Live Review : Baroness + Graveyard + Pallbearer @ New Century Hall, Manchester on November 22nd 2024

The Great trilogies. Lord of the Rings, The Hunger Games books, Toy Story, the original Star Wars saga (yes we know, Ewoks, but Return of the Jedi is infinitely better than anything that came after). To that impressive lexicon, you can now add this tour of a holy Trinity of modern metal masters.

Pallbearer, Graveyard and Baroness are all doing something distinctly different in their individual musicality. They all reside in diverse corners of metal's grand and fertile landscape. What they do share and what makes this tour so appealing and also so cohesive, is a deep-seated seam of emotional intelligence. None of them trade in knuckle-dragging “beers and tits” brainless bravado. Instead, whilst the styles are varied and differential, they all sculpt music to make you think and in many cases music to make you cry. Put simply this is the wearing your heart on your sleeve tour.

Live Review : Graveyard + Kadavar + Polymoon @ Academy 3, Manchester on May 4th 2023

The blues are the foundation on which all modern music is built. If you slice hard enough into any current genre, be it black metal or be it trap hop you will eventually find the blues. It is a quintessential cornerstone of everything we consider to be rock, pop, dance or metal. Sometimes it's a hidden, almost silent ingredient, but in others, it is worn very much on the sleeve. Tonight, is a case of the latter as this is a trilogy of young (-ish) bands delving into the past and creating authentic retro-blues rock that sounds like it has been plucked from an episode of old Grey Whistle test circa 1971.

Live Review : Graveyard + Bombus @ Academy 3, Manchester on December 6th 2018

It may be cold out but tonight, in the wind tunnel that is the Academy 3 we are gathered to be warmed once more by the great blues rock revival (though I was at University here in the nineties so this room with always be the Hop and Grape or even the hope and grope…). Anyway there is a vague feeling of hip and trendy about this evening as the moustaches and beards are out in strength and the PA is pumping out obscure Swedish rock n roll, sung in Swedish.