New Leeds Venue: Belgrave Music Hall

Anyone in Leeds on Friday/Saturday should be dragging their arses to this place, free entry, and some top bands

This may also be one of the last Wet Nuns gigs if they are to be believed (they are known liars) and Black Moth will be taking a break to work on their second album

Top 50 of 2012: No.1: Zico Chain - The Devil In Your Heart (Suburban)

So how exactly does a band make it to the top spot on this list? In Zico Chain’s case you just have to release literally the best rock album of the entire year. As a band they’ve been going since around 2004, they released a brilliant debut mini-album and followed this up with at the time a really good album (everything they’ve released prior to this is now considered a warm up) and 2010’s ‘These Birds Will Kill Us All’ EP hinted at a bigger more aggressive sound, what a hint it turned out to be.

So on The Devil In Your Heart, you get everything Zico Chain have worked at so far, Amplified! The choruses which have always been catchy as hell are now stadium sized big, the aggression sounds like someone with roid-rage in full effect, all mix together to create some of the best songs of any bands career. Kicking off with ‘Evasion’ which is truly a statement of intent, showing that the 5 year wait since the ‘Food’ album had been worth it. How they are not huge already since releasing this album I have no idea, when Slash, Duff McKagan and Steve Harris are endorsing your band, more people should be taking notice.

There’s pretty much something for everyone on here and not a single song doesn’t imprint itself into your brain by the end, special mention goes to the adrenaline fuelled ‘Our Evil’ and the heart-breaking ‘Case #44PQ_110807’ inspired literally by the case of Sophie Lancaster, which I urge people to be aware of at http://www.sophielancasterfoundation.com/. The Devil In Your Heart is not only the best british rock album for quite some time, it’s also the sound of band coming into themselves and realising their own limitless potential, the only problem with this album is how the hell they’re going to follow it up.

10/10

Buy here: http://zicochain.net/pre-order/

Top 50 of 2012: No.2: Ginger Wildheart - 555% (Pledge)

I don’t think I need to go into how big a Wildhearts fan I am, previous posts attest to this enough, so when I heard Ginger was doing a pledge campaign for a triple album, it was a no brainer, signed triple cd please! Now the only issue with pledge campaigns is that you pay your money for the artist to use to record their album, and this takes quite a bit of time as can be expected, plus then there’s the pressing and waiting, and it all pushes you to the brink of exasperation, so yes pledge campaigns are awesome, but also frustrating, luckily in cases like this, they’re well worth waiting for.

Now a 30 track album is indeed an endurance test for any artists fans, but Ginger being the genius that he is has managed to pull it off with aplomb, in fact other than a slight dip in quality around 20 odd songs in, there’s not a dud track on here, and the dip is more just my dislike of instrumental tracks and ‘Very, Very Slow’ just seemed a bit of a filler and that’s literally the only criticism you can levy at this beast of an album.

Stand-out tracks, too many to mention really, but even the missus sings along to ‘Another Spinning Fucking Rainbow’ and ‘Taste Aversion’ has to have the most disgustingly funny chorus ever written. I seriously doubt whether anyone ever could do another triple album of this quality, and I once again find myself humbled by the talent that is Ginger Wildheart.

9.5/10

Buy here: http://gingerwildheart.bandcamp.com/album/555-triple-album-30-songs-2012 (no longer available on physical format)

Top 50 of 2012: No.3: Hot Water Music - Exister (Rise)

10 years ago, Hot Water Music released ‘Caution’ an album pretty much perfect, twelve tracks of punkrock greatness with huge melodies and heaps of energy, 2 years later they followed it up with ‘The New What Next’ it was not good, things did not get better, they then split. Now after such a long gap they return with ‘Exister’ so is it any good? Well of course it is, it’s the No.3 album of the entire year!! Now this is what they should have followed Caution with, this is 13 tracks of high energy punkrock with the walls of melody and the catchy as fuck tunes that we all knew Hot Water Music were capable of making again.

Lead single ‘Drag My Body’ is a beast of a track, only outdone by closer ‘Paid In Full’ which is the best way to end any album ever, the album is chock full of short sharp bursts of energy and with 13 tracks in under 34 minutes, none of them outstay their welcome, the choice between this album and the two above it was almost impossible to choose, all 3 really deserve the top spot.

