Athenian guitarist Constantine Kotzamanis has been shredding away since he was a mere 12 years old, and has played in bands such as Mystic Prophecy, Nightfall and Primal Fear among others. In 2010 he dropped his first solo album, ‘Shredcore’, which received positive reviews and showed off his skills as a guitar player. Now he’s back with his follow up ‘Aftermath’ which promises to be another absolute shred fest.
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Dark Stares inhabit a territory that lies somewhere between the desert/stoner groove of Kyuss and QOTSA, the alt-rock anthemics of Muse and 30STM and the irritating indie pop shenanigans of the likes of Arctic Monkeys. Monk first came across the St Albans quartet last Spring, when he reviewed their debut full-lengther, ‘Darker Days Are Here To Stay’: he recalls being rather impressed by what he heard, hailing it as one of the strongest and most consistent debuts of the year. Now, that album had taken them four years to bring together… but, here we are, little more than a year later, and its follow-up has landed on doormat at ÜRHQ.
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Cambridge’s Psychic Lemon inhabit the sort of psychedelic, space rock previously explored and opened up by the likes of Amon Duul II, Goat and Hawkwind. As its title suggests, this, their third album, was recorded live at The Smokehouse, a bespoke venue in Ipswich known for being at the cutting edge of the East Anglian music scene. With five tracks spread across 42 minutes, it is effectively split into two halves, with the first three tracks being grouped together under the banner of ‘The Past’ – a fitting epithet as they are taken from the trio’s last album, ‘Frequency Rhythm Distortion Delay. The remaining two tracks are newbies, presented under the banner of ‘The Future’.
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Amon Amarth have released the third and final part of their video trilogy to accompany their recent ‘Berzerker’ album.
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Originally planned as the band’s second album, the recently unearthed ‘Moronic Pleasures’ is an example of musical archaeology at its finest. Originally recorded in two sessions, the original tapes have lain gathering dust for a little more than 20 years – although many of the songs ended up, in re-recorded versions, on what ultimately proved to be the band’s sophomore offering, ‘Human Zoo’. Two decades later, an old friend of the band, Jake Starr, set about tracking down the long-lost original sessions and subsequently getting the 19 songs remixed and remastered for modern consumption. It was no easy task, as there were bits missing, with a good old-fashioned cassette tape being used to fill in the gaps on ‘Ass Casserole’, for example.
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