Prognosis Festival takes flight this spring with a stacked lineup! Led by Haken, TesseracT, Witchcraft, Leprous, Soen, Alex Skolnick Trio, Sleepmakeswaves, Jo Quail and many more on March 22nd and 23rd. The festival takes place at the legendary Effenaar venue, Eindhoven in The Netherlands. Day tickets are on sale now at the link below and now you can see the daily lineups! More information will be announced soon for clinics and conferences surrounding the festival. Continue reading
Oft breathed by those in the know in the same exhalations as Dream Theater, Leprous and Devin Townsend, London’s Haken frequently pass below the radar of those outside of Prog spheres. New album Vector (InsideOut Music) is, however, the fifth in the band’s ten-year existence and shows a level of accomplishment to surpass those more notable names.Continue reading
Norwegian hipster operatic metal: Got your attention?
Leprous, the opening act at the House of Blues, Anaheim, sure had mine with lead singer and keyboardist Einar Solberg’s crowd wooing; his Iron Maiden/Radiohead-esque harmonic vocals emanating from the stage. It felt like the band was performing a personal score to the movie of my life.Continue reading
Long-running Dynamo Metal Fest has made its first announcement for the 2018 edition, booking Ghost, Ministry, Overkill, Sons of Apollo and more. Additional details below. Continue reading
Over the course of its 12 incarnations, Leeds based Damnation Festival has grown into surely the most important yearly event for underground music lovers the UK has to offer. Far from merely an Extreme Metal festival, Damnation is the closest the UK has to the all-encompassing nature of Roadburn in its celebration of a wide spectrum of sub-genres. This year’s edition seemed to be especially diverse with a rich amount of Extreme Metal sitting alongside expansive entities and experimental Prog outfits. With four stages within the single complex of the Leeds University Union, and a sell-out capacity crowd (admittedly reduced to counter crowding issues from previous editions), the layout does appear labyrinthian at first, but is pretty intuitive and easy to follow pretty quickly; which with a stacked lineup from top to bottom, makes the continuous rushing from stage to stage a little more bearable at least.Continue reading
The time is nigh! Damnation Festival, the UK’s top one-day underground metal festival is back today at Leeds University Union. The fest is totally sold out again and headlined by Bloodbath, Sodom, Agoraphobic Nosebleed, Paradise Lost, Dying Fetus, Dragged Into Sunlight, Nails and many more. Continue reading
There are few things in life as warming and mood-enhancing as a pleasant musical surprise. Be that an unexpected push on in terms of quality of a band, or a change of direction that suits in a way you hadn’t imagined, or a diversification of sound that leads to the producing of an album with a myriad of qualities and highlights that resolutely refuses to be “one defined thing”. Arcane Roots’ sophomore release Melancholia Hymns (Easy Life) is, I’m pleased to report, one of those warming and mood-enhancing pleasures.Continue reading
Treading a different path to many of the bands playing their part in Norway’s Black Metal scene, Bergen’s Vulture Industries (known previously as Dead Rose Garden) have produced their own particular, peculiar brand of Avant-garde/Progressive/post-Black Metal since 2003. Continue reading
