#very much so based on old kerrang covers

[southern--downpour]

making fake magazine covers with your oc's is fun

[nuclearblastuk]

Fifth Angel Sign To Nuclear Blast And Announce 3rd Album 'The Third Secret

Fifth Angel is extremely proud to announce our partnership with the incredible Nuclear Blast Records family! Says drummer Ken Mary, "Over the years, we have worked with some amazing record companies, such as RoadRunner Records, Shrapnel Records, and one of the biggest labels in the world, Epic Records. However, we are even more excited to be working with the Nuclear Blast family for one simple reason: the incredible people that run this company really love the music itself, and are themselves fans of great metal music. This indeed is a unique and astounding situation, and we could not be more excited to make this announcement of making Nuclear Blast our home! We also want to thank all of the metal warriors that have kept the spirit of Fifth Angel alive and well for over three decades, and we are so very excited to finally...finally...finally announce the release of our long awaited new album ‘The Third Secret’ " Adds vocalist and guitarist Kendall Bechtel, "We also want to say a special thank you to Nuclear Blast for giving us the musical freedom to create the art that we feel best represents Fifth Angel! We had an incredible and very long journey creating this record and we hope the fans love it as much as we loved making it for them. In the end, it is the fans of the music that keep it alive, and without you this record would not be possible!" States Nuclear Blast A&R manager Jaap Wagemaker, "Nuclear Blast is very proud to reveal the secret about the signing of legendary US metal band Fifth Angel! Last year when I was at the Keep It True Festival I was blown away by the live performance of Fifth Angel! I have always been a big fan of the two albums they released, and seeing them play these songs live with such an ease was a real joy for the ears! Before and after the show, I had the pleasure of meeting John Macko and Kendall Bechtel and they played me some new music. Although it was still in the demo-stages and sounding rough, you could hear that it had that iconic Fifth Angel signature! We remained in contact and a couple of months later I received the first of three completed demo songs. These songs captured the sound and the spirit of the old classics perfectly! I listened to those songs in rotation for days! It is with great pride that we welcome Fifth Angel to the Nuclear Blast family!" The Seattle music scene in the mid 1980’s was a breeding ground of exceptional talent. “Heavy Metal” was a new wave of music that was beginning to sweep the globe, and Fifth Angel was one of the forefathers of the legendary Seattle music scene that also produced iconic bands such as Queensryche and Metal Church. In 1984, high school friends Ted Pilot (vocalist) and Ed Archer (guitarist) teamed up with lead guitarist James Byrd. They filled out the lineup with drummer Ken Mary (Alice Cooper, House of Lords) and bassist John Macko. Inspired by the success of Queensryche, who shunned playing clubs for the sake of writing, recording and releasing their own music independently, Fifth Angel followed a similar path.   Concentrating on honing their writing and recording skills, Fifth Angel crafted the incredible debut album ‘Fifth Angel’. This recording was initially an independent release funded and produced by the band, and co-produced by the famed Terry Date. ‘Fifth Angel’ was Date’s first ever production, and Date later went on to produce platinum artists such as Pantera, Sound Garden , White Zombie and Deftones. The album was first released in Europe through a fledgling label named Roadrunner Records based in the Netherlands and instantly became a cult classic in the European metal community. Roadrunner Records is currently one of the largest rock labels in the world, with bands such as Slipknot and Nickelback.   Epic Records in New York City caught wind of the band and were so impressed with ‘Fifth Angel’ they signed the band to a seven album, $21 million dollar deal. Re-mastering the original independent recording and re-releasing the album, Epic introduced Fifth Angel onto the worldwide stage in 1988. The band received rave reviews and was touted in the press as the “next big thing” in all the major metal magazines of the day, including Hit Parader, Kerrang!, RIP, Metal Edge, Metal Forces and many others. Kerrang! went as far as attaching a flexi disc of the band’s music onto their cover and giving the center fold out of the magazine to the band. During this same time period, Ken Mary was covering the drumming duties with Rock and Roll Hall of Fame artist Alice Cooper on the 'Constrictor’ and ‘Raise Your Fist and Yell’ tours. While on these world tours with Alice, Ken promoted Fifth Angel in both press and radio interviews, which gave some additional momentum to the release.   The band entered the studio once again in late 1988, this time with producer Terry Brown (Rush) and Epic released ‘Time Will Tell’ in August of 1989. ‘Time Will Tell' saw the departure of lead guitarist James Byrd, and the introduction of guitar prodigy Kendall Bechtel. The video for ‘Time Will Tell’ was released from the album and went into rotation on MTV, and the track ‘Midnight Love’ became the theme song for shock jock Howard Stern’s #1 ranked radio show for over four years. However, the winds of change were beginning to stir over the music industry and when grunge music hit hard in the early 90’s, (ironically based out of Seattle as well), Fifth Angel disbanded. But that’s not the end of the story…   In 2010, some 22 years after the Epic release of ‘Fifth Angel’, the band was asked to headline the Keep It True festival in Lauda-Koenigshofen, Germany. Gathering many of the core members and adding Heir Apparent vocalist Peter Orullian (Ted Pilot is now an endodontist practicing in Seattle and was not able to sing for the reunion), the band prepared a blistering set of songs from the first two albums. The reception was incredible, with the sold out crowd singing the lyrics to every song.   Fifth Angel again headlined the sold out 2017 Keep It True festival as well and this positive momentum planted the seeds for a new album. Jaap Wagemaker from Nuclear Blast Records, one of the most successful metal labels of all time, listened to a couple of demos Kendall Bechtel had been working on and expressed interest in hearing more. A few of the members began writing and recording together and the collective enthusiasm was very strong over the music that was being created. Nuclear Blast signed the band to a new record contract based on a three song demo that was submitted.   Fifth Angel recently put the finishing touches on their first new album in almost 30 years ‘The Third Secret’ , which will be released in September of 2018. The album features the incredible talents of guitarist and lead vocalist Kendall Bechtel, bassist John Macko and drummer and backing vocalist Ken Mary. Says bassist John Macko, “When we began this process, we always were mindful to write songs that moved us as a band first. We felt that if we achieved that, then the music will most likely touch our fans as well.” Adds lead vocalist and guitarist Kendall Bechtel, “We are very proud of the new album! We hope the fans will hear the classic threads of the Fifth Angel they know and love, along with the growth and maturity the individuals of the band have gone through over the years. We hope they love the new songs as much as we do!” Fifth Angel is: Ken Mary | drums John Macko | bass Kendall Bechtel | vocals, guitars --- More info: www.fifthangel.com www.facebook.com/fifthangelofficial www.nuclearblast.de/fifthangel

