Following on from his ‘Acoustically Inclined: Live In Leeds‘ limited release, Devin Townsend has confirmed a second limited edition live album ‘Galactic Quarantine’.
Sourced from various online shows which replaced the ‘Empath’ tour, the new release will be issued as a CD/blu ray release and on 180g vinyl LP.
A full press release sharing all the details, plus a first look via a video clip of ‘Aftermath’ can be found below.
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If Woodstock ’94 is remembered for anything, it’s the mud. Well circulated footage of Green Day and Primus being pelted by massive lumps of grass and dirt has become synonymous with the nineties festival. Scene’s of crowds participating in mudslides and photographs of “mudmen” have almost become more legendary than performances by Bob Dylan, Traffic and The Allman Brothers Band.
Goodbye Blue Monday’s third release, the ‘Misery Punk Ruined My Life’ EP, was one of 2018’s strongest DIY punk releases. Between a barrage of massive riffs and some thoughtful lyrics dealing with mental health issues, the Glaswegian band marked themselves out as one of the UK scene’s most intelligent acts.
Despite sterling support from Make That A Take Records and some very positive online press, things seemed to go quiet in the GBM camp a short time after. It wasn’t until 2020 any new material materialised, but a pair of digital singles (‘Love In The Time of Corona’ and ‘Exile’) made good on the promise of earlier recordings by way of musical crunch and more social commentary. A world grinding to a halt and a lack of social interaction enforced by a global pandemic also meant that fans would have to wait even longer for a brand new EP or album, but the band closed the first half of 2020 with a surprise acoustic EP to tide everyone over.
Back in 2015, Fences made music that sat very comfortably within the indie-rock spectrum. The sound on that year’s ‘Lesser Oceans’ tapped into a sound that often sounded like a more synth based Mercury Rev crossed with the quieter and poppier moments from The New Pornographers. By the time 2019’s acclaimed ‘Failure Sculptures’ rolled around, band leader and frontman Christopher Mansfield seemed to be besotted by various elements of Americana. In adding extra folk and Americana derived elements to the already strong alt-pop sound, Fences created something rather special and a strange bubble where Fleet Foxes and Beck seemed to co-exist helped to create the band’s defining work.
Featuring six bands and a selection of retro metal covers, this compilation is an interesting prospect. None of the featured acts will mean very much to most people living outside Canada – or even anyone living too far outside of Ontario – but in a couple of instances, the bands’ choice of material involves songs that will have spent decades gracing millions of stereos since the 1980s. By choosing a couple of very familiar 80s classics, Invicta and Cathartic Demise both stand a fair chance of picking up a new fan or two via this release – and at the end of the day, that’s what every hard working band wants…and needs. By recycling early nineties death metal, both Aepoch and Raider can seem more marginal, but their featured performances capture some more than reasonable extreme metal chops.