REAL GONE GOES OUT: Chris Helme – Star Shaped Festival, Kentish Town Forum, London 21/9/2019

It’s an uncharacteristically sunny Saturday afternoon in September. Most people are outside, filling their day with activities befitting of such good weather. For those who know where the day’s best value entertainment will be, though, the sun can (hopefully) shine another time. This day marks the fourth and final Star Shaped Festival event for 2019. The three previous events have seen Twitter abuzz with photos, tales of friends meeting and of a hefty dose of musical nostalgia. Hopes are running high for the final round in That London.
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What Else Is New?: The 2019 Dinosaur Jr. Reissues

There have been various Dinosaur Jr. reissues over the years – most notably the Rhino CDs from 2010 – but none that have served the band especially well in the age of deluxe editions and lavish box sets for legacy artists. The Rhino reissues were a step in the right direction with each featuring a smattering of bonus materials (save for ‘You’re Living All Over Me’ which managed to be a potential downgrade from the earlier SST CD), but those still didn’t give the big fans too much in terms of unreleased materials or rarities. Luckily, the 2019 campaign from Cherry Red Records puts that right. The period between 1990 and 1997 presents their most commercially successful, but with that came four great albums, an archive of unheard live material and a lot of other stuff that deserves to be shared.

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LEFT HAND PATH – Left Hand Path EP

Taking their name from the classic Entombed album from 1990, Romanian metallers Left Hand Path are the kind of band you’ll only have to hear once to realise they mean business. Their self-tited release from 2019 is a monstrous, riff-heavy disc that will gain an instant love from fans of the heaviest end of groove metal, as well as from those listeners whom aren’t about to let an obtuse vocal stand in their way of riff-based enjoyment.

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