Wednesday 27 February 2008

Ready To Fight.


Negative Approach European Tour 2008:

21.06.2008 Germany Trier Summerblast Festival
22.06.2008 Netherlands Amsterdam Melkweg
23.06.2008 Belgium Antwerpen Hof Ter Lo
24.06.2008 UK London Underworld
25.06.2008 Spain Barcelona Sala KGB
27.06.2008 Italy Milan Audio Drome
28.06.2008 Germany Münster Vainstream Rockfest

Mayhem, Birmingham Barfly, 26th February 2008

Last night we travelled from Liverpool to see Mayhem at the Birmingham Barfly.

There had been a change in the bill; support was just meant to be one band but were "treated" to two support bands instead. The first band we arrived at the end of their set; so I couldn't tell you who they were or really what they sounded like.
The second band....whoah. They were called Dimension something or other, wore body armour, had fans blowing their hair everywhere, kept asking if we were "having fun yet" and played a Prodigy cover.
Anyway....after a short wait, Mayhem's intro tape comes on, Silvester Anfang and the band come onstage, Atilla dressed as some form of crazed Chaplin-essque dictator, with globe surrounded by pig's heads and candles. He sings at the globe as if he's plotting the demise of the world or something, stabbing at it with an inverted patriarchal cross. Necrobutcher is over on our side of the stage, and Gorgoroth's newest member Hellhammer is thrashing away behind his kit.
We can't really see Blasphemer too well from our side of the stage because we are watching Atilla's antics.

The set is a good mix of old and new material; Deathcrush mixing well with Illuminate Eliminate and Freezing Moon, all held together with Hellhammer's amazing drumming.
There are projections being displayed on the background of cities levelled in wars and tanks and bombed out churches, all fitting in with Atilla's mad dictator look.
They finish with Pure Fucking Armageddon, Atilla smashes the crucifix into the globe, sending a piece of the cross flying into the crowd, pushes the table over and the band leave the stage.
Awesome.

After we drove home, I was sat in the front room of our house telling my girlfriend about the show when at 1am there was an earth tremor.
It's nothing to worry about, just
Øystein Aarseth and Per Yngve Ohlin spinning in their respective graves thinking about the support band with the body armour.

Some more pictures:




Link: Mayhem Official Site.

Thursday 21 February 2008

Delineation II

Essential reading - Tom G Warrior's weblog

Today is the Day U.K. Tour



Nashville Noisemongers Today is the Day visit the UK next May (I know it's an old photo but, bleh):

Tue 20 May: Ivory Blacks, Glasgow (with Jucifer + Complete Failure + 4 Questions Marks)
Wed 21 May: Carling Academy, Birmingham (with Jucifer + Complete Failure)
Thu 22 May: The White Rabbit (The Viaduct), Plymouth (support TBC)
Fri 23 May: Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff (support TBC)
Sat 24 May: The Underworld, London (support TBC)

New Vinyl

Totally stoked about this. Just bought - from a second hand record store that is just 2 minutes walk from my hotel here in Ikebukuro - a Misfits 12" picture disc of "Horror Business Sessions 77-81, Volume 2" . The cover art says it has 14 tracks in total and the disc was pressed in Poland. And it is a "limited edition" of 666 copies.



Not a bad find, considering that the record shop in question specialises in jazz! They also had a ton of other stuff, mainly punk, some Eyehategod vinyl too... I only had enough cash spare for the one purchase though and I have never seen this particular Misfits record before. Sure I could get extra cash from the bank I guess but, knowing my luck, the vinyl will be damaged on the flight home or something.

