1979 was Year Zero for a new musical movement in the UK, and a term was coined by Deaf Barton which perfectly summed it up, NWOBHM. I was 16 at the time, listening to Tommy Vance on a Friday night, reading Sounds music magazine, and trying to buy as many singles and...

Johnston has long been pursuing his own brand of avant garde jazz, but this is the first time I have come across him outside of his band The Microscopic Septet (whose 2017 Cuneiform album ‘Been Up So Long’ is simply superb). A few years ago I was fortunate enough to...

At the same time as releasing Johnston’s soundtrack album, Asynchronous are also releasing the debut album by Johnston with his band The Coolerators, a band he formed after moving to Australia in 2005. On this album he provides both soprano and alto saxophone, and he...

In the 90’s they played some of the world’s largest festivals, toured with the likes of Rammstein, Deftones and Metallica and were highly regarded in the German music scene for this ability to mix metal with pop melodies, but since their fourth album ‘The Other Side’,...

Yes, this really is what it sounds like, it is an album full of acoustic versions of AC/DC classics. But, easily the worst thing about this album is the artwork, and once you get past that this is a little gem. A few acoustic guitars, a gentle bass and inobtrusive...

There can be few bands who have been going as long as these guys without a single line-up change, but Isaiah Mitchell (vocals, guitars), Mike Eginton (bass) and Mario Rubalcaba (drums) came together in 2001, and although they took a couple of years off, they’re still...

This is the debut album from Berlin-based quartet Engst (the title translates to ‘Major Fire’), and as the title may suggest it is all in German. That is probably down to their refusal to conform and do what is expected of them, and they certainly seem to be in this...

Although this may seem as if it is another seasonal digital only single (and it is these things as well, to be fair), what we have here is a really interesting take on folk-rock, and while based in the folk tradition there is actually far more going on than one might...

In Seattle in 1984, high school friends Ted Pilot (vocals) and Ed Archer (guitar) teamed up with lead guitarist James Byrd, completing the line-up with Ken Mary (later Alice Cooper, House of Lords) and bassist John Macko. Their debut album was self-released and...

The more I listen to David Brenner’s work with Gridfailure, the more I understand what he is attempting to achieve, and hence find myself enjoying his “music” even more. I have put that inside quotation marks, as while I would argue vociferously that this is indeed...