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Posts in the Music category
Top 10 Rock & Metal Albums of 2011
Doing the traditional "top 10 albums" post for me this year is the most difficult one of these top 10s I've done to date. There have been so many albums I've enjoyed this year I could easily do a top 20, but wanted to keep it to a top 10 to keep with tradition. The top 5 albums have been fairly set for awhile, though the order was in doubt until very recently. The bottom three could easily have been any three from around 15, but all earned their places, so here is my top 10 albums for 2011, with....
A Rocksins & Metal Press Catchup
Things have been extremely busy lately, even more so than usual. I've been neglecting this site because I've been spending so much time on Rocksins, so I thought I'd post a bit of a recap on some of the stuff I've been writing for Rocksins lately (with links to each thing so if anyone wants to read it they are more than welcome):
Rise To Remain in Cambridge
Back in September, I was invited to review Rise To Remain's show at The Portland Arms in Cambridge, a venue comprising the backroom of....
Insomnium Live Review From The Camden Underworld November 15th 2011
What were you doing last Tuesday? If you weren't one of the several hundred people inside an almost sold out Camden Underworld for a night of quality melodic death metal, then you seriously missed out. Insomnium's first ever headlining tour across Europe has been an event long awaited by their deservedly growing fanbase, so after seeing them once in a support role (with Swallow The Sun) and after missing them with Dark Tranquility due to a family emergency last year, as soon as the headline tour....
The Top Ten Metal Album Opening Tracks
UPDATE
I've made a complete balls up with this as My Last Serenade is actually no4 on Alive Or Just Breathing. That's officially dropped and replaced with Aces High by Iron Maiden. More detailed fix coming in due course.
END UPDATE The other night, coming home late on the delayed train from work I was listening to my ipod when something of a relevation for a blog post hit me. Top 10 lists are done all the time, particularly when it comes to metal, metal songs and metal albums, b....
I've made a complete balls up with this as My Last Serenade is actually no4 on Alive Or Just Breathing. That's officially dropped and replaced with Aces High by Iron Maiden. More detailed fix coming in due course.
END UPDATE The other night, coming home late on the delayed train from work I was listening to my ipod when something of a relevation for a blog post hit me. Top 10 lists are done all the time, particularly when it comes to metal, metal songs and metal albums, b....
Sonisphere Knebworth 2011 Sunday Review - A Celebration of Paul Gray
After the fairly restful happenings of the Saturday of this years' Sonisphere, topped off by Gojira's stupendous performance in Bohemia, Sunday's schedule had indicated
that it was likely to be wall to wall quality metal with lots of stage dashing. With this in mind the whole group was up relatively early and we made it to the arena with
plenty of time to spare, which was somewhat fortunate as Volbeat, who were kicking things off on the Apollo stage started approximately 10
minutes e....
Sonisphere Knebworth 2011 Saturday Review - When The Rains Came
After the sheer magnificence of the assault on the ears provided by the big four until late the previous evening, one might expect that the occupants of Sonisphere Knebworth may not be particularly early to rise on the Saturday morning. Indeed, with a few exceptions, I personally viewed Saturday as something of a rest day before the wall-to-wall onslaught of great bands on the Sunday.
One of the aforementioned exceptions though, were my longtime favourites Sylosis, who having graced the Bohem....
Sonisphere Knebworth 2011 Friday Review - The Big Four Hit The UK
For many of the rock and metal festival going public in the UK, this year it really has only been about one festival: Sonisphere Knebworth. Sonisphere promoters Kilimanjiro had assembled one of the greatest looking UK festival lineups of recent times, possibly ever. Whilst the Download lineup had the odd highlight, it was unable to match Sonisphere for star power and for the combination of experienced popular bands combined with up and comers, memorable events (the big four, the return of Slipkn....
