Posted in Cd Reviews

Old Ironsides are a Chicago based band who have taken their name from the nickname of the USS COnstituion – the famous ship that these days resides in Boston harbour. The band formed in 2005 and released an EP in 2008. They’ve been through various lineup changes and have now released their debut album ”The path of madness” which includes four of the six tracks from the EP.

The music is Prog Rock and there’s plenty of variety here. The music is very good – there’s some nice heavy stuff with plenty of power from the guitars, and also some slower stuff. The vocals though are another matter – while they are good and at times work well with the music, at other times they just seem to be lacking the power needed to match the music, and that does tend to bring the whole thing down somewhat.

Posted in Cd Reviews

Mike Tyler is a poet from New York City who has been cited as an infleunce on Beck, and who’s words have been stencilled by the artist Banksy outside London’s Paddington station (the line used was ”only the ridiculous survive”). ”Erection” is his second album.

Listening to this album, the closest comparison is to Lou Reed – vocally Mike Tyler is very similar, and the emphasis on the lyrics is also a reason to compare them. Mike Tyler’s lyrics are thoughtful and well written with a bit of humour – which is what you’d expect from a poet, good lyrics. Musically the album is a blend of Folk, Blues and Rock’n’Roll.

The tunes are quite catchy and there is a lot of variety here – in fact the album feels quite unpredictable as you’re never quite sure what’s coming next...

Posted in Cd Reviews

This album was originally released in 2010 but has now been re-released with extra tracks. This is a very unusual album (but in a good way). It doesn’t really fall into any recognisable genre. Ambient or Prog are the two terms that come to mind when listening to it – certainly at times it has Genesis feel to it, but generally it really is unique. It’s music that you can happily have playing while you’re doing something else as the music doesnt disturb your train of thought but just gently washes over you.

The use of Synth, piano, wind chimes and harp give the music a very interesting sound and the vocals are used in really interesting ways with echoes and other effects used to really add a whole new dimension to the sound.

This really is a hard album to review as the music is so uniqu...

Posted in Press Releases

Auction for the Promise Club, are very lucky and super excited to be playing in the Olympic Park on the opening day, Saturday 28th July! The leading online music community, Unsigned Band Review (UBR) announced the initiative to give unsigned bands the chance to perform at a specially constructed stage in the Olympic Park as part of London’s 2012 celebrations from 28th July – 11th August. Auction for the Promise Club’s track ’Dancer’ was recently included in a compilation album that was curated by the Kaiser Chiefs. ’Really epic.. it’s massive!’ – Peanut Baines from the Kaiser Chiefs about the track Dancer by Auction for the Promise Club.

Auction for the Promise Club have a new video for the track ’Liquid’ that is set to be released on Friday 20th July on Http://www...

Posted in Interviews

This year at Tuska I got an invitation for an interview with the Finnish melodic hard rock/heavy metal band, who started at the end of the nineties as a technical death metal. This got me pretty curious to learn more about the band, to watch them live at Tuska and, of course, to accept the interview invitation. It turned out that I met a band with a good stage experience from all over the world, interestingly mixed compositions and an awesome promo photo that convinced me they’re a bunch of crazy guys enjoying what they are doing. The result of the interview can be read below, and everything else about the band, plus media streams can be found on their website at http://amoralweb.com/

Me: Who is the band Amoral?
Ben Varon: Amoral was started by me, on guitars and our drummer Juhana Karlss...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

There are loads of festivals happening in Romania right now – OST Fest, Rock the City, Peninsula, Summer Well, Artmania – but B’estfest has had the best possible evolution over the years. When it started, in 2007, it was one of the largest events of this sort – not only in Romania, but also in Eastern Europe. But during its first editions it took place in the middle of Bucharest, among the buildings and concrete of a busy, hot, industrialized city. As incredible as the line-up was, nobody really saw it as a real festival, because every night people went to their homes, or to hotel or hostel rooms, not to a nice camping ground.

Last year, thought, B’estfest became something totally different...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Canadian band Kobra and the Lotus have come a long way in the last few years, and in the last few months in particular. The band formed in Calgary towards the end of 2008, and their first UK shows were in November 2009 when they played to a handful of people. Their debut album, ”Out of the pit” has always been hard to track down in the UK but is well worth the effort of tracking down a copy. Over the last two and a half years the band have had lineup changes, and have worked their asses off touring as many places as possible including gigs all over the UK as they built up a fanbase...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Pagan/folk metal band Korpiklaani are about to release their eight album – Manala

Jonne Järvelä gives this summary of the storyline: “`Manala´ is the realm of the dead – the underworld in Finnish mythology. This place is best known for its appearance in the Finnish national epic Kalevala, on which many of our new songs are based. In the 16th poem of Kalevala, Väinämöinen, a shamanistic hero travels to Manala in search for knowledge about the dead. On his journey he meets the ferrywoman – a girl, Tuonen tytti, or Tuonen piika (Death’s maid), who takes him across the river of Tuoni. However, on the isle of Tuoni he is not given the spells he was originally looking for and he barely manages to escape the place. After his return he curses anyone trying to enter the place alive.”

In ...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

Being organised quite close to the city center and populated areas in Helsinki, Tuska festival has a different curfew than any other I’ve seen. Friday and Saturday the ’noise’ has to end at ten PM and Sunday at nine, making it possible for everyone to get their rest and have the chance to go home at decent times for the next working week. Thus, Sunday only leaves room for three bands on the main stage. The first of them was a Finnish act I’ve known for a long time now and I always wished I’d see live- Apocalyptica. Everyone was telling me how cool they are live, but nobody actually managed to explain how cool they really are. There’s one drummer on stage surrounded by three guys playing cellos… Way atypical for any metal concert...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

Not the easiest of mornings in the Finnish capital, yet I managed to make it by 13:30 to the festival grounds to watch the performance of the Finnish hard/heavy rock (former death metal) band Amoral, as I was going to have an interview later on that day and it would have made my life easier if I got to ’know’ them a bit by watching them perform. I liked the show. You could see that the band had just returned from touring on other continents as they had a good energy and would always make the scene look crowded. They warmed us even more by the intensive use of pyro effects and all in all made a good impression for such a young band...