Yob (13 Oct 2011) Star And Garter, Manchester, UK

And, hell, here's a bit of video footage from the very same gig for good measure.

Black Breath @ Star & Garter, Manchester, UK [2010.11.22]

Date: Monday 22 November 2010
Venue: Star & Garter, Manchester, UK
Line-Up: Closure, Hang The Bastard, Rot In Hell, Black Breath
Promoter: Say It To My Face

CLOSURE


HANG THE BASTARD


ROT IN HELL


BLACK BREATH




...you weren't lying about the stacks huh Kam mate!

Upcoming - BLACK BREATH - Manchester S&G - 22nd November 2010

Say It To My Face presents:

BLACK BREATH
http://www.myspace.com/blackbreath
Motorhead & Discharge mixed with Entombed on Southern Lord Records

ROT IN HELL
http://www.myspace.com/rotinhellband
Holy Terror on Deathwish Inc. New album coming soon...

HANG THE BASTARD
http://www.myspace.com/hangthebastard
Raw Sorcery from London

CLOSURE
http://www.myspace.com/closurehc
Leeds finest

Monday 22nd November
The Star and Garter, Fairfield Street, Manchester
£8 adv from Ticketline.co.uk
Doors 7.30pm

http://www.starandgarter.co.uk/

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!

Winters in Osaka / xJonathan Rossx / The Ergon Carousel / Insect Warfare - 7th October 2009, Manchester Star & Garter

INSECT WARFARE


ERGON CAROUSEL


xJONATHAN ROSSx


WINTERS IN OSAKA



Grindcore lunacy. Quote of the night: Shane (xjonathanrossx) - "Hi we're xjonathanrossx and we're going to play you 20 songs as fast as possible."

Church Of Misery @ Manchester S&G... Thee Claw's G.O.T.Y.??

We went along to the Star & Garter (a wonderous place, set deep in Manchester's red light district) to witness a really great gig this evening... Charger, Firebird & Church Of Misery.

It's late in the night now (early in the morning really) and I have work still to do, so I won't have time to give you a blow-by-blow about the show and the sets played by each band. But already this is a sure-fire contender for our gig of thee year.

But one thing is for sure: We certainly don't like how many Down hoodies we are seeing in our path lately! THEE CLAW says: Down with Gegcore.

Be there, or be Patchie.

 

It's going to be a lock out, get down early.  Church of Misery; heroes of Roadburn, Charger, one of the best live bands from "Grot Britain" and some retro stylings from Firebird.

Lazarus Blackstar / Ramesses / Unearthly Trance - Manchester Star & Garter (15th April 2009)

Af'ernoon droogies! Ste here - reporting in after a great show at Manchester's Star & Garter last night. Totally love the S&G, great venue. I would wager it's one of the loudest venues in England, if not thee world. The volume in that place is totally unnecessary for a venue of it's size, but more about that another time maybe.

Before I go on to the gig, a quick word about parking at the S&G for all you boys and girls to take heed of - DON'T just turn up early in the day and park your vehicle in the pub's back lot without mentioning it to the guys lurking downstairs in the beer cellar first! I did just that yesterday and ended up getting myself a parking ticket for my troubles. £60 fixed penalty... balls. Fortunately your friendly S&G landlord was able to have the fine rescinded for me later on, but it's still not a pleasant experience to get back to your car and find a fucking fixed penalty notice slapped onto your window! Next time I will be leaving a "Doctor on call" note on my window or something. Anyways, just so y'all know!

Okay, here's some gig facts for you.

LAZARUS BLACKSTAR


Lazarus B*S were 1st up tonight, and they had a decent crowd. I could be wrong here, but I remember a different band line-up last time we saw these guys. Also, this is the 1st show I had been to at the S&G in 2009, it was probably the same for a lot of the other people in attendance too. Man, I forgot just how fucking loud this venue is. Really, really fuckin loud in that place. L.B.S. got on with their set pretty sharpish and I'm guessing that they had all of their knobs set to 11. Sorry, no idea of what the setlist was... I should have asked. Talking to mikey (vocals) later on, he was happy with their set, he said they had a much better show here than at Scumstock in Sunderland recently.

After Blackstar finished their set, there was a HUGE wait between the end of their set and the beginning of Ramesses's. Like an hour or something. Not a problem for everyone else, the crowd spent this time wisely (at the bar getting drunk).

