Haar – Haar EP
From the outset it is clear that this 2 year old Edinburgh band are not your typical bullet belt clad blasters, as a cursory glance at the CD player shows 3 tracks on clocking in at a weighty 26 minutes. With long songs comes a great responsibility to diversify, as anything featuring 9 minutes of wall to wall trve kvlt biscuit-tin drums recorded on a mobile phone in Gandalf’s corrugated steel garden shed would have me eating my laptop with rage. Luckily for me Haar paint a rich musical picture, using the time to conjour desolate landscapes where raw speed is balanced with doomy, progressive parts that occasionally bring to mind Agalloch’s heavier moments.
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Disturbed – Asylum
The pale blue glow of the anti junkie UV lighting set the mood perfectly. David sat, dictaphone gripped tightly in his hand, placed between his legs, only inches above the shimmering water. A single groan, then a splash. It was over in seconds. A whole weeks cheesy pasta and Vimto evacuated into the ceramic cradle.
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Stone Sour – Audio Secrecy
I am old enough to remember Slipknot’s early days. The buzz, hype and the mystique that surrounded them before they released their self-titled album – which I duly purchased – painted them as a bunch of total mental cases that wore the masks so they could do what the fuck they wanted and could anonymously replace each member if one of them quit or died. Their masks were a rejection of the mainstream and marked them out as something darker and less predictable than everything else Nu that was being shat out of 1999. So what happens when you remove those masks and renege on your initial statements of intent? Well on one level you retain the street cred of latter day Glen Benton, and on another you become Kiss circa 1983. Enter Stone Sour.
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The Absence – Enemy Unbound
The Absence return after what seems like far longer than the 3 years it’s been since Riders Of The Plague, their 2nd album, pushed them to the forefront of the melodic death/thrash/music picture, establishing themselves as the smart alternative to the Arch Enemies of this world and becoming firm Leave the Hall favourites in the process. Naturally the question must be asked; after such a hotly anticipated build-up, will they choke like Michael Hutchence or gloriously unleash a pent up torrent of creamy metal musical ejaculate into our lives?
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Accept – Blood Of The Nations
Two heavy metal superpowers have released albums this month. Iron Maiden’s fifteenth album, The Final Frontier is barely out of the shrink-wrap yet I find myself more excited about Accept’s latest effort. Whilst the 2 sample tracks Maiden were released to a very mixed reaction, Accept’s first single, Teutonic Terror was met with outbreaks of mass-orgasm. One town in North Germany was, in fact, washed away by a torrent of semen minutes after the premier of the video.
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Iron Maiden – The Final Frontier
The release of a new Iron Maiden album has almost become more than simply music. Along with Priest and the other elder statesmen of the genre, every new release is an affirmation of the continuing health of a beloved musical institution and, by extension, metal itself. For a metalhead a new Maiden album should be greeted with the sort of rapturous masturbation usually reserved for a teenage boy that’s just flicked over to babestation for the first time, and so it was as a loyal acolyte that I made the pilgrimage to HMV to pick up a copy of The Final Frontier, Iron Maiden’s 15th opus.
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I was unaware that International Talk Like A Pirate Day had come around again (not really, you dullard) until Achren’s set. “You are a sorry excuse for a crowd compared with Bloodstock!” barks vocalist Scott, in his best buccaneer tones, to which he receives the sage response, “It’s the same fucking crowd, ya baw!” It’s true, looking around Ivory Blacks, about half of the crowd were packed into the New Blood tent on Saturday morning. It is also true that the crowd were a good deal less enthusiastic but that might have something to do with post-festival malaise.
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Avenged Sevenfold – Nightmare
Losing a founding member, drummer Jimmy Sullivan, came as a massive hit to the band with a trajectory & momentum unprecedented in the metal world for the last decade. Nightmare was already written when he passed away but 7 months on, I can’t help feel they went to the studio too soon to record this. I’m not one for guilty pleasures as demonstrated by my fanatical love of Basshunter, but if I were, Avenged Sevenfold would be one. I’m totally gay for Waking The Fallen & about half of City of Evil is brilliant.
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Danzig – Deth Red Sabaoth
Glenn Danzig might have been keeping himself busy with Black Aria II but we’ve not had a Danzig album since 2004′s disappointing Circle Of Snakes & if we’re honest, we’ve not had a classic one since How The Gods Kill. Anyway, horror punk’s elder statesman is back aged 55 with long time collaborator Tommy Victor (Prong, Ministry) & Johnny Kelly (Type O Negative) handling guitar & drum duties respectively. Big Glenn himself takes care of the bass, production & he even has a crack at drumming on one track. Unfortunately he has fired his loyal spell checker who served him well since 1988. I guess he never fully got that fuck up back in 96 with Blackaciddevil.
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Blue Gillespie – Synesthesia
Blue Gillespie describe their namesake as, and I quote:
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