Tag Archives: glastonbury

JEHNNY BETH – Obsession: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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RAW INDUSTRIALS FROM BETH, BLACK METAL FROM EGYPT AND … A VIDEO OF GLOWING SHOELACES

It’s been a big few weeks for big names and big media coverage. Glastonbury dominated the BBC but if you weren’t screen-bound at the time Neil Young actually played, his set remains elusive bar whatever scraps you can sweep up from YouTube (here’s an Old Man clip that’s quietly hypnotic despite – no, because of – being filmed miles away from the stage from by someone who totally gets it… thank you BrainRotRebellion. Great laces).

As if Glastonbury all over wasn’t big enough, Oasis got us giddy for communal anthems less than a week later and then BLACK FCKN SABBATH reunited for a celebratory all-star last-ever show at Villa Park: Back to the Beginning. Massive. Sabbath are dominating the sounds round here but, to balance all that enormity and nostalgia, here are some new tunes – and it’s a noisier bunch this month.

Converge have not put out anything new but Mary Anne Hobbs played the ferocious Dark Horse on her new Sunday evening 6 Music show last month. Why? Seems that Jehnny Beth is a fan – and Hobbs had just given Obsession its first ever radio play.

Unsurprisingly, Beth aces it. Obsession grabs the wracked emotions and desperate aggression of early Nine Inch Nails and makes fresh industrial chaos for 2025 – here’s the video and her new album You Heartbreaker, You is out in August. Obsession bodes very well.

Meanwhile … Manchester for Maruja, anyone?

MARUJA – Look Down On Us

For Maruja first-timers, like what I is, Look Down On Us starts out like punk-noise bass with sax and rage. So far, so grit. But there’s more to it as this is a track (and video) of many parts, moods and movements, where anger slows to calm, calm swells to hope, and hope gets hit with headbanger intensity and a squalling free-form crescendo. Explosive, cathartic and very possibly ascendant, no doubt this is a beast when played live. Video right here.

STRATFORD RISE – Gunshow

Can you call this stuff prog? It’s two and a half minutes short so probably not. But then again, length isn’t everything … is it? In Gunshow, Belfast’s Stratford Rise mangle blackmidi/Geordie Greep quirk into a dense, churning chunk of artsy metallics that doesn’t quite go where you think – and stops before you find out.

WITCHCRAFT – Burning Cross

Very timely, given the music retirement news of the moment – a pure retro crawl from a descendant of a descendant of Black Sabbath. Absolutely nothing about Burning Cross screams ‘2025’. Nothing screams ‘summer heatwave’ either, but this Witchcraft tune is definitely at the quality end of any Sabbath devotion you might stumble on, especially the non-metal (jazzier?) breaks and ever so slightly stank-face wah. Check it here and file away for some appropriate autumn drizzle.

LYCOPOLIS – Mesektet

Feeling the need for raw dirt? An anti slick fix, a hot shot of sonic filth? This’ll do it. Sounding like it was recorded inside a tomb, Mesektet by Egyptian black metallers Lycopolis does to black metal what Entombed did to death metal – gives it swagger, gives it groove, gives it fucking ROLL. Atmos conjured, arrestingly unique.

TAKKAK TAKKAK – Garang

Cultures clash, but which ones? Who knows. Percussion-heavy chants and beats make for an underground cult where the ancient and the modern mix it up while metallic one-chord chugs pin you down. Subterranean club music, without borders, outside of time, impossible to describe. A spirited antidote to barriers and boundaries. Take a hit of Garang from Takkak Takkak and make your own mind up.

BLEETH – Echoes of Doubt

Bass alert: prepare to be steamrollered. Echoes of Doubt employs an absolute wall of it to bulk up its post-desert stoner anthemics so if you’re partial to the late Caleb Scofield’s four-string MO for Zozobra and Cave In, Bleeth are worthy. With thick, catchy riffs, super melodic vocals and a neat little tempo pick up, what more do you need for the summer?

’til next time!

Monthly rewind
The monthly music rewind

HEY COLOSSUS – My Name In Blood: TRACK OF THE MONTH

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JULY REWIND: QOTSA STORM WORTHY FARM, HEY COLOSSUS GET BLOODY, ZAMILSKA CHANNELS REZNOR

Right-o, where are we? July … no, it just left dammit, another sign of not getting any writing done. But before we scrape together a handful of ace new noises from the past couple of months, we can’t let Glastonbury go unmentioned, even at this late post-Worthy Farm hour, because 

Queens of the Stone Age: is this as good as live rock music gets?

