16th MAY:  MOUSE ON THE KEYS – An Anxious Object (Denovali) – Different music, experimental, not too experimental, never awkward or difficult, rather pleasant actually. Mouse On The Keys are two people, Atsushi Kiyota and Daisuke Niitome, they’re from Japan, they do, at times, most of the time actually, sound like (rather clever) mice on keys – very very clever mice, no, mice aren’t this clever.  A fine mix of jazz fusion, restrained unobtrusive glitch, fill bodied electronic and instrumental warmth. I guess the electronic piano is the lead instrument,  there’s some full bodies drums alongside saxophones, trumpets and all put together in a slightly different way.  A clever album, an album that flows easily, instrumental works, flowing jazz experiments, crisp clean sounds, fresh... www.denovali.com/mouseonthekeys
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12th MAY: MELISSA AUF dER MAUR – Out Of Our Minds (Roadrunner) –  A concept album that’s part of a bigger project that involves gallery exhibitions and a comic book of some kind...  Don’t know about that, sounds interesting, just the music here though.  The music then... Out Of Our Mind is an album slowly seeps though your skin, this isn’t a body of work that grabs you straight away and demands you run with it, not one of those albums you love after first play and then become rather bored with after the fifth or sixth. No, this is more of album that slowly works in, pushes slowly through your veins, through you mind, pushes to that space in the garden under the tree. A slightly dark album, a quiietly twisted album - little twists of lyrical drama, of musical thought - under those wings, resurrection sound, dreams within a dream. Leather hearts, clear the decks, there’s going to be a shipwreck... Dark edged romantic alt,pop rock with a wordy twist to take you to the heart of the matter... a hint or two of a proggy gothy undertone, a rich sound, a lush mysterious feel, a brooding sense of dark psychedelia, I am your ear and your mind, a call to meet on the darkside, to enter from the inside... Everyone has a dark side don’t they? Guest vocals from Glenn Danzig to add yet another twist... Kind of like it once it lets you in     www.xmadmx.com or www.roadrunnerrecords.co.uk

11th MAY: RAZORWIRE – A Lethal Dose (Psychophonic) – No messing live album from the hard working English street-metal crossover band. More of you raw-edged bands should do it like this, less messing around in low budget studios with half-arsed production and engineers who don’t get it, and more of this blistering live stuff... This is where this kind of thing works best - live, raw and in your face.  Feral punk-fried street metal recorded live and right there in your ear and on your toes.  Songs mostly taken from the hardworking Stoke band’s first three studio albums, this is the way to really hear them though, a proper road band out there doing exactly what they’re supposed to be doing. Recorded at several UK venues over the last year or so, the twelve live tracks flow at one whole piece really well, spot on in terms of production, sound, mix and petty much everything (besides that rather awful artwork, got ot be honest here, that is a dreadful cover, don’t let it put you off). There’s a couple of new studio tracks on the end, taste of the forth studio album that they’re no doubt starting to think about around about now... Razorwire are a damn fine punk-fuelled English street-metal band, no great musical revolution or anything, just a no messing in your face road band do their chosen thing the right way. Damn good live metal album for a good honest no messing band..  www.razorwire.info or www.psychophonic.net  . 
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6th MAY: THE GLITTERATI – Are You One Of Us? (DR2) – Mo messing, right in there, hitting it right on the on the head of the big red button marked glam metal with attitude, The Glitterati have it down properly this time. Loaded with far more attitude and a little more aggression that they did before. No musical revolution or anything, just doing their glam flavoured party metal big hair things with a little more street wise style than they did before, a little more swagger and a touch more stomp than last time around, just a little more everything waiting for you should you want it – www.theglitterati.com or www.myspace.com/theglitterati

FUNKI PORCINI – On (Ninja Tune) – Mellow mellow beats and the gentle throb of soothing Moog rivers (including a re-titled reworking of Moon River, now called Moog River). Refined flowing lounge electronica, dream-logic, delicate found sound and James Braddell just letting it all flow in a quietly silky way, slow hypnotic movement, jazzy undercurrents, easy listening chillout goodness – www.myspace.com/funkiporcini

5th MAY: KILL THE CAPTAINS – Fun Anxiety (Armelodie) - The thing about some of those scatchy indie bands who come in with strange little blustering blistering songs and angular energy and sets of irons, these scratchy indie bands who learn to speak pleasantries and have all these little twists that chew corners of tables, is that they often make great singles and then... well with the best of intentions and thousand yard stares and spotting the leopard and well it all kind of gets a little lost over the length of an album. Kill The Captains have great songs, fine singles, not sure if they have a strong enough sound to really hold it together and hold our ears over the length of a full album, those words are strong but that thin scratchy guitar sound and that stretching of the edginess and that c86 style scratch indie rock voice... fine singles and I do rather like this band, they just keep loosing me over the length of a full album, gone back so many times now, maybe I’ll split it all up in to a whole load of two track singles..  www.myspace.com/killthecaptains

