Young Fathers have already been praised highly with a couple of releases through the respected Anticon records. They had better get used to praise as Dead should see them gain widespread acclaim. Rightly so, as the Edinburgh based group have delivered a bold and unique album of brilliance.

Rooted in hip hop, afobeat and soul, Young Fathers take these elements and construct something both dark and melodic. There is a multitude of influences and ingenuity in the beats and production. The three members combined Scottish, Nigerian and Liberian heritage makes for a melting pot of sounds.

At times grimey and menacing, with gravel throated hushed rapping, it's offset with soulful harmonies. The strength of the songwriting and delivery sets it apart. I guess the hooks are pop but don't confuse that with polished nonsense. Pop in it's most progressive form and like a crack of sunshine breaking through dark storm clouds. The first two 'Tape' releases reminded me at times of Massive Attack. There is still is an element of that in Dead. However here Young Fathers have really found their own style and it's infectious.

From the machine gun like propelled beats closing the opener 'No Way' it's clear this is a special album. Previous single 'Low' demonstrates their sound perfectly. A soulful sung opening and building rhythms leading to an explosion of sound. It along with the darker 'War' have been some of my most played tracks for a while.

The fact that the rest of the album is as good and at times better is a relief and proof those tracks were no fluke. Recently released 'Get Up' is the type of song that would make the dead dance. Infectious, uplifting and blending contrasting elements. They sing "Get Up, have a party" although if you're not already dancing to this there's something wrong.

Elsewhere, the pace is slowed on the likes of 'Hangman' but with quality still shining through. 'Am I Not Your Boy' carries a Gospel feel with layered vocals enveloping the senses.

In all Dead is a triumph in times of manufactured bullshit dominating the mainstream. Hopefully Young Fathers will make people sit up and pay attention, and sell by the truckload if there is any justice.

It's testament to their quality that both Anticon and now Ninja Tune/Big Dada records are behind Young Fathers. Dead ranks among some of the best releases from both labels.

It’s kind of amusing how certain bands find their way into your life, following my review of Sierra it transpires that Jagged Vision are (A) label mates (B) also on tour with Kylesa and (C) had this album produced by Phillip Cope, so would be rude not to check them out. It also turns out you learn something new every day as the record label in question has actually been created by members of Kylesa (new favourite label for me then and just when you think you can’t love a band anymore!)

But that’s where the similarities end as Jagged Vision (A) are Norwegian and more importantly (B) Harvest Earth is a relentlessly aggressive beast as the opening blast of ‘Darkness Into Light’ testifies with its up-tempo filthy RIFFAGE and harsh gravelled vocals. The prevalent influences on this record are sludge and hardcore that results in a general sound somewhere between driving energy Cancer Bats and the southern vibes of Down (which to me is a winning combination).

The production job makes it also sound absolutely colossal with even the drums getting attention sounding especially huge in ‘No Peace’ and ‘Shadow Glide’ while the RIFFS are superb and come thick and fast – check out that opening RIFF in ‘Path Of Bones’ and the groove of ‘Harvest Earth’.

They are willing and able to mix up the tempo as notably demonstrated on the Kyuss-esque slow rumbling burn of ‘Supernova’ followed by the outright punk rock of ‘Electric Empire’.

Phillip Cope himself even makes a guest vocal appearance on ‘Spiritual Invasion’ and although his vocal style is very identifiable to their credit they haven’t made it sound like a knock off Kylesa track.

I haven’t been this impressed by a debut album since Cancer Bats’ ‘Birthing The Giant’ – well played!

Fatalists are a “prog punk” trio from Edinburgh (Zak Cotton (guitar/vocals), John Pettie (drums), Chris Sharples (bass/vocals), and that’s pretty much all I knew about these guys - minimal information, and a copy of their second album Unwelded to listen to. What I know now is that this is another huge reason to say that 2014 is already shaping up to be a GREAT year for your ears already! There’s plenty here for fans of all things noisy, angular and melodic, a mixed bag of sonic flavours that you’d normally expect to confuse your aural taste buds. Instead, they meld together to create the perfect blend that will have you wanting to press play again as soon as.