Ozzy Osbourne Helps Kerrang Magazine Celebrate 30 Years Live Review From Hammersmith
Ozzy Osbourne performing a show nowadays is something of a semi-rare event. Ozzy playing to help celebrate Kerrang magazines' 30th birthday by playing a special, "more intimate" show at the Hammersmith Apollo definitely falls under the rare event category, so I figured it would be bonkers not to attend. Ozzy's live performances have become slightly more erratic as he has gotten older but he's definitely still capable of pulling off a spectacular show and it was hoped that this would be one of th....
Boysetsfire Live at Islington Academy London Review, 27th June 2011
Boysetsfire are a band who were pioneers with their post-rock/post-hardcore sound when they first hit the airwaves over a decade ago with their breakthrough album After The Eulogy. Pretty much every single screamo or hardcore band from then on as well as bands such as Enter Shikari will have been influenced directly or indirectly by the fierceness and rawness of Boysetsfire and the way their songs were crafted, though I doubt many of the bands they influenced had such a political theme to their ....
Download Festival 2011 Friday Review
Quick Note: There are no pictures in this, and I apologise, I have just moved house and my camera downloading equipment is buried in a box somewhere. I will update this when I have pictures.
This years annual pilgrimage to Donington Park had a very different feel to it than the previous seven; It was the first time in my 8 years of attending the Download Festival I would only be going for the day and not for the entire weekend, due to having just become a home owner and needing to move in on ....
A rather awesome special Kamelot moment from London
I just realised that despite mentioning it in my review of the Kamelot show with Fabio Lione in London last week, I never included the video I took of them performing The Haunting (Somewhere In Time) with Simone Simons. I also enjoyed it enough to warrant giving it its own post.
Without further ado, enjoy!
....
Kamelot Live at Islington Academy London 28th April 2011 - Life After Khan?
I had decided months ago not to go to this show. As far as I was concerned, Roy Khan, Kamelots iconic lead singer was on a touring hiatus and that was the fact of the matter. As a result, I did not want to see the band with a temporary touring replacement, whomever it may be. Then, two things happened. One, I saw videos of Fabio Lione, lead singer of well renown power metal band Rhapsody Of Fire who was standing in for Khan on this tour (and on Kamelot vocal duties in general until September) on....
Chimp Spanner Review Live From The Purple Turtle Camden April 21st 2011: The Tech Yourself Before You Wreck Yourself Tour
When you have an instrumental collection constructed as well as an album like Chimp Spanners' At The Dreams' Edge, you often wonder how it would translate into live performance. Sometimes music of this time is fantastic live, and other times it can fall a little bit flat. Add into the equation that Chimp Spanner up until now has been one (genius) man, Paul Antonio Ortiz, and it adds another element of uncertainty to how the music will come across on the first Chimp Spanner tour. Will the musicia....
Influences on Musical Tastes & Discovering Bands
I've been slacking on my writing lately, not so much for Rocksins but certainly on this site so I'm hoping I'll rectify that in the next few weeks.
Something I've been thinking about lately is how people acquire their musical tastes (in this case relating specifically to metal and its associated sub-types, but you could apply it to anything). I got into metal around the age of 13-14, literally thanks to channel surfing one night and catching the last 30 seconds of the video for The Unforgiven....
Top 10 Rock & Metal Albums of 2010...And Top 3 E.P's
It's taken me a long time to put this together, mainly because I needed to catch up on several of the major albums from 2010. In the end I found that a lot of this top 10 did not turn out how I would have expected. Several big bands or favourites of mine disappointed with their releases in 2010, leaving some new contenders to climb the ranks. In my opinion, when some people write these kinds of posts, they're a little bit afraid to be completely honest and put in albums they think they should, r....
Rob Zombie Live At The Brixton Academy 16th February 2011 Review
Considering it has been 16 years since Rob Zombie last played on these shores (with White Zombie), I think its a bit of an understatement to suggest a) it was overdue and b) there were a lot of rather excited people in Brixton Academy for this one.
We missed opening band Revoker but were in with plenty of time to catch the always excellent live Skindred, or should I say usually excellent live Skindred. Something tonight was just not quite right and it's hard to put my finger on what it was. T....
