Monk has to admit that, when this album submission first landed in the ÜRHQ inbox, he viewed it as something of an anomaly. A folk metal band from Ukraine who take their monicker from the ancient Norse name for the world of man (that’s Middle Earth to all you heathen Tolkienites), and a concept album about a rebellious Jedi knight… It didn’t seem to make any sense. But, then, slowly, it did…
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The annals of rock ‘n’ roll are littered with tales of bands who, to quote the title of a recently released single, coulda, shoulda, woulda made it bigger than they did if events hadn’t conspired against them… one such example is Diesel Machine, who, in the mid-Nineties were among the first wave of the then new-sounding groove metal acts, alongside Lamb Of God and Machine Head, to try and piggyback the coattails of the likes of heavy blues specialists such as Pantera and Crowbar.
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Since first finding these guys at Stonebaked Promotions’ ‘Sniff The Riff’ almost three years ago, describing them as heavy fuzz with a singer reminding me of a hippy Ozzy Osbourne, DJ Astrocreep has kept an eye out for these guys. He actually almost lost track of this release as a myriad of other things kept cropping up, but remembered in time to still catch this a little bit before release. The first dive into the music would show the big lad where their latest sound has gone to…
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Frankie Banali, the long-serving drummer in Los Angeles hair metal veterans Quiet Riot, has died at the age of 68, following a battle with pancreatic cancer.
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In many ways, it could be argued that this, the 14th album from German hard rock troubadours Mad Max, is something of a “sequel”, seeing at it resurrects a character first created by the band on their third album, ‘Stormchild’, away back in 1985 (one of the best albums of its ilk and era, and an original vinyl copy of which I still have buried away in the darkest recesses of my mancave!). According to guitarist Jürgen Breforth, fans have been clamouring for the return of the character – “our warrior who battles for everything good in the world, not with weapons but with rock songs” – and this album is their reward…
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