LIVE REVIEW: Blind Guardian @ Academy, Manchester

Despite a career spanning near four decades, it’s remarkable that we can count on two hands how many times German power metal legends BLIND GUARDIAN have graced UK shores and only their second appearance in Manchester. The eight years since they blew us away at The Ritz feels like an age, but finally, they are back. And given the queue is snaking its way down Oxford Road, it’s fair to say that this will be an occasion to remember.

The Night Eternal live @ Academy, Manchester. Photo Credit: Jess Robinson

As sole support, there’s a lot riding on fellow countrymen THE NIGHT ETERNAL to kick start the evening with a bang and with a sizeable crowd inside Manchester’s Academy to greet them, it could have been easy for the Germans to wilt under the pressure. But thanks a bombastic, no-nonsense thrills homage to 80s heavy metal, the band hit the ground running. Over the course of their eight song set, guitarists Rob Richter and Henry Käseberg dual and gallop as they deploy riff after riff and in Ricardo Baum, the frontman channels the heroes of yesteryear with an energetic stage presence and soaring vocals to boot. Whilst their sound is far from ground-breaking or truly innovative, THE NIGHT ETERNAL deliver denim and leather in fine fashion and their warm reception from the crowd amassed in front of them shows they will be welcome back on our shores with open arms.

Rating: 8/10Blind Guardian live @ Academy, Manchester. Photo Credit: Jess Robinson

Impressive they may be, but tonight is all about BLIND GUARDIAN and in the moments prior to their grand entrance, the excitement is palpable. As the lights dim and the band announce their arrival with Imaginations From The Other Side, the energy is electric as the band, led by the charismatic Hansi Kürsch, built the atmosphere before delivering a knock out punch of bombastic proportions.

From there, the band just excel as they embark on a journey across their extensive discography. Nightfall‘s early outing sees the crowd grin with glee as the guitar harmonies from Marcus Siepen and André Olbrich sound utterly immense in the live arena, whilst material from the band’s latest album (2022’s The God Machine) sit comfortably amongst their decorated back catalogue. Given that technically, this tour is in support of their latest album, it’s somewhat surprising that just three songs from their latest record make a live outing, but BLIND GUARDIAN‘s history is rich and extensive, and they play to what their fans want; a victory lap of masterful power metal.Blind Guardian live @ Academy, Manchester. Photo Credit: Jess Robinson

The Bard’s Song – In The Forest sees two thousand people join the band in singing the sombre folk tale, and it’s a moment that raises the hairs on the back of the neck, whereas Majesty and Traveler In Time injects a ton of adrenaline in the show’s closing stages.

It’s an exhilarating performance, but a triumphant encore ensures that BLIND GUARDIAN finish their time in Manchester with the most epic of finishes. Sacred Worlds soars as the booming symphonics, mix with the epic riffs and Kürsch‘s soaring vocals, Valhalla has the crowd screaming every word back to the band and in finale Mirror Mirror, the band end their time in Manchester with a flourish. And as the crowds filter out of Manchester chanting in unison, “Valhalla – Deliverance, Why’ve you ever forgotten me”, one thing is clear: BLIND GUARDIAN are one of metal’s greatest properties.

Rating: 10/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Manchester from Jess Robinson here:


























































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Splitknuckle: Essex Kings

“From every angle of what people may or may not like about the band, I think this is the best thing that we’ve done.” SPLITKNUCKLE vocalist Joey Drake is right about his band’s new album Breathing Through The Wound. The Essex bruisers have been going for over a decade now – their status as UK hardcore legends cemented at least as far back as 2018’s excellent Innocence Bleeds EP – but they’ve really surpassed themselves with this long-awaited full-length.



“Obviously this album is the first time we’ve had to proper knuckle down and crack on with it,” offers guitarist Liam McCarthy. He and Drake are joined on the call by the rest of the band – drummer Matt Bullis, guitarist Christy O’Connor and bassist Larry Statts – on the day of the album’s release, its arrival closing a near six-year gap between records filled only by a compilation appearance and a couple of tracks on a split with Pittsburgh punishers SETTLE FOR NOTHING. Much has changed in the hardcore scene in that time – in the UK and beyond – but for SPLITKNUCKLE it’s all business as usual.