RAMESSES


THEE CLAW loves Ramesses and they always do a good show. Just like Lazarus Blackstar before them Tim, Mark & Adam just got up on stage and played, no dramatics, no ad-libbing with the crowd. Seemed to me that Ramesses had the biggest audience of the show (plenty of people in the crowd musta needed to make tracks to catch the last train half way through Unearthly Trance's set). Again, no idea of the setlist. Shit reviewer, I know. It didn't make much of a difference anyway, they were so fucking loud and the crowd was so damn into it. The temperature in the room had gone up by about 10 degrees by the end of the Ramesses set.

UNEARTHLY TRANCE


It was quite late in the proceedings when U.T. got to the stage, about 11pm I think. Okay, so that's not really *that* late, but the waits between sets seemed to make it feel that way. That's no complaint from me there btw, I am always happy hanging around for post-midnight rock & roll. It just worked out to be a bit too late for some of the crowd, that's all. Ah well, the folks who left early missed out I guess!

One gripe: U.T. didn't play a lot of the material from their Electrocution record. At least, I expected more. But the set was still good... people around the front of the crowd went a bit nuts when they played Raised By Wolves. At the end of their set I was at the front of the stage, next to the speaker; as I was bent down (putting my camera back into my bag) a huge blast of feedback screamed out of the speakers and sent my head into a spin... like some kind of sonic torture implement! I stood back up and fell over because all sense of balance was suddenly gone from my body. Today I am still getting a sickly whistling sound out of my left ear, I think that's my hearing finally fucking gone. Haha, thanks a lot Unearthly Trance, you have just arranged lifelong tinnitus for me! Earplugs for me from now on I guess, you bastards.

Upcoming: CoM in the UK

Future Noise in association with DFFD & Liverpool Noise

Thursday 14th May 2009 @ The Star & Garter, Manchester

Church of Misery
http://www.churchofmisery.net

Firebird
http://www.myspace.com/firebirdblues

Charger
http://www.fuzzbastards.com

Doors: 7.30pm

Damage: £8 Adv

Pre-order tickets from http://www.future-noise.co.uk

Manchester, soon. (Or, we all love Future Noise)

First:

---

Second (No Flyer):
Future-noise presents....

"Grind to Groove III" - Sponsored by Zero Tolerance Magazine

Esoteric
The Sontaran Experiment / Stuntcock
Charger
Gonga
Volition
They Are Cowards
Jonathan Ross

14th Sept @ The Star & Garter, Manchester
2:30pm till 10pm £8 w/flyer £10 otd

Future Noise Update

Home of many great bands that are much loved at Claw Towers, North West collective Future Noise have some dates for us to get booked off work/get out of bed early for/get off the bench in the park and bring our cider to:

As promised, here's the details of our up and coming gigs:

On Thursday 28th August 08 @ The Star & Garter, Manchester, we will not only be celebrating 6 Years of Future Noise, but also the release of Lazarus Blackstar's darkest chapter 'Tomb of Internal Winter' CDEP, bands playing are Lazarus Blackstar, Limbic Riot & Dog Kicked In Half (although these are still to be confirmed). And as a way to thank all those that have supported us through thick & thin over the last 6 years, this gig will be FREE ENTRY, yes you read correct FREE ENTRY!! So you really have no excuse!

The 'Grind To Groove' All Dayer returns for its third installment on Sunday 14th September 08 @ The Star & Garter, Manchester, Esoteric have been confirmed to headline this and we hope to announce the rest of the line up very soon!

On Thursday 13th November 08, we have The Star & Garter, Manchester booked, as yet we're still awaiting confirmation on who is scheduled to play, but we just thought we'd make you aware of this date so you can pencil it into your diary.

And finally, on Tuesday 25th November 08 @ The Star & Garter, Manchester, Ufomammut make there welcome return to the UK bringing with them recording & label cohorts Lento, Malleus will once again be supplying visuals for this gig and support is still to be confirmed.

Phew...we hope that's enough to wet your appetite and as usual, keep an eye on this website or our forum as news as and when its confirmed will be announced.

Can't wait for that new Lazarus Blackstar EP, it's going to be total filth!

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.

Pombagira/Lesbian, Manchester Star and Garter, 15th April 2008

Last night Thee Claw travelled to Manchester to catch the latest stop on a tour by two bands that are (were) new to us: Lesbian from Seattle, and Old London Town's very own Pombagira.
Actually, there were three bands playing that we'd not heard but I'm trying to forget the first band, Lathe Spirit or something, who buy their shirts exclusively from the Southern Lord webstore, with the exception of the drummer who had on a Burzum shirt and eyeliner.
As I walked out after ninety seconds of the first song I could hear the sound of Varg Vikernes digging himself a grave so he could spin in it.
Don't worry lads; even Hellhammer got a one K review back in the day, so you're in good company. Before I forget, here's your very own solitary K.

