Groove metal’s a funny thing. It’s one of those genres that seems to be in the middle of a venn diagram of multiple other genres and straddles a mix of thrash, death, hardcore and in some cases djent. WoR are someone new to my ears and I’m always down with the idea of giving new music a punt because you never know when you might find a bit of a gem hidden amongst the swathes of new music that’s around now.
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‘Of Malice And The Magnum Heart,’ the debut album by Misery Signals, has enjoyed a dramatic reputation enhancement since its release in 2004. When it first dropped in the music world’s lap, it received decent reviews and had some moderate success, but take a look online nowadays and the general consensus is that it’s an overlooked classic. Hindsight is a wonderful thing but it does indeed stand up. It’s a well-crafted record that’s stood the test of time and it’s not surprising its stature has grown. The band themselves have recognized this. In 2014 they welcomed original singer Jesse Zaraska back into the line-up and played it in full on an anniversary tour, introducing it to a lot of fans who missed out on the original run. The promise of new material has hung over them since, but it’s taken a full six years for ‘Ultraviolet’ to take shape, the band refusing to rush in and fart out a subpar legacy-breaker. It’s been a long time coming and expectations are high to say the least, so is it any good?
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Jet Fuel Chemistry are a young band with a full-grown attitude and an insightful message to share. Social media is ripping the heart out of the younger generations, fuelling depression and aimlessness and robbing them of a true identity.
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Since signing with Frontiers Music last year, 2020 has been quite a prolific year in terms of releases for the mighty Blue Öyster Cult. The live album and DVD of the ‘Agents Of Fortune 40th Anniversary’ came out early this year, followed by very welcome re-releases of 1998’s ‘Heaven Forbid’ and 2001’s ‘Curse Of The Hidden Mirror’, both largely overlooked BÖC gems which had become pretty hard to get hold of. So ‘45th Anniversary – Live In London’ is the fourth release on Frontiers this year, with strong hints that a brand new studio album will follow before the year is out. So there’s plenty to cheer about for BÖC fans, despite the inevitable postponement of the live shows, mostly with Deep Purple, put back to next year.
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Well, this takes John B back to high school. This is exactly the kind of thing he listened to back then. He has spoken about this before but it warrants mentioning again here: sometimes nostalgia is best left in the past as things rarely live up to the memory but an album like this really works because this matched the memory he has rather than what the truth might have been. That makes this stand out as such a great album to me. It matches the nostalgia. This is what JB remembers loving – and an excellent example of it at that.
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