Suicide Rex

Our favourite Northerners (real Northerns that is) BLACK SUN are back with a new track! Suicide Rex is the name of their new demo and here it is for you to check out. Thee Claw has been in love with the twisted sounds of the BS vibe since forever now, we wish for the same feeling of delight to be instilled within each and every one of our readers. And now it can, just click on the following link!

BLACK SUN / VOLITION / BASTARDS OF THE SKIES

Date: Friday 24 September 2010
Venue: Star & Garter, Manchester, UK
Line-Up: Thade, Bastards Of The Skies, Volition, Black Sun
Promoter: Future Noise

A special "Album release" show for the new BLACK SUN record, entitled "Twilight Of The Gods". Nice line up and a long show, starting at 8ish with THADE and carrying on til 10 to 1 in the morning when BLACK SUN left the stage!




Apologies to THADE - never had the camera ready for their set. Did watch them though - sludgetastic!

BLACK SUN - Black Angel

WARHEAD

BLACK SUN - WARHEAD - STUDIO PRACTICE DEMO

One of Thee Claw's favourite bands in the UK if not Thee World. Get it whilst it's hot hot hot.

Black Sun @ Roadburn - A Slideshow Video

Black Sun Roadburn 2009 slideshow - Pics by Steven Walley

Hahaha, how mad it looks! THEE CLAW loves Powerviolence and BLACK SUN offers it up in spades.

Hailz ti Glasgee!

Heavyfest @ 1 in 12, Bradford

Great day at the 1 in 12 in Bradford yesterday, but so much happened... right now I need to collect my thoughts on the whole thing. Does this count as 1 more gig to the 2008 Claw Tour or can I add it as 11 separate bands?

Here's some thoughts and photos all about the bands that played at the 2008 edition of HEAVYFEST:

LIMBIC RIOT



MISERICORDE



GUSTO MASTIVO



E. MUD GENERATOR



GRUEL


Gruel are a band that can be described with one word... Drone. They came to the stage and produced an inverted cross (made out of light-bulbs), switched on the smoke machine and then started to make a right old nuisance of themselves in the best of punk tradition. Blood, animal bones, smoke, a bit more blood. That about covers it I think.

THEY ARE COWARDS


Their best gig so far. We saw They Are Cowards on Thursday night in Manchester and they looked tense. It was their first show, nerves etc, it was a very serious set. Heavyfest was a different vibe, the guys really seemed to enjoy their turn on stage. Drunken, sweaty & loud... but that applies to almost every band that played at this event I guess.

BLACK SUN


A contender for set of the festival, Black Sun came to the stage and they were already smashed out of their minds. Well, Kev (guitar) and Graeme (bass) were smashed, your man Russell (drums) seemed in good form. They played a blinder, lots of noise and huge angry volume. Kev started butting his microphone during the last few songs, God only knows what he was playing at there. No matter because it only added to the perfomance. The sweat was stinging my eyes by the end of their set and I was loving it. Black Sun are a band with huge stage presence.

VOLITION


Apologies to the fellas in Volition - I hardly saw any of their set! It was during the previous Black Sun set that one of the guys that I was with (Cov) fell unconsious and we had to call an ambulance to get him to the nearest hospital A&E unit quick. So while the rest of my friends were carefully putting him into the recovery position, I ran back into the venue and got some photos of Volition to include on here. After all, if I wasn't going to do it, who was?

LAZARUS BLACKSTAR


Another band that we saw in Manchester earlier in the same week. Blackstar have made the transition between vocalists successfully, Mikey is giving it all in the lungs and throat department. They played the loudest set of Heavyfest (by far), I don't know what was going on with that. My ears have become accustomed to listening to stuff through massive amplifiers and I was doing pretty well all day throughout Heavyfest, then Lazarus Blackstar came on stage. Afterwards I had dull hearing and I am still struggling with it now.

CHARGER


Now yer talkin! For my sins I haven't seen Charger now for about 5 years, when they played the Cavern in Liverpool. Yes, it's really been that long. They are sporting a new line-up now and, although they never took to the stage til close to midnight, it was worth the 5 year wait. The crowd had started to thin out by the end of Heavyfest due to a combination of heat and too much booze (one guy had to be carted off to hospital). So Charger's audience comprised of a hardcore of alcohol-fueled nutters. One of the Black Sun guys stripped down to his skin and ran about the place naked during their set... unphased, Charger played on.

GLOOMY SUNDAY


Twice in a week, I get to see Gloomy Sunday up on stage doing their thing. They played another great set but - I'm so pissed off about this - most of the crowd had started to make their way out fo the building while Charger were on and by the time it came to Gloomy Sunday's turn, all that was left watching was the guys from Lazarus Blackstar, a couple of Volition, Black Sun and about 5 others including myself. Okay, so it had been a long day but it's still not right. Anyways, everyone who left early were the ones who missed out. G/S did their thing and it was great to see. Towards the end of their set Denis (Guitar) had technical problems which held up the show for about 5 minutes until Kev from Black Sun (who was well and truly annihilated by this point) helped out the guys and played lead for the next song. Dennis held his own on vocals along side their main voacalist Jari.

Okay so now I owe you review-ettes on 4 more bands who hit the stage at Heavyfest. Maybe I'll get back to you on those a little later on, okay. No promises!

