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Our latest Track Of The Week contest was a truly international affair, with Northern Irish rocker Ricky Warwick leading the charge, aided by the great English guitarist Phil Collen. Second place went to Greek stoners Villagers Of Ioannina City, while zesty New Zealanders Powder Chutes romped into third place. Congratulations to them all. Or Συγχαρητήρια, as they say in Athens.
Our latest competition is now underway, featuring heavyweight contenders of all sorts. We hope you enjoy their respective excellence.
Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats – Shapes Of Midnight
Back in our lives with a deliciously fuzz-heavy, boot-stomping boogie, the UK’s original 21st-century psychedelic/proto-metal revivalists are reminding us exactly why we fell in love with them in the first place. Part of a new, Abbey Road-tracked record (of the same name) that draws from Edgar Allan Poe’s The Masque Of The Red Death, and “the too-real nightmares of our modern age”, Shapes Of Midnight finds them mining the past in their own inimitably dark and delightful way. “Our albums exist in an alternate universe to our own,” band mastermind Kevin Starrs says. “They’re all stories that could happen here, but everything’s just a bit ‘off’.”
Ghost Hounds – Something Wicked
Picking up high-profile support slots, TV appearances and media hat-tips all over the US, Ghost Hounds have brought their slick, soulful brand of rootsy rock’n’roll to an increasingly wide audience. Now on Something Wicked they bring a touch of heartland-y outlaw heft and mystique to the table, singer SAVNT’s stand-out pipes (think Sam Cooke in a country club) front and centre, as they should be. Like what you hear? Check out more on their new album, Justified, which comes out in August.
Black Spiders – Cool Reaper
You know who’s misunderstood? The Grim Reaper. Or at least that’s the message (‘message’ is maybe a stretch, but you get the idea) of this rambunctious, shaggy-haired banger from Pete Spiby and his merry band of brothers in rock arms. Now given the single treatment with a video that taps into snippets from Black Spiders’ budget-friendly but no less fun or triumphant career, Cool Reaper is well worth cranking up. There will be denim. There will be riffs as thick and juicy as T-bone steaks. There will be puppets. Hell yeah.
King Kraken – I Am The Apocalypse
“Rolling with stomping, slow pounding grooves laden with soaring lead guitar work,” the Welsh hard rockers say, of this new marriage of heavy fire and brimstone, “all of which compliments the guttural vocals and thunderous bass making this song unmistakably King Kraken.” Not sure we’re totally sold on that key-change in the final section, but otherwise this is a most satisfying slab of low-slung beefcake riffage, choice guitar flashiness and heavy, ribcage-rattling beats – like Clutch shaping up for WWE, in hell, or something.
Arthur Brown – Bursting The Bubble
There’s something freeing about the God of Hellfire’s latest release, as he both embraces his advanced years and defies them with a sizable, psychedelic spring in his step. All balloons, spacey synth bounce and 70s hippie freakout vibes, Bursting The Bubble is a beguiling swirl of existential fears, glitchy lo-fi textures and jubilant classic rock’n’roll. Lovely soaring, short n’ sweet guitar solo, too. More to be found where that came from on his new album, Nature.
Halestorm – Perry Mason
With a year gone since Ozzy Osbourne tragically left this mortal coil, the internet has been awash with memories, many of them from his epic last concert. Yungblud’s Changes was dubbed the surprise hit at the time, but for our money it was the sight of Halestorm smashing this gnarly, less widely celebrated but still ace Osmosis-era Ozzy number that really cracked a smile as we watched. So we were delighted to see it getting the spotlight it deserves – a fiery gem from a heavy metal event like no other.
The Zac Schulze Gang – Hellhounds On My Trail
In an age when rock bands have largely forgotten how to swing, along comes Hellhounds On My Trail by Gillingham rockers the Zac Schulze Gang, and it swings hard, pounding and pummeling and puffing its chest out and having a mighty fine time as it does. It’s a cover of a cover song by late blues guitarist Tony Dowler, which in turn was inspired by Robert Johnson’s Hellhound on My Trail. “We’d never rehearsed it before, but from the first time we played it, we knew it had to stay in the set,” says Schulze. “Every time we perform it, it evolves. We improvise and discover something new.”
Hoa – The Great Hazby
“Jang-in-jeong-sin” is a Korean word that describes obsessive devotion to achieving the absolute best outcome in one’s work, and it seems to us that The Great Hazby by Seoul quartet Hoa might be an example of that. It’s a beguilingly crafted song that sounds like it might have been written by the Beatles in their mid-Sixties pomp, with touches of The Kinks thrown in for good measure. Bassist Lim Jin-hwa plays a Paul McCartney-style violin bass while singing in a convincing English accent, and we might be suspicious of the entire project were it not so beautifully executed. Lovely stuff.