Tag Archives: Review

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 …

Now in it’s fifth year, the Steelhouse Festival is one of the UK’s more remote festivals.  Although only four miles from the nearest town, Ebbw Vale, Hafod-Y-Dafal Farm’s mountain top location means it is not the most accessible – especially in a weekend dominated, in both the build up to …

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 …

Inception of Inhumanity is the debut offering from melodic death metal group Shrouded. Based in Lisburn and Antrim in Northern Ireland, their cd has a lot that I like. There is the bones and most of the flesh of some outstanding tracks but it has more elements that took me a little while to …

“I told you we’d be fucking back!”  It may be somewhat unusual to start a review at the end, but drummer Brann Dailor’s closing remarks to the audience are important for contextualizing what had happened over the previous hour-and-a-half or so.  You see, it had only been a little more than …

It could be argued that, although they hail from the Midlands of England, Diamond Head share an affinity with Belfast:  after all, it was they who helped shape the sound of the nascent Metallica – a place in history they share with a band from this neck of the woods, …

The venue for this evening’s long-awaited return to Belfast by Pat McManus – it has been almost exactly a year since ‘The Professor’ last graced a stage here – is the basement of a pub situated in Belfast’s oldest known building, McHugh’s Bar.  Built back in the 17th century it, like …

Ah well, here we are… it’s a Wednesday night here in Belfast and it’s officially the start of the week;  well, as far as Team PM is concerned anyway, with the prospect of six gigs over the course of the next five nights, starting with tonight’s long overdue return to …

Die No More a young four piece NWOBHM band from Cumbria formed in  2011, since then they have impressed people with their energetic live shows. They released self-financed, four track, début EP ‘Blueprint’ in 2013 which led to them being signed by Rocksector Records with whom they released their debut …

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 …

Imagine the most ungodly hour possible for a self-respecting metallian to be crawling from their pit – and then move it back an hour or more… well, while most of our readers were most likely turning over for your second sleep, your reviewer was up and about in the wee …