[novelwritingtrash]

Charlie Simpson is so wildly enthusiastic about his band Fightstar's forthcoming gig at the London Astoria he is literally lost for words. He tries to tell me how excited he is, but he's so excited he can't finish any of his sentences. "All the bands I went to see, growing up, at the Astoria . . ." he says, but his voice, a kind of well-bred mumble that befits his public school education, trails off. He tries again. "I always thought to myself, the day I played the Astoria, the day you get to the Astoria level . . ." He trails off again. "It's just, like, 2,000 people, which is a shitload of people, and I always thought to myself . . ." Another sentence vanishes.

Still, he has a point. It's a venue steeped in rock history - Nirvana played there in the early 1990s - and it is often used as a sort of benchmark for success: last year, a lot of fuss was made because Arctic Monkeys managed to sell the place out without releasing a proper single. Nevertheless, there's something slightly odd about Simpson's enthusiasm for "getting to Astoria level", particularly when you take into account that less than two years ago, a group he fronted sold out Wembley Arena 11 times in the space of 12 months.

But that was Busted, the faux-punk boyband who briefly reigned supreme as Britain's biggest pop act. And, as Simpson points out, when he was playing Wembley with the band, "A lot of my friends said the same thing: you looked as if you would rather have been anywhere else but where you were. Every day at work, I was in a fucked-up situation. I was in a music career, which was amazing, and I hated it because it wasn't fulfilling me in any sense of the word. I kept thinking, imagine if this was a band I really liked, I'd be loving it. It was like torture. I had to put on this front of being . . ." His voice trails off again.

