Metallica: Load. 2025 Album Reissue Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Five years on from the internationally bestselling album Metallica, the thrash metal band returned with a different style than the fans were used to, and arguably the difference in sound, in attitude, and appearance had some scratching their heads, and some arguably utterly confused about the near 180-degree turnaround in terms of songwriting and heavy riff displacement, and yet as the band release their 2025 reissue of Load, what comes across is a resilience of Time, that the reminder of what we as fans perceive as ownership of sound and expectation is an unavoidable truth that we are wrong; that the artist is, and always will be the ones to have to have the last word on how they present themselves to the wider world.

Metallica: Load. 2025 Album Reissue Review. full post

(538 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

Omar Kent Dykes & Jimmie Vaughn: On The Jimmy Reed Highway. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

No matter what we may think of the United States of America, politically at times exaggerated, we must surely concede that there is so much to learn from looking at the map of the continuous land mass and understanding its myths and history at times cross over, meld and merge to a point where the only option is to explore and witness the stories first hand, to go beyond that cross roads where the Devil collects souls whilst all Hell prays you continue on your journey.

Omar Kent Dykes & Jimmie Vaughn: On The Jimmy Reed Highway. Album Review. full post

(384 words, 1 image, estimated 1:32 mins reading time)

Joe Hodgson: Fields Of Redemption. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

In the Fields Of Redemption, the grass will always be greener, the soul will be lighter, and the mind will be free of all that vexes it, for in delivering salvation to one’s own psyche, by offering a reclaiming of one’s past and not allowing it to define you, we find the liberation to explore a future which is clear and unhindered.

Joe Hodgson: Fields Of Redemption. Album Review. full post

(409 words, estimated 1:38 mins reading time)

Larry McCray: Heartbreak City. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

At one time or another we have all been residents of Heartbreak City, indeed some of have not only lived within the city’s limits, taken in the views, strolled in Melancholy Park, eaten in the many restaurants of regret, they have become a spokesperson for the desire to truly explore the surroundings before they can return to the land of the exuberant and the positive nature of performing for the masses.

Larry McCray: Heartbreak City. Album Review. full post

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

Pulp: More. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *

More from Pulp should be greeted as the arrival of the unexpected gift, an album that arguably no fan of the Brit-Pop gatecrashes expected after such an absence from the charts and the studio. To hear the return of Nick Banks, Candida Doyle, Mark Webber, and Jarvis Cocker in the iconic aural pose of poetry driven music is to feel once again the wonderful interaction of angst and tormented memories of growing up, of facing a future that seemed reserved for someone else.

Pulp: More. Album Review. full post

(501 words, 1 image, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Steely Dan: The Royal Scam. Album Reissue Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The final album from the classic period of Steely Dan’s immeasurable contribution to music has come to pass just a couple of weeks after it celebrated its 49th anniversary.

Critically undervalued at the time of its release, it didn’t need time to be appreciated, it just required ears that were not focused on the sea change in musical atmosphere as the expression of the short hand Punk descended on the world and the shifting attitudes of society aligned itself with change, a bloodless revolution which saw old favourites led to the scaffold and presented with a choice, adapt or no longer be relevant.

Steely Dan: The Royal Scam. Album Reissue Review. full post

(531 words, 1 image, estimated 2:07 mins reading time)

Predator: Killer Of Killers. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

Cast: Lindsay LaVanchy, Louis Ozawa, Rick Gonzalez, Michael Biehn, Doug Cockle, Damien Haas, Lauren Holt, Jeff Leach, Piotr Michael, Andrew Morgado, Felix Solis, Britton Watkins.

Mean, full of rippling muscle, a film that reignites the fear that first came way of the cinema goer almost 40 years ago, Predator: Killer of Killers is a surprise inclusion to the long running franchise, but one like the previous feature of Prey, holds the ethos of the monster up on a pedestal and with the highest of respect.

Predator: Killer Of Killers. Film Review. full post

(415 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

Stephen King: Never Flinch. Book Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 7/10

What it could have been if Stephen King had found Holly Gibney much earlier in his career. The literary Muse who has become so much of a focus in the great American writer’s arsenal in his latter years is one of the best characters to have flowed and taken life from the horror master’s pen that it is no wonder she stepped out from the shadows of Mr. Mercedes, Finders Keepers, and End Of Watch, to ‘star’ in her own set of novels, notably the excellent The Outsider, and has continued to grow as a presence inside the world of Stephen King’s imagination.

Stephen King: Never Flinch. Book Review. full post

(598 words, 1 image, estimated 2:24 mins reading time)

Venom: The Last Dance. Film Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 5/10

Cast: Tom Hardy, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Juno Temple, Rhys Ifans, Stephen Graham, Peggy Lu, Clark Backo, Alanna Ubach, Cristo Fernández, Jared Abrahamson, Hala Finley, Dash McCloud, Andy Serkis, Reid Scott.

Like many Sony attempts to fulfil the needs of the Marvel fans’ expectations of how the surrounding Spider-Man players would fare in their own film, the downgrading of Venom over time has seriously demolished what was perhaps the finest character outside of the MCU, and whilst the initial story of the alien symbiote who melded with Eddie Brock was startlingly good fun, offering Tom Hardy the chance to play a part for fun, in its third outing, Venom: The Last Dance, the enjoyment has become at best a middling affair, given a small dosage of high craft in its appearance, but very little else to give the creature, or Tom Hardy, the gravitates they both deserve.

Venom: The Last Dance. Film Review. full post

(506 words, estimated 2:01 mins reading time)

The Bombing Of Pan Am 103. Television Drama Series Review.

Cast: Connor Swindells, Patrick J. Adams, Eddie Marsan, Peter Mullan, Lauren Lyle, Phyllis Logan, Tony Curran, Merritt Wever, James Harkness, Amanda Drew, Molly Geddes, Nicholas Gleaves, Douglas Hodge, Alastair Mackenzie, Kevin McKidd, Dominik Tiefenthaler, Estrid Barton, Adrian Lukis, Joe Layton, Robert Jack, Andrew Rothney, Adam Rothenburg, Archie McCormick, Parker Sawyers, Etta Jackson, Majd Eid.

To live through history is to take stock of the emotions you feel as the moment reveals itself; to be able to reflect as television, the modern mediator of truth and fiction, uncovers those emotions once more as they harness the energy of the subject for either entertainment or for unearthing some even darker secret, is to understand the curse of our age, that everything presented on a disaster of unimaginable scale is up for debate.

The Bombing Of Pan Am 103. Television Drama Series Review. full post

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