Category: music

Nov212013November 21, 2013November 21, 2013NoCommentby dan

While She Sleeps interview @ Alexandra Palace

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OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERALast weekend I attended my debut Vans Warped Tour, and I was completely blown away. It truly is a festival like no other, with bands and fans of all sub-genres running around a totally packed Alexandra Palace – incidentally, my favourite venue in London – and blistering sets from Parkway Drive, Rise Against, The Hype Theory, Sonic Boom Six, Hatebreed and Enter Shikari.

You can hear my interviews with The Hype Theory, The Maine and Max Raptor on my Kerrang! Radio show this Saturday – but for now here’s my chat with Loz and Matt from While She Sleeps. Last time I saw these guys they quite literally decimated the Vans shoe store on Camden High Street, causing enormous moshpits both inside and outside the shop (see pic) and the police turning up. Needless to say this was the first thing I asked them about…


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Nov132013November 13, 2013November 13, 2013NoCommentby dan

Everybody’s Dancing and I Want To Die

Posted in music, radio

photoThe most exciting new rock band in the UK, Deaf Havana have just announced their biggest UK tour to date. They are playing…

Apr 01: Norwich UEA
Apr 03: Newcastle O2 Academy
Apr 04: Leeds O2 Adacemy
Apr 05: Manchester Academy
Apr 07: Glasgow O2 ABC
Apr 10: London Clapham Grand
Apr 13: Oxford O2 Academy
Apr 14: Wolverhampton Wulfrun Hall
Apr 15: Cardiff Great Hall
Apr 17: Brighton Concorde 2

Kerrang! Radio’s Alex Baker has been playing this band since Day One but I have to admit it was only when their most recent album Old Souls came out that I really started to love this band. It’s a masterpiece from start to finish and Boston Square is comfortably my favourite single of 2013.

I caught up with the band ahead of their sellout show a couple of weeks ago at Camden’s Roundhouse – their triumphant final date of their previous biggest tour to date!


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Oct222013October 22, 2013October 22, 2013NoCommentby dan

Win Motorhead Albums!

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Motorhead release their 21st studio album Aftershock on November 25th.
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To be in with a chance of winning a copy, simply follow me and tweet me (@danhudson) before 23.59 on Sunday 27th October with your favourite classic Motorhead track. The winner will be drawn at random.


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Oct112013October 11, 2013October 11, 2013NoCommentby dan

We’re Off To Never Never Land

Posted in music, radio

lars

 

I caught up with Lars Ulrich from Metallica for an interview to chat about their new 3D film, Through The Never. The film is out in cinemas now, and it’s pretty crazy. Most of the film’s 90 minutes are taken up by the band performing their biggest hits to a crowd on a stage built specifically for the film, interwoven with a loose storyline about a roadie sent on a mission which goes badly wrong. The concert footage is insane – and I’m very excited that they are thinking about taking the set on tour!

Listen to what he had to say:

I am giving away 3 copies of the epic soundtrack to the film!
To be in with a chance of winning, simply follow and tweet me (@DANHUDSON) with your favourite Metallica track by 11.59pm on Friday 18 October , and the winners will be chosen at random.


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Oct022013October 2, 2013October 2, 2013NoCommentby dan

Building Bridges

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Recently Myles Kennedy and Mark Tremonti from Alter Bridge joined me on the show. We talked about the new album, their imminent UK arena tour, their joint solo for ‘Blackbird’ being voted ‘the best solo of all-time’, their ventures outside of the band (Myles is the vocalist in Slash’s current band, and Mark plays guitar for Creed, and has also recently released a solo record) and their take on the controversial issue of band ‘meet and greets’.

This last subject, in particular, has been covered in depth in Kerrang! Magazine lately, with Rou Reynolds of Enter Shikari (‘For a human to charge another human money to meet them is just wrong‘) and Oli Sykes from Bring Me The Horizon (‘Next USA tour! Oli Sykes special polaroid package! Take a photo with me! Special price! Absolutely no charge at all! Fucking cockstars‘) expressing particularly forthright views. With this in mind, I was keen to ask the band, who do offer such VIP ‘meet and greet’ packages, for their views on the subject.

