Following 2014’s full-length ‘The Tide Is Turning’, Colt 45 embarked on a series of live dates which saw them become festival favourites as well as sharing stages with mighty punk ‘n’ roll/soul punk revivalists The Computers. For the Cumbrian based alt rock/punk outfit, busy certainly became the watchword. In the build up to the release of their 2016 EP ‘Snakes & Ladders’, the band continued to receive strong press notices and build their following farther. On hearing ‘Snakes & Ladders’ – assuming Colt 45 had previously slipped under your radar – it should be obvious why they’ve received such a cult buzz, especially since the lead track ‘All Hell Broke Loose’ (issued as a single and YouTube video prior to the EP) is perhaps one of the best exponents of its style since Deaf Havana hit with the furiously infectious ’22’.
SUNSTORM – Edge Of Tomorrow
In 2015, the legendary Joe Lynn Turner lent his vocal stylings to an all-star project entitled Rated X. A hard rock release best designed to impress fans of a Euro metal style and injected with an obvious influence from Rainbow, the album found Joe in good voice. It was also by far the best thing Carmine Appice had been associated with since 1986. Fans hoped that Turner would next reappear as part of the resurrected Rainbow and, by all accounts, he was keen to get involved, but Ritchie Blackmore – and perhaps, more importantly – Ritchie Blackmore’s ego had other plans.
PHANTOM 5 – Phantom 5
The word supergroup can sometimes be overused, even applied to bands whom seem nothing of the sort, but Frontiers signings Phantom 5 fall squarely into that category, with every member having already made a name for themselves as part of a German melodic rock band. Vocalist Claus Lessmann will be best known to most as a founder member of Bonfire; Michael Voss recorded as a member of Demon Drive before joining Bonfire and touring with Michael Schenker; drummer Axel Kruse scored previous accolades with the much loved Jaded Heart and guitarist Robby Boebel first found fame as a member of the brilliant Frontline. That line-up alone would stand Phantom 5 in good stead with regard to past experience and future potential, but the addition of ex-Scorpions bassist Francis Buchholz is the icing on the Euro cake. In terms of German melodic rock line ups – short of including of Matthias Jabs – you’d be hard pressed to find a better band of brüders.
MAMMOTH SPIRIT – Mammoth Spirit EP
Throughout 2014, Brooklyn based garage rockers Greasy Hearts were phenomenally busy. Between May and December that year, they issued three cassettes and played a number of live shows. There was talk of another release in 2015, but nothing materialised and then at the very end of the year, three Greasy Hearts members resurfaced as part of Mammoth Spirit, a more complex band trading in the much of their straight up garage stance for an unpolished hybrid of blues, funk and retro psych sounds with an old soul.
TOMMY AND THE ROCKETS – Beer And Fun And Rock ‘n’ Roll
Although a new band for 2016, Tommy And The Rockets is a collaboration between two familiar faces – multi-instrumentalist and sometime Hitchcocks member Thomas Stubgaard and New Trocaderos songwriter Michael Chaney. Between them and their love for good old fashioned power pop and garage rock tunage, their debut release ‘Beer And Fun And Rock ‘n’ Roll’ results in some lean, mean and no-frills nuggets. The album’s ten tunes, each clocking in at three and a half minutes or less, are the kind that John Felice would have killed to have had the foresight to have written in ’77.