Featuring members of Demented Are Go!, Blue Carpet Band serve up some ferocious rockabilly noise on their new singe ‘B Movie Boogie’. With it’s accompanying video including suitably trashy b-movie elements (inspired by ‘Demons’ and ‘Evil Dead 2’) and performance footage from the band themselves, it’s a perfect snapshot into their horror themed world.
Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews
JIM PETERIK & WORLD STAGE – Tigress
Jim Peterik gained an army of loyal fans through his work with Survivor in the 80s. As one of the biggest hit makers of the AOR/melodic rock scene, the already veteran performer struck song writing gold with Frankie Sullivan, and the pair knocked out hit after hit. Their original seven album run between 1979-88 is almost perfect. Outside of Survivor, Peterik also put his name to big selling singles by .38 Special, tunes recorded by Sammy Hagar and Cheap Trick, and also worked with Night Ranger’s Kelly Keagy. In AOR terms, the man is a bona fide legend. Unfortunately, in the 21st Century, he has become more obsessed with writing material that sounds like it belongs in a stage musical. Although this style has its fans, its overbearing and grandiose nature – as evidenced on his work with Pride of Lions with Toby Hitchcock and bits of Dennis DeYoung’s final work, ‘26 East, Vol 1 & Vol 2’ – really doesn’t suit everyone. There are lots of times when ploughing through these huge works, that an older Peterik fan might wish Jim would return to something less…bombastic.
SHOOTING DAGGERS – Manic Pixie Dream Girl / Missandra
Describing themselves as a queercore/feminist hardcore band and taking huge cues from the 90s riot grrrl movement and classic hardcore, Shooting Daggers pull no punches. Initially, their work seems to present something of a sidestep for the New Heavy Sounds label, whose main stock has previously tended to veer towards the doomy, but it really doesn’t take long to realise why they’ve signed this act. On this two track release, their riffs are massively intense; their personal views are as direct and important as the riffs themselves and the messages cannot be – and should not be – ignored. This is a burst of pure, necessary anger; a release that ups the ante for the style, and for the UK hardcore scene as a whole.
FANS OF THE DARK – Fans Of The Dark
There’s an old saying that you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. Luckily for Uriah Heep and Deep Purple, the same is true of album sleeves, and there’s many a good tune hidden behind an ugly piece of art. Fortunately, this also sort of applies to Sweden’s Fans of The Dark. They’ve saddled themselves with a bad band name, cheap looking logo, and sleeve art depicting a Gollum-tortoise hybrid with car headlights for eyes, but despite that, their debut LP is home to a trilogy of fairly decent melodic rock/melodic metal tunes. These are tunes that would definitely go unheard if we were going solely upon appearances. The album also includes a couple of genuine clunkers, so you could definitely call it a mixed bag, if you were feeling polite.
VINCENT CARR’S SUMIC – Strolling Early Morning
One of the UK prog scene’s true underground talents, Vincent Carr’s complex acoustic work and love for pastoral soundscapes has helped create some interesting recordings over the years. On 2016’s ‘Rekindled’ he injected a very strong British folk rock vibe into some largely instrumental pieces, and on the follow up, ‘New Paeans’, he truly unleashed his inner Mike Oldfield on lengthy arrangements that blended prog, new age sounds and a hefty dose of acoustic complexity. Obviously he was working on a thousandth of Oldfield’s basic 70s budget, but the outcome certainly wasn’t in any way inferior. After that, Vince released a couple of ambient, improvised works that showed off yet another side to his talent. Those were approached with interest by a few of his biggest online champions, but were never designed for mass acceptance.