9.5/10

Buy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Exister-Hot-Water-Music/dp/B007J5PABI/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1380284724&sr=1-1&keywords=hot+water+music

Top 50 of 2012: No.4: While She Sleeps - This is The Six (Search and Destroy)

Sometimes a band shows promise, and you feel that they might become better in future, but even rarer this happens and instead of becoming merely better, the band take things stratospheric, and surpass all expectations, welcome to the new album from While She Sleeps. Previous album(ish) The North Stands For Nothing had some cracking metal songs and its title track had a certain catchiness to it, This Is The Six, melds so many styles and influences together while still keeping a core metal sound but with some of the hugest choruses, and most inventive arrangements heard within the genre. I was watching Download 2012 on the tv the other day and was sad to see so many of the best bands being so old (no offence), and the younger ones were fucking awful, Black Veil Brides (offence), While She Sleeps are up there with Bring Me The Horizon as the future of metal.

While most people I know might balk at listening to a band as heavy as this, I believe they’d still have to agree that songs such as ‘Seven Hills’ have huge crossover appeal. Hopefully with bands like this getting more and more radio play these days, they can go onto bigger and better things, and if you want to keep metal alive, standby up and comers like this.

9.5/10

Buy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/This-Six-While-She-Sleeps/dp/B0083YTBJQ/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1380284756&sr=1-1&keywords=while+she+sleeps

Top 50 of 2012: No.5: Hey! Hello! - Hey! Hello! (Pledge)

Technically this album is pulling double duty, it’s included in last year’s Top 50 and it’s just been officially released, so to those who already follow Ginger Wildheart pledge campaigns we’ve had a good 8 months of already enjoying the hopefully first of many Hey! Hello! albums. However now is exactly the right time to give this album a proper release, why? because this is the most perfect summer album you are ever likely to hear, soaked in pop melodies with enough rock to keep fans of Gingers other work happy. This was supposed to be a bonus album that even Ginger himself didn’t expect to become the monster it has, it’s actually the most refreshingly fun album he’s released in years. If Gingers gift for songwriting and choruses that fill your head for days wasn’t enough you also get the lovely Victoria Liedtke’s duet vocals that make these really good songs great.

Kicking off with lead single ‘Black Valentine’ an ode to all the non-romantics out there, with some of the funniest lyrics Gingers has ever come out with, or the insanely catchy ‘Swimwear’ which takes less than a full listen for various parts of the song to become firmly lodged in your brain, like swimwear (sic). The best advice any band can ever be given is contained in the lyrics to ‘How I Survived The Punk Wars’ and if you’re in a band or even thinking about starting one, you need to listen to this first. After multiple listens the main thing you can say about this album is that’s it’s as damn near perfect as a pop rock album can get, there are no lulls, every single song comes complete with killer choruses, witty lyrics, and more energy than my one year old on a rampage.

Considering this started as a bit of fun, the beast that it became is nothing short of amazing, this weekend all I want to do is crack open a few beers sit in the sun and shove the album on repeat, and it’s almost as if that’s what it was created for. So maybe it was never intended to be what it is, but here’s hoping there’s more to come, and when you put it on and open a beer, have a drink to Hey! Hello! and them taking the world by storm, it’s more than deserved. Special credit also goes to the amazing Frank Kozik artwork, which ties off the release nicely, albums like this make writing reviews and this blog worth doing. So don’t delay and get this album right now and help it keep climbing the charts.

9.5/10

Buy here: http://heyhellomusic.bandcamp.com/

Top 50 of 2012: No.6: Deftones - Koi no Yokan (Reprise)

The Deftones have always been a band with something a bit special, they stood out from the nu-metal pack and pretty much stuck to doing their own thing, and while that genre of music may have catapulted them to bigger things, they’ve always been more than that. Unfortunately lately they seemed to have almost lost their way a little, and while in the past, excitement of a new release was always high, lately it’s become more along the lines of, yeah I’ll get round to listening to it when I have chance, Koi No Yokan makes you excited to listen to the Deftones again, it is literally the most beautiful metal album I’ve ever heard. Chino’s vocals soar like I’ve never heard him before while still occasionally taking it down to the violent screams that he’s famed for, Music wise the riffs are still massive and more inventive than ever, and even bass bringing tracks like ‘Poltergeist’ to a whole new level. So Koi No Yokan it may literally translate to ‘Premonition of Love’ but for me it translates to it being exciting to be a Deftones fan again.

9.5/10

Buy here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Koi-No-Yokan-Deftones/dp/B009ERK1T0/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1380284858&sr=1-1&keywords=deftones