Simpson says he hasn't really talked about his time in Busted before, and indeed, he looks like a bundle of nerves, albeit a spectacularly handsome one - he chain-smokes, his legs bounce up and down, he plays fretfully with his cigarette lighter. Then some of the media training he received as a member of Britain's premier boyband seems to kick in. "The trouble with talking about this is that I don't want to come across as being ungrateful. I was extremely fortunate in a way. I can only talk about this in relation to my own feelings. So, I'm not saying this in an ungrateful way; there were good experiences. But it was like torture."

After two million-selling albums and eight top-three singles, Simpson brought the torture to a premature conclusion by quitting Busted in January 2005 to concentrate on Fightstar, the "serious" rock band he had formed in his spare time a few years previously. Whatever you think of Busted or indeed Fightstar's music, it's hard not to be impressed by Simpson's bravery. That's not merely because, as his management pointed out to him, Busted's popularity showed no signs of waning - "if I'd stuck with it for another couple of years," he says, "I would never have had to work again" - but because Fightstar's music is pitched at the heavy rock market, the world of Kerrang! magazine, the Download festival and bands called Children of Bodom and Avenged Sevenfold.

Hard rock fans are easy to mock, with their piercings, outsized clothes and pen-chant for doing that thing with their fingers that's meant to represent the devil's horns, but they are a notoriously tough crowd to impress. "They take as much pride in hating bands as they do in loving them," notes Simpson, and they particularly hate anything to do with pop music. You can catch a flavour of their musical puritanism by talking to Dan Haigh, Fightstar's bassist. "I'm from a metal background," he announces, with a hint of pride in his voice. "I didn't watch TV or listen to the charts, so when I first met him, I didn't actually know who Charlie was." Most metal fans, however, knew precisely who Busted and Charlie Simpson were, and devoted a lot of time to loathing them.

The fact that Simpson and Fightstar seem to have turned their opinions around in the past year represents one of the more remarkable reinventions in recent musical history. Former boyband members go on to do a lot of things - present children's television, appear on reality shows, reinvent themselves as R&B vocalists, end up in rehab - but it seems fairly certain that Simpson is the first one to appear on the cover of Kerrang! plugging the release of a concept album based around a Japanese manga cartoon called Neon Genesis Evangelion, which contains not one, but two musical evocations of the apocalypse. "I thought to myself, this is not going to be an easy ride," he says. "I understand how hard rock fans feel inside out, because I was one of those people. The reason I've been able to take all the shit that's been thrown at me is because I understand the people throwing it. It's been my personal kind of battle to show them where I'm coming from."

Blessed with the kind of face that girls climb over each other to get closer to, Simpson certainly looks like boyband material, but it still seems slightly odd that a teenage fan of Metallica and the Deftones ended up singing about school discos to arenas packed with screaming tots. He sighs: the way he tells it, it was all a terrible mistake. "When I was at school, I formed a band called Spleen, and I loved that band. At the same time, I met my girlfriend, my brother was at school with me. But all in one year, Spleen's drummer got expelled, so no more band, and my girlfriend and brother left school. I started to hate school, decided to leave. Then one day, my music teacher said he'd seen this ad - guitarist wanted for pop-punk style band. I thought I might as well do it. I wanted to play music. I didn't think about where it would go or what it would do."

He says he realised his error within minutes of signing Busted's record contract. "I remember driving back and saying to my manager, I hope I haven't done something stupid. The other members of Busted don't know I said this, but I said, 'Something feels weird, I'm not sure this is going to work out.' He said, 'No, it'll be fine.' I spoke to my brother and he expressed a bit of concern. He said, 'Be careful, because the way this is going, it's going to be incredibly hard for you to leave it and go into a rock band.' Then I started to think, oh shit."

His fears were compounded by some very teenage-sounding worries about what his peers thought of him. "I started to go to gigs and realised that people were recognising me, and I thought, I really hope these people know what I'm really like, that I'm into the same stuff as them, but I realised they wouldn't know that, they'd think I was into the shit that I was doing. I started to hate fame, I didn't want to go out, because I didn't want to be recognised for what I was being recognised for. Even now, it still gets to me: if people recognise me and ask if I was in Busted, I say no."

