As we barrel down towards the end of the year, we are sharing End of Year lists from staff, bands, and some friends in the business. Check out our Senior Editor Steve Tovey’s picks for his Top Albums of 2023!Continue reading
Tag Archives: Ginger Wildheart
ALBUM REVIEW: Carol Hodge – Savage Purge
Songwriters are often in pursuit of honesty. They want to express the contents of their souls with authenticity and truth. However, these expressions are often refracted through lenses of ambiguity which can leave the listener guessing as to the real truth at the source. It is perhaps less common, and maybe more courageous, for a songwriter to tell us what’s really going on in their day-to-day thoughts without hiding beneath the mystery of their poetry. Continue reading
GHOST CULT ALBUMS OF THE YEAR 2018 – Senior Editor Steve Tovey
Minimal waffle, maximum music – I’m very aware that there is too much music and not enough time! I’ve had close to 1,000 albums pass through my inbox this year alone (I’ve probably only been able to listen to about a third of them), and what I’m presenting are my favourite albums of 2018, the albums that I’ve connected most with, that matter most to me, one way or another.
Hope you find something new to get into… Continue reading
Ginger Wildheart – G*A*S*S Mark II
One of the first UK rock musicians to demonstrate how crowd-funding could really be successful in the non-mainstream world with his phenomenally successful 555% (Pledge Music) campaign, in 2014 Ginger Wildheart embarked on the G*A*S*S (Ginger Associated Secret Society) project. Fans signed up, and in return, received three exclusive tracks a month and opportunities for a whole host of goodies. At the end of the process, a ten-track release of the most popular tracks, Year Of The Fanclub, was made available to the general public. G*A*S*S Mark II (Round Records) is the Directors Cut… Ginger’s own preferred curation of his favourite tracks from the experiment.Continue reading
The Primals – All Love Is True Love
The opening discordant, overdriven stabs of ‘Hello Cruel World’ set the tone for The Primals debut album All Love Is True Love (Southern Lord), a tone that summons the spirit of the fuzziest, poppiest and dirtiest moments of Nirvana’s In Utero (Geffen) jamming with The Pixies and that is every bit as gorgeously sincere as that sounds. So it may come as a surprise to learn that this grunged explosion comes courtesy of John Henry of Metalcore savages Darkest Hour, accompanied by Chad Fjerstad (Dead To Fall) and Andrew Black (The Explosion), a project you’d, like me, have been forgiven to have expected to be churning something more crusty or Hardcore based.Continue reading
Damnation Festival 2017 – Live At Leeds University Union
Over the course of its 12 incarnations, Leeds based Damnation Festival has grown into surely the most important yearly event for underground music lovers the UK has to offer. Far from merely an Extreme Metal festival, Damnation is the closest the UK has to the all-encompassing nature of Roadburn in its celebration of a wide spectrum of sub-genres. This year’s edition seemed to be especially diverse with a rich amount of Extreme Metal sitting alongside expansive entities and experimental Prog outfits. With four stages within the single complex of the Leeds University Union, and a sell-out capacity crowd (admittedly reduced to counter crowding issues from previous editions), the layout does appear labyrinthian at first, but is pretty intuitive and easy to follow pretty quickly; which with a stacked lineup from top to bottom, makes the continuous rushing from stage to stage a little more bearable at least.Continue reading
Damnation Brings The Heaviest And Grimmest One-Dayer To Leeds Today
The time is nigh! Damnation Festival, the UK’s top one-day underground metal festival is back today at Leeds University Union. The fest is totally sold out again and headlined by Bloodbath, Sodom, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Paradise Lost, Dying Fetus, Dragged Into Sunlight, Nails and many more. Continue reading
Vallenfyre, Grave Pleasures, And Leng Tch’e All Added to Damnation 2017
Three more top-notch bands added to the ranks of Damnation Festival 2017 as Vallenfyre, Grave Pleasures, And Leng Tch’e are added to the bill. Tickets are running out for the UK’s top festival event of the late year.Continue reading
Psychedelic Witchcraft, Wiegdood and Mutation Added To Damnation Festival
Damnation 2017 continues to build on its strong early lineup with three more bands: Psychedelic Witchcraft, Wiegdood and Ginger Wildheart’s Mutation have been added to the ranks. Continue reading
Mutation – Mutation III: Dark Black
If there was any justice in the world, Ginger Wildheart, quite possibly the best living rock songwriter in Britain, would be a Grammy-laden peer of the realm; lauded, rewarded and extolled for his services to rock music. Yet, to coin that most passé of phrases, “everything happens for a reason”, because if that justice had been served, the obtuse fire that feeds the abrasive pummeling of Mutation III: Dark Black (Undergroove) would have been robbed of the oxygen of anger and normality of every day human existence that permeates each second of the excellence of extremity that Ginger and co-collaborator Scott Lee Andrews have forged.Continue reading