Radar Festival - Victoria Warehouse, Manchester (27/7/24)

On the one hand, I don't really know what I'm doing here today. There are a lot of metalcore and modern metal acts playing today, two styles that I really don't like. On the other hand, there are enough bands which I do like to justify my attendance. Besides, my wife is away for the weekend and I didn't really have anything better to do.

Kyros are a band I quite like on record, playing eighties prog with a modern sheen. They have some impressive musicianship but the choreographed stage moves seem rather gimmicky. The opener 'Esoterica' is musical Marmite with some great driving prog parts mixed with a synthetic production I don't like and an electronic pop chorus which is quite unpalatable. This sums them up as a whole really as the second track 'Rumour' is a bit heavier, but again has jarring pop elements. The more instrumental Haken style prog parts are pretty good. However, frontwoman Shelby Logan Warne has a theatricality that is irritating rather than entertaining and the vocals seem to be an issue throughout. 'Liminal Space', a proggy 80s power ballad, is pretty decent. The turning of the plugging of merch into an advertising jingle is pretty funny too. The latin funk is too much for me though, even if it sounds like Gloria Estefan (and I fucking love Gloria!). Stylistically and musically, this is all over the place. The final track 'Ghost Of You' is more 80s pop reminiscent of Scritti Politti, which again misses the mark. I didn't enjoy this half as much as I expected to. Disappointing.

A tape of middle eastern chanting sets the scene before Ithaca explode onto the stage. They are a heavy mixture of djent, hardcore and modern metal. The singer, Djamila, is the obvious focus as she stalks the crowd from all over the stage. The rest of the band are impressive too, particularly the guitarist Sam, who is pretty intense. A bit of a stop-start beginning due to equipment problems (not sure what the issue was. Mic? Backing track?) means they have to pause and restart a couple of times. At their heaviest, they are reminiscent of Svalbard. They have that atomic bomb bass drop sound that Harms Way have too. They are much heavier than I thought they would be. I can't always hear Djamila's clean vocals but when she opens up, she sounds great. She is quite soulful while her screamed vocals are impressive. The band play with a real energy, and I love how the bassist throw himself and his instrument around. The final track has a number of satisfying riffs which you can really bang your head to. Excellent.

The second stage is much smaller and less accommodating, which means I have a limited view for Hail The Sun. They impress with their art rock which reminds me of a less mathy Fall Of Troy. They still have a good level of technicality and the musicianship is impressive. The singer Donovan Melero has a Cedric Bixler-Zavala edge to his voice which adds a lot of character to the music. At The Drive are probably an influence musically too. It's sounds a little thin at times but this is no fault of the band and it doesn't detract from the enjoyment. 'Tithe's heavy rhythms are really good. A tasty appetiser for The Fall Of Troy main course later on.

Car Bomb are heavy, precise and technical, with a dense sound, clattering drums and skittering rhythms. Meshuggah are the obvious comparison and whilst they often lack that band's intensity, they are still very good. 'The Sentinel' sees the stage bathed in red light and an increase in intensity, further intensifying the Meshuggah comparison. The bass tone is satisfyingly heavy, almost at doom levels of heft. They have brief softer moments which remind me a little of The Deftones, but these help to provide a contrast to the sheer heaviness. This light and shade helps make the weightier moments more impactful. The musicianship is impressive but that is par for the course for this type of music. Very good.

The Fall Of Troy's brand of mathcore is so dynamic, and they are full of energy right from the start. They are a heady combination of stop-start rhythms, blazing guitarwork and clean and screamed vocals. 'I Just Got This Symphony Goin'' is furious and frantic. They tease the intro to 'Raining Blood' before 'Sledgehammer' which is probably one of their heavier songs. We also get a snippet of Limp Bizkit's 'Break Stuff' during it too. Unlike most of the more precise bands on the bill today, there is a large element of chaos in the Fall Of Troy's sound, sometimes too much. Although most of the songs in the set are at least fifteen years old, they still sound wildly original. Donovan from Hail the Sun joins them onstage for an insanely good 'F.C.P.R.E.M.I.X.' which closes the set.

