Hot Metal

I was recently thinking about my favourite new rock bands; it struck me that out of six favourites (which one is THE favourite depending on mood and context) three are fronted by women. Of other highly-appreciated new bands a lot are FFM (female-fronted metal). Being me, I inevitably find myself wondering why - am I letting a pretty face override musical quality?

At the moment my favourite-favourite new(-ish) band is Within Temptation - I was given their Let Us Burn DVD for Christmas and I've just been watching the Elements concert. The music is fantastic, but it has to be admitted that Sharon den Adel is seriously hot. At the time of the above photo (try clicking on it) she was 38 years old and had borne three children!

Delain's Charlotte Wessels is also seriously good-looking, although in a rather different style. On the other hand, Danii Monroe from The Dirty Youth is pretty but far too young and cute for me to consider her hot.

Admittedly female-fronted metal's  female fronts do tend to be heavily (although not exclusively) inclined to corsets.

Rock music has always been about sex as well as music, of course, but I do think there is far more to female-fronted bands than that. Plus I find myself making some sort of mental distinction between 'hot' and 'sexual', which is weird when I think about it logically. Sharon den Adel in her initial Elements costume (above - doubtless highly metaphorical) looks incredibly hot, highly attractive, even sexy, but somehow, to me, not sexual. I'm strange, I know.

I enjoy the heavy end of rock, overlapping with the melodic end of metal, and hunger after creativity, expression, and a style which combines musical quality with lyrical interest. The contrast between crunching guitars and a rich soprano voice can be a wonderful experience, especially if seasoned with a light smattering of male 'growls'.

A common feature of many songs from Delain, The Dirty Youth and Within Temptation is that they tell a story, and express ideas in interesting ways. Stories about werewolves, deadly sins, or drunken nights out, told through tunes with varied musical structures, by highly talented musicians. All three also play songs of emotional intensity and rhythmic 'heaviness'. Dendera, Future Of The Left and The Virgin Marys (my other three favourites) share similar characteristics, in their varied and distinctive ways.

Of course there is also a lot of formulaic FFM around - it has become a popular musical style on the continent, and there are always those who are more interested in following a fashion than in creating something distinctive - but it remains a genre which, over the past 15 years or so, has attracted more than its fair share of original, creative and enjoyable artists. In my opinion, of course.

I hope you are having a great Christmas, and wish all who read this a happy, hopeful and adventurous new year. God bless.

Unfortunate Timing I

I'm not quite sure what I did, but somehow I mangled my back the weekend before last, leaving me unable to drive for part of last week. That was unfortunate timing, as friends were moving house this weekend, and had asked for help on Saturday, including with the driving. Luckily the back was less bad by then, especially after a hot bath, and I coped. I even managed to mostly resist helping carry stuff ... mostly.

They had someone else to drive on Sunday, which was useful as we had tickets to a concert in Brighton that evening, quite a long drive away, to see The Dirty Youth opening for Heaven's Basement. Unfortunately, in a piece of bad timing for all concerned, that driver's wife fell ill after his first run, so I got the call early Sunday afternoon. Just one more run needed to transport the last few bits and pieces, then get the van back to Berkshire Van Hire (although the dirty great Luton was a scary beast to drive, it was a nice - and surprisingly comfortable - piece of kit). "The last few bits and pieces" - except they had managed to forget to check a room that morning, so it was the last few bits and pieces, plus a fair bit of furniture, plus all the other stuff that goes with being "90% complete".

So we got the van back quite a lot later than I'd hoped, and I was quickly picked up by BlackLin and BlackSar in our car, and set straight off for Brighton, with just about time to get there for the start of the show. But not enough time to go via home, so not enough time for me to persuade the PC to print off the map of Central Brighton which I had found. So we depended on a print-out of directions from the RAC route finder. Which had Brighton Pier a mile down the road from where Brighton Pier actually is. Which is a tad inconvenient since BlackLin didn't have the postcode of The Haunt, which was the venue, but she did know that I'd said it was just opposite Brighton Pier.

