Volbeat - Beyond Heaven/Above Hell

After hearing about Volbeat in September's issue of MetalHammer, I was quite excited to hear what rockabilly metal would sound like. Thankfully Spotify came to my rescue and let me listen to their older albums, and I liked it. A lot. Part rock 'n' roll, part metal, part blues and part country. Quite a mix, but brilliant.

Earlier this week I went back to Spotify and found that the new album, Beyond Heaven/Above Hell, was available for my listening pleasure. I ordered a copy on CD yesterday, but thanks to the magic of the internet this review is brought to you before it even hits the doormat.

The album starts as it means to go on with a stomping, thundering opener. The Mirror And The Ripper has a fast paced verse structure and the slow, heavy chorus will get the feet tapping and set the pace for what's to come.

A host of guest artists and influences make this album incredibly varied. Heaven Nor Hell, featuring Henrik Hall of Love Shop, channels Andrew WK's party anthemics. Jakod Oelund features on 16 Dollars and seems heavily influenced by Run-DMC/Aerosmith's Walk This Way. Mark "Barney" Greenway of Napalm Death features on Evelyn, and it's the only track on the album to include growls of any kind. It works really well, and somehow fits in with the rest of the sound without ever sounding forced or out of place. I was pleasantly surprised.

My favourite track of the album is 7 Shots. Featuring Mille Petrozza and Michael Denner, it bears more than a passing resemblance to Ghost Riders In The Sky. The country style intro and deep blues end to the first verse leading into a cracking rockabilly romp with a thudding bassline that is impossible not to dance to. It can make using a mouse difficult, though, so be wary if you're supposed to be doing something useful!

With so much rock 'n' roll influence, the album gets you in the mood for dancing all the way through, and this is no surprise. Volbeat's name is itself a portmanteau of Volume and Beat and epitomises both the musical style and its effect on the listener.

Luckily for me, I discovered via last.fm that Volbeat are playing Sheffield in November. Will definitely have to go to that.

Bring Me The Horizon streaming new album now!

Bring Me The Horizon are streaming their entire new album, There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let's Keep It A Secret, on their MySpace page ahead of the October 4th release date.

First listen, I'll admit, left me a bit underwhelmed. Possibly because my expectations of it were so high. It seemed that the much promised genre-spanning variety was overwhelmed by their existing post-hardcore sound. Maybe further listening will get me over the first reaction hump.

In other news, I've been listening to Volbeat's latest offering, Beyond Hell / Above Heaven, on Spotify while I waited for pay day to come round, and I love it. Definitely going to splash the cash, as soon as I find someone who has it in stock.

Tarja - What Lies Beneath

Tarja Turunen is the Marmite of the symphonic metal world. Either you like her vocal style, or you hate it. Having been a fan of Nightwish before her acrimonious split with the band in 2006, I've been intrigued to see what she makes of her solo career. With this week's launch of What Lies Beneath, her second English studio album, she continues to define her own style. A genre unto herself, this one promises more of the experimental classical metal she is famous for.

Despite some pretty mixed reviews about her somewhat lacklustre first album, I actually quite liked it. I didn't even mind the utterly bizarre cover of Alice Cooper's Poison. It didn't blow me away, but it was good stuff. Being a fan of metal and heavy rock and enjoying a bit of classical now and again, maybe I was in a position to better appreciate it. The problem, though, is that her voice is so distinctive, and so powerful, that it eclipsed the music that was supposed to be supporting it.

Thankfully with this new release, that problem is a thing of the past. With better songwriting, much better mixing, and a simplification of styles the music manages to shine through beyond the obvious presence of her multi-octave vocals. Swinging between very heavy rock tracks (although I hesitate to call it metal) and softer, more balladic songs, it's a good showcase for both her vocal and songwriting talents. That being said, I don't think that even this one packs the punch of the albums put out by Nightwish during her tenure with them. Tuomas Holopainent's songwriting style more completely encapsulates her vocal and, in turn, makes for more powerful songs.

There is a host of talent brought in for this album, including Joe Satriana on Falling Awake, and Phil Labonte on Dark Star. Given that Falling Awake contains the lyric "All that remains", maybe Phil should have had a part on both? Aside from these two, the German a capella metal band van Canto play on Anteroom Of Death and Max Lilja, formerly of Apocalyptica, plays cello throughout.

Speaking of Anteroom of Death, I can't help but think that it's a very brave track to put as the album opener. The first time the timing shifted to the mind-bendingly rapid chorus I thought my ears were going to explode. It's certainly nothing like any of Tarja's previous songs, and is possibly the hardest to listen to on the whole album. After that somewhat explosive start, it settles down significantly and there are some very good songs on the remainder of the album.

