Metal & Prog Picks: October 2016

A witty harmony trio (The Lounge Kittens), stoner/doom metal (Yob, ((OHHMS))), musically eclectic devil-worshippers (Akercocke), a legendary filmmaker’s proggy musical project (John Carpenter), Dutch symphonic metal (Stream of Passion), Swedish industrial metal (PAIN), classic prog (Focus), a solo acoustic guitar virtuoso (Steve Howe), ’80s/’90s rockers re-formed (Gun, Ugly Kid Joe) and, needing no introduction, Anvil. There’s everything you need for a rich and varied rock diet this month. Why settle for anything less? Lots of tasty new stuff in the coming soon section at the end too, including the welcome return of the Drive-By Truckers next March. And if you’ve ever wanted to hear a metal version of the Star Wars theme tune, Google Galactic Empire, who play the Fleece in December.

Akercocke

Fleece, Oct 2

Those nicely spoken, smartly dressed, devil-worshipping Londoners stage 2016’s most unexpected comeback after a five-year absence. While blackened death metal Beelzebubbery was their primary stock in trade, Akercocke were always much more sonically adventurous than many of their extreme metal peers and not afraid to get all Tangerine Dream on our asses when occasion demanded. Their sixth album, Renaissance in Extremis, is due out at some point, but so far they’ve released just one track from it. So let’s amuse ourselves by revisiting their appearance on BBC Northern Ireland in the company of a bunch of suitably outraged Christians back in 2007.

Yob/Black Cobra

Fleece, Oct 7

Proper hairy doom metal, anyone? Like most doomsters, splendidly named Oregon trio Yob’s core sound is Sabbath slowed right down. But there’s lots of other stuff going on in the mix too. Guitarist/vocalist Mike Scheidt put it rather well when he was asked to describe his band’s sound for the benefit of anyone who’d never heard them:  “Well, it depends on if they know the genre or not. If they don’t know the genre, I’d say, ‘Well, you’ve heard of Black Sabbath. You’ve heard of King Crimson and Led Zeppelin. You’ve probably heard of Pink Floyd too. So you take all that, you make it more metal, and then you play it on 33 instead of 45.’ That’s kind of getting in the ballpark. I wouldn’t say that we’re a progressive rock band, but we do have some of those elements, and King Crimson is definitely a big influence on us.” Touring partners Black Cobra are one of those modish duos. But unlike the hipper acts using the guitar’n’drums configuration, they trade in nourishing sludge metal.

Ugly Kid Joe

Thekla, Oct 10

Poor old Whitfield Crane, eh? All he dreamed of was to earn the same level of respect as his heroes, Black Sabbath and Motorhead. Then along came the Big Novelty Hit and his band were doomed to be dismissed forever as the heavy metal Wheatus. They even stopped performing Everything About You before splitting for a while, but to no avail. Still – let’s back up a bit. If you’re going to be defined by a single song, at least it’s a good one. And beneath UKJ’s strongly developed sense of fun is a catalogue of well-crafted, catchy good-time metal that’s hard to resist. Their new album, amusingly titled Uglier Than They Used Ta Be in reference to debut EP As Ugly as They Wanna Be, includes a cover of Ace of Spades featuring Motorhead guitarist Phil Campbell. Alarming fact: UKJ’s first Bristol gig at the height of their brief brush with fame was a sold-out show at the Bierkeller 24 years ago, almost to the day. Trivia fact: the band name is a piss-take of terrible hair metal act Pretty Boy Floyd, whose career proved to be so short-lived that no one gets the reference anymore.

Stream of Passion

Bierkeller, Oct 14

Yay – it’s the first local gig by these Dutch prog/symphonic metallers. Oh no – it’s also their last, as they’ve announced they’re going to throw in the towel at the end of the year. Stream of Passion was founded by Arjen Anthony Lucassen, of all those Ayreon concept albums, with Mexican soprano and violinist Marcela Bovio. Lucassen jumped ship nearly a decade ago to concentrate on his myraid other projects, leaving Bovio to steer the band through a modestly successful four-album career. They’ll be bowing out with a live DVD.

