/Into the Pit /211 /Katatonia & Sólstafir
Remarkably, I believe that this was my last rescheduled gig in the aftermath of lockdowns and shutdowns, after a few years of next-to-no gigs, followed by a 2022 that seemed […]
I’ve been writing live reviews as far back as I’ve been writing about music – indeed my very first was covering downset. for ROAR (the King’s College London Student Newspaper) back in Autumn 1996.
The live reviews here go back to about 2003, and while most were first posted here, some others appeared in the (short-lived) Alternative Magazine, others on Black Harvest, Connexion Bizarre and even once on the BBC website. This archive is every live review I’ve written between 2003 and the present day.
The title of this section comes from a track on Testament’s album The New Order.
Remarkably, I believe that this was my last rescheduled gig in the aftermath of lockdowns and shutdowns, after a few years of next-to-no gigs, followed by a 2022 that seemed […]
My gigging in 2020 has perhaps started slower than usual – I didn’t see a single show in January – but this might be down to the fact that by […]
The seemingly inexhaustible jukebox that is my brain has a regular supply of new music added to it, by account of my voracious appetite for new songs and new artists […]
We are very much in the time of new bands, new styles, and a distinct dearth of live venues in London. This has resulted in a few things: gigs that […]
A word of warning: in the future, if you see that I’m attending a show in June next year, just know that for the past three or four years now, […]
I’ve long felt Katatonia to belong to the lineage of underappreciated bands in metal. They are a band that have been around for a remarkably long time – they initially […]
Two Fridays on the trot out at small gigs in London, away from the centre. In recent years, particularly as rampant development has swept away much of the Alternative landscape […]
I’ve been meaning to write about a few of the gigs I’ve attended this year, but various things – not least my working day and other commitments – have rather […]
It is easy to forget, sometimes, that what we call “our scene” in the industrial world is not one homogenous entity. While bands that reach wider popularity will naturally appear […]
I have been following Amanda Palmer – and her original band The Dresden Dolls – for a great deal longer than I thought. I remember stumbling across the latter band […]
The longer that I’ve written about music – it has now ticked past twenty-one years, some way more than half my life – the more difficult it seems to be […]
I looked at the concept of my musical Bucket List in Tuesday Ten: 178 in 2013, and of those artists, there is pretty much only Radiohead within the list that […]
The past few weeks have, in one of those odd quirks of scheduling, seen three of the big names in industrial and goth music all come through London in a […]
Since Front Line Assembly returned to the live arena a bit over a decade ago – and indeed their first UK show in ten years when they played Infest 2006 […]
For many, gigs in the heat of summer evenings are a tough sell, particularly in small venues (outdoor, festival shows of course are a different matter entirely). However, the summer […]
The announcement of a European Skinny Puppy tour earlier in the year (“Down the Sociopath Too Euro 2017“) was, I have to say, a bit of a surprise. It has […]
One of the must-see shows in the calendar for the past few months finally arrived over the weekend.
I rather wondered, after the first time I saw Sunn O))) live, whether I could physically stand going a second time. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy it, it was […]
For the third year running – although it was a bit touch-and-go this year with the wedding and everything else, and my wife chose not to come along this time […]
Over the weekend of this year’s Infest, there was some discussion over the current state of the industrial (and wider) scene. In many other scenes – or indeed in “mainstream” […]