While some of the tracks, specifically Falling Awake and In For A Kill, are reminiscient of My Winter Storm, the rest stand out as being solid heavy rock songs. The harder, heavier tracks are great to listen to and the softer interludes make the album feel more coherent than it would if it were one hard-hitter after another. It's not, perhaps, as cohesive as My Winter Storm but the songs don't feel out of place together.

This album is definitely a step forward in Tarja's career as a solo artist. The whole thing feels a lot more polished than My Winter Storm, and the songs pack more of a punch than her earlier work. Whether or not anyone will enjoy this album, really, boils down to whether they think a voice like Tarja's is a good fit for a metal album. If so, this is a good album. If not, then there's not a lot to save it from its rather strident centrepiece.

Linkin Park - The Catalyst - Mini Review

So I posted on Twitter the other day a link to the new Linkin Park video for The Catalyst. When I first heard the song I wasn't sure what to make of it. I knew that the band had been trying out a new sound and that they were planning on venturing down the electronic/industrial rock route with their soon to be released album A Thousand Suns, but the track was still a shock.

After listening to it a number of times it began to grow on me and soon I was completely hooked. Chester and Mike's vocal interplay is as ever crisp and perfectly matched in true Linkin Park style. The song seems to beat and bang and grow and develop to an explosion of immense sound. It just leaves me speechless. The video is dark. Their faces appear to be purposely hidden or obstructed. There are buildings crumbling, smoke everywhere and people are running from something; it is completely captivating.

Of course the change in style may upset some Linkin Park fans but I doubt it will bother many. Their leap from nu metal to alternative rock in 2006 was widely accepted and although there are many fans of their original sound I think a lot of fans will be as excited as I am about the change of direction and growth of the band. Alternatively, they may just be happy to finally have some new material from the guys.

I have no idea what the rest of the new album will be like, I just hope it is along the same lines as The Catalyst. I am literally squirming with anticipation and can hardly wait until 14th September when it is finally released.

To keep you going here is the video of The Catalyst - make of it what you will.

Variety is the spice of life

Over the next few weeks, I shall be looking forward to three new albums by three very different bands. But what makes these albums similar is how very different they are. Not from each other, but within themselves, track by track. In the same vein as Pain Of Salvation's Road Salt One, a mixture of styles is brought together to form a cohesive whole. Not just metal, but hard rock, soft rock, punk and even classical influences.

First up is the venerable Apocalyptica, with their seventh studio album. The cunningly titled 7th Symphony looks set to bring a fresh feel to Apocalyptica's music, with a wide range of styles that marks each song as a unique within the set. I've had a quick listen on Spotify and the results are certainly pleasing. I'm reserving a proper listen and full judgement for the actual release when it plops onto my doormat.

Next is Volbeat with their new album Beyond Hell, Above Heaven. The band are already known for employing a range of styles to their music, with a diverse set of genres including heavy metal, punk and rockabilly under their belts. As well as the genre, tempo and mood of the music changing for each song, there will be several cameos from other artists including Barney from Napalm Death, Miland Petrozza from Kreator and Jakob Oelund from Taggy Tones. Adding these other talents to the mix will certainly spice up the new album.

Finally, a Sheffield band that up until last week I'd never heard of. Bring Me The Horizon have a change of pace in their new, very lengthily titled album, There Is A Hell, Believe Me I've Seen It. There Is A Heaven, Let's Keep It A Secret. Having listened to their 2009 album Suicide Season, I'm not all that enamoured with the sound. But it's all set to change. The new album is said to have a huge variety, covering all of the band's influences and personal preferences. It should definitely be worth a listen.

Ping - What is it good for?

Apple released the latest version of iTunes, version 10, to much media hype yesterday. One of the major changes is a new feature called Ping. A social network of sorts, it's like Last.fm but built into iTunes, with hints of Twitter and Facebook about it. You can follow bands or other users, post reviews and look at charts. It's social media, but focussed around the music in the iTunes music store.

At least, that's the intention. I was actually quite excited about it at first, but the reality soon put a damper on it. Many little issues that cropped up during the configuration of my profile that just irked me somewhat.

The first is quite simple; you can only use your iTunes account. So I can have one, and 23inertia can have one, but TME cannot. This is very much unlike Twitter which is pretty much a free-for-all as long as you can keep track of all the accounts you have.

So that aside, I figured I'd just set up my account like I have for Last.fm. I barely use any of the social aspects of Last.fm, if I'm honest. I'm friends with 4 people and use it primarily to track my music listening habits and get new recommendations. I figure that if I can duplicate that functionality then I'm all good.