Ironically, Simpson occasionally becomes so agitated talking about his time as a teen idol that his face ends up contorted into the kind of bewildered bug-eyed sneer he used to pull in Busted's photo shoots. "The teen press!" he shudders. "I'd go through a six-hour day of interviews and nobody would ask one question about music. Day after day, I wasn't expressing my real feelings." Forming Fightstar only made matters worse -for one thing, the only people who turned up to their early gigs were Busted fans ("I was playing the music I loved to a lot of blank faces," Simpson concedes), and for another, "I'd be so happy playing with them and then I'd suddenly realise, oh fuck, I've got to get up tomorrow and go on kids' television."

Eventually, he seems to have had some kind of breakdown while on tour in Germany. "I sat in my room thinking, I can't do this any more, I'm becoming mentally unstable. I didn't want to upset anyone, but I was getting to the point where I might have done something stupid. So I rang my manager and said, look, I can't do this any more. The management tried to talk my parents into making me stay, and my parents were like, look, he's leaving, make the arrangements. The day Busted split up, I was driving up to Warwick to play with Fightstar, listening to Radio 1, and these girls phone in going [tearfully], Oh, fucking Charlie, boo hoo. It just didn't bother me. I just thought, well, if you knew what I've had to deal with, you'd shut your fucking mouths."

Even with Busted gone, Simpson's history left Fightstar in an anomalous position. "We've had to prove more than any other rock band has ever had to prove," he says. "It was a war, every day," nods Haigh, "it really was." They are presumably one of the few bands who considered making potential record buyers flee from their gigs in tears a mark of success. "A good turning point for us came when we saw a 10-year-old kid at the front with his parents, our support band came on, they were pretty heavy, and about five minutes later we saw this kid leave, crying," recalls drummer Omar Abidi. "You feel a bit guilty," he adds, in a voice that suggests he doesn't feel guilty at all, "but the fans who were there for Charlie, it became pretty obvious to them when they heard our detuned guitars, that perhaps this wasn't their cup of tea any more."

Gradually the teenyboppers departed and the rock press began grudgingly showering the band with superlatives. Their concept album is now officially eagerly awaited, the Astoria is sold out and Simpson is "flabbergasted" at the speed of Fightstar's acceptance. Indeed, he is even enthusiastic about an interview he did with a guitar magazine this morning, which sounds, to the unqualified observer at least, like a protracted attempt to bore the former teen idol to death. "They asked me what guitars we use and what pick-ups we use and what tunings we use," he smiles. Beneath his big hat, the eyes that once caused millions of eight-year-old hearts to break are shining with eagerness. "This is a dream scenario."

[b-sidemusic]

THE B-SIDE MONDAY MEGAMIX

Every Monday, one of our writers takes a moment to switch off from the horror of everything happening everywhere in the World, and finds something nice to write about.  This week, Seymour Quigley does his best to reassure you that things are probably going to be okay. 

THE GLITTER SHOP - FIZZ

Officially the Bury St Edmunds music scene's worst-kept secret for the last few months, The Glitter Shop are effectively a supergroup (in that two of them - guitarist/producer Barny Cutter and singer/bassist/drummer Harry Dale - used to be in Fortunato and Suburban Minds, both locally popular), but any tiny inklings of "spin-off project" doubt are immediately banished by their debut release.  Three-and-a-half minutes of instantly classic, wonderful pop with an earworm chorus you’ll be humming for weeks, 'Fizz' is an assured introductory salvo indeed.  More please, and soon. See them live at: Bury St Edmunds Hunter Club, 20th Jan. Now listen to: Guitarist/producer Barny Cutter's other project, Blood Talk. Follow: Facebook - Twitter

