Rammstein

Since their formation in 1994, Rammstein have grown to become the power house of German industrial metal. Unfortunately for me, I hadn’t heard any of their music until once, round my friend Alex’s, we were playing Call Of Duty and he suggested that we listen to some music whilst killing the Nazis that were heartlessly attacking our positions. I was immediately drawn in by the aggressive and dark sound this band, that I had never come across before, was making.

After finding out what the band was called I went on a search to find one of their albums. The favourite song that I’d heard whilst playing Xbox (and the one that most increased my Nazi killing abilities) was Ich Will, so I ended up getting their 2001 album Mutter, a good choice. Mutter quite honestly one of the best heavy metal Albums I’ve heard in a long, long time. The killer songs and the combination of traditional metal instruments, guitars and drums, along with synthesisers give this album, and indeed Rammstein in general, a sound that makes it stand out from a lot of other metal out there today.

One of the big things that Rammstein have going for them is their choice to sing in German. Not only because German is quire honestly one of the most brutal sounding languages – The rolling “R” and throaty tones are so well suited to heavy metal that you’d think it’d have been designed for the purpose – but I also respect that they don’t want to sing in English, even if it would widen their audience, they’re going to write their songs in German, because it’s their language.

Patches

Back before my time, it was common for rockers to wear denim jackets covered in studs and patches. Now a days it’s near impossible to get studs anywhere but the strange world of the internet, however, if you’re lucky you can still find patches in some smaller shops that sell alternative clothing, here in Swindon I’ve been lucky enough to stumble across two such shops, The Little Rock Shop and The Trinket box. Unfortunately these shops didn’t have a huge range of patches but their proximity to me made up for that and I able to make a start patching my jacket (see the picture to the right). If given a larger choice of patches I might not have chosen to have Green Day or “Parental Advisory” patches, but this is what I had to work with, they were only £1.50 each and I secretly quite like Green Day.


My good friend Chris (who wrote the Blaze Bayley live post) had patched his denim jacket months before me (you can see it below here), however he had risked delving into one of the dark recesses of the internet, eBay. Here he came across a huge range of patches that were only slightly more expensive than the ones I had bought from the shops at £2.50 not including p&p.


It seems to me that the best place to find the best patches would be online, even if this means spending a little bit more, and in hind sight I probably should have gotten mine offline. But what ever your preference, I would strongly urge you too patch your denim jackets and show your support for your favourite bands, or at least ones you can get patches for.

Blaze Bayley live at 12 Bar (Chris guest writes)

Well it was dark and stormy night... not really, just dark, but on the night of Thursday 11th February a certain ex singer of metal legends Iron Maiden was due to gig at The 12 Bar Swindon. The man who would not die had returned to Swindon on tour for his latest album, Promise and Terror.

The gig opened with Blazes support, Sinocence, who were also advertising an album, Scar Obscura, although not massively known they put on a very good show, with songs such as perfect denial from the latest album and songs from their previous albums. After coming offstage all mingled with the audience until Blaze took to the stage, this included signing autographs, chatting and selling merchandise.

Having just arrived off the back of a gig at the Nags Head in High Wycombe the day before you would think Blaze Bayley’s show would suffer, but no, it was as energetic as ever, the Swindon gig being the 3rd gig in 3 days and the middle of 6 in 6 days.

Blaze and his group, self named as Blaze, played songs from the new album and old albums, quoting along the lines of “This is for all of you who have kept me going throughout everything, I am the man who would not die” also playing songs from the last album such as ‘Voices from the Past’ and ‘Samurai’. As part of the tour Blaze would play some of his songs from his years in Iron Maiden, one maiden song at each gig, 2009 marking the 10th year of his departure from the band, in this case he played ‘Lord of the Flies’.

A truly energetic (and loud) performance from all members of the band, Larry Paterson (drummer) and David Bermudez (bassist) especially, there was some real crowd pleasing going on. And from seeing him live it is clear why Blaze Bayley was chosen as Bruce Dickinson’s replacement in Maiden in 1994, the man has unlimited stage presence, he really got the audience going.

Another amazing thing is the scale of the gigs that the band have played in for this tour, there must have been less than a hundred people at 12 bar that night watching, and for £8 entry really got their money’s worth, this was an exciting and lively performance that made you wonder if the foundations of the 12 bar were strong enough to cope, I would recommend seeing Blaze if you can, as well as being an amazing artist he is a genuinely nice guy and finds the time in his busy schedule to talk to the fans, sign autographs (signing one in order to wish Matt a happy 18th ‘birfday’), etc.

I hope Lightning Strikes Twice and he returns to 12 bar in the near future.

Looking back on November 2009 (part 2)

As I said in my last post, I went to the head-bangingly awesome Motörhead gig on the 15th November 2009. that was soon to be followed by an Alice Cooper gig on the 29th of the same month. At this point I didn’t have a ticket to Alice Cooper but, still with the ringing from Motörhead gig in my ears, I scrounged enough cash together to get the ticket to go see him. Even more enthusiastic than I was before seeing Motörhead, we were all expecting a repeat performance of hard rock.

There was only one warm up band called Man Raze, by the time me and my mates had gotten in they were already doing their set. It was average rock, not totally inspiring but not bad. The crowd at this point didn’t seem too interested and it felt to me that many of them were getting annoyed with this trio on the stage. The lead singer was trying to engage us, although having taken his top off he’d elevated himself to the level of “tit on stage” to me and the few friends I was there with.

When their set was done it was a long wait as they put up a curtain to hide them assembling a set behind it. Suddenly the lights went down and we were presented with a suite of a man on the curtain that was then sucked down into the corner of the stage as the music started to play. The crowd started the shout and jeer as Alice Cooper and his band started to perform for us. The performance was one classic song after another, each one telling some vague story through the rightly famous death scenes, such as hanging and being injected with a massive needle. Although all this was very impressive I never really felt engaged with the music or him. Where as Motörhead, Girlschool and The Damned had addressed the crowd and made the crowd like them, only spoke the crowd at the very end. The best way I can think to describe Alice Cooper’s performance isn’t as a rock concert but as a rock musical, and if I'd been expecting that, I'd have enjoyed it much more!

This Sunday we’ve got a treat, my good friend Chris is guest writing telling us all how he got me an awesome 18th birthday present in a review of Blaze Bayley’s concert at The 12 Bar Swindon.