Opener  ‘Old Hag’ starts things off with no intro or warning, and within seconds has you slowly nodding in time with the biggest of grins. Drums, guitar and bass swim around you in a sea that has an ever-changing tide, and schizophrenic vocals float by like the wreckage of a ship sunken by mermaids. It’s a hypnotic beginning to an album that takes hold of you and doesn’t let go until closer ‘The Gentleman’ swings around with the unspoken confidence of a trio that have spent years working on this, and it shows throughout.

‘No Compromise, Just Good Times’ follows, and begins with feedback that shakes your head momentarily before all instruments combine to use your brain as a psyche-rock dancefloor. Get used to that grin that you had in the first track because it ain’t going anywhere. Buckle up and enjoy the ride – there’s gonna be plenty of twists and turns along the way.  

Dischordant riffs and off-beat rhythms can be heard in ‘Whispers in the Yard’ and ‘Peer to Peer’, and when it’s just instrumental at times (this can be said for most tracks), Fatalists aren’t afraid to enter territories unknown. But it’s obvious that these guys have had a map all along and know exactly where they were going. Ten locations that you’ll want to revisit “time and time again” (‘Shoot the Crow’).

I really hope great things happen for this band in 2014, because this is by far one of the most enjoyable albums to listen to that I haven’t stopped playing since it appeared in my inbox. Released at the end of the month, this is something you should definitely add to your collection. There’s a swagger here that isn’t cocky in the slightest, but these guys know exactly what they wanted to do with these songs, and it’s done in great style. “I can take you home, or take you far away” yells Zak on ‘Seppuku’.  You can take me wherever the hell you want as long as this album is on, played at the highest volume on repeat thank you very much!

It’s 2:15 A.M and wherever you are it is quiet. Everyone in your household is asleep or you are commuting home in the nighttime stillness. The air is cool and crisp, it may be raining or foggy and time seems to be standing still pushing you into thoughtful pensiveness. Whether your musings are nostalgic, sad, happy or fill you with perfectly normal existential anxiety doesn’t matter. In this moment there is no other music like Bohren & Der Club Of Gore to provide the soundtrack for your thoughts. Piano Nights is magnificent and deeply introspective work that makes a superb addition to their already impressive catalog.

Bohren & Der Club Of Gore is often cited as playing “black ambient jazz” or “doom jazz” and these descriptors are relatively accurate if only because their really isn’t anything else out there like them. On Piano Nights Bohren & Der Club Of Gore’s progression is just as glacial as their well known slow tempos. If you’re familiar with them there won’t be many surprises except possibly the return of the guitar in the final song, the first time it’s been heard on a Bohren record since 1995. What they have done here is perfect their formula giving Piano Nights even more depth and haunting emotiveness. It is a soft, deliberate and noir-esque journey inward.

Throughout their career Bohren & Der Club Of Gore have employed dramatic use space, anchored by understated and incredibly restrained drumming. The space on Piano Nights is draped in softly echoing ambience that creates an expansive landscape for the various keyboards and bass to stretch out between each chord and note. The sweeping openness gives each note heft and weight. Every downbeat drops like a sigh of relief. All of this subdued weight supports the soaring, mournful saxophone. The effect seems simple at first but the sheer mass and depth of the music reveal a complexity born out of patient and careful composing. No note goes to waste and no bit of quiet is completely empty.

It’s been said that listening to Bohren & Der Club Of Gore requires a great deal of patience. I disagree with this sentiment. I think listening to Piano Nights requires mental stillness more than anything. The band has already done the hard work of instilling their music with all of the patience required, all you need to do is sit back and let it carry you. The band describes their own music as “uneventful” and “sailing without sails.” This is only true if the listener had an uneventful life that wasn’t worth the reflection that Piano Nights will draw them into. It is the perfect example of heavy music played as softly as breath.

This has been said a lot of times over the last couple of months: France has a pretty amazing loud music scene! Especially on the grindcore level there have been some pretty impressive releases by Blockheads, Nolentia, Grind-O-Matic, Infected Society, F Stands For Fuck You and Miserable Failure. We also had some of the noisiest rock releases by Carne, Pigs and Sofy Major. These last three were released on French label Solar Flare Records and this label now released another amazing record, namely Incorporate The Excess by Stuntman.

Stuntman is from Sète in France and this four piece has been building a huge reputation as a very explosive band playing a blasting mix of noisey hardcore/punk metal. They have played a huge number of gigs playing with a very impressive list of bands (check the info section on their Facebook page!). They now released their second full length after the in 2011 released album Target Parade.