You can listen again to the interview below, and the band’s new album, Fortress is out this week, and currently No. 3 in the iTunes chart. With any luck it should stay in the top 10 this weekend!


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Sep262013September 26, 2013September 26, 2013NoCommentby dan

Win Sonic Boom Six Tickets

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The incredible Sonic Boom Six are headlining Manchester’s Deaf Institute this Saturday as part of the #standforsomething Tour 2013. Also on the line-up are Save Your Breath and LTNT.

For your chance to win a pair of tickets to this unique one-off event, simply tweet me @DANHUDSON with the answer to the following question.

What is 6 x 6?

The deadline for submission is 12pm on Friday 27th September, and entries will be drawn at random!


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Sep212013September 21, 2013September 21, 20131Commentby dan

In Defence of Nu-Metal

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keep-calm-and-listen-to-nu-metal-2

I know they’re trying to wind people up. I know I shouldn’t rise to it. i also know that plenty of publications print complete falsehoods on a regular basis, often followed by a minuscule apology when the damage has already been done.

But seriously, have you read this article by Lucy Jones of the NME?

http://www.nme.com/blogs/nme-blogs/10-reasons-why-nu-metal-was-the-worst-genre-of-all-time

I understand that she doesn’t get ‘nu-metal’. A lot of people don’t. But there’s just so many poorly argued points in this article it beggars belief. To save boring you all to sleep, I’ve narrowed it down to a succinct Top 5.

1. Deftones have ALWAYS been high on festival line-ups, this is not just a recent thing. To claim a band as diverse as this is just ‘nu-metal’ and to discredit their longevity is lazy journalism.

2. The assumption that ‘rap + metal = crap’, by default, implies that Rage Against The Machine are ‘crap’. And I would seriously question any music critic who thinks that.

3. The Strokes did not ‘wash anything away’. I remember vividly Slipknot’s ‘Iowa’ beating The Strokes ‘Is This It’ to Number One in the same week, with 1/10 of their hype.

4. It is accepted by everyone, apart from it seems the NME, that the first rap/rock crossover was Aerosmith/Run DMC’s ‘Walk This Way’, not Anthrax/Public Enemy’s ‘Bring The Noise’ a year later.

5. The article resorts to petty insults about how a band looks to make its point.

However, the point, that REALLY gets my goat deserves a whole separate article. It’s Lucy’s throwaway comment that Limp Bizkit and System Of A Down are ‘sexist claptrap’. Yes, there’s an argument that Limp Bizkit are misogynistic and I accept that. But System Of A Down? Really?!?! I do worry in the wake of ‘Blurred Lines‘ that people can be accused of sexism without being questioned and it’s just taken as fact. But I cannot think of a single lyric, track, album, video, live performance or interview that SOAD have ever done which even has a touch of sexism to it. It is seriously unfair on the band, their fans, or the genre, for the NME to make such a bold statement without backing it up.

Anyway, I’m off to Break Stuff. Keep rollin’ baby, you know what time it is.

N.B I tweeted Lucy Jones last night and asked her to offer an example of System Of A Down’s sexism, at the time of writing I have received no reply.


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Sep142013September 14, 2013September 14, 2013NoCommentby dan

I want to see it all, never want to let it go

Posted in music

Rewind The Film

Manic Street Preachers – Rewind The Film (review)

Their last album, Postcards From A Young Man, was their ‘one last shot at mass communication’, and the subsequent ‘National Treasures‘ compilation and mammoth 02 Arena show marked the end of an era for the band.

With a new era beginning, it seems the Manic Street Preachers are free of such commercial concerns and, on this, their 12th album, have turned off the amps and mellowed out – a lot. Within seconds of listening to opener This Sullen Welsh Heart (featuring Lucy Rose on vocals) it’s obvious this is a Manics album like no other. This is an album about growing up, growing old mourning, self examination, nostalgia, loss and old age, and in places is a very unsettling listen. There are guest appearances from Richard Hawley (on the title track) and Cate Le Bon (4 Lonely Roads – incidentally, one of the only tracks to feature an electric guitar) but in both of these cases, James Dean Bradfield steps back and lets the guest vocalists take the spotlight. It seems that everything about this album is unconventional.