“We’re all doing the same as we did before,” emphasises Statts. “Just maybe a touch more organisation is needed to pull off something like this, which didn’t come naturally for any of us but you just persevere and go with it. In all cases we just want to have a laugh with each other – that’s the whole point, and that hasn’t changed whatsoever.”

Clearly though, the band took their time to get things right for Breathing Through The Wound; the weeks of hard graft and late night recording sessions after full days at work all seem worth it when presented with the finished product – a truly vicious 40+ minutes of serrated metallic hardcore with heavy death metal influences and displays of impressive technicality aplenty. It’s the most ‘SPLITKNUCKLE’ they’ve ever sounded, which of course was entirely the point.

“In the past we’ve gelled well with people in our scene and people have a certain expectation that we sound a certain way live, which is good, and they expect that to be nailed on record,” elaborates O’Connor. “Sometimes people have been like ‘it just doesn’t sound quite as good as you sound live’. I just want people to listen to it and it represent us basically, and I think some of the reasons for the stresses in the studio and taking so long were we were just trying to make sure of that.”


To make that happen, the band returned to producer Ben Spence – not hugely experienced in this kind of music but a friend of theirs for a while and ultimately the perfect man for the job. “Sometimes when you have a producer pushing you it can create an influence that typically isn’t what the band is about,” suggests Statts. “We’ve recorded with Ben once before doing a cover song for The Coming Strife compilation and we enjoyed the experience there and it really allowed us to bring what we had in our heads to life in the recording. That’s exactly why Ben was good because it was loose and it wasn’t so pushy and it let us do things the way we wanted to do them.”

Of course, for every crushing riff or breakdown, Drake has a hard-hitting lyric to match. Breathing Through The Wound seethes with all the rage one might expect of a death metal-influenced hardcore record – whether that’s at betrayals close to home or more big picture stuff like the Russian invasion of Ukraine – but Drake can also get vulnerable when he needs to.

“I’ve got thousands of notes on my phone that are just fucking vomited onto the notepad,” he explains. “There’s certain songs like Fuck Your Whole Life where if I were to read out the lyrics it’s probably how I’d talk when I get into a zone when I’m moaning about something anyway, so that’s cool. But when it’s like the title track I’ve got a lot of pals in hardcore – people who might hear that song or look at the lyrics – and there’s certain lines in there where I haven’t really told a lot of people stuff like that. That kind of thing is a bit worrying because you’re giving a part of yourself that very few people who are close to you have even seen, but that’s what you’re supposed to do.”

And he’s not the only one for whom SPLITKNUCKLE is about far more than riffs and moshing. Like all the best bands in hardcore, and anywhere else for that matter, it all comes down to hanging out with your mates. As we come to wrap up the band do share the typical hopes of seeing things grow in the years to come – and based on the quality of Breathing Through The Wound they have every reason to expect them to – but more than anything else it is about doing it together.

“Doing music with these guys over all these years is absolutely priceless,” concludes Drake. “Maybe the biggest lesson for me personally is friendship over everything really; the thing that’s more important than this band is that we’re all good to each other and keeping it about having fun. I think that is the secret to a lot of bands’ longevity; you speak to some OG bands and they might have never made a fucking living out of it, but they’ve stayed around for like 20, 30 years and they’re all still friends and I think that speaks for itself really.”

Breathing Through The Wound is out now via DAZE/Northern Unrest.

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NERVOCHAOS EM CURITIBA

 A Banda mais brutal do planeta   NERVO CHAOS chega em Curitiba para  mais um aapresentação.
Depois de um 2023 incrivelmente poderoso, retomamos as atividades com sangue nos olhos e anunciamos nossa nova turnê, a “Profetas do Caos Tour 2024”.
Dessa vez a trilha de caos e destruição passará por parte da região Sudeste e Sul, entre os meses de Maio e Junho, sempre conjurando ao lado de outros grandes representantes do Metal forjado no fogo infernal do subterrâneo.
Em Curitiba o show será aos 20/06/2024 no 92 Graus. Lembrando que no estado do PR a turnê também passará pelas cidades de Ponta Grossa, Foz do Iguaçu e Maringá. Seguem os cartazes com informações e os ingressos já estão à venda.
Headbangers, o underground é uma construção coletiva. Contamos com a presença de vocês!
Nos vemos no mosh pit!