And wow! This album is mind-blowingly good! There are 7 tracks on Incorporate The Excess, of which 5 tracks slap you straight in the face while injecting you with an overdose of adrenaline in your veins. This band doesn’t take no for an answer and after the brief intro track ‘Broken Mirrors Lacerate’ we get treated on some of the most furious blast beats and extreme riffing and shredding in ‘The Patriot, the Elite, the Icon’!

It is not just straight forward powerviolence here what Stuntman present here, as the drums vary in rhythm greatly, almost giving it a mathy kind of label. Like “math-grind-hardcore-powerviolence-metal” or something. Next track with the brilliant name ‘Bag Of Dicks’ continues this whirlpool of aggressive riffing, growling and insane drumming. It basically never stops during the next tracks ‘Horns Of Misery’, ‘Roll The Skull’ and ‘Chaos Shepherd’. Then the last track ‘Scarecrow Warfare’ takes a huge step back in the tempo and we get this nearly 9 minutes long slow sludgey track thrown at us, slowly grinding towards a finish of this spectacular release.

Fans of Botch, Keelhaul, Deadguy, Unsane and Knut pay attention as I might have found your next favourite album here for you. Stuntman is brilliant, energetic, aggressive and Incorporate The Excess is most definitely circle pit material.

Tellusian are a Swedish sludge metal band mixing in plenty of grind elements making their music slightly different from the vast amount of sludge metal bands out there at the moment. This four piece comes from Malmö and what is it with Scandinavian countries and heavy music these days? It almost seems like every other promo I get sent is from Norway, Sweden or Finland! Not that this is a bad thing obviously as they certainly are a very talented bunch of people up there!

Tellusian have been on the scene for a few years now, having released a couple of 7” releases and this Scania 7” is their latest one, giving us a taster of what is to be released later this year with their planned full length release Collision.

So, here we’re dealing with 2 blistering tracks, ‘Karnival’ and ‘Eight Years of Rest’, both just over 3 minutes in length. This 7” is pretty much the real thing, it is fucking awesome! Heavy chugging sludge riffs, deep growling vocals and a whole range of various pounding drum rhythms are presented to you here. There are indeed grind elements added to the mix, for example after the brief intro in the first track ‘Karnival’. Furious blast beats are interchanged with slower almost Mastodon-like instrumental bits and a huge pile of heavy riffing.

Second track ‘Eight Years of Rest’ continues this technical heavy riffing and shredding showcase. The combination of those blast beats and heavy chugging guitars is brilliant and I can imagine that this band would be devastating live, probably destroying everybody present, similarly to how Coilguns slays the audience during their violent displays.

This is not just sludge or grind, this is metal of the top shelf of superior quality and this 7” is making me extremely excited for the release of Collision. I can’t fucking wait.

Brief Introduction into the ways of Van Canto for the uninitiated readers out there:

Van Canto is a six piece German a capella ensemble power metal band - yes a cappella – and apart from a real drummer all other instrumentation (guitars, bass, synths etc) is preformed vocally by the “Rakkatakka” vocalists.

Fun Fact: I actually had a very similar idea one drunken night in a pub many moons ago but then discovered this lot had already done it… gits!

Having formed in 2006 they originally came to prominence through their performance of metal cover versions, the most notable ones being ‘Battery’ (Metallica), ‘Wishmaster’ (Nightwish) and ‘Kings Of Metal’ (Manowar) however what could have been passed off as gimmicky novelty act has evolved into a bone fide respected metal band because (A) they perform it bloody well and (B) can actually write really good original songs.

So anyway here we are with album number FIVE Dawn Of The Brave which contains thirteen tracks of predominantly original material.

So let’s deal with the elephant in the room first and talk about the cover versions. The press release sold it as only having two covers, one of ‘Paranoid’ (Black Sabbath obviously) which is preformed pretty much straight and another of ‘The Final Countdown’ (Europe) which is given an orchestral flavour (it actually sounds a lot like Laibach’s cover of the same song).

However it transpires there are in fact another two covers hiding in the running order and are both interesting curveballs, ‘Holding Out For A Hero’ (Bonny Tyler!) in which the female vocalist takes the lead (she even does a Bonny style rasp) is metal-ed up a touch and pretty much brilliant! All the more interestingly though is ‘Into The West (Annie Lennox – ‘Lord Of The Rings Soundtrack’) which is performed as a full group harmony and is starkly beautiful.

