Tag Archives: Review

It’s a chilly Friday night, so where would you rather be than in a darkened basement?  And, that’s exactly where Team PM finds themselves, together with the rest of the assembled Belfast press corps:  making our long overdue first foray into the refurbished Bar Sub, the smallest of the three …

Despite having only emerged from Norn Iron’s dankest extreme metal sewers within the past 12 months, The Crawling are by no means newcomers to the scene over here, with the triumvirate collectively counting nigh on four decades of experience between them.  Guitarist Andy Clarke, for example, was the cornerstone of …

Throughout their decade long career, German doomsters Ahab have consistently displayed a fascination with both all things nautical and literary:  previous albums have been based on works such as Herman Melville’s epic ‘Moby Dick (with the band, of course, taking their name from the novel’s psychotic lead human character) and Edgar …

It’s not often that a night out turns into a chance to review the bands you are going out to see, but with a plethora of gigs happening in nearby Belfast, PlanetMosh just didn’t have enough hands at the pump to cover an evening of rock and rollery in my …

Bauda first came to life in 2006, ostensibly as a solo project by Chilean guitarist and vocalist César Márquez.  It wasn’t until 2012 that it became a fully formed band.  The following year, Márquez and his fellow musicians – drummer Nikolas Recabarren, bassist Juan Díaz and keyboard player Edgardo González …

It’s just gone seven o’clock on a cold and damp October eve- the second night in a run of six gigs in five nights for your PM Belfast team, and we have been joined by a healthy turnout of our fellow metallians for the debut appearance here of Wisconsin psyche-doom goddess …

School night gigs in Belfast can be awkward buggers to predict, especially in terms of their attendance levels.  However, Paradise Lost, paying their first visit to the city in six years, manage to pull a reasonably healthy number of punters – if not quite enough to ease the promoter’s financial …

Northern Ireland is currently gripped in the greatest financial scandal in its chequered history.  It is a scandal which already has practically crippled the economy south of the border, and brought down at least one government there.  It has politicians running for cover, and has resulted in the current well-publicized …

Following a pair of warm-up festival shows in Spain – well, they certainly were “warm” – Stormzone returned to the colder climes of their native Belfast for this, the official launch of their most recent album, ‘Seven Sins‘.  They were also returning to a familiar venue, but one which has changed …

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 …

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 …

Seven hundred and thirty one.  That is exactly how many days it had been since Gojira last appeared in Belfast – when they completely wiped the stage with Bring Me The Horizon and Bullet For My Valentine at the annual Belsonic festival – and this much-anticipated return, one of two …

City of Thieves made their live début at Camden Rocks earlier this year. Cutting your rock teeth at a big event is fairly momentous and with their début EP Incinerator being produced by Toby Jepson former Little Angels and Gun front man, mixed by Mike Fraser and mastered by Simon Francis I …

Have you ever gone to gig where one band started the headline set and another finished it?  Well, that’s what happened – more or less – this past Saturday evening, when Million Dollar Reload played their last ever gig (coincidentally at one of their favourite venues), and midset transmogrified into …

Formed in the mid-Ulster area in late 2011, upstarts Donum Dei have spent the intervening period ripping up stages across Northern Ireland and establishing themselves as perhaps the singularly most impressive young thrash act in this part of the world, going from copycat Metallica wannabes faster than some of their …

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 …

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 …

Oncology is the branch of medicine that deals with the treatment of tumours – and particularly cancerous ones – while a metastasis is a secondary growth of a malignant tumour, separate from the primary one.  However, PM is a music website not a medical one, and therefore the particular branch …

The dawning of August can mean only one thing in these parts – the annual celebration of all that is best about the Irish metal scene (and, on this occasion, that from slightly further afield) that is the latest instalment of the Monsters Of Rot one-day festival of madness, mayhem …

It may be the last day of July, but already it is a typical Belfast “summer” evening – the temperature is plummeting into the lower reaches of single figures and the rain isn’t taking its time to belt it down as the PM team duck from the adjacent pub and …