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Def Leppard - Def Leppard - Mirror Ball So, hot on the heels of headlining Download, the Leps (Def Hoople, or Mott the Leppard as they now seem to be known) release this, a mix of live tracks recorded from their 'The Sparkle Lounge Tour' plus 3 new studio tracks and a bonus DVD containing live performances and backstage footage. There is no doubting the legacy of tracks on this album and what they have given the rock world. The first British band in the 80's and NWOBHM band to really have a go and crack the US and succeed big time, they are only one of five rock... Marduk - Marduk: Iron Dawn Itching for a little war-themed black metal to get the day rolling, but don’t really want to sit through fifty minutes of mundane blasting? Marduk’s three song EP, Iron Dawn is exactly what the black metal doctor has prescribed. The material on this EP clock in at just over thirteen minutes and will leave you drooling for more " exactly what a release of this nature is meant to achieve. “Warschau II " Headhunter Halfmoon” erupts out of the gate with invading WWII bombers and frenetic drums that come across like belt-fed machine guns buried deep into hill-side bunkers, laying down... Edwyn Collins - Edwyn Collins (Latitude 2011) Edwyn Collins was an act that saved Latitude's soul and kept it true to its roots. His announcement was one that made sense on a Latitude bill, which cannot be said for many of the other acts on this year's puzzling line up. It was hard not to feel sorry for Collins, once the sexy rocker front man of Glasweigan post-punk band Orange Juice now reduced to walking with a cane and slurred speech as a result of suffering multiple strokes in his lifetime. But this fact has not affected Collin's confidence, nor his performance. Despite his speech problems, the distinctive... Gomez - Gomez - Whatever's on Your Mind It’s a long time since Gomez won the Mercury Music Prize. Thirteen years, to be precise, since they beat The Verve, Massive Attack and Pulp to the award back in 1998. And after one spin of this, their seventh studio album, you’ll think it was even longer ago. Perhaps in another life altogether. To be fair, Gomez have been sliding towards middle-of-the-road mediocrity for a while now. Those first three albums - Bring it On, Liquid Skin, and In Our Gun - were rife with a sense of raw, youthful experimentation, blending British and American folk... Jeff Buckley - Jeff Buckley - Grace While Jeff Buckley’s sole complete studio document has achieved two million sales worldwide since its mid-90s release, its impact at the time was far from impressive. And that’s from both critical and commercial perspectives, as although today it’s regularly held in high regard come top-albums lists, a mixed reception greeted it on its initial emergence. Listening today, almost 17 years to the day after that first release, it’s easy to hear why reviewers weren’t universally moved by Grace. Its best-known track isn’t even one penned by Buckley, Hallelujah being a cover of Leonard Cohen’s haunting masterpiece. Nor is Corpus... Metallica - Metallica (Sonisphere 2011) This is it! Every single soul in front of the Apollo Stage knows they are witnessing history today. This is one of these gigs you will be telling your grandchildren about. "Yes, I was there when the Big 4 played together on one stage, for the first time in metal history." Except for the bassist, RIP Cliff, Metallica still represents the original band that transformed Bay Area Thrash Metal into an international phenomenon. We can obviously not ignore the band's split from Dave Mustaine, but without that happening back in the day, today would not have been such a big issue.... Nervecell - Album Review: Nervecell - Psychogenocide As someone who lives relatively close to Dubai, I've heard many things about it, but I've never heard the word "boring" being used as a description. And why would I? Anyone who speaks of it usually speaks of its globalized ambience and how it doesn't resemble the rest of the middle-east at all. Thanks to the continuous gushing of oil and gas from the Arabian desert into the Emirati economy, Dubai has its own manufactured answer to everything in the world, including death metal. The answer comes under the name Nervecell, and without a single local lad in sight, as... Groove Armada - Groove Armada - Vertigo Prince may have neglected to mention it, but 1999 actually belonged to Groove Armada’s Vertigo and Moby’s Play. Along with Air’s Moon Safari, released a year earlier, they were standard-issue discs in even the most causal of music collections at the end of the 90s. These records marked the moment that dance music came good at album length, and although not every track of Vertigo was licensed to advertising (unlike Play, of course) it felt like it. Adverts have thankfully moved on, allowing Vertigo space to breath. Groove Armada, formed of jazz musician Andy Cato and Tom... Idlewild - Idlewild - 100 Broken Windows (2000) For the first time in a long time, I really don’t know where to start with writing a review. I have listened to this album several times since I got it, and I still don’t know what I think of it. Whenever I put it on, I find myself rather liking the tracks (well some of them). Whenever it is not on, I cannot seem to remember a single thing about it, except for the odd snippet of a word or a phrase (‘Roo-ooooh-seabilty’; ‘All I need is a little discourage’; da-duh-duh-da-da). So where does that leave me when it... Hate Eternal - Hate Eternal: Phoenix Amongst the Ashes Holy fucking shit. Phoenix Amongst the Ashes, the mighty Hate Eternal’s latest full-length dose of unrelenting death metal, is as near a perfect album as you can hope to experience. But then again, what would you expect from Erik Rutan " a living legend on the soundboard having produced classics from Cannibal Corpse, Goatwhore, Nile and more? The appropriately titled album could be seen as retaliation to the relatively lackluster response the band’s last album, Fury & Flames, garnered from media and fans alike. Where Rutan faltered on Fury & Flames " essentially throwing too much at the listener at any... |