This Week's Playlist (Ste)

Albums that I have been listening to while traveling around on the transport network in Tokyo:

Bathtub Shitter - Dance Hall Grind
Bathtub Shitter - Lifetime Shitlist
Bill Hicks - Philosophy (The Best of Bill Hicks)
Boris - Amplifier Worship
Celtic Frost - Cold Lake
Celtic Frost - Into The Pandemonium
Dream Death - Journey Into Mystery
King Diamond - Abigail
King Diamond - Them
King Diamond - Give Me Your Soul... Please
Manilla Road - Crystal Logic
Motorhead - Orgasmatron
Radiohead - OK Computer
Trouble - Simple Mind Condition
Warning - Watching From A Distance

Tuesday 19 February 2008

Tony Iommi

...is 60 years old today. Happy birthday lad!

Saturday 16 February 2008

Iron Maiden Setlist Spoiler


SJW sent me this photo earlier today from Tokyo; as maiden were playing in Makuhari Messe he wrote the setlist down on his claw to send home, how awesome is that.
I know that with this being a show containing a lot of Maiden favourites, some people will be avoiding the setlist, so click here if you want to see it.

Iron Maiden @ Makuhari Messe, Tokyo

The Maiden gig in Tokyo today was really good. It was filled to the brim with Japanese metallers of all kinds, but also there were lots of non-metal fans there too. They really go wild at concerts!

One thing I noticed is that, when Maiden played the song "2 Minutes To Midnight", everyone in the crowd made the peace-sign when they shouted along with the chorus.


I guess they meant *2* minutes to midnight, but its really weird how they all did it in unison here but I have never seen or heard of it being done anywhere else. Perhaps it actually is done everywhere, but I have been to drunk or too busy headbanging to ever notice it before.

That's it - no more gigs here in Japan for now.

Friday 15 February 2008

Iron Maiden @ Yokohama

Ok, so here's an interesting one - Iron Maiden in Japan.

I'm not going to go on and on about this, but I do have to write it all down now while it is in my head, because I'll be at another gig tomorrow and if I don't do this now it will all blend into one big memory.

The gig was held in a place called the Pacifico Yokohama which is a big conference hall centre by the riverfront. The hall where Maiden played was all-seater. There's a carnival ground nearby and lots of skyscrapers. We got there early (I like to be sure that I know where the venue is) then we went around the way and found the Yokohama Hard Rock Cafe to get some food and listen to metal.

The ticket for the concert is in Japanese, so I couldn't read many of the details of it. All that I could make out is my seat number (B-41-38) and that the doors were due to open at 6pm. We got there pretty handy, at about 5pm, just in case. Then at half past 5 (on the dot) some guys who were from venue security appeared from inside the Pacifico wearing long blue bubble-jackets and with megaphones in hand. They were shouting something in Japanese and pointing around the corner and down some stairs, we figured that they were there to tell everyone to start making their way to a different entrance.

Well, as soon as the guys with the megaphones said whatever they said, all of the Japanese metallers began running along to form a queue. There were 100s of them sprinting! So we thought "better get moving" and walked quickly in the direction that everyone else was moving. At the foot of a huge staircase and around the corner there was more security, they specified for a queue to be formed and it needed to be exactly 4 people wide - no more, no less. And surprisingly, that's exactly how it formed.

At 6pm (again, on the dot) they opened the doors to the venue and the queue began to file inside in a very sensible fashion. We went through security and then another queue began to form, this time for the merch tables. I have never seen such organisation from your average metaller! I got into the queue pretty sharpish (I only had to wait about 5 minutes). The tshirts were ridiculously pricey - the equivalent of £25 for a shirt. WhhaaaaaaAAA?? And there were no Japan-only shirts, they have tour dates on them for the first leg of the current tour (from the India gig on February 1st to a gig in Toronto on March 16th). I picked up 2 shirts - 1 for me (a Somewhere In Time one) and one for my brother who now owes me £25 and a night on the ale. They also had a great looking blue Maiden scarf on sale, but I never got one and forgot to check out the price for it. Maybe I'll see them again tomorrow night.

Right, enough about all that. Time for some gig review.