Which leaves this album with 9 original tracks to stand on, So to rewind back to the very beginning and they open proceedings with an a cappella take on the big grandiose orchestral intros metal bands love to employ and its surprisingly super effective and leads into the fist pumping power metal of ‘Fight For Your Life’ with its dual male and female vocals providing anthemic choruses and the guitarists up-tempo “RIFF”.

Far from being a novelty item the “guitarist” have a superb eye to detail as ably demonstrated on the triplet RIFFING on ‘To The Mountains’ which is another female led anthemic power metal anthem.

In fact the original songs traverse most aspects of power metal so as well as more fist pumping anthems like the lead single ‘Badaboom’ (note: watch the music video as it’s class) there is also classic rock/Judas Priest worship on ‘Steel Breaker’ a nod to operatic symphonic metal on ‘The Awakening’ and of course no power metal album could be complete without a power ballad as we get on ‘The Other Ones’.

The concept around the album is supposedly based on superheroes so it’s fair to say Van Canto have “Leveled Up” and as you can tell I love it and so “Rakka-Takka, Motherfucker!”

Cleft are a rather nerdy looking two piece guitar/drum duo who reside in Manchester playing kind of math rock stuff. They delivered one of the stand out performances at last year’s Arc Tangent Festival (quite an insane achievement if you look at the line up) and have two E.P.s in their artillery which contained ton of potential. But we finally have a full length to get fired into entitled BOSH!, which is almost like something you’d say when you finished making yourself a good sandwich or found your car keys after looking for about 10 minutes. Well I’m delighted to tell you BOSH! is far more of an accomplishment than either of those things… it’s huge.

We start with ’12 Second Panda’ which has quite some delicate finger work before firing into some rather huge riffs. When you hear the term ‘math rock’ these days it’s easy to assume it’s all been done before and any new bands having a go will be dull and generic but that’s not the case at all. This feels vibrant and unique, I believe they refer to themselves as ‘Turbo Prog’ and that’s exactly what it is really. Consistently throughout the album they manage to take on a journey and just as you figured out what you are listening to it’s turned completely on its head and you have an entirely new experience on your hands.

From almost techno to speed metal before you’ve had time to slowly nod at your mate who’s sitting on the couch across from you skinning up. It sort of reminds more a stripped back and slower version of the incredible Ruins Alone album which came out a few years ago. What I really like about these chaps is they must use dozens of pedals to make all these different noises and to enhance the passages but don’t get bogged down in it and really deliver on riffs, it’s fucking heavy at times. These riffs I speak of have real substance and combined with the time changes Cleft really take it to the next level.

BOSH! is ace and full of surprises, even some vocals turn up out of the blue from Hailing’s Leaf’s Matt Franklin on ‘Elephant in the Bar Room’ which temporally makes them sounds like a noise rock band like Future of the Left, who the fuck wouldn’t want that in the mix? If you like bands such as Zolle, That Fucking Tank or Adebisi Shank then get involved at once. ‘Turbo Prog’ is exactly what they have achieved, a trip that I’m not sure our minds will ever be able to fully comprehend. Most of all it just fucking rocks!

Providence, Rhode Island-based black metallers Bog of the Infidel claim to channel Dissection’s The Somberlain. And they do. If you’re going to emulate a black metal album, that’s a very strong choice; while Storm of the Light’s Bane seems to get slightly more love, The Somberlain has its legion of loyal followers and is an essential part of any black metal fan’s collection.

While I’m certainly all ears for a worship act now and then, the blatant derivativeness does bog down (pun slightly intended) the band’s newest EP, To Corrupt Your Sons and Lust After Your Daughters. That’s not so much a knock on the band’s talent as it is a statement of the expected given that The Somberlain is one of black metal’s crowning achievements, and emulating its sound while also matching its quality is a painfully demanding task for even the most able and knowledgeable musicians. And with that in mind, the EP is pretty good; Bog of the Infidel play their music very well and there is some enjoyable black riffage to be heard. However, the lack of real new ideas keeps this EP from being truly remarkable.

