Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
There aren’t going to be many bills that can compete with just how metal Behemoth’s current touring party is and therefore, it is nice to see them playing a venue the size of Glasgow’s O2 ABC. The beer might be overpriced and it’s not actually sold out, but it show’s that extreme metal doesn’t have to exist solely in the underground.
Continue reading “Behemoth w/ Decapitated, Grand Magus and Winterfylleth.”
As we approach the end of the year, (you can expect my end of year lists to start appearing over the next few weeks) I have a tradition of making a list of albums I have somehow missed, so I can go back and check them out. While looking for some that might grab my attention, I stumbled on the fact that apparently everyone’s least favourite twats, Nickelback, released a new album. Now, I was kind of surprised I’d missed this. As much as I despise their bland, soulless radio rock, I was of the opinion that Nickelback were still a rather big deal and therefore, I would have heard when they were releasing a new album. All of this led, out of some masochistic need to hurt myself, to me sitting down and listening to it this morning.
So yesterday the Daily Mail once again ran an idiotic article about the suicide of a young teenage boy, I’m not even going to bother linking to it, because they don’t deserve the one click that would get them. That story is obviously tragic and I don’t want to belittle that. However, the Daily Mail chose to focus on the fact the young man was listening to Slipknot and was a ‘hardcore rock’ fan. Now quite frankly, I am fed up of this kind of shit. I think we all are. However, I have written about these problems before, more times than I count. So, rather than focusing on calling the Daily Mail cunts, which they are, I have decided instead to write about 5 ways that heavy metal is awesome. Because in shit times, we should focus on the positives.
So Metallica will once again make their way over to our shores in the summer of 2015. This time they will grace Reading with their presence and as usual there is a lot of people very happy about it, but a more vocal group of people pissed off. Why? Because of the feeling that Metallica have over saturated the UK with festival headline slots. In the last four years they have played Download, Sonisphere and Glastonbury, all with only one new song and the pile of steaming shite that was Lulu. People are apparently fed up of Metallica and want someone new to take the spot.
In an attempt to change things up I am going to begin to deliberately vary the length of my articles, this is going to be an example of a shorter piece and there shall be longer ones down the road. I assume no one shall have any complaints about this.
Some ideas are just so incredibly insane that you couldn’t make them up. Primus covering the soundtrack of 1971’s Willy Wonka & The Chocolate Factory, is one of them. You would have had to have taken a lot of drugs to stumble on that idea before it came about and yet here it is, Les Claypool and gangs interpretation of classic movie fare like “Candy Man” and yes all those oompa loompa bits too.
Hacktivist are beginning to make a habit of coming to Electric Circus, with this being their second performance here within a year. Therefore, it’s kind of strange that tonight seems to actually see a smaller crowd come out for the Milton Keynes band. Although the lack of new material and the fact it’s a Wednesday night might have also played into that.
Continue reading “Hacktivist w/ Dead Harts and The One Hundred”
So Download announcement’s have started and as usual the internet is all excited. It’s become a worrying part of our festival culture, that the announcements now seem to actually get more hype than any of the bands themselves and personally I’d love Download to follow the model that Hellfest does, where it just released the majority of its bands in one go (check out that line up by the way!) That’s not what I’m going to discuss here however, but rather an interesting divide I have begun to see in festival announcement reactions. It’s one that to be honest confuses me and while this isn’t the first time I have noticed, it is becoming more and more common.
Black Veil Brides have been called a lot of things in their career. Widely derided for being all style no substance, the band have risen up to be the latest whipping boy of the heavy metal community due to a perceived notion that their over the top rock and roll is a bit shit, most of which people on the internet have probably decided because of how they look. The truth is that Black Veil Brides have never been as offensive as people like to believe they are. They play pretty simple rock and roll, inspired by the likes of Guns ‘N’ Roses, but instead of sex, drugs and rock and roll, they instead embrace being different and how being so doesn’t make you alone. Much like other bands who have embraced that message, My Chemical Romance being the most obvious recent example, it has led to them amassing a huge teen audience (something else people seem to think is a bad thing) and they look well on their way to being this generations gateway band into the world of rock and metal.
So on Friday I nipped down to Caberet Voltaire in Edinburgh on a whim, to check out a few local bands. I came into this gig with exactly zero knowledge of any of these bands, except for the description on the Cab Vol website and came away very pleasantly surprised, as all four bands put on a great show. Not bad for a fiver.
Sometimes I sit down to write a review and realise that there is probably not much point. Today was one of those days. On Sunday night I went to see Ginger Wildheart in Glasgow and had a rather fantastic night. However, me writing about how awesome Ginger is seems a bit pointless. If you wish to know my opinion on the man and his music you can find it here, here and here, as well as a few other places if you want to delve a bit deeper. I’m a huge Ginger fan and therefore repeating myself is now going to be that interesting. Of course it was awesome, he’s always awesome.
Continue reading “A Look at Music Venues Via Ginger Wildheart”
Ramblings About Wrestling 