Concerts I've seen

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Awake By Design were frankly disappointing. After a couple of promising performances, this one was really not up to the same standards. It was bland and uninspiring, the band didn't seem interested and the vocals were flat for much of the set. I don't know if they were just having an off night, or if there were technical problems with the monitors or similar. Either way, the end result wasn't good.

One Machine were better and were clearly giving it their all. But their all didn't seem to be enough. The Encyclopaedia Metallum lists them as Progressive, groove, power and thrash metal, and there did seem to be a hint of an identity crisis with a bit of everything thrown in. There was some nice guitar work in places. The vocals were mostly gruff, with some metal screams thrown in at various points. The frontman was complaining about having hay fever and that affecting his voice. But even cutting him a bit of slack for that, I think the band are still missing something.

So on to Evergrey. There's little I can say, other than that they were absolutely on top form and put in a genuinely stunning performance. There was no stage set to speak of, no pyro, minimal lights. Just a band playing an outstanding set of metal. They were heavy as a heavy thing, melodic as a thing with melody, and very, very tight. Highlights for me were "I'm sorry", "Recreation day" and an outstanding "A touch of blessing". A very strong contender for gig of the year.

Openers Shadowstrike were the only band on the bill tonight that I didn't already know. They turned out to be quite good, playing melodic metal with occasional hints at glam. The guitars and drums were both good, and it's nice to hear clean vocal harmonies. My only complain would perhaps be that the songwriting is a bit inconsistent. On the good songs, it's fine, but there were a few that I'd weren't up to the same standard.

I've seen Second Rate Angels several times now, and they're turning into a very good live band. However, this wasn't really one of their better performances. I couldn't point to anything they were doing wrong, but somehow it just didn't all hang together well tonight. That's not to say it was a bad performance, because it wasn't and "Dragged out" and "The lost days" were both very good. But they've been better in the past.

I.C.O.N. play heavy metal. No frills, plain old heavy metal, and they do it well. Good guitars, and good drums from Larry Paterson, too. But for me, it's missing something. The songs are OK. The vocals aren't outstanding, but are perfectly adequate (although it's sometimes hard to take a Bolton accent seriously). But somehow it just doesn't quite work as a whole.

I'd seen Dendera several times, and while I like the band, they'd been a bit lacking. The last time, however, had shown a marked improvement, and tonight continued that trend. The arrival of Season's End guitarist David Stanton had definitely given them a new dimension, and he once again showed himself to be a very good guitarist. But all of the rest of the band seemed to have stepped it up as well, and this was head and shoulders above anything I've seen from them before.

Seven Sisters were once again OK, playing a set of NWOBHM songs. The lead singer had a cold, and did remarkably well taking that fact into account. Highlights were "Lost in time" and "No guts, no glory". For me, it's just a shame that they seem to have explicitly aimed for a raw, recorded in their bedroom sound, where with a bit more polish they could be a much more interesting proposition. Dead Before Mourning were much the same as last time. They're competent at everything they do, but ultimately, it's just not for me. As I heard someone comment on the night, if you're in a band and have the choice of how you want the band to sound, why would you choose to sound like the bland Pantera clones of 15 years ago?

Triaxis have just released a new album, so it's unsurprising that the setlist tonight was heavily biased towards that, playing 6 of the 12 tracks found on the album. Despite that, they managed to omit my favourite track from the album, "End of time", and I think this is also the first time I've ever seen them not play perennial favourite, "Lies". Both of those may have been slight disappointments, but the band were firing on all cylinders and put on yet another strong performance. Furthermore, those minor disappointments were soon forgotten at the end of the set. For the new album, the band had run a crowdfunding campaign. One of the pledge options was to select a song that the band would cover. That seemed like a great idea, and I picked Rainbow's "Stargazer". Since I was in the crowd tonight, they chose to end the evening by playing it for me, for which I remain eternally grateful. It was one of those genuinely spine tingling moments and I had goose bumps throughout the whole of the song. A fantastic cover by a fantastic band of one of my favourite songs of all time. Outstanding.

I'd been due to see Star Scream a few years ago, but they'd cancelled due to illness, so this was my first exposure to them. They're hard to categorize, but I'd say there are elements of hard rock, industrial metal, electronica and even big band swing. At times they reminded me of Devin Townsend's "Bad devil". I found them enjoyable, but I did also find myself wondering how much of what I was hearing was being played live and how much was coming from the backing tape.

