Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
With the weather continuing to be surprisingly strong, despite some light showers overnight which as it meant waking up to a tent that didn’t feel like a sauna was actually quite welcome, the Saturday at Sonisphere kicked off with Tesseract on the main stage. I only caught about five minutes of them before I headed off to Bohemia, but I felt it was worth throwing in that they sounded awesome. Continue reading “Sonisphere Review: Saturday”
So last weekend was the return of Sonisphere, something I’m sure the majority of rock and metal fans were very happy about. I managed to make my way to the festival and watch a whole bunch of fantastic (and not so fantastic) bands do their thing, so read on for Ramblings About’s official opinion on everyone we managed to catch at Knebworth.
When you sit down to review an album there are many things that need to be thought about. The most obvious being whether it is any good or not. However, something that often gets overlooked is how long or how short an album is. Unless an album is ridiculously short or ridiculously long it is very rarely a point that is raised and usually for good reason. However, there is something to the idea that if an album gets it’s length wrong, it can skewer the whole thing.
Every couple of years some twat who has never actually seen a guitar writes an article claiming that ‘guitar music is dead’, as if it is some great scoop and actually true. Which of course it isn’t, yes bands with guitars more often than not fail to top the charts, which is instead full of soulless crap (in the majority anyway), but any slight scratch below the surface shows that music with guitars is far from dead. However, is it still cool? I mean of course it’s cool, but is it really cool? There was a time when rockstars were the coolest fuckers on the planet and had an amazing ability to do more drugs, drink more booze and fraternise with more young women than anyone else. Is that era dead? Are the current wave of rock bands lacking that little bit of va va voom?
I’m of a generation of rock and metal fans who probably all, despite what they may claim now, at one point loved Linkin Park. They were releasing their best work when I was hitting that age where I was beginning to make my way over to the dark side, but I wasn’t quite ready to give up on the traditional musical formula I’d grown up with. Therefore, to sit here and completely destroy Linkin Park would be very hypocritical, this band meant a lot to me once and while I’ve got past that, it doesn’t erase it from history. Despite that, there is no denying that their recent output has all been a bit shit, as they disappeared up their collective arses into a world of synths and musical wankery. Yet this year seems to have seen a turn around from the band, playing Hybrid Theory in full (still their best work) at Download was the first step and then they started promoting The Hunting Party, their most recent album, as a return to their rocking roots, but is it too late? Even if The Hunting Party is great is there still a place for Linkin Park in the minds of people like me?
This was originally going to be my review of the latest Pixies album. However, I decided that was a bit boring and instead I’m doing a wider look at the idea of comeback albums. Enjoy.
The last few years has seen the idea of the comeback become a bit of a trend. With everyone from Refused to Crazy Town deciding that maybe the world needs them after all ( we really don’t Crazy Town) it’s become clear that coming back is the new black and in conjunction with that it raises the thorny issue of the comeback album. Some bands do one, some bands stay far away. One band who have recently decided to do a comeback album, although they have been touring in recent years, is the Pixies. Now I should probably say this out of the bat, I bloody love the Pixies, they are everything that a band of that genre should be and while I’m not a huge fan of that kind of music, the Pixies have a very special place in my heart and because of that I apologise for anything I say about them that sounds mean.
So as more and more people flock to the hallowed turf of Donnington, we are onto our final day of suggestions at Ramblings About, where we are looking to point you in the direction of those bands you might not have realised were worth your time. The Sunday traditionally see’s a classic rock edge to the main stage, but there is plenty going on elsewhere to insure that even the most avid hater of the Aerosmith’s of the world, have something to enjoy.
So the first day of music at Download is getting ever closer and we move onto our recommendations of who you might want to check out on the Saturday (if you’re interested on our Friday suggestions click here) because at Ramblings About we do things chronologically. I realise some people are now at Download and setting up their tents so if you’re reading this from a field I hope the weather stays good! (I’m not actually sure if it’s currently good, but it is in Edinburgh).
So Download is this weekend and the usual horde of rock and metal fans will descend on Donnington Park for a long weekend of drinking, moshing and general carnage. Here at Ramblings About we are aware that you all know that checking out Avenged Sevenfold’s first UK festival headline slot might be a good idea and that Steel Panther will bring the rock, so rather than repeating what you already know we have decided to give our suggestions of three bands on each day that you might not be aware of and why you should definitely make it your mission to check them out. So taking that into account, here is our three suggestions for this Friday.
It’s rare I’ll start a review by talking about the album artwork, but the latest Triptykon effort Melana Chasmata is the third time that Tom Warrior has collaborated with the now sadly departed H. R. Giger. It’s as unsettling as you would imagine a piece of art that comes from the man who designed the Alien would be and (although I am still someone who buys CDs so it makes little difference to me) I would say should make this an album that is actually worth going out and getting a physical copy of. Artwork aside Triptykon are of course the latest project of the aforementioned Tom Warrior, who is most famous for his time in Celtic Frost and because of that time is unlikely to have many detractors in the extreme metal community.
Ramblings About Wrestling 