It’s as if someone else has taken all of my frustration and helplessness and screamed it away into the void for me and has left me cleansed.

This is a damned fine sludge/doom/drone record, and inarguably one of Lovely Wife’s best.

Each and every live gig, good or bad, is a unique experience. It CAN’T be background music, because you are IN it as much as IT is in YOU. I miss the gig scene terribly, and I want it back.

That’s the thing about post-rock. It doesn’t tell you what you should be feeling, it lets you make up your own mind.

The show’s not over. As expected, they’re back, and take us right back to their very beginning with ‘Hurry on Sundown’ . . . and then the quintessential Hawkwind riff-monster, the incomparable ‘Master of the Universe’. This is it. This is what made me love Hawkwind forty-odd years ago, and what is likely to keep me coming back from time to time.

It is unlikely that you will step away from this record humming one of its merry tunes. This is not a party record.

Before I start, I’d like to make a short statement. I have long resisted writing anything about Calla. Not because of them, but because of me. They deserve better than me, more than I can give. My writing is, and always has been, frivolous. My analysis …

Yes, it’s cheesy and yes, it’s sleazy but, dammit, Metaltech are just so much FUN. Mind you, I’d hate to have to clean the place up afterwards. . .

There’s been bands I loved, bands I really didn’t, and a lot in between, and it will have been exactly the same for everybody. Let’s hope that the Damnation philosophy never changes.

Do yourself a favour, check this out, close your eyes for a while and let it carry you off to weirdy-beardy space-land for a while.

I come to see Wren, and Wren are magnificent. I get two top class supports in Sapien and Haar. And, to top it all, I get to see the fabulous Death Engine, my new favourite French shouty harcore/noise band.

Languid and slinky and prone to sudden bursts of feral violence.

It’s Independent Venue Week, y’know . . . So, let’s go to Leith Depot for a gig. It’s a venue, it’s independent, and RM Hubbert is playing. . .

Bruce Cowie does Damnation 2017, watches Big Business do the business, discovers that Myrkur are more like peanut butter than Marmite, and wonders why pasties cost more in the evening. . . Oh, and did he mention Wren?

In his his inimitable style, Bruce Cowie reckons the best way to see Damnation 2017 is to and fro between the smaller stages (with the odd pasty break) and make sure you see Wren. . .

It’s a stoner/doom album. Never pretends to be anything else. You might draw comparisons with Sabbath, obviously, St. Vitus and Electric Wizard. Ewen will also offer Reverend Bizarre as a reference, if you ask him. But it’s a DAMNED FINE stoner/doom album. Yes.

Bruce Cowie drove from Edinburgh to Newcastle to see Telepathy with support from Zaum and Kylver. “…pummelling post-metal crunch with gentler post-rock interludes, like a mash-up of Pelican and Explosions in the Sky, but better than both”

To re-cycle an old faithful cliché here, Glories are not trying to re-invent any wheels, but what they have done is take a familiar, well-loved wheel and polish it, refine it, maybe add a nice new tyre, and pump it up to just the right pressure to give you the smoothest, most comfortable ride you could ever want.

Bruce Cowie reports back from another successful Damnation Festival in Leeds. Which includes a few words by Sander van den Driesche as well.

Bruce Cowie saw Half Formed Things present their debut EP at Leith Depot in Edinburgh with support from Kapil Seshsayee and Alex Auldsmith. “Half Formed Things are absolutely one of the best bands in Edinburgh right now.”

It occurs to me that Bobowler is a bit like a cat. Languid, almost lazy. A bit creepy, sometimes. Slinky and elegant with minimum effort. Invite it in, give it the time and space it deserves, let it poke about in the corners and sit on your second favourite chair. Cherish it, and it will reward you. By Bruce Cowie