The three full songs on the album – that’s excluding the acoustic intro ‘An Epitaph Scribed in Dismal Skies’ – mostly hover around the same tempo and the same feel, though each ramps up the intensity at points in the middle of the song. Though the warbly, reverb-laden acoustic intro of ‘To the Lurker Sold’ provides a brief break, the similar feel does cause the songs to blend together, and not much feels very distinct on the EP. Despite this, the EP doesn’t drag, though the quality would probably be improved if the songs were a bit more varied.

The main difference between Bog of the Infidel and their main influence is the lack of the big, epic melodies that were a Jon Nödtveidt trademark. Where other Dissection worshippers might try to copy the hooks that defined songs like ‘A Land Forlorn’, Bog of the Infidel mainly borrow the heavier riffs of ‘In the Cold Winds of Nowhere'. That’s not to say that there aren’t melodic parts – ‘As Satan’s Pale Serpent Eye Waxes Full’ has plenty of them – but they don’t make up the core of Bog of the Infidel’s sound the way they do for Dissection.

If you like Dissection, you will find something you like on this EP, as it is well-done despite the lack of new ideas. Ultimately, though, there is a glass ceiling put in place because the band is so dedicated to the Dissection sound. It is possible for bands to break through it when they charge forcefully enough, but To Corrupt Your Sons and Lust After Your Daughters doesn’t quite build up enough momentum. There are enough good aspects of this EP to have me interested in future material from Bog of the Infidel, but they have a bit of development to do before they become something special. Greater variance in the songwriting – and perhaps the same for their influences – would do wonders for these guys.

All bow before the mighty Toad King!

This will most likely be your first reaction when listening to Demilich, right after ‘what the fuck is up with those guitar riffs!?’ and ‘those melted face stains are never going to come out of the carpet!’ In short, Demilich are the weirdest, craziest, most original technical death metal band to emerge from the 1990s and now you can enjoy their full discography in one complete package.

20th Adversary of Emptiness features all of Demilich’s recorded material over the course of their history, along with a whopping 44 page ‘zine featuring lyrics, photos, interviews, reviews and song commentary. In short, if you were a big fan of the group’s one and only full-length studio album, Nespithe, then you absolutely have to get your hands on this double CD/3 LP package!

For those of you unfamiliar with the music, well... it’s not really all that easy to describe. Probably the closest comparison is something in Gorguts’ discography, but even that doesn’t prepare you for the alien-like atmosphere and twisted riffs that define this release. And if describing the instrumentation wasn’t difficult enough, explaining the vocals is an even greater hurdle. If I had to try and sum them up, I would say that they are the sound of a belching alien toad demon. That’s right. Belching. Alien. Toad demon.

All of this would be superfluous, of course, without fantastic songs to go along with the weirdness, and 20th Adversary of Emptiness provides by being absolutely chock-full of great death metal tracks. Opener 'When the Sun Drank the Weight of Water' is the perfect way to get acquainted with Demilich’s unique sound and Antti Boman’s notorious vocal style. All of the songs from Nespithe are stone cold classics, but it’s the final three tracks from the album that are the most memorable; just wait until you get to ‘that riff’ towards the end of 'The Planet That Once Used to Absorb Flesh in Order to Achieve Divinity and Immortality (Suffocated to the Flesh That it Desired...)' (every bit as epic as its title) or find yourself employing very unusual headbanging techniques in order to cope with the strange grooves that characterize 'The Cry'.

Perhaps the only downside to the release is that many of the remaining songs are merely demo versions of what can be found in far superior form on Nespithe (brilliantly remastered here, by the way). While this does make for an interesting listen, you really only need to hear these versions once or twice before making your way back to the album adaptations. With that said, there are three superb ‘new’ tracks (one newly written and two that the band never got around to recording) from 2006, with 'The Faces Right Below the Skin of the Earth' proving that, even after thirteen years, the band still had what it takes to create quality death metal.

20th Adversary of Emptiness is the quintessential Demilich collection. It serves as the ultimate package for fans and would be worth getting for the magnificent remaster of Nespithe alone. Do yourself a favour and listen to this timeless classic; even after all this time, there is still nothing that sounds quite like Demilich.

In what is pretty much the first notable psych release of the year, Doug Tuttle has both set a bar really high and also ushered in a return to a more pastoral 60's influenced sound. Whether this is a turning point for the genre will remain to be seen although one imagines that the disparate strands will remain bedfellows. For the time being we have this album.