Facegrabber were musically OK, but the vocalist shouting into the mic did them no favours whatsoever. I make no bones about preferring clean singing to harsh vocals. But the latter do have a place. It's just that when they sound as flat and monotonous as they did here, it's simply not something I want to be listening to.

I'd made a last minute decision to come to this show. Triaxis are one of my favourite bands at the moment, and I'm happy to travel to see them. The new album was due to be released a couple of weeks after this show, so unsurprisingly they were showcasing material from it tonight. I wasn't sure they'd be able to follow their previous album, which I thought was outstanding, but the new material sounds very good, particularly "Liberty" and "Stand your ground". Plus, they played a couple of my favourite tracks in the form of "Lies" and "Under blood red skies", and ended up with a crowd pleasing cover of "Hallowed be thy name".

Chaos Asylum played heavy hard rock. On paper, that should be my sort of thing. The problem was, they didn't play it very well. The guitar had way too much distortion, which yes, gives a crunchy sound, but it ended up just buzzing and sounding bad. The guitar solos sounded flat. Was the guitar out of tune? Was he just playing the wrong notes? I don't know. But it wasn't pleasant. The bass player's backing vocals were better than the lead singer's vocals. The mix was poor, and the overall effect wasn't what I was hoping for. From Dusk Until Dawn, on the other hand, were much better. The twin vocal approach looked worrying and sure enough, they played modern shouty metal, with a few clean parts. But the thing is, even though it's not my sort of thing at all, they were pretty good with it and put on an engaging performance, with some occasionally noteworth guitar work thrown in.

Biolith, on the other hand, were almost comedically bad. The music itself was fine. Thrashy metal. But the death growls were so poor and so unintelligible that they essentially turned into another instrument and it became a set of instrumentals. Sadly, not a particularly inspiring one. Copper Garden were much better, playing what I guess could be described as southern boogie rock. Good performances all round from a tight band playing to an appreciative audience. My band of the night. I'd primarily come to see Incarnadine Coven. I like my female fronted metal, and they're a band I'd almost seen of several occasions, but it had never quite happened. They weren't exactly what I was expecting. Sure, there was the standard symphonic metal with operatic vocals over the top. But at other times, there was an almost folk metal feel, with Gregorian style chants, which made for an interesting mix.

At the end of the night, Copper Garden and Incarnadine Coven were chosen to progress through to the final in a couple of months, which marks the first time in a very long while that I've agreed with the M2TM judging!

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

Review to follow.

I'd seen The Mariana Hollow a few weeks earlier and was impressed with the direction in which they're headed. Tonight was more of the same, with them slowly moving away from alt-metal towards a more traditional metal sound, at least to my ears. Indeed, this was arguably the best I've seen them, particularly on tracks like "Come undone". They still have (and probably always will have) an alternative edge to their sound, and they're never going to be my favourite band. But nonetheless, they're a band I enjoy watching.

I'd seen Control The Storm several times before, and each time I felt they'd been massively let down by the vocals, which were simply not up to the quality of the music. Since then, they'd acquired a new singer, and this was to be the first time I'd see them in this incarnation. What a difference! Kate's voice isn't perfect, and she missed a few notes here and there. But what she has is a good foundation on which to build, which the previous vocalist was sorely lacking. A bit more stage time should see her perfect the weak points, and this was a hugely better performance than I've seen from the band before, and it's almost all down to the vocals. A cover of Evergrey's "I'm sorry" was a nice touch, and there was also a cover of Madonna's "Frozen", although not really being familiar with the original, it's hard to say how it compared. But this was, by far, the best performance I've seen from the band, and I hope a sign of things to come.

I hadn't arrived in time to see Evyltyde, so my evening kicked off with Ded Orse. Much as when I'd previously seen them, they put on a very competent performance of slightly bluesy doom. They clearly don't take themselves too seriously, as evidenced by the main mic stand collapsing mid way through a song. Rather than resurrect it, the singer just crouched down and carried on singing. Black Emerald continue to show promise. But as with the other times I've seen them, they seem to be missing something. They're certainly musically competent. I think it's that they'd benefit from better songwriting. Not a bad performance, but nothing to really inspire either.

Beholder were here previewing material from their soon to be released third album. I'd felt the second album to be a big let down after the debut, so I was interested to see how the new material fared. Jay Walsh from formerly with FWK and Blaze and currently playing with Bull-Riff Stampede was standing in on guitar until the band find a permanent replacement for Martyn. The new material sounds reasonably promising, with one track in particular (sadly I didn't catch its name) sounding very good. In addition to those, "The awakening" was good tonight too.

Review to follow

Review to follow

Review to follow

Review to follow

Review to follow