Band of the Week: The Birthday Massacre, Chthonic, Sonata Arctica and more!

Soooo, might possibly have not posted for months. For anyone who does actually pay attention to and like my blog, apologies. On the plus side, I have an absolutely enormous list of bands to write about, so hopefully we'll get a few more posts out of me before I start forgetting again. Here goes.

First up, Canadian electro-rockers The Birthday Massacre. Delightfully creepy at times with excellent female vocals. Yum. Check out the video for Blue below and then go check out some more of their awesomeness.

Next, we have Taiwanese black/symphonic metal band Chthonic. So, OK, I can't decipher the lyrics to most of their songs, but the music itself is pretty brilliant. Have a listen to Takao from latest album Takasago Army.

Then we'll have a bit of Sonata Arctica. Power/symphonic metal from Finland. Check out recent single I Have A Right below.

Some Brit stuff now - metalcore in the shape of Sheffield natives While She Sleeps. At least, I'm pretty sure they're from Sheffield. Should probably check that... Anyhoos, their debut album This Is The Six is being released at the beginning of August, so for now check out the title track and then go have a listen to some more of their lovely stuff.

And finally, the loveliness that is InMe. Alternative rock/metal. Well worth checking out. Think we'll have Single Of The Weak.

That'll do, yes? Check it out and pass it on.

Review: Kerrang! Tour 2012 at Norwich UEA LCR, 8/2/12

Kerrang! Relentless Energy Drink Tour 2012: New Found Glory, The Blackout, letlive. and While She Sleeps

Where to start with this wonderful gig? Well, the beginning would be a good place. Even better, let's start before the gig even kicked off. Two weeks before the tour, original headliners Sum 41 pulled out due to their vocalist having a back injury. All well and good, but the organisers then had to find a replacement at two weeks notice. Welsh post-hardcore guys The Blackout stepped in. Cue the shit slinging. Seriously, so much hate. Ah well, I personally prefer The Blackout over Sum 41, but I can understand that a lot of people were disappointed.

Moving on to the actual gig. Sheffield metalcore mob While She Sleeps kicked off proceedings with an amazingly slick set, powering through their tracks non-stop save for occasional instructions from frontman Loz to open up the pit or to engineer a wall of death or two. From experience, music of the While She Sleeps variety has a tendency to sound a bit messy live, but this really was brilliantly polished - great vocals, strong guitars and an immensely powerful rhythm section.

Next up was L.A. progressive post-hardcore crew letlive. who really got the crowd moving with their infectiously catchy, wonderfully raucous music. Once again, frontman Jason Aalon Butler got told off by security for climbing on the speaker stacks, but the highlight was undoubtedly the segue from a Black Flag cover to fan favourite "Muther". As I posted on my Twitter last night: words cannot describe how much I love Muther and it's infinitely more amazing live.

Following letlive.'s set there was something of a mass exodus from the LCR. I am going to put this down to the vast number of people who whinged about The Blackout playing and leave it at that. Personally, I'd rather people left than hung around and complained all the way through The Blackout's set as a group of guys next to me did. Incredibly irritating. But onto the actual set. This was my fourth time seeing The Blackout and they were just as wonderful as always. Launching their set with "I'm A Riot, You're A Fucking Riot", the crowd really got involved - evidently just as many fans as not. They followed this up with an assertion that "we're not Sum 41" and promptly covered said band's Fat Lip. And a pretty good cover at that. They might just have managed to claw back their position as "Zoe's Favourite Live Band", although that's largely because they slagged off all the people heckling them. To which I say, good for them and feel I must share this wonderful image.

Courtesy of deviantartsecret

And so finally we come to the headliners, pop-punkers New Found Glory. All in all a great set, but they're not a band I'm particularly interested in. Also, if anyone cares to comment, I'd really like to know if their vocalist is always quite so nasal. Anyhoos, I can't pick out individual songs (because I don't know them), but the cover of Green Day's Basketcase in their encore was a stroke of genius. Even people who hadn't really shown much interest earlier in NFG's set suddenly took notice and most of the crowd was singing along by the end. Overall a brilliant end to an awesome show.