Going solo after playing guitar in now defunct MMOSS, Tuttle has abandoned the more out there noise aspects of that band for a much more hazy feel. Taking his cue from MGMT and Tame Impala, Tuttle dabbles in the lysergic 60's with Syd Barrett being a key point. It's a great choice and gives the album an almost timeless feel.

Dense layers of guitar and synths create a deep psych that drifts along in a dreamlike state. This is punctuated by some glorious melodies and choruses such as the wonderful 'Forget The Day' and 'Where You Plant Your Love...Is Where It Grows'. Playschool psych which immediately transports you back to a childlike state.

That's not to say that it's completely dreamlike. There is enough here to keep you on your toes and it is testament to the production that nothing jars. Incendiary guitar solo's drift into songs without you realising until about halfway through that you may be in some long lost Jimi Hendrix song. This is finely demonstrated on the title track which ends in a smorgasbord of guitar twiddling lifting the song to heady heights.

This is an album to sink into the bath to. The songs drift by but leave enough trace for you to recall half the lyrics the next time round. Doug Tuttle has created a mini-masterpiece with this album and it bodes well for both Trouble In Mind who run a good stead in music like this and the psych scene in general. In fact, after all the out there albums of the last few months, this one makes a welcome change to the in your face droning. This is a different kind of droning and let's hope that more albums follow in the same vein.

A triumphant start to the year for psych and one that shows the Americans are still top of the game.

It’s probably fair to say that, across the broad spectrum of listeners who have encountered his music, Max Richter’s greatest strength, his accessibility to contemporary audiences, is equally likely to be seen as his greatest flaw. This accessibility was first noted by the world at large upon the release of his 2004 record The Blue Notebooks, which is probably one of the most widely acclaimed modern classical records of the last decade, by critics and fans alike. It was easy to see why people felt themselves drawn to that record. Richter painted lush brushstrokes of emotion across his canvas with such consummate ease that he made the job of composing music seem almost disparagingly easy. 

People tend to forget that The Blue Notebooks was not Richter’s first effort. That would be Memoryhouse, released two years earlier, and now being granted (another) reissue courtesy of Fat Cat’s 130701 imprint. It would be harsh to dismiss this as just a failed attempt to deliver ideas that would later be far better realised on The Blue Notebooks, but equally it wouldn’t be completely unreasonable either. The fact is that, whilst Memoryhouse is just as easily accessible as its more illustrious successor, it is nowhere near as powerful. 

There are exceptions to that rule of course. The haunting tones of ‘Sarajevo’ or ‘Arbenita (11 Years)’ are as accomplished as anything on The Blue Notebooks, but Richter has a tendency on this release to make a few too many leaps. Motifs come and go without properly establishing themselves, samples too often feel like distractions rather than suitable additions and, most problematically, there are moments when the listener is left with something perfectly pleasant but also distressingly beige. The dramatic colour of Richter’s later compositions has yet to find its true outlet, resulting in a release that is ultimately variable in quality. 

Nevertheless, the moments when this works are demonstrative of Richter’s phenomenal talent. The ascension of ‘November’ may be one of the most impressive tricks he has pulled off in his entire career, and is one of his greatest moments as a composer. Make no mistake, if you are a fan of Richter’s work then Memoryhouse is well worth seeking out. Perhaps, however, there are parts of the album that lack a little of the emotional and compositional depth that has made some of Richter’s later work accessible and thought-provoking. 

Sola Halos are a three piece band comprising of John Crouch, Nora Rogers and Eddie Sanchez who have apparently featured in bands such as The Curtains Of The Night and Fin Fang Foom, but what we are more interested in is what the self-titled debut album delivers right here right now.

And what it does deliver is strikingly engaging mid paced stoner rock that is almost psychedelic in its sheer relentlessness.

Relentless might be an odd term to use in connection with stoner rock but it works in this case as the pace is very rarely altered from its mid paced grind across the course of the six tracks, instead any tempo change is used sparingly for increased affect which is amplified by the strong clean female vocals.

It’s also far one dimensional as the slow burning RIFF work is nicely varied and the drumming allowed the freedom to add texture in unique ways, whether it be the triplet double bass on ‘The Vast White Plains’ or rattling fills on ‘Tunnels’, while male vocals occasionally appear to compliment the female vocals such as on ‘Migration’.