A Day To Remember Live At Brixton Academy Review - 6th February 2011
I had been looking forward to this show for a long time, and for many reasons. One, after seeing A Day To Remember three years running at Download in half-hour doses I was looking forward to seeing them play a headline length set and two the gig was an opportunity to catch up with some old friends.
It was this catching up in the only pub between Brixton tube station and Brixton Academy that caused us to miss the opening band Pierce The Veil, but we arrived in plenty of time to catch main supp....
Paramore Live At The O2 Arena Review, London, 13th November 2010
The last time I saw Paramore live was at Brixton Academy some 2 1/2 years ago with New Found Glory. Whilst they were popular then (and put on a good show), it was hard to imagine the rise to seeming global superstardom that has happened to the band in the last 18 months or so. Through touring, an appearance on the Twilight soundtrack, the release of third album Brand New Eyes and appearances at major festivals all over the place (including Reading and Leeds were they were 2nd headliners under Bl....
Linkin Park Live At The O2 Arena London Review 10th November 2010
Despite my misgivings (and I know I am far from the only one) over Linkin Park's latest offering, A Thousand Suns, there is never any questioning that they are a live act always worth seeing, so when the latest Linkin Park UK tour was announced the tickets for the O2 where they last played nearly three years ago were snapped up in short order.
Linkin Park's support bands over the years have ranged from the fantastic (Lostprophets) to the quite frankly appalling (Biffy Clyro) and this time we ....
Why missing out on Alter Bridge was a very dumb move
I have always been a big Alter Bridge fan, but since new album AB III came out (check out my review of AB III at Rocksins.com) it has taken my appreciation of them to a new level. I unfortunately did not manage to see them on their UK tour this week, but someone showed me this amazing video from the Southampton show, so I thought I'd share it with anyone who stumbles across my site.
Alter Bridge doing Watch Over You and Wonderful Life Acoustic in Southampton
....
Red Sparowes Live At The Scala, Kings Cross, London 10th October 2010
Unless you're a particular follower of the ambient/post-metal genre (or you've read my recent album review of The Fear is Excruciating But Therein Lies The Answer on Rocksins), there's probably not too many people who have heard of Red Sparowes. Anyone who falls into this category, I have only this to say: It is your loss. With the recent departure of their peers and one of the founders of the genre ISIS, Red Sparowes are more important to the world of ambient post-metal than ever.
With this....
Sonisphere Knebworth 2010: Sunday Review: Fear Of The Dark
After the magnificence of Rammstein the previous evening, none of us were in a particular hurry on Sunday and Sunday turned out to be quite a laidback day as festivals go (if one can say such a thing on a day when Slayer are playing!).
When we did get to the arena, there was a brief shopping trip before some of our group chose to go and enjoy The Bootleg Beatles after Bjorn Again's relative success last year. I say brief, but over the course of the day Steve acquired himself 10 t-shirts and a....
Sonisphere Knebworth 2010: Saturday Review: Ich Will
Having recovered from the battering in Sylosis the previous evening and the disappointments of Alice Cooper's technical difficulties, hopes and spirits were very high for Saturday. The first band of the day that any of us really wanted to see was Lacuna Coil and so we got into the arena with about 5 minutes of Sabaton's set left. This looks like it was a total mistake as they sounded brilliant and were seven shades of hilarious inviting us all to their homosexual party of a tour in October. Come....
Sonisphere Knebworth 2010: Friday Review: Schools Out
On first entry to the arena the most noticable difference was the shift in the location of the Bohemia tent to a (in my opinion) more favourable location near the main entrance to the campsite, and also how much bigger the second stage was this year (in my estimation definitely bigger than the Ronnie James Dio stage from Download). In terms of musical action, the task of kicking off this year's Sonisphere Festival was down to Dutch metallers Delain, who I knew very little about. During their fai....
