In case you haven't heard yet, Mercury Rev are back. Best known for 1998's critically acclaimed Deserter's Songs, the pop-minded proggy psychedelicists have been ploughing their own wonky furrow for twenty years now.  Seeming to lose their way a little in the past couple of years, their new album, Snowflake Midnight, is by most accounts pretty good. Does it translate well live? Hell yes.     Before the band appear, we are shown a lovingly crafted intro video on the huge screen on stage, accompanied by the otherworldly babbling of the Cocteau Twins. An image of a Ken Wilber book flashes up, but before I can make out which of the bald brainiac's works it is, the image changes to a young and wild-eyed Iggy Pop. Next comes John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, then a shot of Phil Hine's book Condensed Chaos. Seeing the chaos magick classic up blown up super-big makes me grin, and it's a grin that doesn't really fade for the next one and half hours.   Frontman Jonathon Donahue is still an intriguing elf/goblin combination, with wide eyes and a bottle of red wine that he takes slugs from throughout the show- presumably fuel for his Dionysian revels. We're not just ...

    Release The Bats - ATP/Capsule Halloween Party   Lightning Bolt When someone told me that Lightning Bolt were playing here in Birmingham, I started to run around making a high pitched sort of girlie noise. I love Lightning Bolt and I firmly believe that they are the best band in the world. If you don't agree then take it outside. So imagine my surprise and horror when I turned up at quarter past seven (have you ever got to a gig that early?) and while walking in I thought "...that sounds like Lightning Bolt." It was Lightning Bolt. Finishing. I am not having a good year for gigs, having missed Secret Chiefs 3, Dillinger Escape Plan and Nine Inch Nails in the last year. Anyway, it sounded like a new tune so hopefully they have an album coming out soon.     Pissed Jeans I had never heard of three of the bands in the line up and this was one of the surprises. The vocalist came out and stripped to the waist before he'd even started, but he had reason to because when they began their Neurosis / Isis style assault, he expended a lot of energy. I mean a lot. A disturbed hybrid of Mick ...

Title: Hanson Brothers - 'It's a Living'  Label: Wrong Records/Southern Records Released: Available Now Format: CD/DVD & Double Vinyl         I love it when I get pleasant suprises, and this the latest opus from NoMeansNo's oddball Bar-comedy-punk side-project The Hanson Brothers, has plenty of them!   The first thing that surprised me was my own lack of any observational skills, and how I should probably eye-ball the press release a bit before slamming CDs into my Mac. This CD has a DVD on the otherside, which really baffled for a second! (I had put the disk in the wrong way!)    First up, the music! THB play a blend of punk rock that harks back to the good-ol days of the Ramones and The Ruts-era Punk, but with the added twist of cleverly placed (and actually funny) odd-ball comedy. The CD is setup to sound like a live radio-session, interspersed with band interviews and rants, which actually works really well. If, like me, you are a fan of NoMeansNo, you will instantly recognise the 'sound' of this record...in fact this kind of reminds me of their earlier releases, but with more of a, dare I say, comedy-concept.    The DVD, which I ended up rewinding once I realised my mistake, is, ...

Experiment: a test, trial, or tentative procedure; an act or operation for the purpose of discovering something unknown or of testing a principle, supposition, etc.: a chemical experiment; a teaching experiment; an experiment in living. A Sontaran: An ugly potato-headed alien from Doctor Who; heavy-set, thugish and with an obsession for conflict and total domination of the universe. After just one listen of this brutal outpouring, it's not hard to see why these guys chose their name! This, their debut album, is an epic and adventurous work of three 'acts' each lasting anywhere from 15 - 25 minutes. Yes! I know what you're thinking: "Urgh! I hate it when bands do this", but stick with me here.  The album opens with layers of strange electronic ambiance, which are brutally interrupted by an explosion of bowel-emptying doom. The tone and tempo of the record shift around like a disturbed and violent rockweiler, one minute you are nodding along (wishing you had a big doom-fan beard) and the next you are thrown into an almost Napalm Death blast-beat-ridden hellfest. The album takes some seriously cool little sidesteps when you least expect it;  Act II, for example, goes down a, dare I say, almost jazzy avenue at one point! So, I told ...

