I Almost stopped doing this after the few days off (that turned into weeks) I had, Google also killed my Adsense account, which annoyed me enough to try and discourage users. After deliberating a bit and deciding not to move to another Blog site. I have decided to put up this new/old review and start being regular again, and sorry to you all loyal readers.
We're in Derby, the weather is very warm for the time of year and we're ready to rock, everything is perfect.
We enter the venue and see some familiar face, which is always nice, meeting new people with familiar music is good, but seeing a new band and meeting new people is a pain as you end up forgetting either the bands name, the name of the person you've just met or both. All of which means you end up spending time on the most awful website in the world (MySpace) trying to find info on the band and find that they're on of about 5 bands with the same name two of which are in the Midlands! It gets very frustrating.
Talking of which over the past few years me and a friend often discuss possible band names that could be used, I'm putting a list up soon, so that if you do happen to have the same name as another band then you can use one from our list. Anywho, We arrived at Redemption (Heroes/Brannigan's for all you old fogies out there), which is situated on Colyear Street, just off Macklin street in Derby and is owned by the same dudes as the Old Bell. After getting some drinks in Airstryke (http://www.myspace.com/airstrykeuk) started with Whiskey Legs, which I thoroughly enjoyed, though I was surprised as these were the band i'd gone to see and thought they were headlining, Phi corrected me and said Powerquest were headlining, I thought “Never heard of them, must be all right though”.
Anyway, I digress, the band played/sang well but were a bit stiff in their movements, the song is about coming home after a mighty drinking session (obviously) and was a good song to get the blood flowing. Next came Booze o'clock the subject of which is arguing about whether its too early to drink or not, personally I believe that any time after 12 is an acceptable time for a drink, Rock and Roll came next and by now the band had loosened up a bit, Airstryke are a glam rock band, this term of course doesn't just encompass the look of the band but their stage persona and overall sound Airstryke are a glam rock band in the same way Burt Reynolds is a man, Burt has no feminine side, Airstryke have nothing about them that isn't glam rock.
Next came Evil Scarecrow (http://www.myspace.com/evilscarecrowhome) who we'd seen mooching around in their stage costumes before they were on, incidentally they were selling CD's, Shirts and other merch at very reasonable prices and if you do see them I would recommend getting both CD's as they are very good. They started with War and Seek which set the tone for the band nicely, Vampyre Trousers came next and by now it was quite clear they were about as serious as Jim Carrey in Ace Ventura, i.e. not very. They are comedy melodic death metal, so they immediately become the worlds No. 1 comedy melodic death metal band, congratulations!
If you do see them at a venue near you then go see them, they played 66 minutes past 6 next, I forget the subject of this song as the next four songs blew it out of my mind, first came a brilliant cover of the Thundercats theme tune, which was full on and totally unrelenting, next was Blacken Everything a much slower song but a funny parody of emo's and they're self harming ways, when will they learn :-), incidentally the video is well made and available at their Facebook page (www.facebook.com/Evil.Scarecrow) this was followed by Robototron which resulted in a brilliant set of synchronised dancing, the likes of which haven't been seen since those prisoners did Thriller, so far it had been an excellent night, assisted greatly by double whisky and coke at £2.50 (seriously!), I figured it was all downhill but then came a cover of a song by Sweden's most well known death metal band Europe, the song of course being The Final Countdown, I won't ruin the stage antics of Brother Dmitri Pain but I will say be prepared to see some epic Y-fronts.
They finished and Powerquest (www.power-quest.co.uk) came out, I figured they couldn't beat the previous two bands, but they did, with their lead singer looking like a tall, Asian Dio, they blasted the crowd with excellent power metal, they started with Find my Heaven followed closely by Crunching the Numbers which sounded very Manowar-esque, followed by some 90's power metal tunes (according to my RUBBISH notes anyway, damn that cheap whisky!) Better days was also very good with good twiddly bits and excellent riffs, Blood Alliance has an excellent intro and promised much, it is very 80's with it's heavy synthesizer but it slips into a very Dio like song but not as powerful, it delivers but isn't as powerful as the master, it does sound very good but also dated with the synthesizer, it is for people who don't care about music trends (me) or those nostalgic about older styles (me again). They finished with Another world which reminded me of a relentlessly hard game for the Mega-Drive with the same name, in that game you started under water and drowned if you didn't press up, it also used passwords to save the game and its save points were miles apart!! Anyway this song is brilliant and has a good length, as did all their songs actually, power metal needs time to mature it just doesn't work if the song is too short. In conclusion to tonight Airstryke - great, Evil Scarecrow – funny and great, Powerquest – Excellent. I'd recommend them all.
