Nov 082021
 

(Andy Synn was fortunate enough to attend this year’s edition of Damnation Festival and now reports back with his experiences of all the bands he saw over the course of the day, along with video evidence)

Well, here it is, the very last Damnation Festival at Leeds University, as the event has become so popular now (as evinced by how quickly so many stages reach capacity these days) that the organisers are moving it (back) to Manchester where they’ve found a bigger and (hopefully) better venue for future editions of the fest.

And while this gives 2021 a real “end of an era” feel, it’s obvious that the Damnation team really wanted to see out their time in Leeds with a major bang, delivering – despite some well-documented, and sadly unavoidable, pandemic-based issues – one of the most stacked line-ups they’ve ever had.

Now, one thing I really tried to do this time around was to see (and document) as many sets by bands I hadn’t seen before, and while, in practice, this didn’t always work out – sometimes due to circumstances entirely beyond my control, sometimes just because I really wanted to see certain bands in particular – I don’t think you’ll be disappointed by who I actually did manage to catch over the course of the day.

So, without further ado…

Continue reading »

Apr 272020
 


Cryptic Shift

 

(Andy Synn again focuses on releases from his home country, and today reviews two brand new albums and one that will be arriving soon.)

I’m not going to waffle on here about the state of the world, the way things used to be, etc. It’s all been said enough times already.

Instead, let’s get right to the matter at hand, and enjoy these three celebrations of the power of the riff, in all its unlimited glory! Continue reading »

Mar 142020
 

 

Yesterday was crazy. And no, I’m not talking about the latest coronavirus developments (though those were depressingly crazy too). I’m talking about the ridiculous flood of new songs and videos that were discharged into the electronic ether. Nowadays there are always a lot of new releases on Fridays, but yesterday was a Friday the 13th, and that always triggers a rabid Pavlovian response among bands and labels.

Rather than try to winnow down everything I thought was appealing into a five-or-six song SEEN AND HEARD column, which would have over-stressed my feeble brain, I decided to throw up my hands and resort to the Overflowing Streams format — just shove all these new songs and videos at you with only brief commentary by me.

The thing is, there’s SO DAMNED MUCH STUFF HERE, particularly because I also included a few things that surfaced in the few days preceding Friday the 13th, that I decided to cut it into two parts to make it a little more digestible. Everything is arranged in alphabetical order by band name. If I don’t get the second half ready to go today, you’ll find it here tomorrow along with our usual SHADES OF BLACK column.

AVERSIONS CROWN (Australia)

I was inclined to include this first video simply so I would have an excuse to put Eliran Kantor’s cover art at the top of this page, but wound up digging the song too. Continue reading »