Support act: The Lauren Harris Band

The gig started at about 18:30 with Lauren Harris and her band. I am not a fan of hers at all. They played a set of about 6 or 7 songs that lasted roughly 35 minutes, which included a cover of Gun's "Steal Your Fire". Apart from the one song I cannot remember any of the other track names, they all seemed to blend into one long Kerrang-friendly pop metal set. Not promising for the rest of this tour, as Lauren Harris and her band are being hyped up when (let's be honest) they're only were they are because of her dad being in Maiden. Oh dear.

I remember looking around the hall during the interval before Maiden and I noticed that there was a high percentage of women in the crowd. There were a lot of Japanese businessmen dressed in suits too... I had one sat right behind me, in fact. Maybe they arrived straight from work. The row of seats were I was sat was all Westerers too, strange that. You should have seen the dress sense of some of the people in there though. A lot of the Japs were wearing full leather get ups with black bandanas and maiden tshirts under their jackets. Some Westerners looked like their mum had dressed them. the guy next to me, for example, had jeans and a Maiden tshirt on.. and a beige cardigan tied around his waist.

Before the show began event staff were patrolling up and down the aisles between the rows with placards showing diagrams of cameras in red circles and a red line through them - NO PHOTOGRAPHY. Hmm, ok. I could see that this had the potential to get messy.

The lights went back down at 19:30 and Doctor Doctor started to play. Soon after Maiden took to the stage and they did a great set.

I want to write a set list out but I won't spoil it for you! Although I could (being a sad fucker I kept notes of what got played). If you want to know what they played, I have the list here. What do you reckon, should I edit this and add the setlist to the end? It was a fucking blinding set like. But one thing that was very strange is that the whole event was over and done with by 9:30pm. In England most bands don't even get on stage til about then!

During one song half way through the night Bruce Dickinson came on stage wearing a cape and mask and I just *had* to get a photo:


As soon as I took it one of the little event security guys, dressed in a full suit, ran at me and demanded that I stop taking photos immediately or he would throw me out. I mean, he proper ran to me, past all of the other people in my row! I said "Many apologies" and I was very nice to him. I mean, what else was I going to say? Anyway I made it to the end of the night and what's more I even made a 4 minute video haha.

We're due to go to see them again tomorrow, I dunno if I will be writing such a big review then though because tonight we never had any alcohol, but tomorrow I am getting drunk.

Thursday 14 February 2008

Electric Wizard Cancel Roadburn Appearance



Official Statement:

We regret to announce that ELECTRIC WIZARD will not be able to perform at Roadburn Festival this year. Unfortunately due to an unforeseen and unavoidable situation, of a personal nature - which we had no idea would arise when we agreed to play last August, it has now become impossible for us to be at Roadburn.

This cancellation is not something that we want to do and we wish to apologise to all our fans and all at Roadburn especially Walter and we hope that this awesome festival will be the huge success it deserves to be. We will be rescheduling our performance for Sept 12th, 2008 again at the 013 venue.

Shinjuku Disc Union


I was in a branch of Disc Union in Shinjuku Tokyo earlier on today and came across a floor dedicated to Avant Garde and Noise bands. Here's a photo to make you jealous!

Wednesday 13 February 2008

Boris Plays Manchester, 21st April

From the gig's promoter:

BORIS + GROWING + 1 more tbc - Monday 21/4 - Ruby Lounge, Manchester

Monday 11 February 2008

New In The Post


The new Sunn "ØØ Void" double disc from Japan's Inoxia Records. It looks very nice indeed and the second disc is all previously unreleased stuff.

Friday 8 February 2008

Brutal Truth, Sheffield


We travelled over to Sheffield to see grindcore legends Brutal Truth play a show at the Corporation club last night; Support came from local bands The Afternoon Gentlemen and Reth; both competent Yorkshire (correct me if I'm wrong) grinders; I don't mean this in any way a slight on either band, but it seems to me since the rather untimely demise of UK grinders Narcosis, every young British grindcore band I go and see sound like a pale Narcosis clone. Most enjoyable though.