Steve Howe

The Lantern, Oct 18

Mr. Howe was on fire with Yes at the Colston Hall back in May. So much so that, unless it was a trick of the light, he actually seemed to enjoy playing Owner of a Lonely Heart. Back at the Colston’s bijou Lantern venue, this solo show by the eclectic guitar virtuoso is likely to be a rather more sedate affair. It’s part of a tour in support of his recent Homebrew 6 release, which, as the title implies, is Howe’s sixth compilation of previously unheard demos and other odds’n’sods from his own archive, revealing the compositional origins of some of those great prog classics. Now if only someone could persuade him that he really can’t sing…

Focus

Tunnels, Oct 19

The Focus gig at Bristol’s uber-friendly Tunnels (if only Gareth would book some more non-tribute acts, eh?) has become something of an annual event. But in addition to wheeling that battered vintage Hammond into Temple Meads once again, founder Thijs Van Leer and the shit-hot current line-up (still including drummer Pierre Van Der Linden) have a brand new album out this time. And Focus 8.5 (Beyond the Horizon) is something of a “Hope you like our new direction…” release for the yodelling Dutchman, being much jazzier than anything his band have put out before. It was actually recorded back in 2005 on Focus’s South American tour with a bunch of big cheeses from Brazil’s jazz and samba scenes under producer Marvio Ciribelli. On paper, this shouldn’t make for a good mix with Dutch progressive rock, but Prog mag was enthusiastic, remarking that: “Those layered, syncopated Afro Cuban beats are a world away from Focus’s native Holland, but this album is all about bringing disparate styles together….It’s remarkable that Focus are still touring and recording as they approach their fiftieth anniversary, but the biggest surprise about Focus 8.5 is that the band waited so long to share this music.” It’s unclear how much, if any, of the album they’ll be playing tonight, but old-schoolers and Saxondale fans can be reassured that we’re bound to get Hocus Pocus, House of the King and Sylvia, as usual.

The Lounge Kittens

Exchange, Oct 20

Classic metal songs are generally so sturdy that they can withstand any interpretation, hence the existence of Apocalyptica, Hayseed Dixie, Harptallica, Dread Zeppelin, Rodrigo Y Gabriela, and so on. There’s even an Estonian early music ensemble that translates Black Sabbath songs into Latin and performs them as Gregorian chants (Google Rondellus if you don’t believe me). The only act to play Download, Glastonbury and the Edinburgh Fringe, the Lounge Kittens’ USP is that they’re a three-part harmony trio with a sly sense of fun. Blue Kitten, Pink Kitten and Red Kitten cover everything from System of a Down’s Bounce to Alice Cooper’s Poison and Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap by AC/DC. Rather brilliantly, they also nail Aerosmith’s I Don’t Want to Miss a Thing as creepy and sinister rather than the romantic wedding anthem it has become. And they add another delightful layer of tongue-in-cheek to the cock-in-beast of Steel Panther’s Gloryhole. This tour is to promote the Southampton trio’s crowd-funded debut album, Sequins and C-Bombs.

Gun

Thekla, Oct 21

Remember them? Early ’90s Scottish hard rockers boasting siblings Dante and Giuliano ‘Jools’ Gizzi who grew up in Glasgow’s tough East End, not far from the legendary Barrowlands venue, Gun got off to a strong start with their first two albums, titled, with typical swagger, Taking on the World and Gallus. They even got to support the Stones on the Urban Jungle tour. Alas, Gun’s biggest hit single proved to be a woeful cover of Cameo’s Word Up, and much of their audience lost interest when the band decided to pursue a lame pop-rock direction, presumably in the hope of broadening their appeal. The inevitable split and subsequent re-formation followed. Well-received new-ish album Frantic goes some way towards recovering all that lost ground.

John Carpenter

Colston Hall, Oct 23

This should be an interesting one, attracting hordes of hipsters and film score enthusiasts. So why include the legendary director of Halloween and The Thing here? Close your eyes, listen to Distant Dreams above, and try to work out what genre of music it belongs to. Didn’t take long, did it? Yep, that’s very clearly progressive metal – specifically, as a gazillion YouTube users have already observed, it sounds very much like Rush. Early tour reports suggest we’ll get a full-on audio-visual performance -including plenty of film clips and, er, lots of fog for The Fog Main Title theme – plus material from most of Carpenter’s scores and stuff from his two Lost Themes collections. It’s not clear who’ll be performing alongside him, but he’s previously toured with his son Cody Carpenter, godson Daniel Davies (son of Kinks guitarist Dave Davies) and members of Tenacious D’s band.