Of course, it’s the TV version we’re talking about – no chance of actually being there – and even though the ever-expanding BBC TV/radio ubiquity of GLAS-TON-BERRRYYYY often easily grates, this year it didn’t. Seeing Glastonbury through the media means it’s very much a headliner-centric prism but, for rock fans of a certain vintage, the nostalgia-meets-car-crash potential of Guns N’ Roses was impossible to resist. Non-nostalgic sparks flew with, er, Sparks (sorry), Nova Twins, Working Men’s Club and more, but it was the Sunday night Other Stage headliner that promised a special moment.

One of our bands, in the big slot. And it feels like a big deal because although they’re obviously popular, there’s still something a little cult-y about QOTSA – something not quite mainstream. A little bit outside, singular, defiant.

In an interview with Mary Anne Hobbs for 6 Music, Josh Homme quipped that when it comes to Glastonbury, they get asked to do the slot no-one else wants. Last time, it was when Beyonce took the Pyramid Stage. This year, the small matter of Elton John’s Last Ever UK Show was the same-time competition.

The resulting gig was a badass statement in how to step up and own a festival gig. Apologies for the vacuous state of these few words, they don’t add up to a review and definitely offer zero news or insight. They’re just a fumbling attempt to express how exceptional QOTSA are live … a drilled unit with gang attitude who’ve got the chops to do exactly what they want. Stunning show, can’t get enough. Last year, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss turned in a spiritual set that touched on the divine. This year, Queens do the same but with devilish, high-energy relish.  

All of this means the QOTSA love-in continues round here, no doubt helped by the heat of In Times New Roman, but the occasional new sound still managed to creak on through. 

Shall we?

HEY COLOSSUS – My Name In Blood

Having only got two Hey Colossus albums meself – In Black and Gold and Happy Birthday – and not really getting on with the latter while bloody loving the former, we’ve got no choice but to dodge the Hey Colossus backstory and take this tune entirely on its own terms.

And those terms go something like this: sticky dank crawling spidery Slint-y trudgy hypnosis, all via the medium of RIFF. Never has an ascending sequence sounded less positive (disclaimer: I have no actual evidence for that) and those vulnerable shoegazer-esque vocals make a neat juxtaposition. Intricately, gothically doomy and very nearly uplifting, give it a shot and wallow in its dank.

MEMORIALS – Boudicaaa

Matthew Simms, guitarist in Wire. Verity Susman on vocals. Sprightly, catchy post-punk shapes that you might expect but given extra crunch you might not quite expect with an ultra-satisfying heavy low-end oomph that resolvethe main hook. Boudicaaa doesn’t last long and even then, Susman’s vocals disappear long before this already-short track fades away, making it less a song than a sketch that happens to be complete. Neat headbang and no excess. 

ZAMILSKA – Better Off

In trying to create something that captured the trip hop and heavier guitar sounds she listened to growing up, Polish electronica artist Zamilska has conjured a little magic here – a stark beat utilising Nine Inch Nails’ signature sonic decay and Massive Attack’s Mezzanine black-hole teetering. Whether Better Off is typical of Zamilska’s sound or a guitar-enhanced one-off, I don’t know, but it’s a darkly seductive electro strip. 

HEAVY LUNGS – All Gas No Brakes

Jerky shouting with a near-funk punk stab to match, All Gas No Brakes hits you like a rough, rowdy, non-digital guitar-band version of a Working Men’s Club track, an incessant one-note bass pulse that judders, lurches and agitates more than it grooves. Wakey wakey, losers. 

And there we go – a long overdue round-up, must try harder. 

‘til next time!

Northern Quarter, Mamchester
Manchester, Northern Quarter

Glastonbury Saturday: Metallica

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Still got doubts?

Sure. Lee. Not.

Metallica headlined Glastonbury and did exactly what they had to do – pulled it off with a festival-friendly yet thrash-infected set drawing heavily on the Ride/Black albums, and at least one cut from every record bar Load (surprisingly) and St Anger (not at all surprisingly).