It’s not all introspective though. Show Me The Wonder is an uptempo, brass-filled homage to living life and seeing the beauty in everything, and the anti-Thatcher 30 Year War is the closest we get to the Manics of old (‘And the endless parade of old Etonian scum line the front benches‘). On the whole though, Rewind The Film is much more restrained than anything they’ve done before.

After trying everything from ‘mass communication’ (Postcards) ‘heavy metal Tamla Motown’ (Send Away The Tigers) to ‘elegaic pop’ (Lifeblood) in recent years, it is refreshing to see the band do something completely different, throw away any sort of Manics rulebook, and, now in their mid-forties, take a step back, and examine themselves in such a personal way. This album is not going to drastically change their live setlists but it is the Manics in fine form, and on this, their 12th album, as relevant as ever.


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Aug212013August 21, 2013August 21, 2013NoCommentby dan

Reading & Leeds 2013

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leeds

As mentioned earlier I’m heading to Leeds Festival this weekend. A Friday night spent at Kenwood House in London watching Suede means I’ll miss Nine Inch Nails, but there’s plenty else I’m raring to see.

If you’re heading down make sure you wake up early on Sunday (Friday at Reading) for Decade. They’re a five piece ‘post-hardcore’ band from Bath with hooks that will get stuck in your head for days. I’ve been playing them on the Kerrang! Chart for a couple of weeks now and they’re opening up proceedings on the Lock Up/Rock stage. Check out the video for ‘Never Enough’ below.

Also, there’s a handful of other great R&L warm-up gigs this week if you’ve been lucky enough to get tickets – primarily Green Day tonight at Brixton Academy (supported by the excellent, Frank Turner) and Bring Me The Horizon at, ahem, a tattoo parlour in London. The latter is so over-subscribed that even their PR guy told me he his only chance of getting tickets was by entering a competition! If you’re there, you have my envy.

See you at Leeds!


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Aug212013August 21, 2013August 21, 2013NoCommentby dan

The Day The Whole World Went Away

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Nine Inch NailsNine Inch Nails, The Scala, 20/8/2013: Review

You don’t really need me to tell you how good this gig was – you know the story. Nine Inch Nails are an incredible live band. They possess a frontman capable of delving deep into his unconscious to deliver some of the most intense performances known to man. They boast an enormous back catalogue covering everything from metal, industrial, goth, disco, to glam, pop. dance and everything in between and they’re back after a six year hiatus with an album that promises a spectacular return to form, playing a TINY venue as a Reading and Leeds warm-up. Needless to say, tickets sold out in minutes and people were practically selling their mother to get in. All of that is patently obvious.

BUT what I didn’t see coming was an epic light show that wouldn’t look out of place in an arena, a brutal cover of David Bowie’s (NIN-esque) ‘I Believe In Americans‘, a surprisingly talkative Trent Reznor, a brutal moshpit for Terrible Lie, and (however many times you’ve seen it before, it never ceases to surprise) the sight of grown men crying to the dark balladry of Hurt that gets you every single time. Epic.

Of course, this was just a warm-up for the madness to come this weekend at Reading and Leeds Festival. Their previous performance, in 2007, was so captivating that frankly, The Smashing Pumpkins were blown off stage, and I certainly don’t envy Biffy Clyro this weekend. Unfortunately I’ll have to miss this, as I’m heading to Suede at Kenwood House on Friday, but I’m heading up to Leeds on Saturday and looking forward to checking out Frank Turner, Deaf Havana, Bring Me The Horizon, Twin Atlantic, Chase and Status and Eminem (in that order!).

(Re NIN, Cleverly I turned up 20 minutes before showtime which meant I was literally right at the back with no chance of moving, so the above pic is sadly the best I could do!)


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