During the pandemic lockdown of 2020, Powerman 5000 released their tenth studio album, ‘The Noble Rot’. Beyond the band’s hardcore fans, the album went largely unnoticed, but it actually contained some great material. It was actually a contender for being the best Powerman album since the shelved ‘Anyone For Doomsday’ – excepting 2011’s brilliant covers collection ‘Copies, Clones & Replicants’ – and proved that Spider One was still capable of sharing some great riffs. Much like the rest of the PM5K catalogue, it showed his willingness to follow a musical muse, whatever the style, and it’s succinct and vinyl friendly half hour playing time ensured there was no obvious filler.
Author Archives: Real Gone
FRED ABONG – Blindness
Released just seven months after ‘Fear Pageant’, most of Fred Abong’s 2024 album ‘Blindness’ feels as different from its predecessor as ‘Fear Pageant’ had sometimes felt from the slightly slicker ‘Yellowthroat’. On a basic level, it’s great to hear the artist continually evolving, but that becomes more impressive once you consider the relatively lo-fi soundscapes that Abong often favours. A good chunk of this album doesn’t just represent a step forward, but a massive leap sideways into a world of the unexpected.
Watch ‘Adam & Eve’ – the new video from UK nu metal titans Until 9
Until 9’s 2023 EP ‘Dyadic’ shared some absolutely brilliant metal sounds. The Yorkshire based band really weren’t shy in exploring their love of nu-metal, and the release’s best tracks channelled an already retro sound that blended the darker elements of bands like Mudvayne with the force of scene giants like Coal Chamber.
REAL GONE GOES OUT: The Fierce And The Dead – Ramsgate Music Hall, Ramsgate, Kent 4/5/2024
It’s been a great day in Ramsgate. The town has been buzzing and the sun has been gloriously bright. It’s felt like the “seaside season” has finally arrived. At the Ramsgate Music Hall, a sell out crowd are in really friendly spirits. They’ve come out to see The Fierce And The Dead – the Northampton post rock/art rock band who took the prog scene by storm with the release of their third album, 2017’s ‘The Euphoric’. That success came with almost a Trojan horse-like approach: for a while, it seemed as if the band were too much of a heavy/stoner rock phenomenon to click with the proggers, but a bit too strange to find a home amongst the Fu Manchu and Kyuss fanbase, but here they were, finally gaining enthusiastic press and a keen live audience.
BA’AL – Soft Eyes EP
Ever since the release of their ‘In Gallows By Mass’ EP in 2017, Sheffield’s Ba’al have always been committed to pushing the boundaries of metal. That EP’s three tracks explored the extreme end of post-metal riffing, doom laden sounds, and even dropped in some black metal vocals for good measure. With a few melodic twists that explored a slightly more commercial goth based sound with clean vocals, there were concessions to some great melodies too, but didn’t offer anything particularly accessible to those not into extreme sounds.