01. Intro 1:24 02. Empty Promises 5:05 03. Break The Trend 4:04 04. Thanks For Letting Me Know 4:31 05. Empty Promises (Video Edit) 4:08

Forever Never describe themselves as having ‘a sound that bridges the gap between “underground” and “mainstream” scenes; a sound that is both beautiful, and brutal.’ The cover of last year’s self-titled second album showed a peaceful waterfall in the midst of a green valley, with an grim industrial cityscape lurking in the water’s reflection. Trying to show your musical philosophy through an arty, symbolic CD cover, lads? I like it.

This juxtaposition that the Essex metallers pride themselves upon is true of ‘Empty Promises’, the first single from that pretentious (just kidding) album. A mysterious ambience and some splodgy sounds herald the arrival of the title track, opening with a sublime vocal harmony courtesy of superbly-toned vocalist Renny Carroll. Then kicks in a deliciously time change-laden riff which continues behind sorrowful yet soulful lyrics; ‘I’ve had enough of your empty promises / Don’t blame yourself, it was my mistake for listening.’ He’s been hurt. The mournful chuggery continues after the second chorus, sometimes sounding too bland and tuneless without vocals, but thankfully there are chiming notes and a palpable guitar solo to distract from where things are lacking.
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The poster on the wall inside the Glasgow Auditorium on this rainy November evening reads ‘They keep killing him… and he keeps coming back!’. Which is very true; Alice Cooper has been performing for over four decades now (!), being - amongst other gruesome acts - hung, electrocuted, maimed, decapitated and strangled in his legendary live show, but is still going strongly, shocking and grossing-out adults and bores everywhere he goes. Even ex-Home Secretary David Blunkett called him ‘obscene’. What’s that? Oh, yeah, that is the same Mr. Blunkett who got caught shagging his married secretary and breaking ministerial laws for personal gain. But I digress.

First up are Man Raze, who can count Def Leppard’s Phil Collen and The Sex Pistols’ Paul Cook in their ranks. They’ve also got Simon Laffy from Girl on bass (I’d never heard of him either). They fare well tonight on their first Scottish show, with a nice hard rock sound and covers of The Stooges’ ‘Search And Destroy’ and The Jam’s ‘That’s Enterainment’. One very satisfied punter in the front row gives them a standing ovation after every song. Not the greatest of bands, but an enjoyable little act and a nice wee side project for the members nonetheless.
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01. Whom the Gods Love Die Young 04:47 02. Battle Within 03:34 03. Eyes of a Stranger 04:01 04. The Seventh Sign 05:02 05. Raise Your Hands 04:37 06. Rock City 03:58 07. Sin City Lights 04:51 08: Carved in Stone 04:43 09. Metal Slave 04:20 10. Sinners and Saints 03:42

Welcome to the world of Mean Streak, the latest crusaders in the battle to defend the faith of heavy metal. The kind of largely imaginary battle which involves leather armour and large axes, obviously. They were formed in Sweden (where else?) in 2006 entirely as a studio project by Peter Andersson, apparently in order “to make music straight from the heart”…and “the early/mid ’80s”. Andersson started out alone, recording all of the guitar and bass parts and even programming the drum lines before he had recruited another band member. He added singer Andy LaGuerin and drummer Jonas Kallsback to fill out parts in the studio before the idea of getting a record deal or even playing live even occurred; guitarists David Andersson and Patrik Gardberg were only recruited when a local club heard their demos and requested a live performance. This led to interest from a local record label, and all of a sudden Mean Streak had walked into a recording contract.

The first fruit of this deal is the album “Metal Slave”; the name tells you quite a lot of what you need to know about Mean Streak. They are Slaves to Metal. Indeed, they are so dedicated to their particular craft (their Myspace defines it as “Metal/Metal/Metal”) that every song is a microcosm of the greater whole; essentially, you always know what you’re going to get. Right from opening track ‘Whom the Gods Love Die Young’, there are no surprises here; every song comprises a selection of thundering riffs, double-bass drumming, wailing solos, and soaring vocal melodies. We’re firmly in the Manowar/Grand Magus/hooray-for-epic-metal vein here.
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01. White Willow 06:28 02. Down Memory Lane 03:58 03. Lakeside Park 05:36 04. 3rd Type 07:23 05. Near Death Experience 01:46 06. Lost Ghost 06:16 07. Dragged 06:04 08. O.B.E 03:59 09. Tomorrow 08:07

I’m going to have to make clear that right from the start I have something of a bone to pick with Spheric Universe Experience; any astrophysicist worth his salt knows the universe is saddle-shaped. Not spherical. If Stephen Hawking and Albert Einstein are down with that, sorry, I’m not letting a French prog band sway me.