Dirty Loops are a completely different proposition to everything else today. They play funky electronic pop which sounds like when big pop stars such as Bruno Mars or Justin Timberlake play live with a band. The singer has a voice suited to this kind of pop and the harmonies are great. They have some of the best hooks and choruses this side of 'Thriller'. A cover of Justin Bieber's 'Baby' goes down well but feels like a step too far for me. The funky bass sounds too synthetic, and I generally prefer my music more organic than this.

Conjurer's mix of doom, sludge and post-metal is utterly crushing. It is soooo heavy. They are masters of dynamics, constantly mixing tempos and various heavy sonic textures so they never get boring. In fact, it is this which makes them so thrilling live. Epic.

TesseracT are heavy but accessible djent, which is essentially stadium metal these days. They are technically excellent but it's also surprisingly easy to get into. The light show is excellent which helps to make it a real spectacle. 'Acceptance - Concealing Fate, Pt. 1' is fantastic, a real anthem. The addition of the Choir Noir backing singers really elevates some tracks such as 'The Grey'. Daniel Tomkins' voice is superb, hitting high falsetto with ease in his clean singing and being very powerful when screaming. The crowd are very enthusiastic and, to be honest, I didn't realise how popular they are. They far surpassed my expectations.

TesseracT *****

Conjurer *****

Dirty Loops ***

The Fall Of Troy ****

Car Bomb ****

Hail The Sun ****

Ithaca ****

Kyros **

Manic Street Preachers & Suede - Castlefield Bowl, Manchester (12/7/24)

Tonight is part of a joint headline tour featuring two British indie/rock veterans rotating the opening and closing slots.

Tonight sees Suede tasked with the opening slot. 'Turn Off Your Brain And Yell' is a great anthemic start. A euphoric 'Trash' follows and it is seemingly one banger after another as 'Animal Nitrate' then explodes into life. Brett then disappears into the crowd for an excellent 'The Drowners'. 'We Are The Pigs' is sleazier and dirtier than the studio recording whilst 'The Only Way I Can Love You' highlights how strong their newer material is. 'Hollywood Life' captivates with its swirling, hypnotic riff. Tracks like 'Filmstar' demonstrate a harder edge than the recorded versions. Brand new track 'Antidepressants' bodes well for the new album with a pretty strong chorus. Brett gets the whole crowd involved for 'Saturday Night' and turns it into the best sad karaoke you've ever been to. 'She Still Leads Me On' is absolutely fantastic. Brett's voice cracks during the high notes of 'The Wild Ones' but it is still beautiful. Brett doesn't try and sing everything.  He speaks quite a few lines but when he does sing, he sounds pretty good. 'Metal Mickey' is still as good as it was in 1993. 'Beautiful Ones' ends the show in fine fashion. However, I'm a little distracted because the lady in front of me threw a pint of beer over another woman and I end up watching the fallout instead of watching the band.

Manic Street Preachers open with 'You Love Us'. It sounds a bit weak on the verses but the chorus is as dynamic as hell. The sweeping' Everything Must Go' sounds much more powerful. Even this early, it is clear that they are getting a much bigger reaction than Suede. 'Motorcycle Emptiness' is a true guitar anthem. 'Theme From M*A*S*H (Suicide Is Painless)' is described by James Dean Bradfield as 'one of the most depressing cover versions ever' but it is better than I remember. Like Suede, they wheel out  a lot of their big guns early as 'You Stole The Sun From My Heart' follows. Catherine from The Anchoress does a great job on 'Little Baby Nothing' although I'm not fully engaged with the track (which is a shame as i really like the studio version). She's even better on an excellent 'Your Love Alone Is Not Enough'. A glorious 'A Design For Life' is dispensed with surprisingly early. 'Kevin Carter' still is a great slice of alt rock. 'If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next' closes the show and is played (and greeted) with the fervour of a stadium rock anthem, which I suppose it is.

