CD

I don’t think Deep Purple realized what influence they would have on the music business, nor did they have any clue that the band would still exist some 40 years later.  In order to celebrate the anniversary of the release of the ‘Machine Head’ album, Eagle Record sort of re-releases the album, but the songs were covered by various famous and – in our countries that is – less famous artists.

Having reviewed their latest studio album ‘Razorback Killers’, and rewarding that album with a good score,  I was curious how this live album would sound like.

My first remark is that new singer Brian Allen acquits himself very well of the job but is sometimes struggling with the really high notes in the older songs from the Carl Albert era.  I have no comments to make about the other musicians, it sounds very good.

The Sword is an American heavy metal band from Austin, Texs. Formed in 2003, the band is composed of vocalist and guitarist John D. Cronise, guitarist Kyle Shutt, bassist Bryan Richie, and drummer Santiago "Jimmy" Vela III. Originally signed to New York-based independent label Kernado Records, the group released its debut album Ages Of Winters, which was largely written by Cronise before the band's formation, in 2006.

Almost a decade before one Steve Harris would start up what was to become one of the more successful Heavy Metal bands still around (somewhere in 1966 to be more precise, bassist Barry Skeels, singer Steve Drewett and guitarist Chris Rose (whom had that far been active in an acoustic band) witnessed a performance of Cream at their school hall in Basildon (Southern border of Sussex, some 50 km East from the center of London)!

Mammoth is a band hailing from Australia, and with this album they just released their third album on the world.  It’s the first album I ever lay my hands on though.

I was fortunate enough to see Hidira Spacefolk at the latest Burg Herzberg fest in Germany. So with great anticipation I waited for their newest full-length Astronautica. 

Down, who still play their typical mix of sludge metal and classic rock, prefer to take their time. The band started already back in 1991, but The Purple is only their fourth album to date. The difficulty in judging this album is that I started to like it after quite some effort to dig and try to find interesting elements In the beginning it sounded rather typical and my initial impression was that few things were going on.

As soon as the package labelled Corsair arrived in my mail, I knew I was in for a treat and I was right! I've been a big fan of this band and have been following them since their first Ep.  So far this band has been delivering 2 excellent EPs, and this one is no different. The third offering is one of those rare but welcome CDs that grabs you from the very first track and holds you enraptured through the entire recording.

This Metal band from Sydney, Australia (“Metal” is really the word used in the opening lines of the info sheet we got with the download promo copy of the album) was started some 6 years ago, went through some line-up changes (current membership comprises lead singer Sam Rilatt, guitarist/ second singer Ben Irwin, guitarist Dan O'Brien, bassist Kiel Stranger, and drummer Reece Kirby).