Tag Archives: live review

When any band is regarded as truly innovative at a certain moment in musical time, the main question which must surely come back to haunt them, nigh on a generation later, is whether or not they are still as relevant and their innovation as impactful as it was ‘back in …

Flying halfway around the world to play to a handful of people on your debut gig in a strange country must be entirely disconcerting and disappointing – to say the least.  But, there is an old showbusiness about the show having to go on, and despite various unexplained (and unexplainable) …

It was William Shakespeare (and how many times would you expect to see The Bard quoted on PlanetMosh?) who penned that immortal line about parting being such sweet sorrow… tonight, marked a parting of the ways for Belfast-based Safe Ships, as half of the band members prepare to return to …

For those not already familiar with the event, Monsters Of Rot – which was sponsored for the first time this year by PlanetMosh – is Northern Ireland’s premier annual showcase for the best that the extreme metal scene on both sides of the Irish border has to offer.  Taking place …

The sun dawned over the final day of Catton Park… well, it would have if it could have been seen through the heavy clouds and incessant rain which had unleashed itself over southern Derbyshire in the early hours of the morning and showed no sign of abating a sodden campers …

A little over a millennium ago, the first Viking longboats pulled up on Erin’s shores… once the initial raiding parties had departed, a few of us settled down while others returned several centuries later – this time in peace, merely seeking to make new lives.  A further few hundred years …

Over the past half a dozen years or so, the Diamond Rock Club – nestled rather innocuously in the rolling hills of Northern Ireland’s ‘Bible belt’ – has extablished a reputation not only for being one of the best small venues in this part of the world but also as …

Ten or 12 years ago, the sight of large groups of people dressed in full camouflage gear and sporting various guns, knives and other assorted artillery (including bazookas – and pirate swords?!) would have had the guys at the now redundant cop shop a few hundred yards from this venue …

I seriously think it says something about heavy metal gigs when there is one thing you notice which is conspicuous by it’s absence – and that is security!  Apart from one guy nonchalantly leaning against the DJ booth, and another languidly lazing at the top of the steps leading to …

According to those who know about such things (in this case Wikipedia), ‘metal fatigue’ refers to repeated progressive and localized structural damage that occurs when a material is subjected to cyclic loadings.  In the case of tonight’s gig, it could equally refer to the damage caused to the local metal …

The sun may be beating down outside, and Belfast threatening to enjoy some some of (quite possibly foreshortened) summer, but that doesn’t stop the hardiest of the city’s black clad metallians gathering (not quite in their masses) and heading indoors to the sanctity of the equally darkened Slimer for another …

While circuses may fascinate many – either in terms of the tongue-in-cheek grotesquery of the ‘carny’ or the slapstick farce of clowns chucking water over each other – personally I’ve never quite seen the attraction.  They’re often facile and meaningless – and those which inflict needless cruelty on animals just …

For those of a superstitious mien, Friday the 13th is not exactly a lucky talisman – and so it proves, at least partially, for the organizers of this charity fundraiser gig (in aid of the hugely-underfunded Belfast Rape Crisis Centre) as, despite huge advance marketing and PR campaigns, other mitigating …

When Northern Ireland metallians Conjuring Fate last year decided to call it a day, it was quite a shock for the scene in this part of the world as, after eight years together, the band’s ascendancy had appeared to on the upward slope.  However, the ‘break’ turned out to be …

The tea break. Ah, that most venerable of traditions, when one seeks refuge from the travails of the working day by relaxing with a nice cup of Darjeeling or Earl Grey and a chocolate biscuit (or, maybe, if you’re lucky a bacon butty) before launching back into the fray once …

Over the past three decades or so, Darren Wharton has been a regular visitor to these shores, both as a member of Thin Lizzy – into whose ranks he was recruited, at the tender age of 17, by the late, great Phil Lynott, and with whom he remained until the …

The last time New York’s IKillYa played Belfast, they nearly didn’t – as the venue they were scheduled to appear at closed just a few days before they were due to grace its stage. Fortunately, in the true spirit of metal camaraderie, another promoter stepped into the breach, a few …

It’s good to get out of the country now and again, and so it was that I gladly accepted an invitation to forsake my normal Saturday routine of a late afternoon of premier local metal followed by an evening of avoiding the local smiks back in Belfast to head south of …

You know, I can think no better way of spending Easter Monday – for those of you not familiar with it, the end of a weekend of celebrations dedicated to the ancient Semitic goddess of love, war (aren’t they one and the same thing?), fertility and sex – than ensconced …

Birthdays and anniversaries are important milestones, often forgotten at peril (which probably partly explains why my ex-wife is just that!), and so Belfast hardcore heroes By Any Means decided to mark five years together with a suitably celebratory bash at the city’s most famous rock venue. Chosen to open proceedings …