HEAVEN S GUARDIAN CHEGA A CURITIBA COM A TURNE CHRONOS THE TOUR COM ORQUESTRA

Em julho deste ano 2022, a banda Heaven’s Guardian iniciou o processo de gravação do seu quarto álbum, em Los Angeles, no Fuel Music Studio. A produção é assinada pela dupla de produtores parceiros, Roy Z (Bruce Dickinson, Rob Halford, Helloween) e Addasi Addasi (Nervochaos, Los Lobos, Black Oil).

O álbum intitulado “Chronos” conta a história evolutiva da sociedade humana, desde a antiguidade com a mitologia grega até a contemporaneidade da inteligência artificial, e contará com 11 faixas inéditas, mais uma ‘introdução Hollywoodiana’.

O line-up da banda conta com os vocais de Carlos Zema e Natalia Tsarikova (a cantora russa que encantou o mundo cantando Nightwish), Ericsson Marin na guitarra e cello, Luiz Maurício na guitarra, Everton Marin no piano e teclado, Murilo Ramos no baixo e Francis Cassol na bateria.

Várias são as novidades apresentadas pela banda nesse novo trabalho; a Orquestra e o Coro Sinfônico Jovem de Goiás, já têm presenças garantidas, totalizando mais de 100 músicos participantes no projeto. Os arranjos orquestrais foram todos produzidos pelo pianista Everton Marin, que tem formação erudita nos Estados Unidos. Será o primeiro álbum de estúdio a ser produzido por uma banda de metal e orquestra sinfônica completa, em toda a América Latina, continuando com o pioneiro trabalho do Heaven’s Guardian, que em 2019 lançou o primeiro DVD da América Latina com o mesmo formato sinfônico.


A banda chega a cidade de Curitiba com um dos maiores show de metal Symphonico  já vistos ,uma noite inesquecível para amantes de rock e metal.

Já deixei marcado em sua agenda !!!!!!!

TURNÊ CHRONOS - HEAVEN’S GUARDIAN E ORQUESTRA SINFÔNICA JOVEM DE GOIÁS



25.jun.2024 (terça-feira)
Local: Teatro UP Experience/Curitiba

Mais informações:

https://www.diskingressos.com.br/evento/6479/25-06-2024/pr/curitiba/turne-chronos-heavens-guardian-e-orquestra-sinfonica-jovem-de-goias?utm_source=beplauze

ALBUM REVIEW: What Doesn’t Kill You – Marisa And The Moths

UK grunge rockers MARISA AND THE MOTHS have put out their second album What Doesn’t Kill You. For lead vocalist Marisa Rodriguez, this album is a reflection on a difficult time in her life that saw her finally leaving and overcoming an abusive relationship and the toll it took on her mental health. It’s a representation of finding the strength in the face of adversity, a fact that is clearly stated across each and every powerful song and brutally honest lyric.



Opening the album with Cursed, the first thing the listener hears is piano and violins, soon joined by strong vocals that draw immediate comparison to the likes of EVANESCENCE. Rodriguez, much like Amy Lee, has the skill to make you feel every word and emotion conveyed in the lyrics. There’s a stark contrast in sound when the album moves into Get It Off My Chest, which starts out with a distorted noise before the full band kicks into a grungy hard rock track with elements of nu-metal also brought in. And once the vocals come in, things shift into something more haunting and melodic, with easy comparisons to the likes of WITHIN TEMPTATION, FLYLEAF and LACUNA COIL coming to mind.


Things can go one of two ways with MARISA AND THE MOTHS. Either they sound truly haunting with dramatic piano and vocals, or aggressive with their blend of 90s/00s hard rock and grunge, but it’s the powerful vocals and lyrics that truly set them apart from other artists in the rock scene.

Each song on the album tells its own story and represents its own difficult topic but does so in a way that can resonate with you whether you can directly relate or not. Standout moments include, but are not limited to, Gaslight, a hard rock track that in a few years’ time could become a staple theme song when it comes to talking about emotional abuse, Fake It Till You Make It, that, as the title suggests, has you pumped and ready to face whatever comes you way, and regardless of what happens you now have that confidence to push through, and Serotonin, a raw and honest song that beautifully conveys the thoughts and feelings surrounding mental health.

What Doesn’t Kill You is a powerful album that will give anyone struggling the push and confidence they need to keep going. MARISA AND THE MOTHS are one of those rare bands that can make you feel what they feel and are likely to become an important name in the scene within the next few years.

