on my shoulders whilst Iron Maiden played. Unlike ten years ago, the list of bands on the main stage was quite good (ie. a list of names I by and large recognised) and I was looking forward to the day.

Things went smoothly until we got to Donington when for some inexplicable reason we had to queue for over 45 minutes to get in, missing half of UFO's set which was a shame as what we heard was pretty good and I had made a point of setting off from Bristol at some God forsaken hour to make sure we saw them. They are definitely on the list to catch next time they tour in the UK.

UFO were followed by Young Guns, the only band I was not even passingly familiar with. Not knowing any of their songs didn't help but the sound was awful (my son commented that their best know song Bones was largely unintelligible despite being a good crowd pleaser). I have for many years bemoaned bands wearing black playing in front of black back drops at festivals, however everyone in Young Guns wore white which unfortunately did make them look like a boy band...

Black Star Riders aka Thin Lizzy were next, a good set mixing old Lizzy with new BSR stuff. Ricky Warwick is a great singer and certainly knows how to work a crowd (even as the rain lashed in during Whiskey In The Jar). Heard enough of the new album to decide to investigate further...

I was looking forward to Mastodon but again the sound was ropey' the rain heavy and I am not that much of a fan to be familiar enough with their material to make up for that. However, in fits and starts I liked what I heard so will go back and give them a proper listen as I have a couple of their albums.

I only know one Alice in Chains song (yep, Rooster) but they were entertaining enough, as were Queens of the Stone Age who played a great set in the lovely evening sunshine (the weather was very fickle). Again not a great fan, I only knew Go With The Flow and No One Knows but they played with enough diversity to warrant further investigation (my son has their albums but I've never really taken the time to listen to them).

In between them came Motörhead who played a blindingly good set. I don't know how a three piece band can sound as good as they do but they were great. I wasn't planning seeing them on tour later this year but I just might have to get a ticket now. The highlight of their set was none musical with an ancient looking Philthy Animal Taylor joining time on stage for a well deserved ovation.

After QOTSA came the headline act - Iron Maiden. Their set was preceded by a Spitfire buzzing the crowd (even at 48 I found that too cool for words!)' before the band came on with a great set of material drawn from albums between 1978 and 1992. It was great to hear Phantom of the Opera and Afraid To Shoot Strangers amongst a list of more popular anthems, the only downside was the intermittent sound issues again.

Overall, despite the changeable weather (I got soaked and sunburnt), poor queue management in and out, muddy sound and horrendously priced food (£18 for two burgers and two bottles of Fanta), it was still an enjoyable day and some great music was heard and appreciated by both son and Dad (and he did comment there were a lot more boobs here than High Voltage...)

Controlling Crowds...

So what do you get when you put a UK prog star and a Scandinavian metal god together? Well, if last year's Åkerfeldt/Wilson Storm Corrosion project is anything to go by, not a lot. So it was with a certain amount of trepidation that I decided to order Wisdom of Crowds from The Pineapple Thief's Bruce Soord and Katatonia's Jonas Renkse. My concerns, however, proved unfounded, this is a really good album.

I am not sure what The Pineapple Thief or Katatonia fans will make of it and I have not judged it based on the releases of either band. Renkse's vocals are quite distinctive and his melancholy tones will be immediately recognisable to Katatonia fans but the laregly electronic music underneath is quite different from Soord's Pineapple Thief (even if you catch flashes here and there).

It struck me as somewhat amusing that whilst Steven Wilson embraces the past with his latest seventies prog inspired work, Soord has gone down a more modern electronic route showing touches of the likes of Archive, Muse and Pendulum, whilst still not quite kicking off his comfortable prog slippers. He has pushed boundaries, but not to the extent that he will have alienated his fan base.

Song wise the album has some great songs, Pleasure, Frozen North and the title track, Wisdom of Crowds are all immediate favourites, but there is not one track I feel like hitting the skip button on. Overall, an impressive collaboration and one I hope we see produce more new material again.

A Delicate Sound of Thunder...

Watching Thunder the other night reminded me that I had not shared my "discovery" of hard blues rock band Albany Down. A friend posted a video of the band on his Facebook page and it immediately appealed so I went off and hunted down the band's back catalogue of two albums, 2010's debut South of the City and this year's Not Over Yet.

Albany Down have that heavy Thunder/Skynyrd/Led Zep blues rock sound to them which is great for some good old fashioned rocking and I have found both albums hugely enjoyable, vocalist Paul Muir is very impressive. Their debut, South of the City, also includes a wonder cover of Duffy's Mercy which is immeasurably better than the original.

All in all, if you like good old school heavy blues rock, Albany Down are well worth checking out. I'm certainly looking forward to trying to catch them live as soon as possible.

Here I Go Again...

Sunday saw a trip across the border into darkest Wales and a visit to the Motorpoint Arena (that's the Cardiff International Arena to you and me). Journey, Whitesnake and Thunder were in the bill so a great night was promised - and delivered.

The night kicked off at the rather earlier hour of 6.45pm with Thunder blasting onto the stage to AC/DC's Thunderstruck before delivering an impressive set replete with crowd pleasing Thunder classics. They are truly an excellent rock band and it must be the biggest mystery of all time why they didn't become massive. Live, they hit the spot and their 45 minute set was hugely entertaining, if a little too short. I really hope this tour has given Danny Bowes a taste for all things Thunder and the band reform properly and not just for odd gigs.

Thunder, Cardiff International Arena, 26th May 2013

Whitesnake were next and despite having seen odd comments that David Coverdale couldn't sing anymore I was quite impressed. Ok, Coverdale did struggle on a couple of songs when he needed to hit some (very) high notes but with 35 years of material to choose from he stuck mainly to material still within his range. The only negative were the indulgent guitar and drum solos, sooo old school and not in a good way. I don't mind seeing great musical technique but random tub thumping or guitar shredding is a waste of time.

David Coverdale and Whitesnake, Cardiff International Arena, 26th May 2013

Prior to the gig I had read a lot of negative comments about Journey on this tour and that audiences were streaming out after three or four songs. Not so here, indeed the only noticeable difference was that the number of female fans markedly increased! The band launched into a very rocky set, replete with a catalogue of classic tunes that I rather disturbing found I was nearly word perfect on (I don't really count myself as a Journey fan!). The band were pretty tight musically although the drum sound was a little too bassy. I was interested to see how lead signer Arnel Pineda would perform and the reaction he would get. No worries on either score, he is a excellent singer, jumped around like a bouncing bean and his infectious smile ensured he got the loudest cheer of the evening when the band were introduced at the end of the set.

A ticker tape welcome for Journey at Cardiff International Arena, 26th May 2013

Overall a very enjoyable evening with over four hours of classic rock music.