Unfortunately the parallels with Last.fm fall very short. There is no scrobbling, for instance, or anything like it. In fact, Ping seems entirely unaware of the existence of my music collection despite being in the very same iTunes library. It doesn't use it for recommendations, for populating the "music I like" box, or anything else. And simply listening to songs doesn't make them show up either. I have to purchase, follow or review the album for it to make an appearance. In the end I simply used my Last.fm top 10 artists to manually populate my profile. That I had to use an external service to get that information, despite iTunes holding my play counts, is not a good sign.

So plodding along with the profile creation, I get to set a photo. So far, so ordinary. Except when I chose my photo, it informed me that it had to be approved before it will show up. What's this? The lock-down control extends as far as how you look now? This is getting worse ...

And so the final nail in the coffin for the Ping profile configuration; genre selection. You are allowed to choose a maximum of 3 genres that match your musical tastes. Never mind that my collection spans dozens. I have to limit myself. Uncle Steve said so.

Fair enough, I shall do that. Alternative, Metal, Rock. Sounds like a good combo and relatively representative of my general tastes. And this is where it all goes horribly wrong. There is no way to select metal as one of your three. At all. It simply doesn't exist.

And so here I am. The metal being forcefully stripped from my persona, I am forced to live as an alt-rock goon with no profile picture. Time to follow some bands, I suppose. Let's do a search.

• Dark Tranquillity - No results found.
• Lacuna Coil - No results found.
• Arcade Fire - No results found.
• Nightwish - No results found.
• The Gathering - No results found.
• Lady Gaga - Aha! Here we go!

Except, no. I don't listen to Lady Gaga. But she is my top recommendation. Remember what I said about it ignoring my music library? And no other artist I have yet searched for has a profile I can follow.

Maybe all this will improve in time as more people and artists sign up to it. Unfortunately, though, I fear that it may never encompass my primary interests. I'll leave my profile dormant for a bit and see if anything more exciting than Katy Perry pops up on the recommendations. Otherwise, I really can't see the point.

Robbie Williams & Gary Barlow - Shame

Having been a teenage girl in the early 1990s it is unsurprising that Take That are a big part of my music history.  I am not ashamed of this fact, nor do I try to hide it.  I am quite a sentimental old fool when it comes to music which means that Take That occasionally pop up on the iPod shuffle in-between gothic metal or indie rock to this day.  That's okay, right?  Doozr is terribly mean and pokes fun at me constantly for my Take That fetish but I really don't care.

When they reformed in 2005 I was sucked in.  Desperate for a reunion with Robbie I bought all their new stuff, went to all of the tours, felt like I was 12 again.  The nostalgia faded after a short while, but I still keep an eye on what the lads are up to and  very occasionally I dust off my signed original copy of Take That and Party and have a little boogie.  (My mum also buys me a Take That calendar every Christmas which always takes centre stage in my kitchen).

Recently the long awaited reunion with Robbie Williams was announced.  Take That fans all over the world rejoiced.  I was less than convinced, slightly excited but trying desperately not to show it.  All I could see was a money making strategy especially as this is for a one off album and tour.  Their reunion is unlikely to be a long term situation.

On the 4th October, Robbie Williams releases his new single, Shame.  This single has been released in collaboration with Gary Barlow.  The song appears to be about them apologising to each other for the public falling out they had 15 years ago and the lack of communication since.  It isn't immediately catchy but is smothered in the distinctive Gary Barlow sound that has made Take That so successful over the years.  On listening to the track for the first time I thought 'meh' and then proceeded to listen to it on repeat 6 times in that same sitting.

The video for Shame has received the most controversy.  It is very Brokeback Mountain and I don't understand why?  Why are they eyeing each other up in a western bar?  Why are they getting undressed and running about half naked together?  Why are they pretending to be gay?  I have no idea what they were thinking when they discussed the concept for this video.  It does work somehow though and I can't help but smile when they look at each other with that knowing glance or at the end when they walk off together with their arms around each other.



To be honest, I am not sure that I care why they have decided to reform, I am not sure that I care why Gary and Robbie have decided to release a track together with a very gay video and I am definitely uninterested in how expensive it will be to see them tour next year.  All I know is that my inner 12 year old is happily singing her lungs out to Shame and desperate to get hold of the new album and tickets for the tour.  I am not sure I will be going as far as the actual 12 year old me by naming my pets after Robbie and Mark or covering my now very grown up adult bedroom with hundreds of Take That posters but still you get the idea.  I am 12 again.  I love it :D

Purified In Blood and Opinicus @ Corp - Photo Review

A few weeks ago I posted about the new camera I bought to try and get back into my waning photography hobby. This was in part to give me something to do, and in part to improve the photos I was taking at gigs. As I said at the time, the Canon A570 I was using just didn't cut it and caused me much frustration.

