Category Archives: Music

The Best Of British Blues Kompilation Vol 2, Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The world may be getting smaller but in terms of its output and the sheer abundance of music that comes forth on a daily basis, the expanse is such that it may be considered hard for many to keep up with what’s new, what’s available and what is to be seen as the dog’s own business.

For Blues that maxim is surely as true as it will rain at some point during the week and that the genre doesn’t get the ringing endorsement it is surely due in a world more and more obsessed with television programmes churning out singers who within the wink of a cameraman’s eye will be forgotten and mislabelled in years to come.

The Best Of British Blues Kompilation Vol 2, Album Review. full post

(382 words, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Scorpions, Return To Forever. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

When a band reaches fifty years in one form or another, the listener could quite rightly expect for Time to get the better of them. Time though can be fickle, it can easily be as nice to the passing of the seconds and hours as it can be cruel and waywardly malicious to the minutes and days that fall in between. As the time fritters past, it could easily subject you to ridicule and the rigours of slowing down, the steam not just running low, but barely existent, in your 20s and 30s and yet elevate you to a position of power and full of intrigue, deep fascination and adoration in your 40s and 50s. Such is the arrangement and accord time seems to have struck with the Scorpions and their new album, Return To Forever.

Scorpions, Return To Forever. Album Review. full post

(502 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Black Star Riders, The Killer Instict. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

It could be argued that the world needs Black Star Riders like it needs to bang together the heads of those who are quite happy to stoke up the fires of war in the Ukraine. The chances of the latter happening are about as likely as One Direction suddenly throwing their lot into the realms of Heavy Metal, the former much easier to believe; especially with the band’s second album, The Killer Instinct, being unleashed and ready to destroy any doom mongers the planet is hiding up its rigid sleeve.

Black Star Riders, The Killer Instict. Album Review. full post

(478 words, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

Kyle Carey, North Star. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

There is a bind that ties the U.K. to North America that goes beyond the physical appreciation of its common and often misused language, more so than the rugged terrain and building blocks of democracy and historical values, it is the appreciation for the vast majority of times, in the importance of the two countries similar music tastes. Perhaps it goes further than that, it is interwoven in the thought of its ability to sow the seeds of its Celtic folk traditions to those over the edge of the Atlantic basin and the lost memories of the places that surround England, the beating conscious of artistic thought and the long established alternative view generated by hundreds of years rule from a pile of land that was once a monastery.

Kyle Carey, North Star. Album Review. full post

(451 words, estimated 1:48 mins reading time)

H.E.A.T, Live In London. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

The lands of Scandinavian thought might not come shamefully readily to the attention of the British public when it comes to being considered the home of great Rock bands in the last thirty years.  However, raw and sublime talent keeps being unearthed and especially in Rock and Metal circles keeps pinning down the British contribution of late in a near one-sided bout.

H.E.A.T, Live In London. Album Review. full post

(479 words, 1 image, estimated 1:55 mins reading time)

Ian Siegal, One Night In Amsterdam. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

For the purists of such things, it takes at least a long weekend to get lost in the thoughts and melee that Amsterdam has to offer before time spent there can make the foundation of songs in which to be immersed in.  One night surely cannot be enough, it’s barely enough time to find the mayonnaise at Schipol Airport for a plate of chips, take in the pleasantries that the cobbled stones provide the abundance of cyclists as on road entertainment or to savour the well founded truth that the Dutch are arguably some of the nicest people in the world and yet One Night in Amsterdam is all that is needed to understand that Ian Siegal’s second live album in under a year is an absolute belter.

Ian Siegal, One Night In Amsterdam. Album Review. full post

(485 words, 1 image, estimated 1:56 mins reading time)

Thunder, Wonder Days. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Memories of our youth are perhaps the greatest we hold onto. They are the ghostly images in which form and shape the future and they are the ones that remind us of how far we have come. Youth though also works to remind us that every day we wake up and put our feet on the cold hard floor that we have a debt to owe our former selves and the need to better our position, spiritually as well as mentally, is burned into the back of a black and white photograph hidden somewhere in an insect nibbled box.

Thunder, Wonder Days. Album Review. full post

(560 words, estimated 2:14 mins reading time)

Dan Patlansky, Dear Silence Thieves. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Respect can come in many shapes and forms, some deservedly more so than others and in Dan Patlansky, respect arrives in abundance and leaves the same building swaying under the enormous adulation that has been heaped further still on the Blues guitarist from South Africa. That weighty expectation is further enhanced by the release of the stunning and outrageously gifted latest album Dear Silence Thieves.

Dan Patlansky, Dear Silence Thieves. Album Review. full post

(431 words, 1 image, estimated 1:43 mins reading time)

Michael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock, Spirit On A Mission. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Consistency is the hardest of all endeavours. The near creative peak is one that at times can be insurmountable, overwhelmingly impossible to try and surpass and for which even Hannibal on a good day, with elephants and gallons of vinegar in which to destroy a few thousand boulders blocking his way, might think twice before giving up and going home for a plate of cheese and grapes. For the Spirit on a Mission to entertain and thrill still looms large in one of Europe’s greatest Rock God-like figures.

Michael Schenker’s Temple Of Rock, Spirit On A Mission. Album Review. full post

(407 words, 1 image, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Revolution Saints, Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

The ancient civilisations such as the Greeks and Romans had words to defend the meaning of when supreme beings banded together to take on a foe that threatened their way of life. As with all things, poetic quality has been lost in translation over the corresponding centuries and now the only phrase that seems to justify the immensity of talent that comes in the shape of Revolution Saints and their superb eponymous debut album is one of a Titan’s fury, a divinity of rock elegance and soaring spirit.

Revolution Saints, Album Review. full post

(423 words, 1 image, estimated 1:42 mins reading time)