It’s interesting to hear an album from places in the world that you wouldn’t normally expect a metal album to be created.  I don’t mean that to sound narrow minded, but to hear an album with the quality of production and arrangement that Need from Greece have put their name to, I wonder if there’s [...]

It’s a shame really.  I remember seeing these lads from Kilkenny when they supporting Megadeth in the SFX years ago.  Perhaps a little bit of a mismatched lineup, it was still a proud moment to have one of our own playing ahead of Corrosion Of Conformity on the bill.  And now this is the final [...]

I get the best of both worlds here.  To write about an awesome album is one thing, but to have their entire catalog of albums they released in the years following as a reference… Well, Im smiling.  Let’s just leave it at that.  ’

Combining the finest in Roland, Yamaha and Casio technology, a bohran, a rice shaker, several stringed instruments, a 32 track digital recorder and one (1) extremely talented, unconventional and ambitious Irish musician and we have the debut album by Patrick Kelleher.  Such a wide array of sounds and emotions on one album, you are unlikely [...]

So there I am in my ‘non-Vampire Weekend listening’ womb, listening to music that has nothing to do with Vampires or weekends.  And I’m reading some article about new releases.  Yeah, new album releases.  But I’ve never been into Vampire Weekend.  I heard a few tunes from the debut album, (their self-titled release of [...]

The final results are in.  Rage Against The Machine are the official Christmas UK Number One with Killing In The Name Of.   Simultaneously they’ve reached number 2 in the Irish Charts.  And that’s not all!  They’ve grabbed the record for the first ever Christmas Number One available for purchase through download only.  Not bad [...]

Not intending to generalise all of its disciples, but Black metal is a genre in underground music that has some of the most po-faced fans. Fans that will only accept ‘true’ black metal bands as long as they’re from Scandanavia somewhere, and whose promo photos depict the band waving “intimidating” weapons resembling large television aerials. [...]

There aren’t many music fans that pay attention to what song makes it as the Christmas single.  But for the past 4 years, Simon Cowell’s X-Factor has dominated the Christmas Number One slot.  However, the pinnacle of annoyance was reached last year when Alexander Burke released a cover of Jeff Buckleys, Hallelujah.  A large number [...]

Like some sort of weird Satan-worshiping, gore-loving trainspotter, I’ve spent the last year watching the progress of this album.  Carefully noting who the potential producer would be, which label would handle the release, what sound engineer would be available for selection.All the components that matter to a release from a band like Slayer.  Snippets of [...]

The guys at Relapse Records must be chuckling smuggly to themselves. They have their cake, they’re eating it and they have more on order from the wholesalers. Firstly, they have Mastodon on their books.  And secondly, they have Baroness. Comparisons between both bands are very understandable albeit occasionally a little unfair. Certain aspects of Baroness‘ [...]