Posted in Interviews

I briefly spoke to Merlin and Chrigel from Eluveitie shortly before they played the HMV Forum in London as part of their tour with Sabaton, and asked them about their albums and touring..

Festivalphoto: Your new album, Helvetios was released in February. How has it been going down with the fans?

Chrigel: It’s going down great, reactions have been extremely positive.

Festivalphoto: 6 months after Helvetios you released the early years. What made you decide to go back and re-record your first EP (Ven) and release it with a remastered version of Spirit, as the early years?

Chrigel: On one hand both havent been available for quite a while so it made sense to re-release them, and also we’re celebrating our tenth anniversary this year we wanted to do something special for the fans...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

First up tonight were The Howling. They were on stage pretty soon after the doors opened thanks to the venue having an early curfew so they could run a club night after the gig. As a result the place was pretty deserted when they hit the stage, but filled up steadily during their set so by the time they finished, the venue was around half full. This young five piece band blend rock and punk and put in a suitably high energy performance. The bass levels seem excessively high though as you can feel it vibrating the floor and that does detract slightly from the quality of the sound. The singer drops or throws his microphone down regularly with a loud thud – presumably an attempt to show how ”punk” he is but really just making him look like a clumsy fool...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

Tonight’s gig had four bands, but sadly they decided on a stupid idea of opening the doors at 6pm on a weeknight, so too early for most people to get home from work, change and come to a gig, so the first band apparently played to a pretty small crowd. Like most people, I missed them and only arrived just in time to see the band I’d really been looking forward to seeing – German power metal band Orden Ogan.

Orden Ogan are a German power metal band whose latest album (To the end) is very impressive, so I was looking forward to hearing them play some of the songs live. Right from the start they played as they meant to continue – heads banging furiously as they played some great guitar-heavy power metal...

Posted in Press Releases

Swedish metal band Sister sin formed in 2002. The band is fronted by Liv Jagrell who was the first vocalist in fellow Swedish band Hysterica (where she was known as Sinderella). The band play female fronted old school metal in the same vein as bands such as fellow Swedes Crucified Barbara. They’ve toured extensively with bands including Motorhead, Faster Pussycat, U.D.O, In this Moment, Otep, Arch Enemy and many more

”Now and Forever” is the band’s fourth album, and as with their previous albums what you get is top quality heavy metal – powerful guitars, pounding drums and powerful vocals ...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Thirty-five years after it’s original release, Slowhand is being re-released. The album contains some of his best known songs including ”Cocaine”, ”Wonderful tonight” and ”Lay down sally”. The Hammersmith concert includes other classics such as ”Layla”, ”I shot the sheriff” and ”Knocking on heavens door”

”Slowhand, 35th Anniversary edition” comes in five different versions.

The first option is the Single CD release which is a remastered version of the original album
The Second option is a vinyl version which again is a remastered version of the original album
The third option is the Digital version which is a remastered version of the original album plus four album session outtakes.

Then come the really interesting ones – the Deluxe edition and the Super Deluxe edition.

The Deluxe editio...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

The night started with the support band – Seven, who come from the Czech republic. Doro fans may know of the band purely because of their guitarist, Honza, who guested at Doro’s 25th anniversary show in 2008, which was recently released on DVD. That is the only reason any of the fans here tonight are likely to have heard of this band. They play progressive metal, but really don’t seem to excite tonights crowd – while they get applause between songs, during their set the crowd seem fairly unimpressed and theres little sign of enthusiasm. Perhaps Doro’s crowd isnt the right audience for Seven.

Next up was the Metal Queen herself – Doro Pesch...

Posted in Gig/Festival Reviews

172 minuter Steve Vai. En klar kandidat till årets spelning

Gitarr-legendaren Steve Vai har länge varit önskad åter till Sverige. Så nu när han äntligen skulle komma till KB, Malmös bästa klubbscen, fick många av oss gåshud innan han äntrat scenen!

Det är fullt och avslappnat när jag kliver in på KB strax innan avfärd till galaxernas mystiska världar. Publiken är mogen med kanske en medelålder på 40 år och står lugnt och sansade, prydligt uppradade framför scenen.
När såväl allas hjälte springer upp på scenen som en virrande orkan så kan man inte göra annat än att stå still och häpnas av Steves magiska kraft. Han har stil. Han har energi. Han är självsäker men har samtidigt en självdistans och vågar driva med sig själv...

Posted in Cd Reviews

Angel Air/Border

Prior to SAXON, back in the first half of the seventies, there was SON OF A BITCH. Deemed unsuitable by the band´s record label at the time, Carrere, the name was ousted in favor of what was to become Barnsley´s most major music export. In 1986 history repeated itself as SAXON originals Graham “Oly” Oliver, guitars, Steve “Dobby” Dawson, bass, and Peter Gill, drums, joined forces with THUNDERHEAD vocalist Ted Bullet and guitarist Haydn Conway, guitars (ex. SARACEN). The band´s debut gig was headlining the Isle of Man TT and things looked good until Peter had health issues and Ted ran into contractual obligations with THUNDERHEAD.

This album opens with one of two question marks...

Posted in Cd Reviews

The Apostates are a three piece band which formed in 2006 in London. Since then they’ve played over hundreds of gigs as well as a session for the Radio 1 punk show. They’re described as ”melodic punk” – in other words nothing at all like 70s/80s style punk, more an indie rock/alternative hybrid.

If you ignore the punk label and accept it’s a hybrid of indie rock and alternative, then the album makes more sense (I doubt there are many people who’d classify this as punk). In that light, it’s actually a very good album. The vocals are very good and thetunes are well written with a nice rock feel.

Check out the video for ”Fire Blanket” below and have a listen for yourself what the band sound like...

Posted in Cd Reviews

To celebrate the 40th anniversary of the formation of 10cc, Universal are releasing ”Tenology”, a five disc box set which includes four CDs (two discs of singles, one of selected album tracks, and a further one of B-sides and rarities) and a DVD (featuring all the promo videos and TV performances on Top Of The Pops, BBC In Concert, See You Sunday, Six Fifty Five Special and Pebble Mill). The packaging is impressive looking too.

It’s a very impressive package all round really – Two discs give you all the band’s hits, then the other two CDs give you rarities and tracks that were on albums but didnt get released as singles but which are certainly worth listening to. Add in the DVD and you’ve got a great package for any 10CC fan...