All six tracks are well crafted with strong hooks from the outset and delightful intricacies that will keep revealing themselves after multiple listens and flow superbly into each other backed by a strong production job.

If you have been following them since their 2012 demo EP then you may be touch disappointed as all four songs from that have been carried over and pretty much untouched (great as they are) but the two new songs will make up for this.

This second album from New York quartet Hospitality is nothing short of a revelation. Described as an intriguing mix of post-punk and progressive rock; two opposites don't seem to match on paper. In reference to Trouble though, they seem to intermingle into a cohesive whole which in parts is quite mindblowing.

High praise maybe, and in some respects there is nothing much original here. It could be argued that they are in thrall to Karen O and Co but that would be unfair to this most exciting of bands. In short, Hospitality are the future of indie rock, whatever that means in this day and age.

The urgent 'Nightingale' ushers in a stop/start sort of feel as lead vocalist Amber Papini, all frat girl vocals and snotty attitude, interlaces the music with her preening lyrics about, well...fish from what can be made out. Over the top are tempo changes that foreshadow an almost orchestral ending to the first five minutes.

The pace is kept up with the funky bass on 'Going Out' which serves to anchor the song as it progresses along it's path. This is then matched by the jagged, angular 'I Miss Your Bones' which aside from displaying their post-punk nous also threatens to turn into a Talking Heads epic at them end. Innovative for it's kind, there is something special at work here.

The bleak 'Inauguration' plays well on repeated listens and becomes a sort of backbone to the album as it leads into 'Rockets and Jets' which shows Hospitality's total mastery of what they are doing. Once the groove kicks in, you find your feet shuffling to a distinct dance beat which should be negated by the style of music but still comes through.

This dance style is revisits later on 'Last Words' which is the most overtly Yeah Yeah Yeahs song here. Where-as Karen O reaches for the glitterball though, Amber delves deep into the psyche and searches for a more tribal feel. Counteracting this is the sweet little indie song 'It's Not Serious' which precedes this song which is pure 90's Juliana Hatfield.

There is an awful lot to admire in Trouble and it is great to see a good indie guitar band for a change, a true independent spirit runs through their core and they deserve all the plaudits. On this showing they have released one of the first great albums of 2014. Take time to explore this album and have a dance at the same time. Its a killer.

By all accounts Texan “professional musician” Monte Pittman current ‘claim to fame’ is that he taught Madonna how to play Pantera riffs whilst he was a session musician for her, whilst not so well known is that he has also appeared on several of the more recent Prong albums Scorpio Rising and Power of the Damager.

So safe to say his career so far is the definition of ‘journeyman’ and joining him on this journey for his new solo album The Power of Three is Kane Ritchotte on drums and Max Whipple on bass. And power they certainly do deliver that if the gods of rock have any sense of justice this should give them serious recognition.

‘Before the Mourning Son’ is the first track I heard as it appeared on the Century Media youtube playlist and it's very Prong industrialised metal RIFF and predominantly stoner rock verse and chorus providing an interesting mix.

This track is a bit of a red herring when the opening track ‘A Dark Horse’ kicks in with its full throttle thrash metal RIFF (including a brief acoustic passage) that’s very loud and very heavy and hits a very solid groove. Pittman himself has a very strong clean vocal range that brings a sense of melody to proceedings as ‘Delusions Of Grandeur’ keeps up the thrash tempo and throws in an impressive solo to boot.

As well as the afore mentioned heavy metallic influence of Prong there is also a large influence of Alice In Chains style grunge to keep the momentum mixed up as ‘Everything’s Undone’ takes the music down the grunge path with a superb jagged off kilter breakdown… wait is that a (very brief) bass solo!?

What is really apparent is that Mr Pittman can write (A) a killer RIFF and (B) an equally killer chorus. The following trio of ‘Blood Hungry Thirst’, 'On My Mind’ and ‘Away From Here’ continue the grunge theme in different ways until the afore mentioned ‘Before The Mourning’ arrives and fits in perfectly in the context of the album bridging the gap between the metal and the grunge influences.

‘End Of The World’ is a bit of a curveball in that it’s a 90’s brit-rock styled rock ballad but the final two tracks ‘Missing’ and the monstrous fourteen minute ‘All Is Fair In Love and War’ bring back the metal RIFF, the latter closing out the album in a massive rock out fading into an acoustic strum (providing a nice full circle with the opening track).