Dropped right before Christmas last year, Rose Coloured’s Doorstep Volume 2 compilation doubtless made great stocking filler for a number of Surrey and Hampshire’s resident music fans. It also offers plenty of great reasons to get excited about the Guildford- and Aldershot-centred music scenes in 2015. Read more…
The “death of the album” has been declared many times in recent years – but nonetheless, musicians keep making them and are showing no signs of stopping (and thank God for that!). Almost a decade and a half into the twenty-first century, there still exist bands and artists capable of composing immersive, engaging, and fully satisfying collections of songs that stand up to repeated, unshuffled listens. Here are fifteen of them. Read more…
I have a very strong emotional attachment to many of the releases listed below. Choosing this list was exceptionally tough; I’ve been fortunate to discover some incredible bands and artists over the past year, and it’s safe to say that outside this list lie a great many immense tunes that can be found via a quick browse through TMMP’s archives when you’re done with this lot. However, the following choices are the cream of the crop. Read more…
With very few exceptions, Christmas music is terrible. Fortunately, the Boileroom team have good taste in tunes – and so this show was the perfect antidote to the overwrought saccharine pap that’s been unavoidable for the past few months. Read more…
In the weeks leading up to Christmas, the metal side of the music business shuts down. Fans of heavy music across the world use the festive season to hibernate, nurse their bangovers, get drunk, and sharpen their skills on FIFA while the pop side of the music world excretes yet another warbling X Factor karaoke puppet and shoppers get smothered under a tidal wave of Now That’s What I Call Christmas! CDs. All goes quiet on the metal front until the new year hits.
Beyond the fuzzy opening grind of They Should Have Warned Us Years Ago, For Astronauts And Satellites’ new mini-opus drops straight into the Yellow-Magic-Orchestra-go-post-rock sublimity of title track A Homing Light. Read more…
As far as day jobs go, being a tattoo artist, videographer, or lifeguard can’t be too bad. Still, I, The Lion seem set on giving said occupational titles up in favour of rock stardom – and on this evidence, they’re definitely on the right track. Read more…
Discovering new music often feels like dating: first impressions are usually okay, but you just know there’s something off-putting beneath the surface. Then, when you do find whatever-it-is, you can’t run for the hills fast enough and wind up looking back and wondering what the fuck you were thinking. Read more…
If your plans for the night of February 2nd 2015 involve chugging absinthe, spinning round in circles until you fall over or puke or both, repeating the above until you pass out, and then waking up and putting on your coat and going to work, this album is the soundtrack you need. Read more…
As far from happy-go-lucky cheerfulness as it’s possible to get, Die Trying is a fat slab of throat-rending catharsis – and a clear indicator that Hawk Eyes’ 2015 album Everything Is Fine is going to be fucking immense. Read more…