Download Festival 2010: Sunday Review: In The Rainy Season
Relatively fresh from Rage and meeting up with the Rocksins crew afterwards, Sunday was (in terms of the band schedule) supposed to be my most leisurely of days, but it didn't exactly turn out that way. Aside from Aerosmith, the band I most wanted to see all day were the mighty Saxon, who were one of the major highlights of 2008 in the Tuborg tent and was looking forward to seeing hopefully a repeat, unlike at Sonisphere where the curse of the Saturn Stage crappy sound hit them in Knebworth last....
Download Festival 2010: Saturday Review: Rust In Peace
Saturday came and the weather was still holding and our large group went off to the arena in dribs and drabs, with me failing to carry out my original plan of getting into the arena in time to see Rise To Remain early on, I instead opted to get in with plenty of time to spare for Sybreed, a band who I had heard good things about but not seen or heard much of their material.
Upon arrival into the arena at about the time Flyleaf should have been playing, I saw an unfamilar banner adorning the ....
Download Festival 2010: Friday Review: Back In Black
Due to the rather large presence of AC/DC headlining the first night at Download this year, the amount of bands on Fridays lineup was a bit shorter than usual, with the bands kicking off at 3pm rather than the usual 1pm. We got ourselves into the arena in plenty of time and had time to acquire beer and ice cream and get a good spot right down the front for main stage openers Unearth, who kicked things off in typical aggressive style with their blend of NWOAHM. The sound was not brilliant, but it....
Top 10 Download Festival Performances So Far (2004-2009)
In my six years of going to the UK's main rock and metal festival, there have been a very wide mix of performances from the fantastic to the bloody awful. After much careful thought and deliberation, here is my top 10 (well 11, I couldn't drop one) performances that I have been witness to (which unfortunately disqualifies me from including Metallica's secret show on the second stage in 2003).
Honourable Mentions: Devildriver 2006, Saxon 2008, Testament 2008, Faith No More 2009, Sylosis 2009, ....
A very bad 10 days for metal
The last 10 days have been a very bad 10 days for metal, and a very mixed bag for me personally. I will mention the personal stuff briefly, but want to dwell on the bigger issues as it were.
Last Saturday I fulfilled a long standing ambition to meet Chris Jericho from the WWE and frontman of Fozzy. I actually got to interview him, never mind meet him, which was a real thrill, and spent around 25 minutes on his tour bus talking to him about everything from Judas Priest and Metallica to the vol....
Bowling For Soup Accoustic Live In London: An Evening With Jaret and Erik
Due to this evening's venue (The Islington Academy in Angel) hosting a club night after the show, the show kicked off at the very early time of 6 O'Clock. The time sheet on the wall said that Bowling For Soup were on at 7:15, with support act Bob Schneider on from 6:15 - 7. Given that it seems to be something of a tradition of some people to not come to a gig until at least 2 hours after doors, I wondered just how much of the show those people would miss.
When going to a Bowling For Soup show....
Trivium and Chimaira live at Koko, London, March 18th 2010
My live association with Trivium goes back to their very first tour of the UK in May 2005, when they were on the Roadrunner Records new bands rotating headliners tour alongside 3 Inches Of Blood and Still Remains which hit the (old) Garage in Highbury. By the end of that tour Trivium were headlining every night and had begun their very quick rise to the top during their Ascendancy period.
Whilst the "next Metallica" hype around the band has died off somewhat since (which is probably a good th....
Kamelot Live At Koko, London, March 28th 2010
Due to me and Steve taking a stop over in the hope and anchor for a beverage next to Koko whilst waiting for our other 2 friends to join us (mainly Div as he took a scenic route around Tottenham and the surrounding area in his car trying to find Koko) we missed Adagio and their temporary singer, arriving in Koko just as they finished. This did mean we were in plenty of time to catch Leaves Eyes, who I wasn't too sure about based on listening to them before the show, as I'm not too keen on the wh....
