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.

Band of the Week: Marmozets, Hysterical Injury, & more!

Band of the Week time, my lovelies, so let's kick off with Marmozets. If you've not seen my review of their support set for Young Guns, go do that NOW. Anyhoos, really great young band - female fronted math rock. One sec while I find some sort of stream/video. Ah, the video for Lives, that'll do nicely.


MARMOZETS - LIVES from Sam Macintyre on Vimeo.


Moving on, we now have Hysterical Injury. Indie rock? Indie pop? Their Bandcamp tags say grunge and riot grrrl, which I'm not inclined to entirely agree with, but the tone is certainly there. Here's the album Dead Wolf Situation:


Following on from them, let's have Every Time I Die. Scrumptious metalcore/hardcore-ness. Aaaaand, I don't like any of the streams, so let's dig up a video instead. Wanderlust will do, right? I'd have preferred a good live video of The Marvelous Slut, but apparently it doesn't exist...

Next up, a couple of bands I've just found this evening, courtesy of looking up the support acts for The Broken Seas gig next month (you should check them out as well, by the way). So, here's a little bit of Faster Than Robots:

02 Jubilee by fasterthanrobots Followed by a little something from ...Of Diamonds: Weirdo - MP3 Version by ofdiamonds

 That'll do for this week. Check 'em 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.

Randomness: character playlists

Many aeons ago (otherwise known as the time before my second year at uni), I wrote prose. Lengthy prose that rambled all over the place and didn't really have a plot. It was more a way of tracking the life of the character than telling any proper story. Because, you see, I have a huge number of characters milling around in my head. They live there and now and then they have been known to pass judgement on my every day life. It's very annoying, because I know they're not real, but for some reason this does not stop the snide comments (and occasional concerned comments from friends who seem to think there's something wrong with me). Anyways, given my love of music, it seemed only natural that at least one of this multitude of characters should have an interest in music. And then I wondered what music she'd like. So I strung together a playlist. That said, it probably says more about me than the character, but I can relate each song to something that happens in the character's life. The bad times and the good, all slung together in one little playlist. And because I'm feeling like death warmed up and therefore can't actually focus on the 4000 word report I'm supposed to be writing, I figured I'd share this playlist with the ether. Have fun. There's bits of all sorts, but it's pretty rock heavy. I've included Grooveshark links for the ones I could find there. I suspect some of them are dead links, but there's no harm in trying.

1. Mayday Parade - When I Get Home, You're So Dead
2. My Chemical Romance - Thank You For The Venom
3. Mindless Self Indulgence - Evening Wear
4. McFly - Down Goes Another One
5. Paramore - Misery Business
6. Mindless Self Indulgence - Issues
7. My Chemical Romance - I Never Told You What I Do For A Living
8. Hey Monday - 6 Months
9. My Chemical Romance - I'm Not Okay (I Promise)
10. Papa Roach - Hollywood Whore
11. AFI - Darling, I Want To Destroy You
12. The Blackout - ShutTheFuckUppercut
13. In This Moment - Daddy's Falling Angel
14. Lostprophets - Rooftops (A Liberation Broadcast)
15. The Academy Is... - Crowded Room
16. Cage The Elephant - In One Ear

For the most part, it's painfully clear to me that most of the choices were made in my first year at university. The songs meant more to me then, but even now I can listen to these tracks and know exactly what point in the character's life they're related to. And there's a clear enough chronology to them - tracks 1 through 8 represent a totally distinct period of life, track 9 is a transition and tracks 10-16 are more representative of her current state (in my head, at least). It's interesting to listen and remember all the shit I put the character through in the name of "character development". Rather misguided, I think, but it did make for an interesting personality. Anyways, enough babbling, because the nausea from this afternoon has just decided to pop in and say hello again.

Band of the Week: Cancer Bats

I picked Cancer Bats this week largely because I've got Hail Destroyer permanently stuck in my head at the minute. It's an awesome song. Unfortunately it's also one of the few songs I actually know by Cancer Bats. Since I tend to think you can't really love a band if you only know one or two songs, I feel the need to justify why I love Cancer Bats so much. Hmmm...
Reason 1: it's simply amazing music. Kinda, hardcore, punky, metal influenced amazingness. Hail Destroyer is perfect for letting loose at the world for a few minutes. Or an hour or so if you stick it on repeat... which I totally didn't do just to wind my housemate up...

Reason 2: They're even more amazing live. They were main support when I saw Billy Talent last year and it was so totally epic. I wasn't really expecting to like them, given that I'd only just started listening to more post-hardcore, metal and stuff. I checked them out before hand and wasn't over-keen. But dear god, so awesome live. OK, so I couldn't understand a word Liam Cormier was singing/yelling, but the pure energy of the performance was easily enough to make up for that. Plus, I swear he was totally wasted. Drunk Canadian = hilarity. He kept telling the crowd "We're the motherfucking Cancer Bats", doing another song and then saying it again, like he'd forgotten. I was in half a mind to shout back, "yeah, we know, you already told us about 5 times." Amazing gig.

Reason 3: ... I don't think I have a reason 3. Oh, they covered Beastie Boys' Sabotage, that's  pretty good reason. Great cover, plus the video's pretty cool. By cool read: silly.

I give up on finding reasons. Cancer Bats are simply amazing. Seriously, check 'em out and if you ever get the chance to see 'em live, TAKE IT. Think that's all. Check 'em out, tell me what you think and pass it on.ba