Brutal truth are writing new stuff, some of which got an airing here, but it was the old stuff that everyone loves that went down best. Rich Hoak is an absolutely legendary drummer, it's worth going to see BT just to see the faces that the mild-mannered Total Fucking Destruction drummer/vocalist pulls whilst he is playing.
Walking Corpse, Displacement, Choice of a New Generation; all get the crowd going for a second or two until some knobhead at the front gets in a bad mood because people are bumping into him.
Dude, you're at the front of a gig by Brutal Truth, deal with it!

The band seem to be having a great time, Kev Sharp bounding all over the stage, barefoot as ever, belting out grind classic after grind classic.
They tagged Collateral Damage onto the end of Walking Corpse, but that didn't stop all kinds of idiots shouting for it after they finished every song. I assume these are the same people who go to see Napalm Death and shout for You Suffer all the way through.

Speaking of Narcosis, Brutal Truth finished with I Killed My Family, inviting Chris from said dead grinders up on stage to do voacals with them.
We stayed afterwards and went into the club bit that the venue was joined to; fucking hell so much Emo, so little petrol. Nice globes though. Rich Hoak came over for a bit in the club afterwards, stinking of green with a big shit eating grin on his face.
We got back home at 5am, all smiley and totally grinded out.

More pics:

Earth & Sir Richard Bishop

...at The Zion Arts Centre in Manchester last night.

Great gig, Earth played a wonderful strong, slow and memorable set. I wasn't expecting Sir Richard Bishop to be one man doing a 1-hour-long set, it was pretty hard to take in.

The organisers (and the venue) had a "No flash photography" policy so all of my pictures turned out looking all dark and shaky for the most part. I haven't got an expensive gig camera just yet, so for now I guess that I'll be sticking to loud sweaty concert halls where it's acceptable to use the light on your camera.br />
While we were there I got hold of some tour-only vinyl, a split release between both artists. The promoter was also good enough to give me a tour poster as well, I will probably put it on my wall in a nice frame of sorts. Thanks Dave!

Thursday 7 February 2008

New, in the Mail.

Not long to wait until the Roadburn Festival now, all we need is to get sorted with tickets for the Afterburner show on the Sunday... I'm sure something will come up!

Deviated Instinct, Bradford, 2nd Feb 08 (Patchie)


I've been into Deviated Instinct since I was about 11 or 12, when I first heard "Behind the Scaffold" on the Friday Rock Show on Radio One, a session they'd recorded for John Peel.
My rather tender age at the time coupled with the fact that I was a pure metalhead meant that by the time I started sneaking into Liverpool's Planet X club a couple of years later, Deviated Instinct were long gone, and I never got the chance to see them. When I heard earlier this year that they were playing in Bradford, only their second gig since they decided to get a wash in 1993, I was besides myself with excitement; what's more, support was to come from Extinction of Mankind, whose Northern Scum has had a lot of airtime in my house.

Warprayer were first up, total British hardcore/anarcho sound will keep my eye out for them, then Extinction of Mankind played a blistering set, Scoot's last gig before he goes off to Brazil or something. Then what everyone is waiting for, Deviated instinct come onstage, opening with Resurrection Encore. They sound amazing. Putrid Scum, Judas Cancer.... halfway through I have to hand my stuff and the camera over to SJW so I can get down the front for Slow Death Suck. I'd already seen the setlist (it was on the stage in front of us) so I knew there wouldn't be any Behind the Scaffold, but closing the set with a double whammy of Sacrecrow and Rock N Roll Conformity made me very happy. We cajoled them into staying onstage for one more song;
They had to do Putrid Scum again because they had only practised the songs on the setlist.

It didn't matter though, they sounded great and it was well worth the trip over to Bradford for.

"Why weren't you this good in 87?"
"Because we were always drunk".

that Deviated Instict setlist in full:
The Resurrection Encore
House of Cards
Putrid Scum
Despair
Judas Cancer
Slow Death Suck
Stormcrow
Beyond Pain
Conquest for Eternity
Scarecrow
Rock N Roll Conformity
Putrid Scum (again)


Links:
Warprayer
Extinction of Mankind
Deviated Instinct

Couple more photos here.

