Bagpipes. Often a bit of a controversial topic, we’ve found! It seems that people either love bagpipes or they have a real passionate hated for them. Jonny B? He makes no secret of the fact that he’s a big fan of the bagpipes and he thinks that more bands should experiment with them. Fortunately, the latest release from Germany’s Tanzwut had bagpipes in spades, so this will be an exciting ride for our man…
Read More
Jonny B is not ashamed to admit it, He had his stint as an emo kid when he was in his early teens, and he’s going to attempt to channel that for this review of the debut album from Scotland’s Dude Trips. It may have been buried by years of excess and metal, but he will see what he can do…
Read More
Heaven knows the bar has plunged to new depths now. ‘A New Low,’ the latest release by Footprints In The Custard is an absolute masterclass in juvenile behaviour. Coming across like a crass sex-comedy made into an album, it’s so shamelessly bad taste that giving them a negative review almost feels like playing into their hands. You can tell they’d be absolutely delighted to have offended every music critic that crosses their paths and were most likely rubbing their hands with anticipation when the promos went out, eagerly awaiting the chance to plaster every soundbite slagging them off across their Facebook homepage.
Read More
One advantage of Belfast is that it is a relatively small city, and easily traversable, if you plan your route in advance – something which proved to be something of a boon on this particular evening, with two gigs running (virtually anyway) back to back within a half a mile or so of each other. So, it was relatively easy for Monk to leave one as soon as the last note died in the speakers and make it to the other in good enough time to grab a beverage before the main attraction started…
Read More
On the face of it, staging your album launch gig on the same day as the majority of Belfast’s metal fans seem to have decamped some 100 miles or so to watch some outfit called Metallica play in a field in the arse end of nowhere may not seem to be the best of timings. However, a number of factors always come into play when planning anything, such as the availability of band members, other tour commitments and the release date of the album… and so Skypilot found themselves with something of a fait accompli. But, as a certain playwright wrote several hundred years ago, all’s well that ends well and, at the end of the evening, there was a decent crowd present to watch the trio officially send their excellent new ‘The Affront’ out into the big bad world… but we’ll come to that anon.
Read More