When a band hits their 32nd studio album and 50th year, is it even possible to remain fresh, new or even relevant? Dave Brock and friends have some legacy to live up to, a weight that isn’t born well by everyone. So, have they lived up to expectations? According to our resident Hawkwind geek, the answer has to be a resounding yes.
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When it comes to fuzzy stoner rock, it’s often difficult to escape drawing comparisons with Josh Homme. Through QOTSA and Them Crooked Vultures he managed to drag those fuzzy sounds kicking in screaming right into the mainstream spotlight and introduced scores of the modern generation who may have otherwise overlooked the genre completely. But this makes things difficult for other bands in the genre as they have to pull soon getting special or of the bag to avoid being compared to those bands and allowing their own music to define them.
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The nights are getting colder and darker, but there is still one constant, no matter the season or the weather outside – and that’s you’re virtually guaranteed some pretty damn hot heavy metal action any time you step off the street and up the stairs into one of ÜR’s favourite venues in this or any other corner of the Überverse.
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Sometimes when you grab a beer you want a complex craft beer with a lot of different flavor notes to explore and identify. For many, like myself, this can be an almost obsession. You want to keep challenging your pallet and finding things you had not before. Not every time though. Sometimes you just crave a generic beer. For John B, this tends to be past blue ribbon. It is not some fancy IPA or stout that demands all of your attention. It is just a damn good beer and there is nothing wrong with that. The same is true with music. ‘Maher Shalal Hash Baz’ is not groundbreaking it is not experimenting with anything we have not heard before. It is, however, a damn good black metal album and sometimes that is exactly what you are craving.
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The rather inimitable Sunn O))) playing Manchester? In the Albert Hall, no less, a venue with incredible acoustics which may as well have been designed for such a gig, indeed a quite fabulous setting for it. Our resident gigaholic’s choice had been between this and HRH Prog, with this gig being a fairly easy winner, despite his love for some of the bands on the Prog line up. Even the now usual train cancellations were not enough to keep our boyo away. Sunn O))) are nothing short of an experience, however you look at it, with his previous experience of them being at the short lived Temples festival, where rumours were bandied around that the last day was delayed due to cracks in the building, following the headline Sunn O))) set, where a suite of mirrors reflected every pointt around the room – what audio/ visual delights were in store for the big lad tonight?
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