Fear Factory & Sylosis Live at The Electric Ballroom, Camden Town, London
Fresh from having my ears destroyed the previous night at Brixton Academy courtesy of Machine Head's overloud sound setup, I really wasn't sure if I was going to make this show. After numerous attempts to ship the tickets, I was unsuccessful, and thus headed down to The Electric Ballroom in Camden with Matt in tow for an evening with Burton, Dino and friends. We arrived too late (6pm doors, finish work at 6pm) to catch much of opening band October File apart from the last couple of songs, which ....
Festival Choices: Download 2010 vs Sonisphere 2010
So we've had a couple of rounds of announcements of bands from the UK's two main alternative/metal festivals. Both seem to be trying to pull out all the stops in the battle for our money. The headliners of both will attract a lot of different kinds of fans. AC/DC are arguably the world's biggest hard rock band ever, and the Download organisers have been trying to get them since 2003. Iron Maiden on the other hand, rival Metallica for the title of the world's biggest metal band, and Maiden headli....
My top 10 albums...of 2008
While everyone else has been churning out their 2009 top tens, I thought I would post a top ten with a little bit of a difference and go back in time slightly as I never managed to get this published at the start of last year. Please let me know what you think, enjoy.
1) Trivium - Shogun
After being accused (more than ever) of trying to sound too much like "Trivtallica" on 2006's The Crusade, Shogun is somewhat more of a return to Ascendancy territory, but the complexity and fierci....
After being accused (more than ever) of trying to sound too much like "Trivtallica" on 2006's The Crusade, Shogun is somewhat more of a return to Ascendancy territory, but the complexity and fierci....
2010 - The Year of Rocksins?
Before anything else, I'd just like to say happy new year to anyone who reads this with this being the first post on My Sweet Shadow of 2010.
Secondly, a lot of you will know I am one of the writers at rocksins.com, a rock and metal news site. This site only started in August, so we're officially only 5 months old, but we are already getting over 20,000 hits a month and doing very well in the Google rankings. I just wanted to draw attention to a couple of posts I have written on there recently.....
Lostprophets in Kentish Town review - Better Late Than Never!
Having been a Lostprophets fan since day 1, receiving The Fake Sound of Progress from Dave for my 15th birthday, a chance to see them perform at a Q Awards gig at a venue a fair bit smaller than what they usually play these days was too good to pass up.
The evening opened up with The New 1920, one of the newest from the bunch of bands of the Welsh rock/emo/metal invasion of recent years. They were a decent enough band, with some nice riffs in places, but the vocals didn't really seem to fit ....
Shadows Fall & Five Finger Death Punch Live at The Electric Ballroom
Last Friday I had the very large pleasure of attending the Five Finger Death Punch/Shadows Fall co-headlining tour at the Electric Ballroom in Camden Town (London for any non UK readers), along with Steve, Rob and Matt. I'd had 2 interviews earlier in the day, so was looking forward to unwinding with some quality metal.
I'm afraid we didn't see or hear much of Magnacult, with their 15 minute short set being taken up by the time it took to stash my bag in the cloak room and getting a round of ....
Metal Journalist?
I have been slightly slacking in updates recently for a few reasons. I've been very busy at work recently and that hasn't left me much time for updates. I have nearly cleared my live review backlog, just got to finish off the review of the Lostprophets show from last month.
I've also had a new venture to focus my creative writing energies towards: Through the incredibly useful twitter I recently became friends with Neil, the owner of Rocksins.com, a rock and metal news site. He saw this site an....
Bowling For Soup Live at the Roundhouse Review: The Party In Your Pants Tour 2009
Bowling For Soup are in my opinion, one of the best live acts going today, bar none. Their mixture of enthusiasm, energy, good songs and comedy makes for a fantastic live experience every time they tour, so when the "Party in Your Pants Tour 2009" was announced, tickets were snapped up very quickly by yours truly. They also happen to be one of my lovely wife's favourite bands, so the fact I could spring this as a surprise on her was a nice bonus.
Tonight's show was at The Roundhouse in Camde....
