Top 50 of 2013: No.47: Red City Radio - Titles (Paper + Plastik)

If doing this blog has done one thing it’s made me listen to more bands than ever before, and I was already listening to a lot, and the great thing about that is occasionally you come across some absolute gems. Red City Radio’s new album ‘Titles’ is one such gem, as soon as the chorus to opener ‘Two Notes Shy of an Octave’ hits, you know you’re on to a good thing, gruff barking vocals that would give Chuck Ragan a run for his money, however Red City Radio are no mere Hot Water copyists like so many bands seem to be trying to be these days, first off they actually have amazing songs which is what the copyists always lack, along with melodic sections and a whole heap of fun and energy. Every song on this album is crammed with either huge sing-along melodies or chant along anthems, it’s so rare to hear a new band where you love every song on the album, but Red City Radio have managed it, stand-out track ‘Don’t Be A Hero, Find a Friend’ shows everything that makes this band a crucial listen. I’ve also just found out their playing Santiago’s in Leeds on 16th May with Texan’s Perdition, get yourself down!!!!!

8.5/10

Buy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Titles-Red-City-Radio/dp/B00H7GZJME/ref=sr_1_4?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1392894187&sr=1-4&keywords=red+city+radio

Top 50 of 2013: No.48: Satyricon - Satyricon (Roadrunner)

Kicking off with a hypnotic riff that could charm a snake Satyricon’s 8th album instantly worms its way through you and makes the 5 year wait worth every minute, as usual the Norwegian black metal band have polarised opinion which they have done throughout their career, because horror of horrors they dare stray from the original blueprint that they themselves were as much a part of creating. So if you are expecting them to return to a sound they pioneered 20 years ago, you’re shit out of luck, if you're expecting one of the best black metal crossover bands to evolve yet still produce excellent metal then this is the album for you. Satyricon have been producing excellent albums since 1994 and this latest is no exception, while not as brutally heavy as my favourite album ‘Now, Diabolical’ the song structures as usual are simple yet effective. While in my opinion having clean vocals courtesy of Sivert Høyem on the melodic ‘Phoenix’ doesn’t do much for the album, I do agree with them at least trying something different and it’s not so much an awful song, it just doesn’t really fit, album highlight is ‘The Infinity of Time and Space’ which is an epic masterpiece in itself. Let’s hope the next one doesn’t take quite as long.

8/10

Buy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Satyricon-Limited-Digipack-Version/dp/B00E0W8ROU/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1392832687&sr=1-1&keywords=satyricon

Top 50 of 2013: No.49: Middleman - Counterstep (Self-Release)

It’s always nice when I get sent a link to an album I’ve wanted to check out anyway, even better when that album is good enough to make me re-evaluate my top 50 of the year to sneak them in. Middleman are another local band I was lucky enough to see at last years and by the looks of things final Crooked Ways festival, if you remember I said I wanted to hear more from them back then, took half a year but due to them being nice chaps and sending me a link to the album I finally got there. Kicking off with the massive sing-along of ‘Helpless’ you can’t help being impressed, especially when I can say I was singing the chorus to myself days later after one listen, Middleman take all the good elements of bands like Enter Shikari, Hadouken!, and to an extent The Music, and create something of their own with bigger hooks than Abu Hamza. Hearing a song like ‘When I Close My Eyes’ it sounds so familiar that you’d swear you’ve heard it countless times, which is impossible because I don’t listen to the radio ever, this feeling is prevalent throughout this album, and whether you like the more urban aspects of the band or prefer the huge choruses, or the crunching heavy guitars, or just like to buzz your tits off to the dance beats, this album has something for everyone. From a band that released their first single 7 years ago, it seems that their time is finally due, and if they don’t move on to bigger and better things there really is no justice. Awesome artwork also.

8/10

Buy here: http://www.middlemanband.co.uk/Welcome%21/ALBUM.html

Do The Beast...

Top 50 of 2013: No.50: Meat Puppets - Rat Farm (Megaforce)

I have to be honest, I’ve not really enjoyed a Meat Puppets album since 94’s ‘Too High To Die’, granted I haven’t really sat down and listened to the 5 albums between that one and this in great detail but none of them really got me hooked and I quickly gave up on enjoying them, so it’s with some trepidation that I put this album on and waited for the first song ‘Rat Farm’ to start playing, then I became quite surprised, this is actually really good, a great catchy opener of a song that had me waiting for the next eagerly. Is this actually the new Meat Puppets album I started to wonder because it’s got all the hallmarks of old Meat Puppets but without the OTT experimentation, I mean I do love a band to experiment with their sound but the Kirkwood’s seem to almost have been doing it just for effect and not to accentuate the song itself.

Buy here:
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Rat-Farm-Meat-Puppets/dp/B00BDSRH72/ref=sr_1_3?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1391170606&sr=1-3&keywords=meat+puppets

CryBabyCry Leeds Oporto 28/01/2014 and EP Review

More bands need to be following in CryBabyCry’s footsteps, not having a cd launch, that’s been done a million times, but rarely do you get the cd as part of your ticket price, and if you paid on the door for an extra pound you got a free hotdog courtesy of one of Leeds nicest little venues the Oporto bar. Previously I reviewed CBC’s performance at Pontefract’s Crooked Ways back in June and if you read that you’ll remember that they were pretty much the best band of the day, so to say I was looking forward to seeing them again is an understatement. It says something about the quality of a band when I can recognise not one but a number of songs over 6 months later, as far as I know they’ve been playing for around a year now, and for a band to have songs of this quality and to be this tight live already is almost unheard of. Co-frontperson (politically correct as I’ll ever get) Jonnythefirth is a man of many talents, for proof of this just checkout his solo work or his other band ‘Knuckle’ who have already been getting good feedback, in CBC whether playing guitar or bass his abilities are never short of amazing. All this would be good enough for a decent band, but when you add Rosie Doonan’s sultry blues infused vocals, you go from decent to outstanding, the chemistry on stage would give Heisenberg’s blue meth a run for its money.

Highlights as before one of my favourite tunes already ‘Tombstone’, a storming rendition of ‘The Tramp’ and a song I’ll call ‘Jukebox’ because I’m not sure of the actual title, but the review doesn’t stop there, because once i got home I got to listen the debut EP. Opening song ‘Go Go’ is a brilliant call and response between Jonny and Rosie with a chorus most bands would kill for, but it’s the second track which really sends chills down the spine, as mentioned above, ‘The Tramp’ is a journey through blues and soul where Rosie’s vocals swirl throughout the song making it almost mesmerising, and closer ‘Lovely Bones’ is a country-gospel infused trip through melody, while it’s not the best of the 3 tunes of offer it would have fit in perfectly on the ‘O Brother Where Art Thou’ soundtrack. For a debut EP it has no right to be this impressive, and for one of Yorkshire’s best new bands I can only see the future being bigger and brighter, unfortunately I can’t give you a link to buy it as it was only for sale as part of the show (which just makes the whole thing so much more special), so I’ll just put their facebook page.

9/10 for both

https://www.facebook.com/CryBabyCryBand

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