They Are Cowards / Black Sun / Lazarus Blackstar / Gloomy Sunday @ Star & Garter, Manchester

A few photos taken during last night's gig:





Another great gig from the Future Noise boys. All of the bands were new to me (or had new members amongst them at least).

Before the show started, before the venue had even opened up for business, me and Patchie showed up in Manchester, mainly because there was not much for us to do in Liverpool to kill time (apart from maybe walk about the city centre in the sunshine) and we have a bit of a ritual now before gigs of parking the car up and wandering around by the venue and checking the area out. It's just as well that we did so on this occasion - we started walking our way down the roadside by the Star & Garter - an old (and derelict looking) detached pub which is situated all on its own, smack-dab in the middle of Manchester's red-light district - and we happened upon 3 guys dressed in black who were sat on some grassland by the edge of a busy street. They were just sat with nothing to do, 3 of them on their own, along with some traveling gear comprising of assorted guitar cases and backpacks.

Turns out that these guys were GLOOMY SUNDAY, the last band playing this night's gig, they had flown in from Sweden only to get to the venue and find no one there to let them in. They'd been in town since 9am that day (we met them at about half 4 in the afternoon) and in the meantime they had pretty much been waiting outside the venue in the baking sun, sitting around and getting burned. No one there to meet them, no one there to greet them.

And then Thee Claw turns the corner to find a Scandinavian rock band sitting about looking desolate and bored. So what do we do? We do what any decent person would do - no, *Should* do - we put their bags and guitars in the back of our car and took the guys down to the local pub and got them some beer until we could arrange for someone to come to open the venue so the guys could get in their and soundcheck.

See, this is pretty much what Thee Claw does best. We turn up early and buy stranded band members beer. Lucky stroke. Actually, they saved us an unmemorable journey to the usual places along the lane, all we had plans of doing was walking to a rock club and sitting about listening to Venom on the jukebox. The Gloomy Sunday guys (3 out of 4 of them) were cool, in spite of the sunburn, we spent an hour or so with them in an Irish pub talking about traveling and future plans. The usual stuff when you first meet someone and go to the nearest bar I guess!

I'll leave it to Patchie to serve up a fantastical drunken gig review. After all, he somehow does that kind of thing much better than I tend to.

They Are Cowards, Lazarus Blackstar, Black Sun, Gloomy Sunday

Ok, so here's my little bit of what I have to say about this gig at the Star and Garter (which is now completely cemented in the number one venue position in my mind).

We flew across the short distance from Liverpool to Manchester, listening to Priest and Sabbath, and when we got there the venue was closed still, and as Ste pointed out in his post we bumped into ³/₄ of Gloomy Sunday, and nipped off for a few pints with them, nice lads, they'd been sat in the park from like 9am or something.
Anyway, we got over to the venue (after I nearly had the poor lads killed a few times due to my habit of walking straight out into oncoming traffic; after all I'm too metal for crossings, and the cars drive on the other side of the road in Sweden!) and bumped into Mikhell who is the newly installed vocalist of Lazarus Blackstar, and Dennis, the last quarter of Gloomy Sunday to arrive.
The guys then started to show up in droves, Dean from Huddersfield, Caitlin and Steve from Liverpool, Doomlord and Thee Barbarian from Manchester...everyone was out, the sun was shining and there was a night of doom, sludge and general filth in the offing.

So let's go!

They Are Cowards
They Are Cowards are angry.
No, scratch that, They Are Cowards are fucking livid.
Exactly what they are so angry about is a mystery, but you can feel it seeping off the stage and into everyone watching. I'd been listening to an advance copy of their demo for a day or two before this gig, and I was really looking forward to seeing them, and if you didn't know that this was their first show together you would never have guessed. We've also got one of their riffs stuck in our heads here at Claw Towers, how mad is that.

Lazarus Blackstar
I've seen tham a few times in the past, but this was the first time I'd seen them with new vocalist Mikhell (formerly of After The Massacre), and he's given them a whole new, more menacing edge. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this band develop, because they are crushing onstage.

Black Sun.
Coming from Scotland, Black Sun are something else. They have a t-shirt that has the backprint "You Won't Like It" which just about sums them up. They are a frightning fucking maelstrom of downtuned, fast, slow, scary scary shit.
And they are fucking nutters.
As Kevin crouches forwards towards his mic spitting out the vocals...you think to yourself that this is the kind of music you don't want to listen to at rush hour on the motorway!

Gloomy Sunday
As I say, I'd nearly killed them a bit earlier on in the day, but I think they had forgiven me when they came onstage. As I say, three quarters Gothenburg Doomsters, one quarter English Doom, and all quarters fucking killer. I've been listening to their "Beyond Good and Evil" for a while, and seeing them bang this stuff out live was a real treat. The only thing that was off about this was that people had started to leave before they even came on.
Well, fuck them, it's their loss, Gloomy Sunday were (are) fucking brutal.

And their "Alucarda" shirt is awesome too.

Gloomy Sunday etc.

Incoming

News just in from the lovely guys over at Future Noise...

Thursday 8th May 2008 @ The Star & Garter, Manchester
Swedish Doom merchants Gloomy Sunday will be playing their down-tempo madness, backed up by:
Lazarus Blackstar
Black Sun
They Are Cowards

Doors: 7.30pm Damage: TBC