Music / Previews
Metal/Prog picks of the month: June 2015
Exchange, Fri 5
is needed now More than ever
A hometown headlining show for the wolfies, who were justly nominated as Best New Band in Classic Rock’s 2014 awards and seem to get better with each tour. They’re currently working on the follow-up to debut album The Hunt with ex-Little Angels frontman-turned-producer Toby Jepson, who now lives round these parts. Get there early to catch fellow Bristolians Wreckage of Society, who claim influences ranging from Zeppelin to Nickelback and Opeth. Quite how that works we’re about to find out.
Exchange, Tue 9
If you’re not still suffering from an, ahem, ‘bangover’ after Temples and crave more of the really heavy stuff, Scousers Conan promise uncompromising, ribcage-rattling doom. Be warned that as The Guardian‘s Dom Lawson noted in his four-star review of their Blood Eagle album last year, they’ve been mysteriously deified by the hipster tosser contingent. “Their songs are exercises in scowling, Lovecraftian menace, with macabre fantasies brought to life via detuned guitars and Jon Davis’ despairing bellow,” Lawson enthused, adding: “Conan are currently cool in spite of themselves, but this has enough substance and simmering malevolence to cause the Shoreditch magpies a few sleepless nights.”
Colston Hall, Tue 9
Shame this one clashes with Conan, but there’s unlikely to be much audience crossover. Following the retirement of Ray Thomas in 2002, the Moodies are reduced to a trio (Justin Hayward, John Lodge, Graeme Edge) augmented by sessioners. They don’t actually have any new material, but are plugging yet another compilation, The Polydor Years, which, as the title suggests, covers the albums they released on the Polydor label between 1986 and 1992. This was mostly pop/AOR-oriented material yielding the hits Your Wildest Dreams and I Know You’re Out There Somewhere, though it’s safe to predict that the band will be reaching back a little further to a certain song you may be familiar with. By curious coincidence, two of those Polydor albums were produced by Tony Visconti, which brings us to…
O2 Academy, Mon 15
Now this is a weird one. As a producer and occasional musician, Tony Visconti has enjoyed a long association with David Bowie, all the way up to 2013’s The Next Day. Drummer Woody Woodmansey is the sole surviving member of the Spiders From Mars (the great Mick Ronson and equally fab Trevor Bolder both having carked it). With Visconti on bass, they’re returning to that brief period when Bowie was indisputably great – specifically 1970’s The Man Who Sold the World, which is, let’s face it, a proper heavy metal album. On vocals is Glenn Gregory. Yes, him out of Heaven 17. Told you it was a weird one.
Andrew O’Neill’s History of Heavy Metal
Bierkeller, Sun 21
Everybody’s favourite vegan, transvestite, amateur occultist metalhead returns with his full History of Heavy Metal show, complete with live music from death metallers Reprisal. Last time O’Neill played Bristol, the dumbass promoter put him on the same night as a big metal show at the Academy (Machine Head, if memory serves). There’s no such clash on the – whoa! – midsummer solstice, unless you’re a pagan metaller planning to cavort at Stonehenge. You don’t need to love metal to enjoy knowledgeable and funny O’Neill’s dissection of the greatest genre in music, but it certainly helps. You might even become a convert. As he says: “There are two types of people in the world: metalheads and dicks.”
Fleece, Sun 28
Death can only temporarily interrupt New Orleans sludgers Eyehategod’s annual visit to Bristol. Founding drummer Joey LaCaze succumbed to respiratory failure just three weeks after their last Fleece show in 2013, but the band ploughed on. They released their eponymous fifth album (their first since 2000) last year, featuring guest vocals by old chum Phil Anselmo, and are now back on the road. Support tonight is from Eyehategod’s regular UK touring partners Baron Greenback.
Our top newsletters emailed directly to you
