Monthly Archives december 2012

Posted in Interviews

Vi möts i ett kalt konferensrum i centrala Stockholm. Efter ca 30 min väntan i receptionen på Warner Music så presenteras jag för Jyrki Linnankivi, eller som han kallar sig, Jyrki 69. Sångaren i The 69 Eyes sätter sig ned mitt emot mig och börjar direkt prata om hur mycket han älskar Sverige, och det är något som han har gjort länge. Fast en sak är han missnöjd med, vi stänger affärerna alldeles för tidigt. Han som ska ge sig ut på julklappsjakt efter vår intervju har väldigt tight schema.

– Jag hade tänkt hjälpa tomten lite och försöka hitta något som jag själv önskar mig. Det kommer nog bli den nya boken om Yngwie Malmsteen (skriven av Anders Tengner), eftersom jag vill lära mig svenska lite bättre.

Man får ofta höra om att finländarna inte är särskilt glada ...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

This was a gig I’d been looking forward to for a while – three great bands on one bill. These days it’s quite normal for the venue to be half empty for the support bands with lots of people staying in pubs and only arriving for the headliner, but that certainly wasnt the case tonight – even before The Treatment came on, the venue was probably 90% full and people kept on coming in. This meant that when The Treatment took to the stage at 7.30pm they were playing to a capacity crowd.

The Treatment have been going from strength to strength lately with some great tours, most recently supporting KISS and Motley Crue on their US tour – an impressive tour for any band to be on, let alone a band who’s members are so young (I’m not sure any of the band are actually old enough to drink alcohol in the...

Posted in Interviews

I recently spoke to Kobra, lead singer of Kobra and the Lotus shortly before they supported Buckcherry at the Roadmender in Northampton.

Festivalphoto: Your new album was released in August. Can you tell us a bit about the album.

Kobra: The album is a very high energy album full of very driving riffs and fast and furious drumming followed with a lot of wailing. There’s also a song in the middle of the album thats more of a ballad at the beginning then picks up again with the same energy but is slightly different. There’s quite an eclectic variety of riffing and styles, all sorts of metal genres mixed together on this album.

Festivalphoto: You were planning to call the album ”Visionary”. Why the change to a self title?

Kobra: That happened when the record label signing came about...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Zoe Schwarz Blue Commotion is a six piece band which contains members who have worked with the likes of Nina Simone, Van Morrison, Paul McCartney and more. Described as ”a contempary six piece blues band” in the press release I was expecting some fairly traditional blues, but this album is far more than just plain Blues music – there’s a really strong Jazz feel to it as well. This meeting of Jazz and Blues means that what you get here is really interesting and very enjoyable music to listen to.

The album contains 14 tracks with roughly half being original songs and the others being cover versions of songs from Billie Holiday, Willie Dixon and more...

Posted in Cd Reviews

“Un-American Gothic” is the first solo album from Hayseed Dixie frontman John Wheeler. The rockgrass band have toured intensively and after performing over one thousand live shows and ten albums they’ve decided to take a couple of years off from Hayseed Dixie. John Wheeler has chosen to spend some of this time off to make a solo album that lets hum explore different musical styles and lyrical subjects.

The album includes two covers – ”Masters of War” by Bob Dylan, and ”Eton rifles” by The Jam, and nine original tracks which cover subjects including the banking crisis and more personal subjects or feelings.

Taking the lyrics first of all, this is a beautifully written album. Songs such as ”Deeper in debt” cover serious subjects but with a bit of wit thrown in...

Posted in Cd Reviews

”North” is the debut solo album from Irish folk singer Mary Dillon. During the 1990s she was a member of Irish band Deanta, but after more than a decade away from the music scene she’s back as a solo artist. Mary comes from a musical family – her grandmothers were both traditional singers, and her sister Cara is also a well know traditional Irish singer.

The album contains a mix of traditional songs and new songs, with all the songs linked to the North of Ireland. The production is nice and simple – stripped down to the acoustic guitar and the vocal, and this really focusses attention onto two things – Mary’s voice, but more importantly the lyrics.

While the whole album is excellent, my favourite song is ”John Condon”, which tells the story of a 14 year old boy during the first world war...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Brice plays drums formed in 2007 as a three-piece and have had various lineup changes. They blend styles of music including Jazz and Prog rock and certainly can’t be considered mundane in their lyrical influences. They say they are inspired by novels from Nietzche, Dostoyevsky, Neil Gaiman, Alan Moore, Goethe, Albert Camus, to name a few – certainly not a typical list of influences you’ll hear a band quoting.

The first surprise for me was when I put the CD into the PC and saw that the three songs are all long – two being over 12 minutes and the third being over 18 minutes, so the three songs have a running time of 42 minutes in total

”Freight train blues” is quite a misleading title. I’d envisaged a real blues track, but the music here certainly wasn’t what I’d expected...

Posted in Press Releases

Breaking news: Blur comes to Sziget

The legendary British band and the winner of the Best European Major
Festival award finally joined forces: Blur is a confirmed headliner of Sziget!
The organizing team happily announces the long-awaited Sziget debut of Blur, the
iconic rock band that earlier this year also received a Brit Award for lifetime
achievements. Speaking about playing live in 2013 the band said:
“Every show next summer will be very special – we can’t wait to get out and play for
all our lovely fans who we haven’t seen for a while.”

Blur became world famous in the 90s with records including Parklife and The Great
Escape and hits such as ”Girls & Boys”, ”Country House”, ”Song 2” “End Of A
Century”, “To The End’ and “Beetlebum” making them one of the bands of the...

Posted in Interviews

Four crazy rockers from Jönköping exploded in the studio as the cold winter reached Sweden-, mixing nostalgic feelings with heavy rock, spicing it with a touch of sleaze to wake us up! Their “best of“ album shows the public, once again, what rock ‘n roll is all about.

“Shakedown Suzies is still an unsigned band – although nowadays this may not be that important. Jon and Agust are pretty busy with their other band, The Embodied, writing songs, working on the new album, the touring… and since we all believe that they need to dedicate more of their time to fulfill their dreams with The Embodied, we decided to record our best songs before it is too late.”

This rock n’ roll formation was established by vocalist Erik and guitarist Jon on an early cold winter morning after party in ...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

One of the best rock-metal competition of Sweden is getting close to its finish in the year, finding again notable groups to rock with them. Who loves the fresh blood? So, lets headbang hard in the end of the month, -the programme is not less, than ’young fighters’ with Hardcore Superstar in Stockholm- on 21st of December.

Released and unsigned is a competition in Sweden from 2010, clearly for unsigned, talented, and naturally impassioned bands. Guys are coming from everywhere, with different styles, and feelings, but who cares the ruins- just play us, ”nice boys, play, play, play rock ’n roll..”

The prize is huge: winner get the chance to play at Sweden Rock Festival in the next summer, so the stakes are really high, and the flurry also. But the rock audience likes the trilles…

Aft...