Everything about Revocation is delivered with a phenomenal precision and passion, which – especially with such a strong tour package behind them – places them amongst the finest names in progressive and technical death metal.  

Joseph Norman and Emma Filtness went to Roadburn Festival this year. Read their very detailed thoughts and review of this year’s festival edition.

Our London-based writer Joe Norman will cover Roadburn Festival for Echoes and Dust this year. So, read his preview to get the excitement going, or to check out some of Joe’s recommendations.

While, clearly, we all hope the world stays healthy enough for live shows to continue, I do also hope that Cradle and other bands keep doing live-streams. I was lucky to catch Cradle live out in the Real at London’s Roundhouse last year, but am still happy to pay to tune in from my sofa. As Dani explains, “If this goes well, we’ll carry on with this trend and do other albums in their entirety as well.” And whether it’s live on stage or live on stream, I’m sure legions of Cradle fans will jump at the opportunity.

A whirling, feverish explosion of colour, rhythm, dazzling musicianship, glorious fun, melodic sincerity, and an utter celebration of what it means to be alive. Life-affirming is too pedestrian a phrase. Spirit-affirming, however, is an adjective made for Sons of Kemet…

This is clearly Enslaved’s most involved stream to date. The studio looks enormous, with huge projections stretching up high above the band, unfurling beautiful kaleidoscopics. . . it’s Enslaved goes art-house in the best possible way.

For those fans down on the ground in Telemark… damn, what an experience it must have been.  For those others like me, tuning in from the comfort of home, it… provided yet further insight into the timeless complexity and grandiosity of their classic recordings, and demonstrated that – thirty years down the line – Emperor remain as unique and relevant as ever. 

This Dracula Spectacular, filmed in Colchester, was delayed from January – yes even streams get delayed in 2021… After two hours, I could happily watch another hour of this – even if they exhausted their stash of music-vid visuals – and would have liked a new track premiere, but I still feel well and truly satisfied…

Part 2 of our Roadburn Redux coverage. “Even online, Roadburn really is like no other festival: diverse, innovative music whose heaviness always cuts deep.”

First Flight of the White Raven is a success, as long as you judge it fairly. If you’re a Wardruna fan, and the band release this show for purchase then you’ll want to buy it. . . For those who tuned in, it was Wardruna alive, bursting with energy and splendour, if not live with the full capacity for majesty that that experience entails. The white raven itself is prophetic, as Einar explained: a symbol of hope – and that’s something we all need now, more than ever.

This heady mix is gloriously strung together into a deeply impressive and coherent concept album of the very best kind, told in VOID’s signature language of brutal and unpredictable riffs. Here, that style is expanded by their most eclectic range of genres to date, the fullest, richest production of their oeuvre, and all wrapped up in the enigmatic and eye-catching artwork of Metastazis. Pulling off their grandiose ambition with panache, this is VOID’s best work yet, and one that demands obsessive replaying.

Our hero’s journey culminates in the nasty, scrabbling execution of ‘Planetary Hypnosis’, harking back to some of the extraterrestrial excoriation of ‘Cosmic Dreams’, broken up with spiraling phaser breaks and reoccurring, overlapping, dual lead lines. By the time the album concludes, after around forty-seven minutes, swirling off into the stellar void, it’s clear that Visitations From Enceladus is essential listening for anyone interested in smart, complex, and rewarding extreme metal that tells a fine science-fictional adventure story. And I’m sure that Cryptic Shift will be telling us many more for years to come.

Judging by the array of fans of all ages in the crowd tonight, The Wildhearts once again prove themselves to be the rock band of their generation and of many more to come.

In a magisterial feat of heaviness, 3TEETH play a finale triptych of ‘Time Slave’ (like a long-lost and souped-up Fear Factory outtake from Demanufacture), ‘Tabula Umbra’ (like being trampled by a T-1000) and ‘Master of Decay’ (like a direct hit from the Death Star).

What they lack in originality, Twin Temple transcend magnificently in pure quality, enthusiasm and an irresistible sense of joyous magnetism, worthy of the Great Horned One herself.

The master of disaster has re-entered his kingdom in the mountain of black, and his recent struggles will hopefully feature as nothing more than a blip in a career of unending grimness. Abbath continues to rise as only the true black metal badger-king can. . .

A Forest of Stars – wrapping psychedelia, black metal, folk music, and prog rock up in a kind of skewed Neo-Victorian package – are certainly ambitious and, like VOID, have always aimed for a complex yet coherent aesthetic that unifies the band’s disparate elements, which Stars largely achieve, even if it can be pleasantly muddled at points on record.

Regardless of the odd ordering and slightly uneven feel of the line-up tonight, it was clearly a monster, and further proof that anything stamped by Sublime Terror Promotions, Cult Never Dies and/or Zero Tolerance magazine indicates a grimly exciting badge of quality.

What I really like about COL is how well they play the quiet before the storm, the steady rise and the heavy drop, the brooding swell and the tidal wave – in other words, the essence of the post-metal sound that they laid the foundations for.

Earth segue into ‘Even Hell Has Its Heroes’ from Primitive and Deadly, and the opening riff resolves into two absolutely glorious open chords, which sound simply wonderful. For that’s often the best aspect of Earth’s sound: every repetition establishing the riff more firmly in your mind until you appreciate how well-crafted that it is, and how the very final part of that riff leaves you gleefully anticipating its reoccurrence.

If you’re remotely interested in listening to guitar music, do your ears a favour and go and see these guys right now (ideally supporting Sunn O))) ). Watching Caspar Brötzmann Massaker perform takes me back to my earliest experiences listening to rock music, and reminds me of everything that made the electric guitar sound so exciting in the first place – so dangerous, so limitless, and so utterly essential to living.