Anyway, if we can somehow pretend that wound isn’t fatal, we could move on to the music…”Unreal” is the third album from the Nice-based five-piece, and is every bit as slick, assured and polished as you’d expect from a band who have been honing their craft for a decade. Despite recruiting a new drummer, Christope Briande, since the recording of 2007’s ‘Anima’, they appear as tight and confident as ever.
The band list their greatest influences and Dream Theater and Symphony X, and this is immediately apparent on opening track ‘White Willow’, as guitarist Vince Benaim doing his best to channel John Petrucci and a range of weird keyboard effects are the order of the day. That said, the giants of prog-metal are by no means bad role models, and subsequent tracks show the band breaking out and doing more of their own thing, and doing it well.
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01. Twisted Coil 11:43 02. Leland Street 08:03 03. Green and Cream 10:32 04. Season of Denial 10:22 05. Over 06:11 06. Perfection 10:46

“it won’t be Ayreon, that’s for sure.” - Arjen Lucassen

The above quote was given during our interview with Arjen Lucassen in April 2008 when work had just begun on Guilt Machine. Arjen has proven true to his word.

If you are expecting another Ayreon epic telling the sprawling tale of knights and wizards, space travel and aliens then this album is not for you. This album is a journey through sorrow, despair and guilt; a vast thematic and musical departure from the Ayreon project. This is not to say that if you enjoyed Arjen’s previous works you will not enjoy Guilt Machine, but there will no doubt be a few disappointed Ayreon fans out there.
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I was flicking through some god-awful Metro-style paper on the Chicago L-Train when the night’s entertainment listings caught my eye. Bob Dylan and his band were playing some fancy downtown club, and perennial stoner-rock campaigners Fu Manchu were playing the ‘Double Door’ out in North Chi’. Needless to say, the choice was obvious.

Admittedly, Fu Manchu could be accused of getting increasingly commercial, over-produced and frankly uninspired in their studio output in recent years - in fact they (arguably) haven’t produced a truly solid album since 2001’s ‘California Crossing - but it has never been in doubt that they are an absolutely cracking live band. I get the feeling that with the generation of bands emerging today, going out on tour just isn’t as important as it should be; everyone just gets their single out on iTunes and headlines a minor stage at Download three weeks later. After all, who really wants to live out of a van, surviving on cheap beer and gas station food? Well, Fu Manchu, that’s who. They’re the ultimate road warriors, having spent their entire lives in an epic circuit of the USA (and when we occasionally get lucky, Europe), only taking the odd month off to churn out a new album to tour for. The latest excuse is their 10th album, ‘Signs of Infinite Power’, out earlier this month, and the Fu chose to hit Chicago not only on a saturday night, but on Halloween.
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Steel Panther have at last been unleashed upon a largely unsuspecting world. For years now, they’ve been a house band, putting on weekly shows in Las Vegas and Los Angeles, showcasing their parody of the 80s glam movement through ridiculously suggestive lyrics and over-the-top rock music. For the first time, they’ve broken free of the LA/Vegas circuit and gone out on tour; and yet this, the second date of their first appearance on British soil, sold out weeks before the show. That tells you a lot about Steel Panther straight off the bat.

That said, the evening didn’t get off on the greatest foot, at least in my book; this was not the fault of Steel Panther, however, but of the way the gig itself was organised. The doors opened at seven (people were queuing at six!) and Panther took to the stage at around nine. You’d think that would be a good slot to fill with support bands, indeed that’s the conventional way to do things. For some reason, at this gig we were instead treated to a guy standing on the stage frowning at a laptop, playing predictable songs (Sweet Child O’ Mine, Highway to Hell, Crazy Train, ad nauseum) on what sounded like Windows Media Player. I hope to pretty much each and every god that he wasn’t getting paid for that. The end result was in essence like being in a very busy pub, with no seats, populated by cross-dressers, for two hours.
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01. MindPlague 3:39 02. Rain 4:58 03. Beast In The Cage 3:33 04. Mechantical 2:30 05. Crehate 4:21 06. Rise Above 3:37 07. No Fucking Way 2:05

Ahh, Sweden. Have they ever let us down in terms of death metal? From the moment that the intro to ‘MindPlague’ sweeps in and impacts your lugholes, you know this EP is going to be a good listen. Hailing from Gothenburg (come on, where else?), Despite are a beardy five-piece melodic death metal band. You’ve heard it all before, you say? Hold on there, because there’s more than that going on here.

