Tagged: davidkeevill

Shining One One One Indie Recordings 03 June 2013 by David Keevill For a band with big enough brass tacks to coin their own genre , Shining’s latest release One One One sidles past your ear drums so carefully that it doesn’t even whisper the idea of perforation. Their latest record seems [...]

Dir En Grey The Unraveling Firewall/SMEJ 03 April 2013 By David Keevill The Japanese metallic monolith that is Dir En Grey have had a fairly minimal penetration into the tight-knit UK music community considering the number, and calibre, of their records over the course of the last sixteen years. 2013 sees the release of an EP called The Unraveling , a seven track record that, [...]

Volbeat Outlaw Gentlemen & Shady Ladies Spinefarm Records 08 April 2013 by David Keevill The ascent towards the upper echelons of Europe’s metal strata that Danish chimaera Volbeat (part-rockabilly, part-groove metal, part-rock) have enjoyed over the last 13 years is proof not of a charmed life of Michael Poulsen and co., but of hard graft at making their distinctly obscure [...]

It's time for another Thrash Hits festival splash page - and this time it's for Hammerfest . All of our Hammerfest 2013 coverage from the weekend will be linked to on this here post, so make sure you bookmark it as it's all you're going to need. Yep. That means individual band coverage (photos, setlists and maybe even some reviews), all the dodgy rumours and awful gossip our man David Keevill overhears, and every single photo of Wales-based debauchery that Gary Wolstenholme and Jenn McCambridge snap will be here. -- [...]

Brotherhood Of The Lake Desperation Is The English Way Vol.2 30 Days Of Night 18 March 2013 by David Keevill Misanthropy is a great commodity. Bands towards the darker end of the spectrum have come to thrive off it, not only as a motivator for writing heavier music but also by working it into the themes, lyrics, [...]

Hatebreed The Divinity of Purpose Nuclear Blast 28 January 2013 by David Keevill It’s a question as old as Gandalf’s liver-spotted inner thigh, but one worth asking again; do Jamie Jasta and co. breed hate or are they themselves bred from the stuff? Either way you look at it, with the arrival of this, their seventh studio [...]

Hang The Bastard 2009-2012 Holy Roar 26 November 2012 by David Keevill Hang the Bastard’s collection 2009-2012  may not be a eulogy (as they stress so empathically on their label’s website) to former frontman and co-founder Chris Barling, but it does serve to draw a line under the first chapter of HTB’s career. The release of this 32-track collection isn’t so much a fitting summation of what they’ve achieved so far (there’s no cherry picking here), rather [...]

• SGR Artist Management - Hang The Bastard - The Blackest Eyes

Baptists Bushcraft Southern Lord 18 February 2013 by David Keevill For every band (and there are more than a fair few now ) who list the name Kurt Ballou  among the production credits in their album’s sleeve notes, there are significantly more who have tried and failed to secure his servics. As it stands, the prolific producer [...]

• Baptists - "Think Tank Breed"

So yeah, you've checked out Part 1 of our contributors' Albums of the Year lists, and you're hungry for more, right? Well, stop reading this and click the 'Read More...' link to find out what the other half of our contributing writers and photographers thought were the best releases of 2012. As we said in part one, the rules are simple this year. We asked our contributors to give us between 10 and 20 of their favourite records that were released in 2012. Any genre, any length, so [...]

Parkway Drive Atlas Epitaph 29 October 2012 by David Keevill The progression in sound from last year’s Deep Blue to Atlas does not come at the expense of Parkway Drive’s core sound, but it is a noticeable departure from the sort of relentless fare that they’ve wielded in the past. What’s more, the endless parade of tracks that erupted from the bowels of Deep Blue has given way to a far more coherent [...]

Shining Redefining Darkness Spinefarm Records 29 October 2012 by David Keevill Redefining Darkness is an incredibly misleading album title. It screams of try-hard impotence and angsty but flaccid cock-surety. Even from a band who are on the dawn of releasing their eighth studio album, as Shining are, there is something unconvincing in [...]

We Are The Ocean Maybe Today, Maybe Tomorrow Hassle Records 17 September 2012 by David Keevill We Are The Ocean aren’t strangers to change. 2011’s Go Now and Live saw the band playing with a sound that accentuated the band’s harsh but melodic core, most notably in reducing then-vocalist Dan Brown’s [...]

Cauldron Tomorrow's Lost Earache 08 October 2012 by David Keevill Earache’s recent tendencies to parley with bands of a retrospective focus has now become a major part of their raison d’etre. From the magnificent muddy river blues rock of Rival Sons through to the deft traditional metal leanings of Savage Messiah, this is a label who’ve spearheaded a [...]

As I Lay Dying Awakened Metal Blade 24 September 2012 by David Keevill As I Lay Dying have consistently trodden water on the edges of higher acclaim. Whilst they have shown a technical proficiency undoubtedly born, at least in part, from frontman Tim Lambesis’ instrumental polygamy, the music has always lacked innovation and heart. [...]

Nachtmystium Silencing Machine Century Media 30 July 2012 by David Keevill Nachtmystium have always been an interesting beast, because whilst they’re yet to release something truly groundbreaking (although  Addicts: Black Meddle Pt. 2  came pretty close), they have pushed the genre into experimental, confusing territories and have shown themselves to be keen on growing, rather than recycling, [...]

Rival Sons Head Down Earache Records 17 September 2012 by David Keevill Bands who rely on retrospection as the main thrust to their music often sound tired, contrived and all out-of-ideas. There is a certain charm to recycling and incorporating a sound into your own musical framework, but overuse it and you betray any chance at your own invention. Yet [...]

Nile At the Gate of Sethu Nuclear Blast 02 July 2012 by David Keevill Nile's ability to meld extreme technicality with expressive and forward-thinking metal is why the music they’ve delivered over the best part of twenty years has been consistently interesting. Yet whilst they’ve maintained such a distinctive and identifiable sound, they’ve departed very [...]

Mike Patton & Ictus Ensemble Laborintus II Ipecac Recordings 02 July 2012 by David Keevill It really is saying something if you have to check Mike Patton against the eccentricity scale to see if he’s wandered past "manically kooky" and into the realms of "wobble custard emu". This is a man who's partially responsible for Faith No More following up The Real Thing with Angle Dust -  an album as hooky as it is strange. It captures the eternally contrarian attitude [...]

Torche Harmonicraft Volcom 23 April 2012 by David Keevil When an album comes along that fits so inherently into the stride of your life, it’s often difficult to tell whether it’s because it’s so inconspicuous that it barely registers or that it's a monumental moment in the history of your consumption of music. Harmonicraft , the third studio album [...]

We love Jägermeister. We hate what it does to us when we drink it irresponsibly, but we love it. Skindred , Therapy? , Black Spiders and Skindred love it enough to have been part of the Jägermeister Music Tour. It was only £5 to get in and Brixton Academy was SOLD OUT. What a great celebration of drunk metallers! Six things we learned when we drank too much Jägermeister in London: 1) [...]