Grass roots is where it starts with hard slogging, vans breaking down, sleeping in the van, getting sick of Subway or living off Pot Noodles; the hotels and catering of the arenas are the thing of dreams. Tonight’s headliners The Treatment have had a taste of that dream touring with …
Read More »The Defiled + Glamour Of The Kill – Mandela Hall, Belfast – Friday September 13, 2013
All ages gigs, when you get to a certain ‘vintage’, can be weird affairs at best and uncomfortable ones at worst. It’s OK if you’ve got your own sprog to keep an eye on, but when you’re there on your ownsome merely to observe the proceedings on stage, it can …
Read More »Lordi – Limelight 1, Belfast – Saturday May 4, 2013
It may be seven years since Lordi firmly put their particular brand of comic book metal well and truly on the international map with their sensational, tongue-in-cheek win at the 2007 Eurovision Song Contest, but the fascination with the band nevertheless endures, with the memory of that night in Athens …
Read More »Rough Cut – Rollin’ Thunder EP
Back in the early to mid-1980s, a band called Rough Cutt had everything that it could possibly to take to become the then “next big thing” – big hair, big tunes, a big record deal (with Warner Brothers) and big management (in the shape of one Wendy Dio). However, despite …
Read More »Suicide Bombers – Criminal Record
Being a rock DJ can be an extremely hazardous job – nearly as dangerous as trying to survive as a music journalist. Please believe when I say this: on and off, I’ve been spinning heavy rock and metal discs and writing shit about said same nonsense for more than two …
Read More »Knock Out Kaine – ‘House Of Sins’
The UK doesn’t really have a reputation for producing great sleaze rock bands – well, certainly, not ones who could challenge the supremacy of the likes of the Crüe, LA Guns, GNR or Cinderella in their prime. The likes of The Quireboys, Wildhearts and Dogs D’Amour always have been more …
Read More »Dokken – ‘Broken Bones’
I have to admit it – I’m a child of the Eighties. I mean that in that is when I got into metal: it was the formative years of that historic decade in rock history that, as a lanky-haired rebellious private school-attending teenager that I first discovered bands such as …
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