That meant we made good time into Brighton, but still ended up getting to the venue late. Which was unfortunate timing when it was the opening act we really wanted to see. We managed to see a song and a half of The Dirty Youth: the sound was really good (this time), the venue was pleasantly busy, the band were brilliant ... and we got to see them for a song and a half!

The second support act were Glamour Of The Kill, a band from Yorkshire. Wikipedia describes them as 'post-hardcore'; I'd call them generic 21st-century pop-punk. They are like all the least interesting tracks on Kerrang, whizzed up in a blender and poured out, lukewarm. This Yorkshire band sings its own songs with an American accent - how's that for artistic integrity! What really got me, though, was the drumming. Generally I like hard working drummers, and he was working hard. He was also drumming absolutely flat, on the blandest possible beat - no push, no pull, no interesting offbeats, nothing creative at all: one two three four wibbly bit wibbly bit one two three four and so on. I really didn't enjoy Glamour Of The Kill.

Headliners were Heaven's Basement. They were much more convincing: for a start they had genuine stage presence - you could tell they were the headliners. They also played their brand of modern heavy rock with energy and skill (and proper drumming). I genuinely enjoyed their set, but there was no doubt they were dinosaurs: from the posey guitarist to the "if God invited me to Heaven I'd choose Hell' woffle (Dio did it far better decades ago) to the acoustic ballad with a heavy finale, they were basically reworking ideas from the Classic Rock era, just heavier ... nothing really new. One entertaining moment was when the lead singer went off to allow the posey guitarist to sing lead on a song: the sense of presence just vanished; for all his posing he had the stage charisma of a damp towel dropped by a supermodel. Although, to be fair, he was good on guitar. At the end of their set there was no real enthusiasm from the crowd for an encore, but they gave us one anyway, as the audience slowly trickled away ... including us.

I'd say Heaven's Basement were a decent band, but anachronisms - out of time.

Takedown Festival 2014

If you're going to a day-long rock festival, it's a really bad idea to be exhausted before you even start. That's the mistake our daughter and I made before Takedown 2014 yesterday, and it did mean we ended missing quite a lot, just trying to recoup our energies.

Takedown is a one-day festival, hosted by Southampton University's Student Union, featuring mostly up-and-coming rock bands. It showcased an amazing number of young bands over the afternoon and evening (click the graphic above to see the programme), for a very reasonable price.

Two bands we particularly wanted to see were The Dirty Youth - who we had never seen before, although I did help to crowd-fund the DVD of their last tour - and Dendera, who are a local Southampton band - we have seen them before a few times, but they say they are working on new material, which we were keen to see.

If you look at the programme you can see that we had a problem: The Dirty Youth were due to finish at 5:50, whilst Dendera were to start - on a different stage - at 5:45. Then The Dirty Youth hit technical problems during their sound check, so they were at least ten minutes late starting. In spite of sound problems, though, it was a really good set, which we got to see from right in front of the stage.

After the gig, BlackLin and BlackSar got their picture taken with Danni, which they were really chuffed about. We gave up on Dendera and went to the cafe, where we got to talking with some of the Dirty Youth stage-crew, and later got some posters signed by two more members of the band (Phil & Leon). So that side of the festival was really good. We'll just have to look out for the next local Dendera gig and see them there instead.

In the meantime we also got to see some bands we'd either never heard of or never seen live before. Western Sand were one I'd never heard of, although they have some decent YouTube clips so we had a look shortly after we arrived. I was very impressed: they sounded to me like a kind of 21st Century reboot of Bon Jovi; heavier and less pop. One to keep an eye out for, I think.

BlackSar was looking forward to seeing Fearless Vampire Killers, but they turned out to be a disappointment. Skarlett Riot were decent, although as another female-fronted rock band playing just before The Dirty Youth they suffered in comparison. Ghouls were fun - basically heavy Ska - although I'd had enough by the end of their set. Kids In Glass Houses were another band BlackSar had heard on TV ... and another disappointment - although by then, to be honest, we were so tired they'd have had to be really good to keep our attention. We skipped the two headline bands and went home early, shattered.

Food was poor, organisation seemed decent, the range of bands was excellent (within their target genres), and we heard some good music, so overall a very good day. Now we're all wrecked, but it was worth it.

"Rise Up, join the revolution"