30th APRIL: HAG – Hag (Noisestar) -  The debut six track album from “London based Anglo-Hungarian-Swedish Eagle-Metal outfit Hag...” Eagle-Metal is their term of choice, or at least that’s what it says on the press release, Eagle-Metal will do us fine, whatever the flip it means, sounds bout right. We like Hag, we’ve played them at you on the radio, we should have reviewed this album already, it came out at the start of April. We’re late with the words and Hag are a band who more than deserve our words. Six raw tracks, raw focused tightly-strung blues, acid flavoured stabs of heavy primal rock’n roll fuelled by a love of heavy blues and based around some kind of grinding edgy experimental Melvins, High Of Fire resonation...  Primordial noise that never actually gets too noisy to live with, I mean, yes, heavy as hell, raw, blistering, no easy listening lounge music here, but perfectly fine to have it rumbling loudly on repeat play all day as they get on with their freight-train rolling cutting-edge blues flavoured heavy rock and all their finely-tuned noise. Face biting tick tack toe and nailed just right, seriously good  - www.myspace.com/hagnoise or www.noisestar.co.uk
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KONONO No1 – Assume Crash Position (Crammed Disc) – The new album from the long-standing Congolese street band  Konono No.1, the fourth in the Congotronics series from Crammed Discs. Junkyard sonics and a forever jumping percussive groove that just rolls on and on with a great big happy smile on that collective musical face. Apparently created using thumb pianos, drums made from scrap metal and disused car parts as well as added bits of electric bass and guitar courtesy on neighbourhood musicians from a young Konono covers band! There’s a wide range of guest vocalists keeping the multi-voiced hypnotic sound rolling on, including members of that other great Congotronics band Kasai Allstars. A precise sound, a find blend of what can be described as a traditional African sound, a trance-like fusion, blended with just an edge of home made distortion, a touch of street-wise raw power and an energetic momentum that just rolls on and on in such an uplifting enjoyable way.  A delight of an album that flows, that raw edge gives them something just a little extra, nothing too raw or distorted, just a little hint, that hint of street and scrap that gives a slightly different feel. A sound moving on and evolving in a rather organically enjoyable way, motorik, a warm rhythmic flow, a fine mix of tradition and experimentation – a sound that feels like it may have been evolving, and indeed will evolve, for hundreds and hundreds of years, a thrilling inviting vitally alive sound, just a joy really, simpleas that  – www.konono.net or www.crammed.be

Assume Crash Position is out on May 17th in the UK, the band are in the UK next week - All Tomorrow's Parties  on May 8th, London Scala May 9th, Bristol on the 11th, Manchester 13th, hit the links for full details.

EF – Mourning Golden Morning (Shels) – What we have here is a more than decent enough, if somewhat typical, post-rock five piece, this time a band from Sweden, here with their third album. Pleasant enough; uplifting, enjoyable, mostly instrumental, epic post rock that, in that enjoyable way of most instrumental post rock, goes to all those enjoyably soothing places that mellow instrumental post-rock so often goes – all those cinematic sky touching build ups to those climaxing highs that slowly get louder and louder and then explode in the sky, wishing godspeed to all as those sigur ros high points of the widescreen world as they encompass everything in that post rock way again and again.... All very nice and full of colour but we know exactly where each epic bit of the dramatic tune is going way before we get there - not once have they come anywhere near proving us wrong and surprising us and oh come on, all you instrumental post rock bands, you’re all sounding the same, this is all very nice but haven’t we been to this same place a few too many times now? (Indeed haven’t we written this same review a few too many times now?) As decent as this is, you post rock bands really need to be making a few unexpected turns now. Decent enough album, and if we hadn’t heard all the others we’d be telling of the widescreen epic beauty and the glow and hey, if you like your epic post rock then this is very (very) good, if you need it all to go somewhere new then this probably isn’t quite enough for you in 2010 in the way it would have been in 2000  -  www.myspace.com/efor www.shelsmusic.com

