Tag Archives: album review

Formed in 1995 when Josh Todd and Keith Nelson met via their tattooist and a shared love of AC/DC, a few line up changes, a few name changes, a brief hiatus and with six studio albums behind them Los Angeles based Rockers Buckcherry, will release their 7th studio album, Rock ‘n’ Roll, …

California’s Bl’ast, one of the “founding father” primal hardcore punk bands, has returned with its first new music in two decades. A five-minutes-and-change listening trek, this two song EP, titled For Those Who’ve Graced the Fire! quickly whets fans’ appetites for more. As before, the band’s core members remain Clifford …

Name me a Russian hard rock band.  Go on.  Gorky Park.  OK, there’s one.  Try another.  Try counting them off on the fingers of one hand.  Tough, isn’t it?  While evil western rock ‘n’ roll music was banned under the communist regime, even in the post-Glasnost era very few bands …

German Speed Rockers Nitrovolt released their third album Dirty Wings via Mausoleum Records earlier this year. Formed in 2004 by vocalist Tom “Voltage” Krämer and bass player Luciano “Louis” Vanini, they started out as a three piece called ‘Hi Octane Rockers’ with Micha on drums completing the threesome. In 2009 long …

Everything about this debut full-length album from South Carolina’s Prowler – not to be confused with the now defunct NWOBHMers or the nascent German thrashers or the half a dozen or so US bands of the same name – points to an Eighties B-list thrash re-issue, from the horror movie-inspired …

Swedish-based Thundermother – they draw their members from Ireland and Italy as well as Scandinavia – draw on a heritage of all-female rock ‘n’ roll bands that traces its lineage back to The Runaways, through Girlschool, L7 and Rock Goddess to likes of their modern-day counterparts The Amorettes.  They are …

‘High Country’ could, quite possibly, be described as The Sword‘s “happy album”.  And that’s no mere throwaway descriptive on our part, but a summarization of frontman John Cronise’s take on the opus:  as he explains, when he started to write the songs for ‘High Country’, he found himself at something of …

Frank DiMino is best known to rockers of a certain vintage as the frontman of US glamsters Angel, the band discovered by Kiss bassist Gene Simmons playing in a New York nightclub and subsequently signed to the band’s Casablanca label, for whom they recorded a series of acclaimed albums in …

Florida-based power duo Cave Of Swimmers trace their roots to an early friendship developed in 1999 by Guillermo “GE” Perez and Arturo “Toro” Garcia when they were both only 15 and still in fourth grade in their native Caracas, Venezuala.   The duo relocated to Miami in the early 2000s and continued …

Hailing from the city of Lviv in revolution-ridden Ukraine, Paganland certainly wear their nationalism on their sleeves, dedicating this, their second album, to “all Patriots fighting against Russian aggression.  The band, who trace their roots back almost two decades, describe themselves as “a group of people holding the same views, who …

It’s been a little over two years since Northern Ireland metal champions Stormzone released what was regarded by many critics and fans alike as arguably their best album to date, the titanic ‘Three Kings‘ – an opus which cemented their position as the region’s premier exponents of their art.  Now, with …

Three years after their last offering, ‘De Vermis Mysteriis’, California power trio High On Fire have returned to the fray with their truly gargantuan seventh album, the appropriately titled ‘Luminiferous’. Everything about this album exudes the word “heavy”, from the huge ball-tingling bass lines to the humungous riffs which drive with …

So, there I was:  standing minding my own business, propping up the bar in my local when I get a tap on my leather-jacket clad shoulder.  “Shaun said to make sure you get this,” a voice says as a package is thrust into the hand which is not holding a …

Baltimore, Maryland’s Hatebeak has released a new 14 track album, titled The Number of the Beak. The band’s music is highly experimental grindcore, noise, or even post-grind, with Waldo the African Grey parrot’s various noises used as ‘vocal samples’. Released through Reptilian Records, this is apparently a compilation of all …

When I was asked to review ‘Vibration of Sound’ by The Hicks I was intrigued by the description of an alternative/hard rock with a hint of reggae from Wigan, a town famous for it’s Pier and for being home of the annual World Pie Eating Championship.  These Hicks are not to …

Ireland’s Shardborne has released a seven song instrumental opus, titled Living Bridges. Formed in 2010, Shardborne released Aeonian Sequence, its four song debut EP, in 2011. Living Bridges is an odd, instrumental hybrid of progressive rock fusion, djent, atmospheric extreme metal, and regular thrash metal. Like listening to a great …

“Mr. Falwell, you are not my god.” bluntly states Paolo Rossi, at the end of Wasted Youth‘s 1986 release, a six song EP titled Get Out Of My Yard!. Channeling classic punk rock in every sense of the phrase, this disc scratches an itch to hear genuine, vintage high-energy music, …

  Guitar virtuoso Joe Satriani has released his latest studio album, titled Shockwave Supernova. The California native’s all-instrumental record explores a fairly loose, abstract concept of an alter ego, named Shockwave Supernova. The songs outline and follow this superhuman persona through journeys across stages both worldwide and intragalactically. This 15th …

Gasoline Outlaws emerged on to the Northern Ireland rock scene at the turn of this year, when former Black Freeway/Last Known Addiction singer Matt Fitzsimons, freshly returned from a sojourn down under, re-united with his brother Chris and in turn teamed up with former Yellow Sam guitarist Adam Parkin and …

‘Ten Years of Pussy’ is the title of Nashville Pussy’s new compilation CD to celebrate their tenth year with SPV records, with whom they have released five albums from ‘And Get Some’ in 2005 to ‘Up The Dosage’ in 2014. ‘Ten Years of Pussy’ takes sixteen studio tracks from their …