Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Some albums jump straight out at you from the opening note and make you sit down in almost startled amazement. In Jonny Lang’s first album for seven years, the tormenting and incredible sound that encapsulates Fight For My Soul, the feeling of bewildered admiration is compounded by thought of time having passed by.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The comparisons that will inevitably follow when Wait Till The Morning, the new album by the superb Mojo Makers, is released or even perhaps unleashed would be a better term with anything that the Midland’s own Led Zeppelin recorded should be disregarded and put away as early as possible. Not for the reason that many might think, those that believe the genre stopped being of any significance when Led Zeppelin stopped making new music, but for the fact that in Wail Till The Morning is far and away more interesting a caged animal than almost anything the Midland band put together.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Worried About Thomas McConnell? On the evidence of his E.P., you really shouldn’t be as the young man with verve, style and the sweetness of attitude has produced four songs that typify the resilience of the young talented artists, musicians and people in everyday life to make their voice heard.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * *
Time moves on and the brilliance of a band that came to the forefront of their country’s contribution to the Heavy Metal/Thrash genre seems to have finally come to a stuttering halt and whilst not completely disintegrating into fragments just yet, the signs are ominously there. For Annihilator and Jeff Waters in particular, the premiere of Canadian Metal, the band that bought out some illuminating and defining classics in their time, have bought out their 14th studio album, Feast, and it is regretfully anything but.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
Four albums in and Metallica confirmed their place as the world’s biggest Metal band with the release of …And Justice For All. As years in music go, 1988 was a phenomenal year for Heavy Metal of any sub-genre, Iron Maiden had released the superb Seventh Son of a Seventh Son, Queensryche had raised the bar to a new height with the epic Operation Mindcrime and Megadeth showed what was to come in the form of the interesting So Far, So Good…So What. …And Justice For All was the best of all worlds, the fusion of Progressive, the barbed sterile lyric feel in which the music reigned supreme and despite the incredible loss of Cliff Burton, the band were able to top the brilliance of the previous album Master of Puppets and give their audience perhaps arguably the finest album of their career. Out of such adversity facing the band with the loss of the superb Cliff Burton came the outstanding entrance of bassist Jason Newsted.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
When a band puts out an E.P. or album that has the flash of inspiration attached to it by supplementing the musical aura with a touch of mystique, the ears tend to get just a little more excited and the brain digs just that little bit harder to understand what makes the group and the music tick. With The Last Scout layering secretive messages from the start with the sound of a pre-Second World War radio drama broadcast in which the idea of courage and making a stand is paramount, the E.P. brims with clever vocals and music which bounces along in a way that is reminiscent to the way that the much underrated Yorkshire band Dead Like Harry sounded.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The concept of confessional poetry isn’t a new one, especially in The United States where it flourished under auspicious talent, weighty hearts and minds that saw the acknowledgment of their craft being greeted as an affirmation of genuine skill and endeavour. As Mike Zito readily admits; his new album with The Wheel, the brutally honest and gorgeous Gone To Texas, is an album in which he pays homage to the Lone Star State, the state that he says saved his life. It might not be in the same vein as poetic luminaries such as Anne Sexton, Sylvia Plath or Allen Ginsberg but the sentiment is there, this is a musician shaking his soul loose and willingly, ungrudgingly revealing all.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If you want revolution, if the idea of the start of an uprising in the hearts of a specific music genre is something that takes your fancy then Samantha Fish’s latest offering to the mass public is sure to be more wrecking than a person with a 1000 pound metal ball on the end of a crane in a scrap yard could ever hope to achieve. Black Wind Howlin’ cuts through the storms, slices past the obstacles placed in its way and heads over the Atlantic in a flurry of musical fury and the result is utter brilliance.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
If music be the food of love, then let Cyril Neville forever play on. Cyril Neville is a music legend, a man who makes music sound as deliciously entertaining as it should be heard and whose latest album, Magic Honey, has all the ingredients of a mix of songs that have been well prepared and seasoned to enjoy in only way that the man can.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Recording an album is only really as hard or as difficult as the artist wants it to be. There is of course the pain of opening the soul up so far that it allows others who have no connection to the musician, in the act of revealing one’s life, no matter how sincere the writing or score is, what is demanding and tiring. It can also be a blessing, a cathartic episode in which the musician just shows to the awaiting audience that what they know is at the end of the day, not all they know. Some will struggle to keep the fine line of privacy and public awareness separate, others embrace it. Michael Monroe, the man who certainly made Hanoi Rocks is one such individual who opens his heart and his latest album, Horns and Halos, is an absolute belter.