Washing Machine – Bury St Edmunds, The Hunter Club – 16 March 2024

What do you do when you go for a weekend away to have a catch up with some friends? Look for a gig, of course, especially if live music is as vital to your life as it is to DJ Astrocreep. To the uninitiated, as was the big lad until gig night, Washing Machine is a showcase night in Bury St Edmunds, with this evening’s edition featuring five varied acts. The venue itself is a small room with great sound and welcoming aura, so it’s a quick drink and time for the bands just after arrival.

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Enuff Z’Nuff/Zach Waters Band/Dead Addiction – Belfast, Voodoo – 16 March 2024

There has been an awful lot of discussion on various social media platforms recently about advance ticket sales for gigs, and particularly the effect a poor performance in that regard can have a serious impact on promoters’ collective and individual abilities to stage said shows. It’s an extremely complex situation, with multiple factors having to be considered, and one not helped by fuel being added to the fire by so-called industry “insiders” adding their ill-informed and ill-judged (and in some cases extremely inaccurate) tuppence worth to the debate… Tonight’s gig was just one example of the maelstrom in which far too many promoters find themselves, particularly in this little corner of the Überverse…

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Dragonforce – ‘Warp Speed Warriors’ (Napalm Records)

Power metal legends Dragonforce return with their bright and sweeping new album ‘Warp Speed Warriors’, released this past Friday. Video game influences twist around cinematic fantasy narratives in this fresh and innovative new album- Herman Li and Sam Totman’s breathtaking guitars rise around the shattering heights of Marc Hudson’s vocals in this self-contained adventure into the most unchartered and playful corners of thematic power metal. 

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Ashen Reach – ‘The Fear’ (Self-Released)

One of the beauties of this job (if you can call it that) is watching, and listening to, bands develop, evolve, grow and mature, as well as pushing themselves to not only their collective and individual limits but also beyond the generic boundaries by which they may be perceived to be confined. One such band are Liverpudlian quartet Ashen Reach, who have reached through the letterbox at ÜRHQ, taken the envelope that landed on the mat inside, ripped out its contents and replaced it with their own missive of strident intent… Monk picks up the pieces…

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Skindred/P.O.D/As Everything Unfolds – Manchester, Academy – 14 March 2024

In this current modern landscape of metal music, diversity has slowly started to shine in every aspect, whether it be Spiritbox reaching new highs at Reading and Leeds or most notably Skindred recently winning a MOBO award for Best Alternative Act. The scene has begun to enter a golden era, and the latter arrived at Manchester Academy to double down and show why they wholeheartedly deserved their MOBO accolade.

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The Moor – ‘Ombra’ (Inertial Music)

Now and again, an album comes along that slowly crawls its way into the deepest, innermost recesses of your aural psyche, casting a shadow that is immovable and impermeable, wrapping you in a darkness that is impenetrable but at the same time ushering you into a light that is both blinding and welcoming an enervating and redemptive new dawn. The appropriately titled ‘Ombra’ casts just such a shadow… as Monk explores…

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Ecclesia – ‘Ecclesia Militans’ (Aural Music)

Heavy metal has always had a fascination with the darker aspects of human history, and mysterious French troubadours Ecclesia are no exception, recalling and exploring the 12th Century Holy Inquisition in the most minute of details via an eight-year career that has spawned an EP and, now, two albums, this latest of which is a decent enough slice of conceptual doom-infused power metal, as Monk now extrapolates…

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Cory Wells – ‘Harboring The Hurt I’ve Caused’ (Pure Noise Records)

It can be difficult to admit that the problems in your life may be no one’s fault but your own, to own up to the damage that you have done and live with your mistakes every day, realizing that you’ve been blind, and then once you can finally confront  the fear that the end is certain, begin to settle into that reality. As much as we all hate to admit it, it’s a situation we all experience, and one which is at the heart of this second album from Cory Wells (not to be confused with the former Three Dog Night singer of the same name) – and one he addresses with the easy eloquence of an expert songwriter.

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The Über Rock Singles Club Daily Pick – Living Dead Girl

Monk’s latest pick of the pops comes from a band who sew together elements of gothic metal with industrialized pop punk like Dr Frankenstein with a turbocharged soldering iron in one hand and a bottle of Buckie in the other… Well, they do take their name from a Rob Zombie song, so what else would you expect but acts of depraved audio and visual ugliness, as evinced by this latest offering from the Florida-based al-metal extremists?

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