Manic Street Preachers ****

Suede ****

Outbreak Festival - BEC Arena, Manchester (30/6/24)

I've been a hardcore kid for nearly 30 years and this is the tenth anniversary of Outbreak Festival, a festival devoted to hardcore, punk and its various subgenres. However, this is the first Outbreak I've ever been to. It usually falls on a weekend when I'm away on holiday but I came back from Greece a couple of days ago so was able to make one of the days finally.

Wrong Man have a distinct 90s feel. The opening song, 'Big Plans', is like Deadguy's slower, less intense moments (think the last two songs on the 'Work Ethic' EP or 'Die With Your Mask On' or 'Riot Stairs'). The rocking 'Don't Remind Me' has a Rollins Band feel. The singer Bjorn has a similar vocal intensity to Rollins although he is rather static physically. 'Who Are You?' has a Rollins Band meets Poison Idea feel. Not many bands sound like this these days so they're a breath of fresh air. They definitely hark back to a time when rage in hardcore didn't necessarily mean metallic. There are some decent, subtle guitar solos within the songs and some nice jazzy touches too which again references mid 90s Rollins Band. The closing track 'Wait' has a decent rough edged chorus.

I wasn't planning on watching Angel Du$t but they sound much more punk than on record and that energy is enough to draw me into to watching them on the outside stage. The vocals sound a bit rough (and with the amount of people on stage, I'm not sure how much of them are sung by the singer) but musically, their catchy, bouncy punk is good. Tracks like 'Stay' are catchy and have tons of energy. The climax of 'Stay' is pretty heavy too. The crowd really love them.

I don't take any notes for Fiddlehead as I watched from the stage and it didn't seem appropriate. Their melodic emotional hardcore sounded really powerful and they sound much more hardcore live. There are tons of people on the stage from the very first note and they get a pretty amazing reaction. Unfortunately, I see very little of it because there are so many people watching from the side of the stage too. Still excellent though.

To be perfectly honest, I can't wait to get out of the backstage area. I prefer to watch from the front and knowing that I wasn't really meant to be there, I just found the whole thing very stressful.

The Hotelier are playing their 2014 album 'Home, Like No Place Is There' in full. They play 90s emo in the style of The Promise Ring. From the opening song 'An Introduction To The Album' there are hundreds of fists in the air, pumping away to every line and it's an impressive sight. 'In Framing' is more uptempo emo pop in the vein of Piebald with maybe a slight No Idea twist. The vocals remind me of Piebald too. 'Your Deep Rest' gets an amazing reaction. Stagedivers are crying and hugging each other, such is the emotional power. The screamier sections of 'Among The Wildflowers and 'Life In Drag'' are exhilarating. Emo and screamo are genres I used to love but as good as The Hotelier are, it starts to sound a bit samey towards the end. Final track 'Dendron' is pretty anthemic in a Jimmy Eats World or Get Up Kids way, and is a fine way to finish. The stage invasion is pretty insane (and I've heard that it's nothing compared to Poison the Well yesterday.).

Teenage Wrist open with an immense sounding 'Sunshine', its thick post-hardcore groove giving way to a melodic chorus. They mix a Swervedriver guitar tone with Hundred Reasons riffs and the end result is absolutely fantastic. They often bring to mind Dig's grungy shoegaze to mind and it is hypnotic, crushing and utterly joyous. Some tracks have a modern rock feel that suggests that they wouldn't be out of place in arenas. It all sounds very bass heavy but that just enhances the overall power. The final track 'Earth Is A Black Hole' has 'Don't Fear The Reaper' style bassline but is as anthemic as Creeper. Excellent.

I never intended to watch Hot Mulligan but I couldn't be bothered following the football text feed any longer. They are yet more melodic emotional hardcore which has made up the majority of the day's line up. They are reminiscent of Hot Water Music. Musically, it's not bad but the vocals are great. The vocals have a gruff edge and the singer Tades seems to push his voice to the limit which reminds me of the awesome Hunter Gatherer (and if you've never heard them, I'd recommend checking out their 'Low Standards For High Fives' album which came out in 2002 and is amazing). The vocals give Hot Mulligan an edge and are the main point of interest for me. Enjoyable.

