UPDATE: TMMP has been reborn! This video has the full story:
Click here to subscribe for free on YouTube!
As one of the UK rock scene’s most hotly-hyped bands of right now, Black Peaks are a band you’ve probably at least heard of, and definitely need to hear. Talked up with huge enthusiasm by Jamie Lenman during a recent TMMP interview, behind the praise and acclaim Black Peaks are more than a mere “hype band”. On record and onstage, Black Peaks have Read more…
Planning a quiet night in this Saturday? Considering lighting some scented candles, taking a bubble bath, and listening to some light jazz?
The hell you are!
If you’re a serious UK rock fan, you’re doing one of two things this weekend. You’re either heading to Southampton for Takedown Festival and getting sweaty in the pit for an immense lineup of epic bands, or Read more…
This show may have been a hard sell for a Sunday, but a sizeable portion of local music fans still made it down to the Boileroom for this show. Earlycomers were treated to Tusks (aka Emily Underhill), a recent discovery who is fast becoming Read more…
Although I enjoyed Red House Glory‘s Foo Fighters-esque radio-friendly rock songs and decent vocal harmonies, and Bridges deserve recognition for their frontman’s emotive vocals and their unorthodox harmony guitars, I have a few things to get off my chest not only about Cavalier, but bands who come from a music-school background in general.
First off, I should say that I come from that background too – I did four years at ACM, and although when I put it that way it sounds like a prison sentence, it really Read more…
Nine Inch Nails. Tesseract. You Me At Six. Strange stylistic bedfellows maybe, but Grumble Bee (aka ex-PaperPlane man Jack Bennett) has succeeded in welding them all together and creating something you absolutely have to hear immediately.
Two of my favourite TMMP genre categories are “Genre Terrorism” and “Complete Batshit Insanity” – and few acts fit those labels quite as snugly as Read more…
As a music venue embedded into Stamford Bridge (the stadium called home by Chelsea F.C.), Under the Bridge was an appropriately unique venue for this unique show. An industry showcase set up by trade paper Music Week, networking hub MusicConnex, promoters ILUVLIVE, and south coast music school BIMM, it goes without saying that the high-profile nature of this show inevitably brought its own special set of performance pressures. A quality showcase set has the potential to push an act to the next level, while a duff performance can see a band crossed off “Ones To Watch” lists in the blink of an eye.
On top of the potential for mind-freezing attacks of performance anxiety, this was not Read more…
Tuesday was a good day until I got to this show and realised it had started earlier than predicted, and I’d missed not only openers Sutek, but also one of my favourite new bands of math-metal maniacs, Let’s Talk Daggers. Sad face indeed. Still, Swim Good soothed my cravings for complex tunes with a loose but still awesome set. These guys can do no wrong, even when beset by technical issues. They really are that goddamn good. Happy face: restored for the rest of the night.
Yearbook (think a pop-punk Reuben augmented by the occasional bit of fancy guitar work) never fail to Read more…
Although The Tens do possess plenty of heart, balls, and swagger, they’re currently still at the stage where their instruments own them, rather than the other way around. With more practice (as in “Spending more time beating the living crap out of their instruments” rather than “Studiously woodshedding a path to NoSoulVille”), the Tens will eventually become serious hard-rocking badasses. For now, though, they still need more time to develop.
Kagoule started off sounding like Placebo’s musical test-tube baby (a really cool move) before Read more…
In today’s world of shuffled playlists and single-track cherry picking, there still remain artists firmly committed to the album as valid self-expression format. The progressive rock world is home to a good many of those individuals – and within that world, Steven Wilson’s name carries a lot of weight.
Given Wilson’s status as a prog-rock luminary and the calibre of his backing band (Guthrie Govan on guitar; Nick Beggs on bass; Adam Holzman on keys; Marco Minnemann on drums; and Theo Travis on sax and flute), it goes without saying that Read more…
The Kut have really won me over with their fresh and epic blend of assorted alt-rock stylings. When they hit their creative and original stride, the Kut look set to do some serious damage to any stuck-in-the-mud traditionalist’s sanity; but on this EP, the harsh truth is that Read more…