Rambles about the wonderful world of wrestling.
Locke is a film that has been badly misconstrued in some quarters.  Any suggestion that it is a gripping thriller is far from the truth.  In reality, director Steven Knight (Dirty Pretty Things) has created a interesting character study, that takes place solely on the drive from Birmingham to London and stars Tom Hardy and only Tom Hardy.
Some time in the last few years it became cool for old punk rockers to ditch the band, pick up an acoustic guitar and go all folk troubadour on our asses.  It’s probably not that much of a leap to believe that this trend was inspired by Chuck Ragan and the Revival Tour, his touring acoustic shows that feature everyone from punk singers to bluegrass to country.  By creating a sense of community around these shows Ragan has turned a great idea into a yearly event that many look forward to.  This event has also seen him releasing several acoustic records and the latest, Till Midnight, hit our shelves earlier this year.
Some bands can be figured out by one glance at their name.  Savage Messiah are one of those bands.  With a name like that and an album title like The Fateful Dark, you know you’re in for old school heavy metal, widdly guitars and all.  These London thrashers are now onto their fourth album and despite their ever growing success are still very much part of the metal underground.
The Amazing Spiderman was a reboot that no one needed.  While many were in the favour of Andrew Garfield pulling on the red and blue spandex, it felt too close to Sam Raimi and Tobey Maguire’s successful (well apart from the 3rd one) go at the franchise.  It was a movie that wasn’t aided by the strict nature of the spidey origin story, meaning that the whole thing was shrouded by a feeling of deja vu.
Comeback Kid may have a name that makes them sound like  a boy band (or is that just me?) but it hasn’t prevented the group that was originally started as a side project from releasing five albums of hardcore goodness.  Album number five, Die Knowing, has recently hit the shelves and see’s this Canadian band doing what they do best.
How do you survive in modern day, small town Ireland, as a good priest.  That’s the rather simple question at the centre of Calvary.  In a world where the Catholic church has been hitting the headlines for all the wrong reasons, we follow the last week of Father James Lavelle, (Brendon Gleeson) who in the opening scene of the film is told in the confessional booth that he is going to be murdered next Sunday.  He knows who has made the threat, but we and the rest of the characters in the film don’t, as even in these circumstances he honours the rules of the confessional booth.  As director John Michael McDonagh has said, it’s a who will do it, rather that a who done it.
There is a moment half way through Beloved where I thought I’d made a mistake and accidentally put on shuffle.  As “Kjaerlighet” slowly creeps in those not paying attention might believe that “Last Serenade” was preparing to blast through their speakers. It’s become a cliché to say that all metalcore takes it core roots from Killswitch Engage and most bands are just repeating what’s been done before, but sometimes it’s so incredibly obvious you just can’t ignore it.
Continue reading “Les Claypool’s Duo De Twang – Four Foot Shack”
It’s easy to forget just how big a deal Within Temptation are.  Their latest UK tour has seen them playing Wembley Arena and their 2011 studio album The Unforgiving sold over 300,000 copies on ITunes alone.  Therefore, the release of Hydra earlier this year has to be seen as a big deal and with it hitting number 6 in the UK charts it may be a case that this is a band that are able to make the leap into the mainstream on their sixth studio album.
There are very few good young band who you could call a pure rock band.  Oh I’m not talking about industrial post-hardcore slightly blackened metal bands.  There are loads of all that shite, but pure rock and roll?  Outside of Airbourne or The Black Spiders there are very few that aim to uphold the values of The Crue and G ‘N’ R.  Well The Treatment are out to change that.  These likely lads from Cambridge have released their second album Running With The Dogs and are desperate to prove that rock is far from dead.Â
Ramblings About Wrestling 