Another Night In London With Devildriver, Behemoth and Friends
As I was lucky enough to grab tickets to the Devildriver/Behemoth tour, last Friday I along with 3 of my friends was off to the newly refurbished "relentless" Garage in Highbury & Islington for a Friday night dose of Metal and chaos.
First minor rant. Who in their right minds puts the doors time for a gig on a Friday in London at 5pm. Even school kids are gonna struggle to make that if they're from anywhere around the m25 or further afield. I'll come back to this later but minor rant over for....
Dream Theater & Opeth Rock Wembley - Progressive Nation UK 2009 Review
As you may have seen from other posts on this website or from twitter, this past Saturday I was lucky enough to attend the Progressive Nation UK show at Wembley Arena, Dream Theater's first appearance in the UK since their fantastic Download Festival set and their first tour in 2 years. This time they had brought along fellow progressive metallers Opeth, as well as the unknown quantities (to myself and my friends) of BigElf and Unexpect.
Getting into Wembley Arena just in time for things to k....
The UK has gone metal thrashing (tour) mad
BIG UPDATE
When I first wrote this, little did I know that 6 or 7 tours were going to be announced in the days immediately following this post, so with this in mind, I have done a major update with a vastly increased calendar at the bottom. Despite the fact the paragraph below refers to this as a brief update, it is now nothing of the sort.
Whilst I should be writing far more important things than this brief update, that also requires considerable effort, so I just wanted to make people awar....
Bleeding for the cause - Here Lies Affliction in Camden review
Something happened at this show that has not happened to me in a very long time, 4 and a half years to be precise. Whats that, you ask? I bled at a show, probably my worst bleeder ever actually!
Matt's brother Chris's band Here Lies Affliction were "headlining" a show at the purple turtle in Camden, I say headlining, they were the advertised band, despite the fact they were actually 3rd on the bill with 5 bands playing. Also on the bill where A Long Time Dead (Jon who plays guitar in HLA also p....
Sonisphere Knebworth 09 Part 1
As something of a Download festival veteran (I only missed the first one in 2003), the announcement of a brand new rock and metal festival in the UK was exciting to me and good news. Jayne (my awesome wife for those of you who do not personally know me) had been saying how she would like to go to a festival, and there would be no better introduction to the world of rock festivals than to see Metallica live, with a whole bunch of other awesome bands into the bargain.
Myself and my lovely wife ....
Shadows Fall & Five Finger Death Punch To Tour the UK
In September 2008 (the evening I was supposed to go on holiday to be precise), Shadows Fall were supposed to headline a show at the Islington Academy with London. Also on the bill were to be Cry For Silence, Exit Ten, and relative US newcomers Five Finger Death Punch. Unfortunately, this tour was cancelled (reportedly so Shadows Fall could get more money supporting Avenged Sevenfold in Canda, if that is true, all I can say is boooooooo lol). I was very disappointed by this as I have been a big S....
R.I.P Michael
Like I imagine a lot of the rest of the world, I am currently sat watching the bbc news as they have announced in the last few minutes that Michael Jackson has passed away after suffering a heart attack at home.It's horrible to say, but I'm not surprised at all, just very,very sad. Regardless of all the controversies surrounding some of his later years, he is and was an icon of his time and responsible for some of the finest pop music ever created. Hopefully now he will find some peace which he ....
Priest Feast Roundup & Review
After hyping the gig on this website, I thought it was only fair to do a quick run down of how the show went.
The day began in somewhat hungover fashion, having had the first part of my stag do the night before (more on this in another post soon). After seeing Steve out, I collapsed back to bed until approximately 1pm where I felt well enough to get up. I thus dressed in appropriate attire of Megadeth shirt and headed for Wembley.
Testament kicked off Priest Feast and were excellent, with ....
You've got another thing coming
On the 21st of February at Wembley Arena, myself, Matt, his dad, his brother and his uncle will be seeing Testament, Megadeth and Judas Priest. All on the same show. To say I am excited about this is a rediculous understatement. Therefore I will leave you all with a picture to try to illustrate how epic this is going to be. Judas Prriiieeessstttt!!
....
