Ding ding! Round 1 of day 2 and first band of the day, London based District 13 gave us a highly entertaining nonet of songs considering they had been on the road since 4am. A dizzying array of musical dishes was served up for Sunday lunch as they kicked off …

Festival organizer Martin Short has a change of name for his annual festival and venue for 2019 so the Badass Bash now became Rockforce Festival and it was certainly a force to be reckoned with as 16 bands, all playing for free shook the rafters of the Waterloo Music Bar …

Judging by the strength of Caught By The Machine, the third album by The Room, I’m looking forward even more to their set at Rockforce Festival on May 5th. Ten songs of crafted melodic rock have just been released on White Star Records make it an essential purchase for me …

Gasoline Outlaws are the second band this year that have until now slipped under my radar. Latest studio album Light Up The World should have been released on April 5th but for a problem not of their own but from their Pledge campaign means it won’t see the light of …

If Saturday night’s alright for fighting then surely Friday nights are alright for obeying as Stoke based metallers Obey unleashed their seismic new studio album Swallow The Sun at the well attended Underground in Stoke. A four band bill saw openers The Secret Elephant and Banzai Pipeline bring the noise …

There must be something in the water (or scrumpy) in Postbridge, Devon for Torqued to create the totally unhinged recently released The Coup De Grâce EP. The trio of Marc Cleave, Kurt Johnson and Rimmy Sinclair have created some of the heaviest music I’ve heard in quite sometime as they …

So, can Obey overcome the tricky third album syndrome with their new opus Swallow The Sun? Of course they have and with ease! It’s taken 3 years since they served up Maelstrom but the wait has been worthwhile as opener ‘Back Home’ draws you in from the off by a …

To say that reviewing Blaze Bayley albums kept me busy is an understatement as the hardest working artist I know of has just released his Live In France double album via Blaze Bayley Recordings which makes it 4 in 2 years in between a relentless touring schedule. The gigs I’ve …

So the dreaded last day of a fantastic 3 days at Grimm Up North Festival 2019 comes far too soon as first band of the day Sellsword proved to be one of my most enjoyable sets of the weekend as the York based lunatics hammered out just four songs due …

Here we go again as a similar song once said. Curious weather in Bury before the first full day of Grimm Up North 2019 as we had rain, hail, snow and sunshine within an hour so that was a sign of a metal storm to come and it did with …

Since the sheer delight of the first Grimm Up North Festival in 2017 we have had to wait just over a year for the sequel and what a weekend it was! 23 bands over 3 days giving their all to a room full of metal heads to say a big …

Now this is how live albums should sound! Dissonance Productions have raided the heavy metal vaults and dug out this 1980 Live Quartz album, of course by the band Quartz. Actually recorded on December 1st 1979 in their hometown of Digbeth, it sounds stripped down to its bare bones. Three …

Those fine folk at Dissonance Productions have cranked up their time machine and unearthed the self titled debut from Quartz in 1977. Produced by Tony Iommi, they also supported Black Sabbath the same year and appeared at the prestigious Reading Festival (when it used to be rock/metal related) in 1977, …

Now flying the flag for AOR for thirty five years now, FM fly it even higher on their latest album The Italian Job, a live recording from their appearance at the Frontiers Rock Festival in Milan on April 29th 2018 that features seventeen songs and a bonus DVD released on …