Rating: 8/10



What Doesn’t Kill You is out now via Tonesick Records Limited.

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Dwarrowdelf: A Minor Key To Unlock Happiness

DWARROWDELF mastermind and multi-instrumentalist, Tom O’Dell looks to draw inspiration from the fantasy world of Tolkien (project name aside) but also blend real world weight and emotion into a powerful delivery. Latest release, The Fallen Leaves, has done just that and a whole lot more besides. Since the initial EP release Of Darkened Halls in 2017, Tom has evolved his writing and honed the compositions, each release providing a further step up from its predecessor. The Fallen Leaves feels like a culmination of a musical journey. While earlier works played with more of the fantasy elements, Tom was keen to push the more real-life influences into these new tracks.



Reflecting on the writing process. Tom offers that he was “quite nervous about this one. It’s a very personal album, different to what I’ve put out before.” Not that he has reason to be nervous. Reception for the fourth album has been widely excellent from both critical and fan points of view. Tom highlights the key difference between The Fallen Leaves and previous albums. “The first three albums were made within a year and a half. It was very much I’m making Lord Of The Rings albums, here we go. Then the world changed. DWARROWDELF took a bit of a back seat. When I picked it up again, things were very different. The lyrical front had been explicit Tolkien and I wanted to explore more themes and music. It still felt DWARROWDELF, I didn’t want to make a new project.”

This is very evident, in the tracks of the album. “To Dust We All Return was the first one I wrote and I was experiencing some heartbreak in life and the raw emotion spilled into the music. Deliverance was started around that time as well and their emotion was also in there too. Then Elden Ring came along and the atmosphere was a good way to use a metaphor for my sadness and journey of those few months through a fantasy filter. It was not too much of a departure for DWARROWDELF.”

With the lyrical content exposing a heavy weight subject matter. The musical compositions on the album can often juxtapose the raw, bleakness with at times uplifting melodies. This is very evident in the final passages of Deliverance. Tom readily picks up on this idea, with a grin explaining, “the final choir there uses the cheesy four chord progression of power metal that I’m contractually obliged to use.” Going on to say, “I didn’t want to just write seven tracks of I’m very upset. I wanted to come out the other side and find acceptance.”


It is also this compositional style that has helped with the well-rounded reception of this album. The happier melodies do tend to stick in a listener’s mind more and as Tom opines “…create that memorable hook, that the listener will find themselves humming. Having written power metal as well, it’s quite an easy space for me to adopt.”

What is always interesting with a long-standing solo project is how the project grows as a reflection of the musician behind it. Tom is no different, he freely admits, “DWARROWDELF is me. It’s the albums I wanted to make at that particular time. I’ve grown up as a person as well, each album has got more and more unique. The first one in hindsight might be my attempt at a SUMMONING album but Evenstar is mine and The Fallen Leaves takes that a step further.” While it is possible to identify specific genre/artist influences in his work, DWARROWDELF doesn’t fit into a neat category per se and that helps keep Tom’s musical identity secure.

One of the pitfalls that can face a solo artist is the solitude of creativity. With a band, there are sounding boards of influence and other instrumentalists to add dynamics and textures that may otherwise have been missed. Tom’s approach to navigating this though is having a close group of people to bounce ideas off of and send out drafts for review. “Being my own critic is the biggest issue, but sending files to four or five of my trusted confidants who wouldn’t shy away from criticism really helps. I couldn’t be a solo artist who didn’t take feedback, there’d be too much tunnel vision.”

“This album more than any other would work live, the early material wouldn’t translate too well.” This is thought process when posed with the idea of taking DWARROWDELF on the road. It does have the hooks and riffs for an audience to pick up on and while there are artists out there who do take these types of projects to audiences. While there are logistical issues to be considered amongst many other things, Tom is not totally against the idea. “It’s more likely than it has been in the past.”

Whatever the future may hold for the project, Tom has certainly been able to produce a highly engaging body of work. An approachable artist with multi-faceted influences who is able to draw together fantasy and cold reality and weave a relatable narrative. Tom sums much of it up, “the man who wrote The Fallen Leaves is a lot happier now than what is reflected in those songs.” With a laugh he continues, “it does get better. You may feel crap and things may be going badly wrong but it does get better, you will get through it.”

The Fallen Leaves is out now via Northern Silence Productions.

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