BRIAN ENO & TOM ROGERSON - IDEA OF ORDER AT KYSON POINT

A perfect meeting of two of Suffolk's finest musical minds, 'Idea Of Order At Kyson Point' is the opening track of 'Finding Shore' - a new, 13-track album (due for release in December) which sees former glam star-turned-ambient/production wizard Eno team up with Three Trapped Tigers founder and renowned improvisational pianist Rogerson to create an album inspired by their childhood experiences (decades apart) in and around Woodbridge.  Eno being Eno, the album is not without its fancy techniques: for the album's creation, Rogerson was encouraged to use a Moog Piano Bar, which uses infra-red beams focussed on each piano key to collect MIDI information, which can then be used to trigger samples and virtual instruments. Technical doohickey aside, though, 'Idea Of Order At Kyson Point' is, quite simply, a beautiful piece of music; Eno and Rogerson's stated aim was to evoke "the strange flat landscape of Eastern England, all heathland, military testing sites, estuary mud and the site of the ancient Sutton Hoo ship burial", on this particular track at least, they resoundingly succeed. See Tom Rogerson live at: London St Pancras Old Church, 4th Dec. Listen to: 'Motion In Field', streaming, out now. Follow Brian Eno: Facebook Follow Tom Rogerson: Facebook - Twitter

CLOWN SMASH EVERYTHING - THE SURFER & THE SHARK

Perhaps surprisingly, given that they feature prog-obsessed former Voter Kernel/Janet Street Slaughter drum punisher Zak Whittaker in their ranks, Norwich-based foursome Clown Smash Everything produce a relatively straightforward, punk-inflected hyper-hard rock, very much in the vein of the Groop Dogdrill track from which they (presumably) purloined their name.  With ginormo-max production, turbo-charged riffage and vocals that screamingly imply that we can all go fuck ourselves, Clown Smash Everything are a Kerrang! cover band waiting for their cover.  Debut album 'The Bombs Are Getting Closer' drops this Friday; their debut gig follows a week later. See them live at: Norwich Waterfront Studio, 7th Dec. Listen to: 'This City Needs Assassins', on YouTube. Follow: Facebook - Twitter

LEMONDAZE - LIQUID RUSH

Utterly outstanding live, Lemondaze cite reformed-and-improved shoegaze legends Slowdive as their key influence, but while Rosie and Isis' chiming, expansive, interweaving guitars and vocals undeniably tick the boxes of their chosen genre, there's an underlying darkness and aggression - in no small part driven by the rumbling, sympatico-but-contrarian John Peel-show growl of bassist Jonty and the openly rock-minded drumming of sticksman Seb (in project Lemondaze, we have no surnames) - more reminiscent of My Vitriol, A Place To Bury Strangers or hugely under-rated shoegaze/industrial envelope-pushers Curve.  All of the band's Soundcloud output to date is loudly and apologetically signposted as DEMOS and HOME RECORDINGS, but they needn't be self-conscious: lo-fi production qualities aside, Lemondaze are clearly brilliant, and they will do amazing things.   See them live at: Bury St Edmunds Hunter Club, 16th Feb. Listen to: 'Demos' EP, on Soundcloud. Follow: Facebook - Twitter

THE INTERESTING TIMES GANG - INTERESTING TIMES 

The only member of gonzo-rock lunatic quintet Voter Kernel absent from (equally lunatic spin-off band) Janet Street Slaughter, songwriting multi-instrumentalist Hannah Cutler's 12-month absence from live music in the wake of VK's abrupt demise, and the possibility that she may never return, felt like a tragedy waiting to happen.  A singular fixture of the East Anglian music scene for over 15 years, even in the oddball context of her various projects - wry comedy-but-not-joking duo Opposite The Hotel, animal-obsessed disco ensemble The Deference Engine, VK's stadium-rock-gone-awry antics - Cutler's otherworldly, heroically intimidating charisma (her ability to silence idiotic hecklers with a single withering stare is the stuff of legend), quiet virtuosity and apparent obliviousness to genre have marked her out as a genuinely unique musical force. So the news of her return, with self-described "genre-straddling" trio The Interesting Times Gang, was heart-warming indeed.  By contrast to Voter Kernel's often-jarring mish-mash schtick, ITG are unfettered and focused, with Cutler's sci-fi obsession (hello, shameless 'Flight Of The Navigator' synth-drum references) brought proudly to the fore.  A bright and shiny future awaits, presumably in SPACE. See them live at: Bury St Edmunds Hunter Club, 20th Jan. Listen to: 'The Sci-Fi Future Outlaw Kids', on Soundcloud. Follow: Facebook 

Photo: The Interesting Times Gang (from Facebook)