MUTINY WITHIN – Mutiny Within (Roadrunner) - “The future of metal has arrived” announces the sticker on the front, well that’s pushed up the stakes as we rip off the cellophane and throw the disc in the cruncher. Let’s see you back that one up then... 
          Ah well, so the future is the same old thing then? Let’s see, millions of riffs, growling vocals babbling, growling and frothing behind the one who can actually sing - melodic bits, bombastic bits, technical metal bits - everything thrown in there, a million sledgehammers to crack a nut once more. They sound like they’ve taken elements of every single little sub-genre of the metal world and crushed the whole lot in to every bombastic stew and right now I’m really wanting to take that widdle-diddle poodle metal guitarist’s instrument and shove it somewhere where even his broken-hearted afflictions haven’t reached yet. Nah, this future isn’t looking that bright, decent stew of bombastic throw everything in if you want it, but the future of metal surely needs to be a little more than this – www.myspace.com/mutinywithin

PRIMITIVE GRAVEN IMAGE – Celebrating Impending Chaos (Envenomation) - A torrential plague-wind of black metal blowing throw with a bag load of evil atmosphere and some old school thrashing and some venomous pounding - this isn’t the future of metal either, I like it here in this black wind of hell noise and banshee screaming. An unrelenting slice of old school proper black metal that ain’t nobodies future, just proper evil black metal, with an extra street wise slice of quality, metal that hits the spot just right, ‘nuff said... www.pgimetal.com or www.envenomationrecords.com
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KAYO DOT  - Coyote (Hydrahead) -  Disregarding any defining line between contemporary classical composition and rock band, Kayo Dot make music that unravels, unspools in its own time, with its own pace, its own huge scope. There's nobody quite like them (if you discount the closely related Maudlin of the Well), yet Coyote sounded like completely different band at first listen.  And then.. of course this is Kayo Dot, who else could this be? But this is a Kayo Dot in a dark, dark place. Still meandering through extended, intense thought processes, still evolving instrumental passages that take you to vocalist/composer Toby Driver's furious or gentle vocal destinations - except that the peaks of raging intensity or delicate, sunny sensuality of earlier works are entirely absent. Coyote is full of a different intensity entirely: crushing anxiety, complex, slippery menace, physical pain.  It feels like a physical struggle, and that it's going to break out into something familiar, to release from holding back, but the claustrophobia just ebbs and flows until it gains its own logic and beauty.  And of course, because this is Kayo Dot, it is beautiful - an exquisite balance of violin and synth and classical instrumentation with guitar and a gorgeously alive, expressive bass that sometimes festers and growls, the whole integrated effortlessly with drums (from superb ex-Time Of Orchids drummer Bodie). In Abyss Hinge II: The Shrinking Armature, there are passages of what is surely Leslie-speaker distorted trumpet or sax, and organ, which sound magnificently like a lost prelude to A Plague Of Lighthouse Keepers.  Few bands have ever been brave enough to take on this amount of space and distance, and to combine orchestration and proper jazz and improvisation and rock dynamics with such seeming effortlessness.  Eighties misfits Birdsongs Of The Mesozoic come close (interesting that Toby Driver was also based in Boston at one time), and there are just hints of pre-sellout Efterklang. (Previous Kayo Dot and MotW albums reference Led Zeppelin occasionally - but there's none on this one). At times it becomes a kind of psychedelia in the purest sense of music as altered state, twisted like Comus or early King Crimson. Other moments point to Driver's background in doom and metal (but then you could be picking apart these musicians' myriad influences all day).  In Opeth's wildest dreams, they hope they sound almost as good as Kayo Dot. 

MORSER – 1st Class Suicide (Bastardized) - Intensely relentless screaming raw bleeding growing grindcore death metal delivered with a mean brutal attitude and a more than healthy amount of f*** you. Others may sound like a fashion parade going through the motions and make mere ‘stuff’, Morser sound like their lives depend on the uncompromisingly heavy blitzkrieg of noise they have to make.  The German band aren’t doing anything that radically different, they just hit the spot and up the attitude a little more than most of the others, that balance of precise energy, intense noised, crafted metal and everything boiling over in just the relentlessly right way. Intense extreme heavy metal without the pose and the bullshit, just the way it should be. www.morser.de  or www.bastardized.net
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27th APRIL:  FROG EYES – Paul’s Tomb: A Triumph (Dead Oceans) – Frantically calm and instantly demanding attention, the new Frog Eyes album is a fiery set of different colours. Cleverly all over the place but not in any kind of awkward way, lot of depth here, lot to peel back and explore here, nothing too complex, nothing difficult, nothing that needs full attention (well worth paying full attention to though). Songs, very much about songs, the commitment of Scott Walker, yes indeed, a touch of early Roxy Music, an album that isn’t retro but isn’t going out of the way to be desperately ‘now’ and modern (although we one again detect those current, almost regulation, Mercury Animal Rev Collective tones and chimes and...). The strength of the voice is what carries things here, the tone, the pouring of so much in to the river of things flowing over the rocks of the tunes. There’s a depth here, more depth than before, a dark depth at times, powerfully self assured depth, a confident knowing from a band, a sense that this album is the one they’ve been trying to make all their lives, this is it – really is all about the song writing and this album is alive with powerful songs, with different textures, different darkness in their garden, lighting up the ways, songs alive with different things, a raw edge, a defiant spirit and in front man Carey Mercer, a voice up there with Arthur Lee or Tom Verlaine, and yes heading out towards Scott Walker in such an intriguing way. Impressive, an triumph indeed. www.myspace.com/frogeyes or www.deadoceans.com