Next up where Pombagira, whose vocalist/guitarist Pete explained that the set tonight will have to be instrumental because he has a sore throat.
Given the fact that only about 15 people had bothered to turn out for this show (quite a few of them were the parents of the first band) I don't blame him for wanting to keep his voice for a bigger audience.


We are then treated to a totally instrumental set of total UK sludge, and it's very, very impressive. I love the fact that the type of music Pombagira are playing has the ability to make you lose track of time; it draws me in until I don't know whether I've been listening to it for a few minutes or a few hours.
Comparisons are lazy; but they're bound to happen, think Ramesses/Electric Wizard style filth, huge riffs and syncopated drumming with roving basslines.
When they finish their one-track half hour-ish set, I'm already making a mental note to go and see them again, because they must be fucking amazing with vocals if they are this good without them!

Closing the show are Lesbian from Seattle.


Lesbian are impossible to pigeonhole, in fact when I got in last night I destroyed any pigeonholes I had around the house and made a big box with "Lesbian" written over the top, and slung all my CDs inside it, and now my girlfriend thinks I'm on PCP.
Seriously though, I didn't know what was coming next with this band; there's Neurosis-style riffing and then it would break into black metal style blastbeats, and there were a few songs at the end with double-kick action, slow doomy riffs that made me think of demo-era Paradise Lost. Nice use of the Bill Hicks sample too guys.
They totally blew me away to be honest, big kudos to promoters Wot God Forgot for getting these two to play in Manchester, I'm so glad we went, a shame nobody else could be bothered.

And is flannel really the National Dress of Seattle?
Links:
Lesbian (Myspace)
Pombagira (Myspace)
Wot God Forgot (Promoter)

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

Weedeater / Stinking Lizaveta / Rise To Thunder Manchester 20 March 2008

Last night we went along to see Rise to Thunder, Stinking Lizaveta and Weedeater at the Star and Garter in Manchester.

I'll add more to this when SJW gets around to either sending me the other photos or writes his own review :)Weedeater are fucking nuts. Opening with a killer one-two of God Luck and Good Speed (surely the best songtitle ever) and Wizard Fight, they didn't let up for a minute.
Swigging from a bottle of Southern Comfort (and cans of 'berg), Dixie Dave kept going all cross-eyed and stuff whilst belting out the songs at the top of his lungs.
or the bottom of his lungs; wherever it is that you actually belt stuff out from.
It's all one big blur of a sludge-buzz-fest in my mind now, but Gimme Back My Bullets was great.
I'm thinking of phoning in sick tomorrow so I can get to Leeds to see them there.....

Weedeater - Manchester 20th March

Baroness / Kylesa, Manchester Star and Garter 30/1/08

Last night we went along to see Bastard of the Skies, Kylesa and Baroness at the Star and Garter in Manchester. Amazingly, the gig totally sold out and people were being turned away outside. And there we were dragging our heels having another pint "waiting for the queue to go down a bit".
Anyway, we got in, don't worry!!

Bastard of the Skies are from Blackburn, and played some decent stuff, nice use of one guitar as a bow to play the other one at the end I thought.

Kylesa came on next, and they totally blew me away; total thundering basslines and two drummers - awesome.
They did a cover of Pink Floyd's Set the Controls for the Heart of The Sun - I always say that Pink Floyd are one of those bands that nobody should ever cover, with only Voivod ever getting away with it in the past, but this was absolutely amazing.
The entire set was full of energy, and after they'd finished my ears were ringing like mad.Baroness played a good, solid set, heavy and rolling, but for me, they just couldn't top what Kylesa had done.
I went home happy with sore ears, and slept so soundly that I jumped up this morning for work, travelled all the way into Liverpool and went to clock in, and then realised it was my day off.
Ahh, the beauty of thee claw!

Kylesa / Baroness @ Star & Garter, Manchester

Some photos from the Kylesa / Baroness gig in Manchester on 30th January:

Kylesa:




Baroness:





The opening band was Bastard Of The Skies, they were pretty smart too. I look forward to seeing them again. In my opinion the highlight of the night was Kylesa's set - they blew everyone else off the stage, they were sooo good. Any band with 2 drummers is good in my book! They covered a Pink Floyd tune, I'm sure Patchie will fill you in on that one.

This was a really good gig, very loud (my ears are ringing like mad right now) and extremely well attended. The promoters (Future Noise) must be very pleased with themselves today - great show guys!