On first listen, they sound like In Flames - which there’s nothing wrong with. But it’s only when you listen to the intricacies woven throughout the sonic bombast that you can fully appreciate this record. The aforementioned opening track features a mellowed middle eight in which Alex Losb‰ck’s vocals come remarkably close to those of Ozzy Osbourne, while the guitar parts of ‘Rain’ could have been lifted out of the System Of A Down textbook. Not that there’s no originality here - it’s just impressive how such different sounds are all encapsulated within the traditional death metal refrains.

The energy displayed by the band is inspiring, to say the least. ‘Rise Above’ has one of those riffs any budding axeman will instantly want to learn how to play (and will probably end up on Guitar Hero one day if fortune smiles upon these Swedes), while closer ‘No Fucking Way’ has one of those violent-yet-uniting metal choruses: ‘I’ll make you fucking pay / I’ll spit on your grave’. Lovely jubbly.
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01. Deathlike Overture (intro) 01:26 02. Esoteric 04:44 03. Rise and Decay 06:10 04. Let the Old World Burn 04:10 05. Darkness Descending 07:09 06. Seclusion 03:46 07. Misery’s Supremacy 07:10 08. Under a Pitch Black Sky 04:52 09. Linger in Doubt 05:18 10. The Legacy of the Defeated 07:21 11. Within Reach (bonus) 03:36

Melodic death metal; Sweden’s gift to world of music. No, ABBA don’t count. So entwined in the gestation and evolution of said genre is the Scandinavian country that some call it the “Gothenburg style”. In Flames, Dark Tranquillity, At the Gates, Carcass, Arch Enemy; all have marched under the banner of melodic death metal, and it is with this plentiful heritage in mind that I approach ’Esoteric’, the fourth album by Skyfire. They hail from a sparsely-populated municipality right at Sweden‘s southernmost tip called Höör, which I hope to never have to attempt to pronounce aloud. Although ‘Esoteric’ is their fourth album, the band’s approach has changed somewhat after a short hiatus, a five-year break between albums, and several lineup changes.

Despite the fact that they are generally pigeonholed as “melodic death metal”, and also that I have just spent a paragraph talking about just that, I feel the tag fails to credit the plethora of other influences present in Skyfire’s music. It’s immediately apparent that there are strong progressive and symphonic shades to this album; it features both an orchestra and a choir, which make everything seem very epic, and there is heavy use of acoustic piano. This makes a refreshing change from the majority of metal bands’ approach to keyboards, which is centred almost entirely around synth strings, the “orchestral-hit” setting, and the occasional wanky pitch-bend laden solo. Those staples are still in evidence on ‘Esoteric’, but the use of the piano really strengthens the melody, and allows it to go to places which might otherwise have been inaccessible.
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01. Like the Ore Strikes the Water 3:13 02. Fear is the Key 3:31 03. Hovding 0:39 04. Iron Will 5:01 05. Silver Into Steel 4:15 06. The Shadow Knows 5:35 07. Self Deceiver 4:49 08. Beyond Good & Evil 5:15 09. I Am the North 9:01

Grand Magus are a bit of an enigma. They’re not particularly Big, in any sense of the word; the Swedish three-piece are probably best known for the fact that frontman Janne “JB” Christoffersson sings in Spiritual Beggars with Michael Amott of Carcass and Arch Enemy. This lack of recognition clashes with the fact that they’re fucking brilliant; more on that later. Anyway, since being established in 2001 on a split 7” with, you guessed it, Spiritual Beggars, Grand Magus have released four slabs of uncompromising, balls-out heavy metal, the latest being 2008’s “Iron Will”. The title alludes to steely determination, dedication and spirit, in case you’re wondering. Not a massive boner. Metal Hammer famously raised this point with JB in an interview, to which he replied that “you should always have an erection while playing metal”. Which says a lot about Grand Magus’ music, really.

Now, generally at this point in a review, I’d be picking out tracks from the album, maybe analysing bits of them, discussing their relative merits. However, with Iron Will, there’s not actually that much point. All of the songs are pretty much the same, both in spirit and execution - and they’re all bloody fantastic.
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