DIVIDED MULTITUDE – Guardian Angel (Silverwolf Productions) – One of those European technical metal bands who like to pass themselves off as prog, though god knows where exactly the progressive element is...? Show-off technical metal with a million histrionic riffs crammed in with the over the top vocals and preposterous lyrics about revealing the truth through a million tears at the foot of the mountain where the eagle flies to the chip shop for a fried cod in batter or some such nonsense. Waiting for the hours to fade away forever... you said it mate!  This is for those strange people who never smile, the ones with neatly groomed beards, nice polite ponytails and serious looks on their serious faces as they stand, hands folded in their serious ‘intelligent metal’ T-shirts that have discrete logos of serious pony-tail wearing metal bands (or technical seven string guitar companies) on them... There go Divided Multitude again, cramming a million riffs, keyboard melodies and pounding drums in with the Quennsryche sauce, the bits that sound like Europe without the smile, the choppy bits, histrionic bits all of them almost like the dream they had again last night where they flew higher than the tops of trees... People do like this poe-faced stuff though, fair enough, each to their own, I don’t, it isn’t prog, some kind of show off technical metal is what it is and if you need it then Divided Multitude do it rather well. Go check it out if you must, I’ve had enough now, killing rage coming on (or at least a CD throwing rage).  The kind of awful band you find giving the idea of prog rock a band name at nightmare-inducing festival traps like the hideously-named Prog-Power festival - no shouts of A Flower there, just widdle diddle sledgehammers cracking nuts in a most unsophisticated heard it all a million times before poe-faced show-off unprogressive fashion, here comes the link 
- www.myspace.com/dividedmultitude

PENGUIN PARTY - See Thru Songs (Sitting Target) – Pleasantly uplifting set of chorus driven songs, sunny English tunes that come with a sprinkling of 60’s sounding psychedelia, some colourful Andy Partridge XTC flavours and just good uplifting gently breezy simplicity. Of course it isn’t that simple to write songs that sound so uplifting and simple but you get the drift here. A more organic, real-sounding Lightening Seeds maybe? Rather charming  - www.sittingtarget.net or www.myspace.com/penguinpartyband

BLEEDING THROUGH – Bleeding Through (Roadrunner) – Blustering and growling and screaming, those horse-stood-on-a-hedgehog guitar yelps at the end of the same old riffs. Gnawling and bleeding through with their screaming and their bluster and their growling and their boiling and their screaming and their brutal bleeding riffing and more bluster and more screaming and tantrum throwing and bang bang bang crunch crunch and...  I’ve heard enough of you and this modern screaming metal intensity is just too slick and formulised and rather faceless, could be almost any of the current crop of Download-heading corporate metal bands and really lacking in any kind of personality. Hundreds of bands just pouring it all out in the same conforming style over substance way... This is just ‘stuff’, just ‘product’, Bleeding Through is the sound of a band just making aggressive violent noise devoid of depth, soul, meaning or any of those things that stop it from just being ‘stuff’. True they add a bit of light and shade here and then, mostly when they wuss out and get all melodic and tuneful now and again, but that’s just them conforming to the blueprint as well isn’t it? Slick, clean cut, full-bodied production, ‘perfectly’ executed ‘product’, Bleeding Through really are a record company marketing department’s dream of a band - obey the rules now, strike the pose, take no risk, add no danger, feel no soul, have no meaning - the face of corporate modern metal bleeding through without ever connecting (besides the nice bit of slide guitar at the end of the sixth track). Nah, they’ve been blistering away here, on and off the CD cruncher for a month or so now, this slick metal ‘stuff’ does not connect in anyway with this gnarly metalhead, need far more than this – www.myspace.com/bleedingthrough
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