Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7.5/10
The way the world is squeezing the creativity out of people as a whole, it’s always heartening to when you come across an album that may have taken a while to record, possibly because of many different factors but sounds as though each delicate step was thought out, processed with great care and attention. In the end, it is a testament to their inventiveness and never say die attitude.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
We have roads to travel upon; it’s how we explain the stories to those we meet along the way that is the key. One man’s pleasant trip down a leafy lane in the middle of spring with the sun at his back is another’s trudge through winter’s terminal grasp with nothing but the eyes of desperate and ravenous wolves reflecting the light of the dwindling fiery torch.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
When waiting for an album to come out by a band that you know deep down could have been the talk of the town and the greater music world in any of the decades since Liverpool gave birth to popular music culture in Britain, caution can seep in. It can mess with expectancy, it can gnaw at the promise you have made to yourself that it surely must be good because the gigs and the songs have suggested nothing but a wonderful sense of timing and delivery. Caution is good, it keeps both the listener and musicians grounded but it can also feed on you like a Succubus caught in the middle of a midday snack asking for extra bread rolls.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Everything in life comes down to two subjects, sex and death. For the witty, taxes comes into the equation as a means of pointing out that everything alive between finding a lover and the point of ultimate demise is just basically because everybody is out to take advantage of you. In amongst it all though is the somehow forgotten entity of Time. Sex and death may be the two romantic visions that a poet will surreptitiously weave into a new sonnet and mentally ask their readers to gouge out the sentiments tied up within, but Time is ever present and demands more than the other state of affairs put together.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Proof, if proof were needed, that the vast array of Metal, in which ever guise or sub genre it takes, is in such a healthy state of mind as soon as you go past Dover and head east, south or across the North Sea to Scandinavia is to found in the latest album by German Metal Kings Blind Guardian, the sensational Beyond the Red Mirror.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
In the darkest moments we all need to be held. It is the basic principle of humanity, to feel compassion, to understand that it is not a weakness to show concern for another or even basic kindness to one who has done you wrong in thought or deed. To be able to do so is to show strength and it doesn’t manifest itself enough in what has become at times an intolerant and growing steadily selfish society.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *
The only true surprise awaiting anyone who makes the right choice in spending that week’s hard earned money on Steve Rothery’s debut solo album, The Ghosts of Pripyat, is that it has taken so long for the celebrated and revered guitarist to place his own stock out before his own special audience.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *
In the spirit of George Harrison, all things must pass, eventually. For some it’s a relief, the death of a dystopian and despotic regime, ground to dust or wiped out by plague is a thought that a cheery liberal would welcome with huge applause and gladdened heart; a new release by a band who filled a lot of teenage hearts with inspired lyrics and power ballad like affection finding themselves at the crossroads of the much missed Mr. Harrison’s almost fatalistic scenario, it can be a daunting proposition.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10
Unlike an album which always gave the impression of being an event that was tantalisingly months out of reach, the single seemed to come around with near frightening regularity.
There was a heyday, an apparently glorious period of time which the single was lauded as the high point of the week for many, the chance to go out on a Monday morning, perhaps be late for the first part of school, but knowing the language that spoke from within the seven inch vinyl were engrained much more in your head than the imagined words of fools.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If passion is your thing, if it’s the be all and end all and makes the nights hanging by an amplifier, dry ice clinging to your lungs like a wet December fog and a guitar playing a sweet serenade of honest love and toiled emotion, then the Keith Thompson Band’s live album, Snapshot of Reality, is one in which to count the ways in which to adore your love of music.