Dragons That Make Love To Pandas – ‘Roundabouts EP’ [Review]
Their name might evoke images of seedy backstreet Chinatown massage parlours, but Dragons That Make Love To Pandas offer much more than just happy endings. Every moment on Roundabouts is masterfully tuned to elicit maximum pleasure of a different sort – the kind of excitement that comes from having one’s auditory cortex stimulated by a unique combination of stylistic elements. DTMLTP drop ska, math, guitar-pop and more into the musical equivalent of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider, and what emerges is appropriately awe-inspiring. Read more…
Last night was a reset-hitting moment for a venue whose continued survival was confirmed just over 24 hours previously. Vintage swing music played in the background while earlycomers gathered around a table laden with instruments, effect boxes, microphones, an iPad, and even fairy lights to await the arrival of first act, A R T E L S. 
Metal’s been around for a long time now – but it never ceases to amaze me how many musicians are still finding ways to breathe new life into a genre so frequently mocked for its backward-looking retromania.
This show was special. 
Good things come to those who wait. At least, they do if you’re a music fan; for musicians, good things only come to those who put in endless hours, days, weeks, months, and years of gruelling and brutal hard work. Bearing this in mind, Crooked Trees‘ emergence from the often precipitous world of Kickstarter crowdfunding is a very good thing indeed. 
The Boileroom team sure know how to throw the quietest (or at least best-soundproofed) album launch parties in town. 
One thing’s for sure: Surrey-based indie label Failure By Design have great taste. For evidence, just give this split EP a metaphorical spin. 
Haunted guitars, rhythms on the edge of giving up the ghost, and lyrical themes of abandonment and loss permeate the latest offering from TMMP favourites Chronographs. The Tallest Peak is yet another track in an increasingly long line of speedily yet masterfully written songs that demands your full attention before rewarding your patience with a rare level of generosity. I’m really looking forward to seeing Chronographs’ hard work paying off in spades within the not too distant future. 
As someone who’s already 
Irish prog-metallers Ilenkus sure know how to stir things up. The moment opening track Devourer kicks in, we’re chucked into a merciless rhythmic maelstrom and dragged through tangential twists and turns punctuated with screams that might echo our own, were we allowed to pause for breath. Relentlessly intense, skin-rendingly cathartic, and hectic as fuck – and that’s just the first track.