heavy metal
Bloodstock Open Air 2012, Catton Hall, DerbyshireWednesday, 15 August 2012It’s Sunday lunchtime and Swiss thrash metallers Battalion are hammering out jagged, smashed up riffage with gleeful ferocity. Indeed, every one of Bloodstock Open Air’s four stages contains bands playing the hardest metal. To aficionados this music... Read more... |
theartsdesk in The Faroe Islands: G! FestivalSunday, 29 July 2012Iceland’s kings of heavy metal Momentum are launching into an assault called “The Creator of Malignign Metaphors”. It’s broad daylight and they’re playing about 10 meters from the kitchen window of a suburban-looking house. The stage is sited on an... Read more... |
CD: OM – Advaitic SongsThursday, 19 July 2012The sacred word 'om' is spoken in different ways according to its context. Elongated, it can be stretched over multiple syllables. As a musical unit, OM work with building blocks that are similarly minimal, yet drawn out for maximum effect. And like... Read more... |
Re-united Black Sabbath announce Birmingham gigMonday, 30 April 2012Just announced: Black Sabbath line-up of Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler to play O2 Academy, Birmingham on Saturday 19 May. Tickets are on sale here from May 4th at 9 a.m.The heavy metal group formed in Aston in 1969 – and have... Read more... |
CD: Marilyn Manson – Born VillainSunday, 29 April 2012Cartoon goth-metal boogieman Brian Warner and his gang return with their first album in three years, and their 10th in all. In Europe Marilyn Manson – the stage name of both the front man and the band - are rightly seen as an industrialised update... Read more... |
CD: Huoratron - CryptocracyWednesday, 18 April 2012Anyone remember gabber? It was a moment in the mid-Nineties when Dutch and New York dance music went as fast and loud as it could. In retrospect it was a bizarre anomaly but achieved brief cult popularity combining puerile juvenility, punk, avant-... Read more... |
Reissue CDs Weekly: Biz Markie, Iron Maiden, Wendy ReneSunday, 01 April 2012Biz Markie: The Biz Never SleepsJoe MuggsThere are plenty who talk about hip hop's “golden age” as being circa mid-1980s to mid-1990s. This tends to be done out of snobbery or nostalgia and ignores all kinds of incredible musical developments that... Read more... |
Korn, Brixton AcademyTuesday, 27 March 2012To dubstep or not to dubstep, that was the question perplexing the nearly 5000 metalheads jammed into the Brixton Academy to see Korn.The California four-piece made their name as purveyors of "nu metal" in the mid-Nineties (like old metal - but with... Read more... |
Justin Broadrick previews JK Flesh albumMonday, 19 March 2012The veteran noise artist Justin Broadrick - whose previous projects include Godflesh, Head of David, Napalm Death, Jesu, Greymachine, Palesketcher and Techno Animal, the latter in collaboration with Kevin Martin - has unveiled the new track "... Read more... |
theartsdesk in Oslo: by:Larm Festival 2012 and the Nordic Music PrizeWednesday, 22 February 2012Although the four days of Norway’s 15th by:Larm Festival were dominated by the presentation of the second annual Nordic Music Prize, there were plenty of other distractions: a sobering tour of Norwegian black metal’s infamous sites, a talk by... Read more... |
Justice, Brixton AcademySaturday, 11 February 2012Justice – pronounce it “Joosteece”, for they are as French as they come – deconstruct the opposition between style and substance. Everything about them is preposterous, from the hipster facial hair via the rock-pig antics in their A Cross The... Read more... |
CD: Rodrigo y Gabriela and C.U.B.A. - Area 52Saturday, 21 January 2012It must have been difficult for Mexican acoustic instrumental guitar duo Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero to know where to go next. Initially discovered in Dublin as high-end buskers, they’ve built a career on energised acoustic pyrotechnics,... Read more... |