Friday, May 26th, 2006
Black clothes, pink hair and more tattoos than you can shake your devil horns at. It’s all about the Despair Faction tonight at Camden’s Electric Ballroom, a venue sporting four walls unreasonably close to each other to host a band of AFI’s stature.
After enduring 35 minutes of what my mate describes as ‘Ambient Doom Metal’ from the support band, AFI take the stage. Fuck these people are excited! Accidental showman Davey Havok struts from the smoke to lead the tribal chant that is Miseria Cantare, and after a blistering three song intro, addresses the crowd with almost sarcastic modesty: “Thank you London, we are AFI, thanks for comin to check us out”.
With the new album due in four days, this show was the perfect opportunity to showcase some new tunes. But hey it’s not as if all 500 people in the room aren’t going to buy it anyway, so let’s just do two new ones and leave more time for some old stuff! As catchy as it is when you hear it on MTV, current single Miss Murder sounds pretty weak when stood right next to gems like Days of the Phoenix and Silver & Cold. The new new one sounds a bit fiercer and more promising though!
By the encore i’ve managed to wrestle my way to about a foot from the barrier, praying for some icing on this toothsome, gothic-punk cake. And just when I thought it wasn’t going to happen, Jesus Havok blesses us with his trademark crowd walk. Awesome.
www.afireinside.net
www.despairfaction.com
[tags]afi, gig, camden, electric ballroom, london[/tags]
Wednesday, May 17th, 2006
“…sometimes you talk about Ronaldinho and Eto’o and people like that, you need to talk about the proper footballer who made the difference and that was Henrik Larsson…”
Thierry Henry
[tags]football,champions league,barcelona,henrik larsson,thierry henry[/tags]
Monday, May 15th, 2006
So i’m sitting watching the FA Cup Final, (annoyed that I can’t get the Scottish Cup Final on my stupid English telly), and my phone rings. “Hello is that Ivan?” …. “Um, yeah suppose so”. It’s Craig from disque Records, to tell me they’ve got the Raconteurs album in stock, if I’m interested in stopping by to get a copy. “It’s a winner”, apparently. Great, but why are they calling me? Well, one day I was walking past their shop (THREE years ago!) and saw a White Stripes - Elephant poster in the window. I went in to ask if they had any spare posters, the guy (who may or may not have been Craig) said no, but if I wanted to give him my name and number he’d give me a ring when they had some. Deal.
Turns out from that point I was earmarked by them as a ‘Jack White fan’ and they stashed my mobile number away waiting for the perfect tele-marketing opportunity (I must have been on the tube when the last White Stripes album came out). Fair enough I thought, ten out of ten for effort, so I went and bought the album from disque, being re-assured at the till that it was indeed a winner. It’s not. On the plus side though, the English cup final ended up being better than the Scottish one.
www.disque.co.uk
Monday, May 1st, 2006
The makers of ‘Glastonbury: The Movie’ should take note - this is what a music documentary should be like. This one was interesting, entertaining, had structure, but most of all had a point! The film was made by a 30-year-old anthropologist (who luckily explained what this meant - it’s someone who studies human cultures) who is also a big metal fan. He travels the world meeting fans as well as heroes such as Bruce Dickinson, Alice Cooper and Ronnie James Dio, trying to find out why metal is constantly being stereotyped by the general public. He explores the range of different sub-genres (Black Metal, Death Metal, Shock Rock, Extreme Metal to name but a few) as well as the roots of the music itself, going all the way back to the classical days of Wagner and Mozart. Seriously.
A must for any metal fan, whatever sub-genre, for the (obviously) brilliant soundtrack if nothing else!
http://www.metalhistory.com/
[tags]film,movie,heavy metal,rock,headbanger[/tags]
