Album Reviews

Grammy nominated guitarist Tommy Emmanuel releases a collaborative album, Accomplice One, in January. For this album he’s teamed up with a whole host of talented musicians to perform a mix of cover versions and original songs. The list of musicians includes Ricky Skaggs, Mark Knopfler, Jerry Douglas and many more, …

Joe Satriani is one of the very few guitarists where I look forward to hearing their next solo album. Why? Well all too often solo albums from guitarists are just a collection of guitar solos, sometimes with vocals, but all aimed at showing how good they are at playing guitar. …

The Fright have a sound that conjures up memories of Sisters of Mercy, The Mission, 69 eyes and Fields of the Nephilim but at the same time has a more mainstream rock feel to it with strong catchy songs with choruses people can sing along to. It’s a tricky balancing …

In March next year, Mascot label group artists Eric Gales, Quinn Sullivan, Gary Hoey and Lance Lopez embark on the Rockin the blues tour. Ahead of the tour, Mascot are releasing a compliation (conveniently available in time for Christmas). Rather than it being limited to the artists on the tour, …

Once again, Evil EyE Records have delivered the goods. This time by a deluxe double disc package version of Operation : Genesis + The Omega Void EP by American thrash metallers Euphoria. Do you remember the feeling you had when you heard Reign In Blood, Kill Em All or Bonded …

2017 has certainly been a fine year for finding new talent and my first experience of Wakefield based The Sourheads was at Rockwich Festival in August this year. Frontman Jake Coxon is a bona fide rock star in the making. Bare footed and bare chested he oozed Jim Morrison like …

Hot on the heels of her album “Chills & Fever”, released earlier this year, Samantha Fish has another new album – “Belle of the west”. It’s rare for an artist to release albums just a few months apart, but Samantha Fish has done just that. My initial expectation was more …

There are some musical ideas that could be a total disaster or a roaring success. One such idea is to cover Pink Floyd. We saw Scissor Sisters butchering “Comfortably numb” as a perfect example of why it’s a bad idea to cover Pink Floyd, but now Kyle Shutt has put …

They say all good things must come to an end, and with Black Sabbath that time has finally come with the band having retired following their farewell tour. It’s an odd time to do it – a year short of their 50th anniversary, but sadly they’re not young any more …

Electric ducks are a French band, but unlike say Trust, they choose to sing in English which immediately makes their music more accessible to an international audience. Formed in 2004 they released their debut album (Rock your fashion) in 2008, and followed that with two more albums (“Back’n’Forth” and “We …

Kiss the gun are a rock band from Salisbury. Their singer though comes from Georgia (the country not the US state) where she appeared on TV shows “Talented” and “The voice of Georgia” where she reached the semi-finals. The band only formed in 2016 and “Nightmares” is their debut album. …

This EP by Liverpool’s Black Cat Bones is not actually as new as it pretends to be. It was recorded last year and this is a re-release; this edition is being marketed, distributed and managed by the band themselves. I first encountered Black Cat Bones last year when I wandered …

Milton-Keynes based pop punksters All Tied Up have recently signed to a new label. Stack-in-a-box Records is an new kid on the Indie scene and this 5-track EP is scheduled to be one of their first releases. So what do All Tied Up actually sound like? Well they are pretty …

Finland’s Von Hertzen Brothers are back with a new album, “War is over”, their seventh studio album. They’ve been making a name for themselves over the last few years in particular, not just in the Prog world, but also in the wider rock world. For this album the three brothers …

Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson has released several solo albums over the years, starting with “Tattooed Millionaire” in 1995, and following that up with “Balls To Picasso” (1994), “Skunkworks” (1996) “Accident Of Birth” (1997) “The Chemical Wedding” (1998) and his final solo album to date, “Tyranny Of Souls” (2005). These …

Christmas albums (or even songs) from rock or metal acts are generally pretty awful with just a few songs becoming much loved classics. Tarja Turunen though is both a rock artist and a classical artist, so her Christmas album has the potential to be a success, especially as classical Christmas …

It took a few spins of Hands Of Fate, the fourth studio album by Savage Messiah to get around their new change of direction, but it has still blown me away. Their heads down thrash metal has been honed down to a heavy metal groove with no loss of power …

Black Aces a young hard rocking four piece from sunny Australia release their second album Anywhere But Here via Off Yer Rocka Recordings today followed by an appearance on the main stage at Hard Rock Hell XI tomorrow. Anywhere But Here is the follow up to their debut album Shot In The …

Ian Gillan has long been the voice of Deep Purple. While the band has had other singers over the years, Ian Gillan has been the vocalist for 34 years in total – the vast majority of the band’s life. Deep Purple are currently on their long goodbye tour so assuming …

In the world of rock the name Appice is well known as brothers Carmine and Vinny have between them played drums for bands including Vanilla fudge, Beck, Ozzy Osbourne, Ted Nugent, Rod Stewart, Dio, Black Sabbath, Heaven and Hell, and Last in line. They played together for the 2014 album …