Tag Archives: album review

Having been a fan for years, when the opportunity to review Ugly Kid Joe’s new album, ‘Uglier Than They Used Ta Be’, arose, I jumped at it.  This is their first album release in 19 years, so I was eager to hear it and the first thing to hit me …

Any new album by the likes of Slayer is going to carry with it an understandable weight of expectation.  With ‘Repentless’, it is inevitably going to be even more so.  Not only is it the band’s first album in six long years but it is also the first since the …

  Biters a Punk/Rock ‘n’ Roll band from Atlanta, Georgia released their début album ‘Electric Blood’ via Earache Records on 7th August 2015. Already proving that they are the new bad boys of Rock ‘n’ Roll they nearly got arrested filming the video to Restless Hearts, read the story here …

South America seems to spew forth new black metal bands with more regularity than a good dose of Epsom Salts could induce.  The latest to come to PM’s attention are Argentinian crew Vomit Of Doom, about whom we know nothing more than the fact that this ten-track 27-minute opus was …

It has been a little over three years since Geoff Tate was very ignominiously and publicly fired from Queensrÿche, the band he had fronted for three decades.  What happened next – the acrimonious verbal bitch slappings, the two versions of the band, the subsequent legal case – has been extremely well …

There is no doubt that the past year or so has been a productive one for veteran guitarist George Lynch, with first his involvement in the KXM project (alongside Kings X’s Doug Pinnick and Korn’s Ray Luzier) and then his collaboration with Stryper frontman Michael Sweet on the imaginatively monickered …

Following a triptych of increasingly impressive albums, there are some – and we most likely are in the minority – who believed that Five Finger Death Punch somewhat lost their way in 2013, with the overly-ambitious double ‘The Wrong Side Of Heaven And The Righteous Side Of Hell’ set – …

Although they have been around since the early part of the Noughties, Michigan mosh starters Battlecross did not really make an impression until the mighty Metal Blade Records picked them up and released their first “proper” album, ‘Pursuit Of Honor’, in the latter half of 2011.  Relentless touring – including …

The MacGregors a five piece punk/rock ‘n’ roll band from Essex released their début album ‘In Your Face’ via Eddie Currents Records on 19th June 2015, with an album launch party at The White Horse in Sudbury. Where did they get the name from? No idea as I haven’t asked …

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 …