Harms Way are surprisingly complex metallic hardcore on their most recent releases. Live, they are boiled down to their most primal elements and is simply music to destroy each other to. It's monstrously heavy and when the bass and beat drops, it sounds and feels like an atomic bomb. It's like the sound effect in Marvel movies where the big villain levels a city, and it feels like it would if you were watching it in a state of the art IMAX cinema. We've all seen the memes but the singer is an absolute unit and a very imposing presence. I like the sophistication of the records but as a live experience this is supremely effective. They're definitely better when playing slower but it's sooo intense, however they play. This is 40 minutes of unrelenting heaviness. Wow.

I only catch a song of Soccer Mommy but it doesn't really grab me. There is a much sparser crowd than any of the other bands I've seen so far and it just seems like the wrong crowd for her. Shame because I really like the records.

I go inside to watch the start of Thursday's set but I'm not really feeling it, so I make the decision to go home. I really want to see American Football later on but I'm feeling tired and to be honest, seven hours of bands is enough for me these days.

Harms Way ****

Hot Mulligan ***

Teenage Wrist ****

The Hotelier ***

Fiddlehead ****

Angel Du$t ***

Wrong Man ****

Anohni & The Johnsons - Aviva Studios, Manchester (29/6/24)

It seems crazy now but I first come across Anohni & The Johnsons in the extreme metal magazine, Terrorizer, as they were about to release their debut album. Maybe it wasn't so crazy at the time because their first album was released on Current 93's mainman David Tibet's label and Current 93, although not that extreme themselves, were darlings of Terrorizer. Their image grabbed my attention and stuck in my memory, just not enough to entice me in to checking them out.

I, like many others, didn't actually get into them until a few years later when they released 'I Am A Bird Now', which the British music press raved about. I bought it the day it came out after reading some reviews (probably in NME and Observer Music Monthly). It blew my mind the moment I put it on. From the very first seconds of 'Hope There's Someone', it just touched my soul. Her rich voice, reminiscent of Nina Simone, was such a perfect mix of desperation, hope and yearning.

Reunited with the Johnsons after a couple of solo records, tonight is the first show in Manchester in years.

An ominous rumble fills the hall as a white cloaked figure with antlers enters the stage, engaged in some kind of communion. It is a piece of theatre which would give Heilung a run for their money. There is an extended intro to 'Why Am I Alive Now?' before Anohni takes to the stage to add her heavenly vocals. There is a nice looseness to The Johnsons' playing which is both jazzy and lush. '4 Degrees' is very dramatic. A sweeping 'Cut The World' is amazing. Anohni's vocals are everything. Evocative. Emotional. Fragile. Defiant. Sad. 'Hopelessness' is warm yet imbued with a sense of despair. It also manages to be hopeful at the same time, It is how she manages to combine all of these things at once which makes her so special. 'It Must Change' has soulful, jazzy touches, like much of the new material. 'You Are My Sister' has different phrasing yet loses none of its power. The extended spoken word section in the middle only adds to this. However, for such an elequent lyricist, she struggles for words when she talks in between songs and she does this quite often. This does affect the momentum of the show. She sings the first verse of 'Motherless' without music or a microphone and it is spine tingling. The Nina Simone comparisons are really apparent here. 'Drone Bomb Me's electronics add a welcome change of pace. 'Man Is The Baby' is utterly stunning, before the mysterious figure makes another appearance. Encore 'Hope There's Someone' is a rather stop/start affair with Anohni singing a line and then stopping to talk like she's remembered something really important that she really needed to tell us. Unfortunately, this robs her best song of it's impact. The climax is still tremendous but I'm still a little disappointed and I don't think I'm the only one. This is still a minor criticism in an otherwise excellent show.

Anohni & The Johnsons ****