Wednesday 6 February 2008

Today In The Post - Shit And Shine


Very pleased with this record - It's Shit & Shine's "Ladybird" on 12" red vinyl. Sweet.
I spoke with Andy from Riot Season yesterday and explained to him that I am away next week (to see Maiden) and asked if he could get this out to me before I leave next Tuesday. I spoke to him yesterday *after*noon... and it arrived today *before* noon.
Andy my friend, you're a legend.

Tuesday 5 February 2008

Dark Tranquility


Last Sunday night (3rd February 2008) we spent some cash to get into the Liverpool Barfly and took in a bit of melodic death metal in the form of Sweden's Dark Tranquility. They are currently on tour in the UK promoting their new album "Fiction", support from Finnish band Omnium Gathering, who I'd never heard of before (and it's difficult finding much info about them online). The night before we'd been to a crust punk gig in Bradford (see below) and then suddenly we're at a Scandinavian metal concert. The only connection is that both bands use guitars.




Dark Tranquility's set was something of a whistle-stop tour of their "greatest hits", performed in front of a surprisingly healthy-sized Liverpool crowd. Are there really that many D.T. fans in the north west of England? From the amount of audience participation that accompanied each song I can only guess that the answer is a resounding 'yes'. The band played hard and their Scouse fans joined in. It was quite a mixed crowd too, as is usually the case on Merseyside - young metallers and old enjoying seeing a band on their own doorstep, a (nowadays) rare Liverpool leg of a UK metal tour.

Starting the set with "Terminus" (track 3 on their latest album "Fiction", fact fans), Dark Tranquility showed class and belted out song after song, fitting in 16 or 17 tunes in an hour and a half. Singer Mikael Stanne (previously of Hammerfall) spent a lot of the set down on the blocks next to the crash barrier at the very foot of the stage, shaking hands with the masses in front of him. He also managed to stand on the house photographers a few times too (that's what you get for flashing lights in his face for over an hour eh!). Bassman Martin Henriksson also kept the cameramen busy with fits of dreadlocked headbanging. It seemed as though the band ran through the set quickly with only a short break towards the end before an encore ("Lethe" and "The New Build") and that was that.

Setlist:

Termimus, The Lesser Faith, The Treason Wall, The Wonders At Your Feet, Lost To Apathy, Hedon, Inside The Paticle Storm, The Endless Feed, Focus Shift, Misery's Crown, Punish My Heaven, Therin, Blind At Heart, My Negation, Final Resistance, Lethe, The New Build.

Check out Dark Tranquility if you are a fan of the musical stylings of bands like At The Gates, Arch Enemy and In Flames.

We're really hitting the gigs at the moment, 2 more at the end of this week and then Maiden the week after that.

Deviated Instinct

So much going on this week that there hasn't been much of an opportunity to tell you about the gigs we've been to... isn't that kinda what this page is supposed to be all about??

Saturday night we hit Bradford for a gig at a great punk club hidden down a back street. The gig was an awesome one-off by crust legends Deviated Instinct, in the sweaty, crusty atmosphere of the 1 in 12.

Check it out:





Even now I haven't got that much time to tell you about the show, no full review today sorry! I'll leave the words to Patchie cos he's a reeeal big fan of D.I.

It was well worth the journey from Liverpool to see them, let's put it like that.

There is an all-dayer to be held in Bradford on the 12th of July, Pagan Altar are announced as headliners. Looks like we'll be back up that M60 motorway soon enough.

Friday 1 February 2008

Vinyl This Week



At the Kylesa gig earlier this week I picked up a copy Of Orange Sunshine's 2006 Bullseye Of Being (Leafhound Records). Check them out, the vocals are pure Iggy Pop.

I also paid good money (£4) for a copy of the Kylesa "No Ending" 7 inch (released on Prank Records) which is on cream white vinyl and with cover art by the one-and-only Pushead.

Happiness is freshly purchased vinyl.