Some bands spend their entire careers stuck in the shadows of others. Female-fronted rock bands are constantly compared to Paramore; prog-metal acts are weighed up against Dream Theater and Periphery; and political rock bands get pinned with the “RATM Clone” tag as soon as they hit a proper groove.
Third-group members Djevara have done more than most to Read more…
2014 has been a good year for awesome album launches at the Boileroom. This time around, opening act Rival Empires lived up to expectations by delivering a strong set backed up with energetic stage presence and buckets of passion. Current TMMP favourite If I Was A Whale (prefaced by a short grammatical debate as kicked off here) sounds epic live, overshadowing the inevitable Paramore comparisons with nostalgic reminders of how good Lostprophets were before Ian Watkins started touching kids. It’s all about the clean sections in that tune, while elsewhere we got unexpectedly brutal riffs and shades of the Foo Fighters and Incubus. Add to that some solid musicianship and a guitarist capable of throwing up the devil horns mid-riff without missing a subdivision, and you have a brilliant up and coming British band. Read more…
Pure punk-metal grit, guts, and glory. Stick-in-the-head songcraft; one-inch-punch drums; confident and melodic guitar work; sick beatdowns – all that and more is present on opening track and lead single Follow Me alone. Personal highlights abounded on Last One Standing, but it you were to stick a gun in my ear and force three choices I’d have to pick Tell Me Something‘s epic drum work; second single I’m Not Leaving‘s slick and slinky electronic touches; and Living In A Hurricane‘s modern rock chorus-writing mastery. Read more…
When a Saturday night bill is only two bands long, that’s a lot of pressure for the musicians involved. Many acts would crumble like month-old birthday cake at the thought of it. These guys were more than up for the challenge: Read more…
And we’re back! After major heart surgery, a round of Type-A flu, acute appendicitis, and many other less-than-fun experiences, The Musical Melting Pot is finally back online and ready to bring you even more epic new music.
Needless to say, the past several weeks have been brutal, difficult, and not a little dark – but there were moments of positivity and clarity scattered about as well. One such moment was the release of this EP – a Facebook news feed discovery that yielded many hours of blissful escape from windowless quarantine rooms and slowly healing surgical wounds. I owe a debt of gratitude to RedTower simply for existing; some intangible quality separated Afterall from its peers in terms of sheer immersive potential, providing many much-needed periods of relief. As TMMP’s archives demonstrate, my musical tastes are nothing if not eclectic; therefore, that this EP consistently topped the entire contents of my iCloud library and Spotify’s bottomless catalogue for seven full days is testament to the existence of some potentially imperceptible x-factor.
But what might it be? Read more…