The Swedish trio VA Rocks formed at the tender age of 12 years old and self-released their first EP in 2014. They have just released this, their second album through Metalville. Although these girls are still quite young, our very own queen of darkness finds that they are really tight as a band, producing music that is fundamentally quite mature and in your face.
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Power Metal. It’s a divisive genre with some people regarding it with some disdain claiming that it is overblown and cheesy. Others enjoy it immensely, partly for the reasons that others dislike it but also because it provides an enourmous sense of fun. Phil C fully places himself into the latter category. There are some downsides with it, notably there is a lot of overdubbing and triggers used in studio recordings that don’t always translate live and can let the music down. However, Signum Regis have stated that with ‘The Seal of a New World’ they proudly recorded everything organically, just natural instruments played by the guys in the band enjoying what they write.
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Three prog bands within a three-and-a-half-hour window, plus changeovers, means probably two songs each for the support acts, right? Not quite, it turns out, but then neither Port Noir nor The Ocean are typical prog bands in that manner. The cold and the rain couldn’t keep our resident gigaholic away, once trains were fairly back to normal, and he was raring to get gigging after the washout of the previous evening…
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The latest edition of the Singles Club is now open for business, with the bar fully stocked and the jukebox loaded with a baker’s dozen of the finest tracks to have crossed our death decks over the past couple of weeks. Once again, it’s a diverse bunch, touching a range of styles, so let’s jump straight in and hit “play” shall we? Oh, OK, seeing as you insist…
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Northern Ireland death groovers Cursed Sun are just about to release their latest EP, the ÜR-approved ‘Vendetta’. We invited singer Andrew ‘Jones’ Cassidy and guitarist Ciaran McKeever into ÜR’s hallowed inner sanctum to discuss the release, the positive changes in the band’s line-up, the creation of new single ‘MDK187’ and the influence behind its powerful accompanying video, why they hope it will be “fourth time lucky” in the annual Bloodstock Metal 2 The Masses competition, and their plans to take their hard-hitting sound across the Irish Sea in 2020
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