So we got Fade, Nothing, One, Sad But True, Roam, Cyanide, Master, Nothing Else Mutters, Unforgotten and tonnes more biggies. Highlights included Memory Remains, its croaking Marianne steamrollered by mass na-na-nana, and Whisky in the Jar … ‘COZ IT’S WHISKY IN THE JAR-O, innit? Those tunes don’t get as much of a look-in these days, now that Metallica have plumped for the Metal more than the Rock in their live outings, and this was the place to revive a couple of those looser jams. Even the too-familiar Enter Sandbags sounded fresh again – every fecker in the field knows it so when that choked intro finally frees the monster hook that broke the band and sold a million (or 30) black albums, the release was huge.

Seek and Destroy brings the show to an end and it’s a show which, for all of its faux controversial (but undeniably fun) talking points, entertained. Striding that stage with total confidence, Metallica grabbed the moment, worked it hard and got a win-win out of it, or so it seemed from the TV. And while there won’t be a metal slot every time – maybe a hard-rock flourish for a year or two? – the time was right and Metallica were definitely the right band to do it. AC/DC next year?

Robert Plant

Ahead of the night’s novelty-value shake-up, however, the man who brought the class and the Glastonbury spirit to Saturday’s Pyramid stage was – as ever – the peerless Robert Plant.

Mining a seam of west African swirl ‘n trance mixed with those deep-set rock and roll sensibilities, Plant and his Sensational Space Shifters put on a show beyond reproach. Dreamland and Mighty Rearranger tracks get aired, as do a couple of newies (check the Perry Farrell-meets-Afro Celt Sound System air of Little Maggie), as do Zep classics – reworked, of course. Black Dog, now in its third incarnation following Plant-Krauss’s spooky two-step swing, is a beguiling prospect as its dusty psychedelia morphs into desert rave. Fresh as the first time you heard it. So is Funny in My Mind, its street-tough rockabilly makeover far removed from Dreamland’s take on it. Superlative stuff.

And this is what sets Plant and his band(s) apart. The explorer, the music fan as music maker, it’s these reworkings that keep the songs not just alive but LIVING – they’re timeless and increasingly formless, shapeshifting their way into whichever space and spirit is called for. Jimmy Page might be the curator of Zeppelin’s material, but Plant’s the one giving it new life in a global sense. In his hands, Zeppelin music becomes the trad arr of the modern day, ready for reinterpretation by whomever.

Which I guess is where Zep and Plant started anyway. Bring on the new Space Shifters record, it’s surely gonna be a bit special.

Metallica v Glastonbury

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We’re 48 hours from Metallica’s Glastonbury headliner slot. CANNOT WAIT. It’s like those good old bad old days when you’d scrabble around for hard rock morsels on TOTP or the Chart Show and feel joyously stuffed by even the tiniest scrap of six-string riff action. Glastonbury has a big-time metal headliner for the first time and that has thrust a playful, us-versus-them underdog thing into the festival hype.

How are they gonna play it, though? I reckon they should cast off the speedier stuff they’ve been playing the past few years and show some Glasto-sized balls by turning out a kick-arse crowd-pleasing setlist. Be a festival band. Play the hits, pull a few groovers out of the Load/Reload bag, nail some Battery-like blitz to the masts and do a couple of classic home-crowd covers.

Yep, covers. How could that not work on Saturday night? Play the heritage card and win / kill ‘em all – Sabbath, Motorhead, Queen, Thin Lizzy, they’ve all made it onto Metallica records and any one of them would go down like cold scrumpy in a hundred-degree hell-hole.

As would Free Speech for the Dumb, come to think of it. What an opener THAT would be (thanks to Garage Inc., on the stereo right now, for the reminder). And for a wildcard cover idea, how about a sneaky quid on Smoke on the Water? Not only has it got mass singalong potential for any number of drunks and wasteds in Worthy Farm, but it’s a well-placed nod to Deep Purple’s influence on Metallica’s earliest roots too. Just a thought. What’s your wildcard bet?

Anyway, it’s nearly show time and, whatever happens, Metallica’s appointment has brought a bit of extra fizz to the top-slot debate (though if you want to read a less enthusiastic view, from a metalhead no less, check Dom Lawson’s bummer-mood piece ‘Another half-baked vanity project’ from the Guardian the other week – an astonishingly churlish, self-regarding glob of journalism. Have a look here).

I hope Metallica storm it on Saturday. And if they don’t … well, so fckn WHAT.