Texas rockers The Well head a supporting cast of quality British bands for a Friday night shindig at Camden’s Black Heart.

Through a combination of excellent musicianship and professionalism, Insomnium gave us a chance to fully experience their signature sound with a real precision performance.

The modern-day Queen of the Blues, Beth Hart, puts on an incredible emotional roller-coaster of a show at the Hammersmith Apollo.

Wire rarely give you quite what you expect and yet the one thing I really never anticipated was for them to make me emotional.

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. . .

Celebrating their iconic Power Trip album, Monster Magnet return triumphant!

Petrol Girls loud ‘n’ clear righteous causes are soundtracked and delivered live by quite possibly the best Post-Hardcore Punk band around at the moment.

Day 2 of Sheffield’s HRH Prog festival saw great turns from Canterbury legends Soft Machine and Caravan, amongst others.

If anything really defines Boris’ appeal tonight it’s the double-whammy of ‘Coma’ and ‘LOVE’, two nebulous, droning titans . . . These are where Wata is given her chance to flex her muscles to the utmost, layering distortion and squealing semi-melodies and then ramping up each of them until the room becomes nothing but a fog of sound and dry ice.

The success of shows like this are a clear demonstration of why Battle Beast are the rising force that they are in European metal. They put together a set which perfectly balanced spectacle and musicianship, and which they were able to combine for a thoroughly entertaining evening.

Alter Bridge’s form of introverted hard rock is joy to behold. . . As they continue to be one of the most consistent acts in the genre, there will be plenty more great shows like this still to come in the next decade too.

At a stage where many bands struggle to have any impact on the scene that made them in the first place, Lacuna Coil continue to redefine expectations and use their experience to carry on pushing boundaries as well as entertaining their fans.

Jinjer to me, and many others, they are Metal’s heirs apparent – Gojira in waiting. It’s theirs for the taking; if they would only step out of the darkness and show themselves in the best possible light. . .

It may be the holidays  and we may have been lulled into a beery bonhomie,  but this bunch of unassuming nice guys can still pack one hell of a punch.

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.

Periphery are on top of their game right now and should feel on top of the world with a performance like that. One of the most exciting and adored progressive outifts of the decade, the future looks even brighter for them, not least because off the back of this show every fan there would go back to see them in a heartbeat.

We headed to Yorkshire for the weekend to keep abreast of developments at the UK’s biggest prog festival, and heard great sets from both The Vintage Caravan and Gong on Day 1.

It’s a remarkable feat, transposing the studio grandness with the bare minimum of tools at her disposal. Strings swirl and electronics ember to produce a warm glowing intimacy that swells and overwhelms when required.

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.