Last night Metallica premiered a brand new track live in Colombia. The song is titled 'The Lords of Summer' and some amateur footage has unsurprisingly found it's way online. Check it out:
The song seems to be very much in vein of stuff from 'Death Magnetic' ('Tallica's last album, 2008) in the sense that it sounds like good old fashioned thrash. It even has a guitar solo, so no need to worry about the four horsemen returning to the 'St. Anger' sound any time soon, as if they ever would!
The opening riff was my personal highlight of the song, sounding very thrash and reminiscent of the band's classic 80's material, particularly the '..And Justice for All' era.
However, it's worth bearing in mind that whenever Metallica have premiered songs far ahead of an album's release in the past, the final product has often ended up sounding very different. Still, things are looking very positive so far and I'm eager to hear more!
Last night I had the pleasure of seeing New Wave of British Heavy Metal legends Saxon live for the first time at 53 Degrees in Preston, UK.
The warm-up band were Stormzone from Ireland who took to the stage at 8pm and played for about 40 minutes. I hadn't heard of Stormzone before they were announced to be the opening act for Saxon, but I was highly impressed. Their charismatic singer, John Harbinson, provided brilliant vocals and the dueling solos of guitarists Dave Shields and Steve Moore were formidable to say the least. I had only listened to one Stormzone song before going to the gig ('Three Kings', as seen below) but I would certainly check them out again!
During the 20 minute interlude between bands, I moved away from the bar into the main standing area to prepare for Saxon. They came on stage at around 9pm and played for two hours, opening with 'Sacrifice', the title track from their latest album.
Despite the fact that some members, including front-man Biff Byford, are now in their early 60s, Saxon made it clear last night that they are still a heavy metal force to be reckoned with and can blow any modern metal bands right out of the water! The band played a good mix of both classic and newer material with a huge amount of energy that was clearly rubbing off onto the crowd, who sang along throughout the show.
After ending their main set with their signature anthem 'Wheels of Steel', Saxon returned to the stage to play a three song encore consisting of 'Crusader', 'Denim and Leather' and 'Princess of the Night'.
Overall, last night was a stunning gig with both bands putting in tremendous performances. If you get a chance to see either band any time soon, don't pass it up!
Edit: 13/06/19 -
Thanks for reading this article, especially if you're visiting in 2019! This was actually the first gig I had ever been to back when I was 15, so its fun looking back at it now, although it is slightly bitter-sweet considering that 53 Degrees is now closed indefinitely.
I have just launched a new music blog, covering all the latest developments in rock and metal, including weekly UK chart updates as well as festival and awards coverage. The blog is called Sound Mouth and you can check it out here. I also plan to launch an accompanying podcast in the near future, so look forward to that. Thanks again for reading!
Rumors have been circulating on the net for a while, but in an interview published yesterday on the Classic Rock magazine website, bassist Gene Simmons confirmed that KISS will be embarking on a tour of the UK in 2014!
In the interview, the Kiss co-founder likened the UK to Middle-Earth, saying it is "like the Hobbit world, a magical kingdom". Fair enough.
This will be Kiss' first UK tour since 2009's Sonic Boom Over Europe Tour and I for one am hugely excited as this will be my first chance to see Kiss in concert (I only just became a fan this year)!
Despite being mega-superstars in the US during the 70s, Kiss didn't achieve much success in the UK until the 80s, particularly during the 'no-make up' era, during which they had three top 10 albums (Lick It Up, Crazy Nights and Revenge reached numbers 7, 4 and 10 respectively) and the single 'Crazy Crazy Nights' reached number 4 in the UK single chart in 1987.
Aside from the news of the tour, the interview is still pretty interesting so give it a look if you're into Kiss.
If you are a fan of Golden-Age hip-hop, you may have heard Run-D.M.C. and the Beastie Boy's 1987 'Together Forever Tour'. I had seen several interviews with the two groups in which they mention the tour but I was never able to find out much else about it until I recently came across a TV ad from the time listing USA dates for the tour. With this info, I decided to create a Wikipedia page which you can see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Together_Forever_Tour
I've also seen an interview video made while both groups were on tour in the UK. The YouTube uploader claims it's from 1987 which tells us that the tour went to more countries than just the US. However, the video could be from Run DMC's Raising Hell Tour which the Beastie Boys supported them on in 1986.
The video is here:
And here is the tour ad I mentioned:
The video only shows USA dates so I'm not sure if they toured other countries together or not.
Here's another interview with the two groups in which the tour is specifically mentioned:
If anyone has any extra information on the tour then please let me know in the comments and hopefully we can build a decent Wikipedia article on this seemingly missing part of both groups' history.
Since '13' was just released and we're almost half way through the year, I thought I would do a run down of my music purchases for this year so far. Enjoy!
CDs
AC/DC-Back in Black
Iron Maiden-Iron Maiden
Dio-Diamonds: The Best of Dio
Queen-Made in Heaven
Iron Maiden-Seventh Son of a Seventh Son
Black Sabbath-13
DVDs
This is Spinal Tap
Iron Maiden-Maiden England '88
Guns n' Roses-Use Your Illusion II: Live in Tokyo 1992
Other
Iron Maiden 2013 Calendar
In case your'e wondering, I bought 13 on Friday so I helped it get to it's well deserved No.1 spot on the UK Album Charts. Last year I got 11 albums (10 CDs, 1 vinyl), let's see if I can beat that this year!
Btw, here's my Iron Maiden calendar review which I posted earlier this year:
I have another funny metal video for you guys this week. As you may know, in 1980, Iron Maiden performed on Top of the Pops totally live rather than miming like most acts on the show. Well in 1986 they were asked to mime for a similar German show and they just decided to have a bit of fun with it.
The band members all swap instruments while performing 'Wasted Years' and seem to be having a great time! Adrian doesn't swap instruments for some reason, maybe it's got something to do with the fact that he wrote the song...
Anyway, this is a hilarious video for Maiden fans! Check it out:
So it's been way too long since I last made a post on this blog, and even longer since I made a music related post (!) but hopefully I can make it up to you guys with this funny video from YouTube.
It's taken from some live footage of Metallica performing (the incredible) 'Seek and Destroy' in 1992. James passes the mic to Jason for him to take a line in the chorus and...well let's just say James doesn't seem too happy with Jason's reaction.
If you're a Metallica fan then there's a good chance you've seen this but in case you haven't, check it out now!
(You may also want to click the video title to bring it up bigger on YouTube)