Sadly the Fuji S5700 I posted about broke after about a day. The flash simply won't pop up at all. This is OK for some circumstances, but for general photography, it's simply no good to not have a flash. So I've replaced it using Fuji's generous "repair or replace" policy with a Fuji S1600, the S5700's more modern descendant. It's a very similar camera, with improvements in some areas and lacking in others. The lens doesn't step down beyond f6.2, for example, but I can get 480mm (35mm equiv) telephoto out of it. The two are about on a par.

To give it a "trial by fire" I took it to the Purified In Blood gig at Corporation to try it out. And trial by fire is right. There were hardly any lights and the conditions were so bad that even people with far fancier kit than I were having trouble getting anything of worth. Even at ISO 6400 (yes, 6400) I could only get shutter speeds of around half a second. Not great when the band are whirling about the stage at breakneck speed. So it came down to patience and just a little bit of cheating.

Up first were Merciless Terror, with perhaps the worst lighting of the lot. I didn't get anything even worth critiquing from that lot. Most of the pictures were a red-hued blur. So on came Opinicus.

I will confess that Opinicus got most of the cheating. With shutter speeds approaching 3 seconds it was impossible to do much of anything, so I switched to ISO 400 and broke out the flash and stepped down the power by about ⅔ EV. Naughty! It did seem to work, though, albeit without the atmosphere provided by the dim lighting in an all black club.

You'll notice the four red lights at the back. Along with two at the front, this was it. Didn't stand much of a chance. So I tried to include as much of the band as possible and see what I could do.

This is what the attempts basically boiled down to. Take a photo with low power flash by waiting for something vaguely cool looking to happen, then crop mercilessly to make it resemble a half decent photo. These are certainly better than the blurry, grainy mess I've been used to, though, so chalk one up for the Fuji.

Between sets I decided to try and take some pics of the stage and capture some of the ambience. I tried to steady the camera by putting it on a flat surface in front of the stage. Unfortunately, the only such surface was on top of a large speaker stack that was playing some random music very loud. The camera shake is not my hands - it's the vibration of the cabinet!

A close up of the drum kit demonstrates the problem with vibration quite nicely. Using a 2 second self-timer to release the shutter, I was nowhere near the camera at the time the picture was taken. The shake is still clearly evident

As Purified In Blood were setting up, I thought I'd just grab one more. After all, even a metalhead has to hydrate. Thankfully, it seems that for the headliners the lighting was brought up substantially. This made for some interesting photographs.

And so Purified In Blood take to the stage. Even with the improved lighting I'm still getting quarter second shutter speeds. But that's not always a bad thing. With creative use of motion blur, some pretty cool pictures can result. And by ensuring that camera shake doesn't ruin it and by keeping the stage area focused and clear, the motion of the band members doesn't look bad at all.

Every so often, though, everything just fell right. A slow moment in the song (of which there were precious few) meant that I could grab pictures like this. Much better!

This one is, I think, incredibly cool. I'm not sure if it was a sudden change in the lighting or somebody else's flash going off, but the bands faces are all but blown out. However, the composition I love, and it really captures the moment. And that, after all, is what a photograph is for.

Once again making use of the slow shutter to capture the moment rather than reducing the picture to a blur of colour. This picture also captures the moment really well. The fact that Glenn Cato Rasmussen stayed mostly still during this shot means that the splash of colour on his jacket ties the whole thing together.

Cheated again for this one and used flash. I don't know why, but I find this photo particularly amusing. Maybe it's the pose? The composition is slightly off, and could have done with being a touch to the right. The flash has completely destroyed any lighting effects. But here it is. It's not bad.

But enough of "not bad". Here is, in my humble opinion, the Photo Of The Evening. A quarter second exposure during a long scream and we have a picture that captures the movement and atmosphere of the moment with clarity and colour. Really very pleased with this picture, and it cements in my mind that it was a good idea to pick up this new camera. Less limitations of the equipment mean more opportunities for cool pictures. I just need to get a little more used to how this particular model behaves in different low light conditions so I don't have 40 terrible practice pics before they start getting good.

And in case you were wondering, the gig was fantastic. The air was buzzing, the kids were (sort of) dancing, the band were amazing. A great gig, and a great evening.