ASVA are probably my favourite of the 'Drone/Doom' (whatever) bands out there, SUNN O)) coming a very close second, so I was pretty excited to get my hands on this release. Formed a few years ago by Stuart Dahlquist (Burning Witch, Goatsnake...and I think he was a part of SUNN O)) at one point as well?), and featuring such names as Trey Spruance (Secret Chiefs 3, Mr Bungle) and the oddly named B.R.A.D. (Burning Witch), this is quite the 'super-group'. In their debut album, Futurists Against the Ocean, ASVA took the slow cue from bands like Earth and then added their own, very unique flavour.  In this record that blueprint was dusted off and added to, giving a much more individual feel to each track. At points far more sinister and claustrophobic than it's predecessor, at others faster and more urgent. Spruance's influence on this record feels a lot greater as well, the varied instrumentation, and what sounds like alternate tunings at some points.  The standout track on this record is the incredible 'A Trap for Judges', which lurches slowly like a grim leviathan nearing some awful, unearthly climax (and can be downloaded from the Southern site here). If you're interested in ...

I can't believe i've not encountered this band until now, I love them!  Kylesa play a mixture of Doom-metal and hyper acid-rock that literally grabs your attention the way all good bands should! Some parts of this record remind me of Black Cobra and elements of early Mastodon, to give you a hint of what to expect. The pace of this record is really clever, slow broody noise tracks ala Old Man Gloom set the scene for huge riff-ridden chunks of fast noise. The only real complaint I have about this record is the production, it's begging for 'fatness', and less tinnyness, but it's not bad enough to impare your enjoyment of this great record. The standout track for me is 'Hallow Severer', which lurches into a sonic explosion laced with epic, almost Minor Threat-esque intensity.  I cannot recomend this record enough. It fills the void between the doomy elements of 'Red Sea' era ISIS and 'Houdi' era Melvins perfectly. 4.5/5 Ken Eakins www.kylesa.com www.myspace.com/kylesa

12 years!...i'll say that again: 12 YEARS! I have waited 12 years to see this, my favourite band. Back in '96 when the Trey Spruance released the mighty 'First Grand Constitution and Bylaws', I was frankly blown away, the crazy mix of Eastern/electro/break-beat/metal was just what the world needed, even though the world barely noticed (a normal symptom of music-fans it seems). Since that first album release (I Know they released some vinyl prior to that, shhh!), we have been treated to an ever evolving slew of epic-genius and crazyness culminating in, to me, one of the greatest releases of all time in 'Book of Horizons'...and now I finaly get to see it live! Cargo is a great venue, I saw Part Chimp and Bullet Union here not so long ago and it was one of the best times i'd seen both bands. Huge sprawling pipes on the walls, a really nice big bar area and a cool garden for us filthy smokers. I grab myself a tonne of merch and head into the main room to witness Zu. Imagine getting Naked City's debut album, mixing it with Morphine's Yes and blending it all down into a slow melting pot with some Old ...

This gig had a slightly surreal quality for me because I have been a devout Pavement / Stephen Malkmus fan for a decade now but this was my first opportunity to see the great man live. I couldn’t really believe that he was going to actually appear for some reason.   Thankfully, openers “Maths Class” didn’t give me a chance to get any pre-date nerves because they were very, very loud. In fact my girlfriend had to stick her fingers in her ears and screw her face up and look at me in a funny way they were so loud. This is a mark of success in my book. I have to admit I’d never heard of “Maths Class” so was slightly surprised to find they have had hundreds of thousands of hits on MySpace. But this increasing success is not just down to the volume at which they can play…no. And it’s not entirely down to the fact that they cut their own hair either. I suspect it’s mainly because they do a very professional line in Liars / Biffy Clyro style screamo. They wouldn’t describe it as screamo, because it’s not the Nineties anymore but that, to all intents ...