((OHHMS))

Stag & Hounds, Oct 24

Suffering from Temples withdrawal? Never mind, here’s Canterbury’s ((OHHMS)), who specialise in hard-edged, mildly proggy sludge/doom epics and were last in Bristol at the Fleece earlier this year as part of one of those bills hastily pulled together by the industrious venue after the festival’s collapse. Check out the vid for The Anchor (above), which was filmed at Temples 2015.

PAIN

Fleece, Oct 26

Swedish multi-instrumentalist, in-demand producer and owner of The Abyss studio Peter Tagtgren seems to be better known for his collaborations – chiefly with Nightwish and Rammstein’s Till Lindemann on the latter’s solo project – than his own work as founder of death metal act Hypocrisy and  PAIN. In truth PAIN is a one-man-band, as Tagtgren writes and plays all their material, but will presumably be joined by some sessioners for this tour. He’s clocked up eight albums in nearly 20 years under the PAIN banner, blending techno, industrial and symphonic metal in a manner that certainly succeeds in rubbing purists up the wrong way. Indeed the opening track on new album Coming Home is entitled Designed to Piss You Off. Utterly bizarre trivia fact: While the mainstream media got all excited last month about Darkthrone’s Fenriz being elected to his local council, Tagtgren can go one better. He’s the mayor of Parlby, on account of owning the tiny Swedish hamlet (pop. 120) in which he resides.

Anvil

Bierkeller, Oct 28

The post-documentary honeymoon is over (that said, the Bierkeller has a scene-setting free screening of Anvil! The Story of Anvil on Oct 12), leaving Lips and Robb to forge ahead without all those rock tourists boosting their audience. They’ve actually released three albums since Sacha Gervasi’s film was released, the latest being Anvil is Anvil – which may or may not have inspired Theresa May’s favourite meaningless slogan. This is much better than the crud they put out during the wilderness years, although lyrically it veers wildly from earnest political statements on gun control (er, Gun Control) and religious extremism (Die for a Lie) to, ahem, piracy (Daggers and Rum): “Yo ho ho/Give us a bottle of rum/Yo ho ho/We be the scurvy scum”. Eat yer hearts out, Alestorm.

COMING SOON

Here’s our essential diary of upcoming gigs that should be of interest to anyone of a rockin’ disposition.

Paul Gilbert, Marble Factory, Nov 2

Saxon/Girlschool/Fastway, O2 Academy, Nov 3

Y&T/Praying Mantis, Academy, Nov 6

Black Tusk, Exchange, Nov 7

Blues Pills/Kadavar, Marble Factory, Nov 8

Martin Turner’s Wishbone Ash, Tunnels, Nov 10

Phil Campbell’s All Starr Band, Bierkeller, Nov 10

Cadillac Three, O2 Academy, Nov 11

Lacuna Coil, Marble Factory, Nov 11

Entombed AD/Voivod/Lord Dying, Fleece, Nov 13

Alcest/Mono, Marble Factory, Nov 16

Onslaught, Fleece, Nov 18

Warrior Soul, Bierkeller, Nov 18

Lordi, Bierkeller, Nov 19

Massive/Bad Touch, Exchange, Nov 21

Planet of Zeus, Exchange, Nov 26

Lazuli, Fleece, Nov 27

Wolf People, Louisiana, Nov 27

Last In Line/Inglorious, Bierkeller, Nov 27

Suicide Silence, Marble Factory, Nov 27

Black Stone Cherry, Colston Hall, Dec 2

Tyketto, Thekla, Dec 3

Galactic Empire, Fleece, Dec 4

Boris, Fleece, Dec 14

Meshuggah, O2 Academy, Jan 12

Drive-By Truckers, Anson Rooms, March 2

Devin Townsend Project/TesseracT/Leprous, Colston Hall, March 12

Black Star Riders/Backyard Babies/Gun, O2 Academy, March 16

Blackberry Smoke, O2 Academy, April 6

Steve Hackett, Colston Hall, May 4