tue 22/07/2025

New Music Reviews

Metallica, Twickenham Stadium review - heavy metal titans bring the noise

Ellie Porter

“You want heavy?” Metallica frontman James Hetfield already knows the answer to that question, and he and his three fellow horsemen of the apocalypse certainly deliver that tonight. This stop on Metallica’s mammoth Worldwired tour is the second of only two UK dates this year – they played an extremely rainy Manchester a few days ago – and they are very pleased to be back. 

Read more...

Download Festival: downpours can't dampen spirits at metal bonanza

theartsdesk

Download is Britain’s premier metal festival, attended by all ages. Theartsdesk’s three person team offer up their reviews of one day each, as they navigated their way between Eighties hair metal, contemporary Viking metal and any other metal you might care to imagine…

Friday 14th June

By Ellie Porter

Read more...

Soweto Kinch, Jazz Cafe review - instant karma in Camden

peter Quinn

Camden’s Jazz Cafe reverberated to the sounds of a 50-year-old spiritual jazz classic last night, as saxist and MC Soweto Kinch and his quintet paid fulsome homage to NEA Jazz Master Pharoah Sanders’ consciousness-expanding album, Karma.

Read more...

Milton Nascimento, Barbican review – besotted audience hails frail legend

Sebastian Scotney

Milton Nascimento is 76. Physically, he is quite frail; he had to be helped carefully onto the stage and then up into a high stool for this London concert by a couple of band members. But that arrival and rather ungainly progress were, as one might expect, given a welcome befitting this hero of the Brazilian musical world.

Read more...

Reissue CDs Weekly: R.E.M.

Kieron Tyler

In Time: The Best of R.E.M. 1988–2003 was issued by Warner Bros. in October 2003. Hitting shops in time for Christmas, it mixed hits like “Everybody Hurts”, “Man on the Moon” and “Orange Crush” with album and soundtrack cuts, and a couple of previously unissued tracks.

Read more...

Backstreet Boys, SSE Hydro, Glasgow review - 90s boyband showcase grown-up new material

Lisa-Marie Ferla

They showed up with a 30+ song setlist, four costume changes and a floating platform, but the strongest moment of the Backstreet Boys’ tour was when they dispensed with all of that for an a cappella version of “Breathe”, from new album DNA.

Read more...

Charlie Cunningham, Queen Elizabeth Hall review - Spanish guitar and strong songs

Katie Colombus

In a post Ed Sheeran world, with a glut of acoustic singer-songwriters like Lewis Capaldi, Tom Walker or Odell, James Bay, Jack Savoretti  all of whom are big on poignantly penned balladry, phonic flair and harmonious melody – is there room for another young male artist to make waves in the indi-folk arena?

Read more...

Lenny Kravitz, O2 review - gloriously joyful rock 'n' roll

Ellie Porter

“Lenny’s coming! Lenny’s coming!” When the lights go down at the O2 tonight, it’s not just the small child behind us who’s excited.

Read more...

Bob Dylan Special - Rolling Thunder Revue, Netflix

Tim Cumming

Tomorrow, Martin Scorsese delivers, via Netflix, two hours and 22 minutes of screen time devoted to Bob Dylan’s Rolling Thunder Revue, following on from the release last week of the latest Bootleg Series boxed set, 14...

Read more...

Reissue CDs Weekly: Marty Wilde

Kieron Tyler

Although Marty Wilde will forever be inextricably linked with the late 1950s British rock ‘n’ roll wave he rode, his career did not peter out as musical styles transformed. While he didn’t have the high-profile mutability of Cliff Richard or claim a niche like the moody Billy Fury, he was enviably chameleonic.

Read more...

Pages

Subscribe to theartsdesk.com

Thank you for continuing to read our work on theartsdesk.com. For unlimited access to every article in its entirety, including our archive of more than 15,000 pieces, we're asking for £5 per month or £40 per year. We feel it's a very good deal, and hope you do too.

To take a subscription now simply click here.

And if you're looking for that extra gift for a friend or family member, why not treat them to a theartsdesk.com gift subscription?

latest in today

'We are bowled over!' Thank you for your messages... ...
BBC Proms: McCarthy, Bournemouth SO, Wigglesworth review - s...

It started like Sunday afternoon band concert on a seaside promenade, a massive ensemble playing it light. But while there were several too many...

theartsdesk Q&A: writer and actor Mark Gatiss on 'B...

Having played Sherlock Holmes’s politically involved older brother Mycroft in the BBC’s hit crime series Sherlock...

Ballard, Prime Video review - there's something rotten...

Following the success of its screen version of Michael Connelly’s veteran detective Harry Bosch, starring Titus Welliver,...

Don't Rock the Boat, The Mill at Sonning review - all a...

Now 45 years in the past, its dazzling star gone a decade or so, The Long Good Friday is a monument of British cinema....

Blu-ray: The Rebel / The Punch and Judy Man

Comedian Tony Hancock’s vertiginous rise and fall is neatly traced in the two films he completed in the early 1960s. The warning signs were...

Bookish, U&Alibi review - sleuthing and skulduggery in a...

As a sometime writer of Poirot, Sherlock and Christmas ghost stories,...

Album: Spafford Campbell - Tomorrow Held

Guitarist Louis Campbell and fiddle player Owen Spafford started playing together as teenagers in the National Youth Folk Ensemble when Sam...

The Estate, National Theatre review - hugely entertaining, b...

The first rule for brown people, says the main character – played by BAFTA-winner Adeel Akhtar – in this highly entertaining dramedy, is not to...

Music Reissues Weekly: Mike Taylor - Pendulum, Trio

Wheels of Fire was Cream’s third album. Issued in the US in June 1968 and in the UK two months later, it was a double LP. One record was...