Innehållsförteckning för December 2024 från Classic Rock

Eddie Van Halen. Truly a man who changed the way we think of guitar playing. And yet, back in 1984, it was a song that was driven by an iconic keyboard riff that would go on to become Van Halen’s biggest single. It also had a fantasic EVH solo as well, so that helped… I’m talking about Jump, of course, taken from Van Halen’s 1984 album. And in its fortieth anniversary year it’s that record we’re revisiting with a deep dive this month, including an exclusive extract from drummer Alex Van Halen’s new book Brothers. We also chat to Sir Brian May as he looks back at the very early days of Queen; revisit the Rolling Stones’ It’s Only Rock’N’Roll (But I Like It) album as it reaches its 50th…

Dick Diamonde December 28, 1947 – September 18, 2024 Born in Holland as Dingeman Adriaan Henry van der Sluijs, Dick Diamonde immigrated to Sydney at the age of four to become a co-founding bassist of The Easybeats, who, despite the brevity of their existence, rank among the most famous and important bands in Australia. Along with Harry Vanda and George Young (who became inextricably linked to AC/DC) Diamonde played on The Easybeats’ huge hit Friday On My Mind, released in 1966. Jack Ponti February 16, 1958 – October 7, 2024 Though his reputation was mostly known to connoisseurs, the name of Jack Ponti was attached to some of rock music’s biggest songs. Ponti, born Giacomo Pontoriero in New Jersey, helped to shape hits by Bon Jovi, Alice Cooper, Nelson, Skid…

News of the passing of Freddie Salem, a member Nof Southern rock survivors The Outlaws from 1977 to 1983, was broken on the Facebook page of his most recent project, Freddie Salem & Lonewolf. It read: “This morning, the Heavens parted for the arrival of a legend. Rock on high, Freddie Salem. Until we meet again.” Salem was born in Akron, Ohio, 70 years ago. At 23 he joined The Outlaws as replacement for original member Henry Paul, featuring on the studio albums Playin’ To Win, In The Eye Of The Storm, Ghost Riders and Los Hombres Malos, exiting after they were ‘let go’ by Arista Records. “Things had unravelled after seven years of touring and recording,” Salem later explained. “Our record label had dropped the band, Billy [Jones, guitar],…

The British blues-rock scene mourns the sad loss of Matt Long, guitarist/frontman of the five-times UK blues award winners Catfish. Long was just 29 years old. He fought an 18-month battle with untreatable bowel cancer, impressing those who knew him with his positive attitude. “Matthew really wanted to live, and we tried everything available to us to try to save him, but sadly the cancer was just too aggressive and fast moving for the chemo,” said a statement from Long’s family. “He passed peacefully with his soulmate Samantha [Leese] and his loved ones at his bedside.” Long’s popularity was such that several events took place across the country, raising funds to access additional drugs and treatment unavailable on the NHS, which helped to extend his life. At The Stables in…

Iron Maiden say there will be no dynamic pricing on tickets to their 2025 Run For Your Lives tour dates. Furthermore, any tickets for their UK and Ireland dates which are resold will have prices capped at face value, preventing fans from facing exorbitant fees nearer to the tour, which begins in late June. The Foo Fighters pulled out of a recent spot at the Soundside Festival at Seaside Park in Connecticut, their first performance since Dave Grohl’s announcement that hehad fathered achild outside of his marriage. Unconfirmed speculation claims that the Foos are taking a hiatus from the stage, with the US Sun suggesting that Grohl wants to be at home to “earn back the trust of his family”. Friends and colleagues of the late Mark Lanegan, including Queens Of…

Artificial intelligence has been used to create a ‘new’ album from Thin Lizzy. Acoustic Sessions offers unplugged reworkings of nine early songs, pairing original vocals from the late, great bassist Phil Lynott and drums by Brian Downey with brand new guitar parts supplied by founding member Eric Bell. The album’s track listing is: Mama Nature Said, A Song For While I’m Away, Eire, Slow Blues, Dublin, Whiskey In The Jar, Here I Go Again, Shades Of A Blue Orphanage and Remembering Pt 2. It marks the first time that Bell has recorded under the Thin Lizzy name since exit the band in 1973 (save for a cameo on the 1983 concert set Life). Producer Richard Whittaker, who remixed the recent 1976 set with Scott Gorham, comments: “I think we’ve made…

“I’ve based this record on my heroes – AC/DC, Queen, The Who, but also The Cars and Kraftwerk.” Tommy Henriksen is a rock’n’roll lifer. Having started out with Doro in the late 80s, he’s amassed an impressive CV as both a featured musician and for his songwriting, mixing and production, working with everyone from Meat Loaf to Lady Gaga. Since 2011 he’s also been a member of Alice Cooper’s band and one of the core members of sorta-supergroup Hollywood Vampires. You’d expect such hefty commitments to take up all of his free time, but Henriksen is now a man with a mission, spreading the gospel for cosmic superhero Crossbone Skully, with a band of the same name. “Crossbone Skully is a working-class hero who’s figuring out how we can survive…

For parts of the year, Mikko Von Hertzen lives on the top floor of a 16-storey ashram in Kollam, on India’s tropical Malabar coast. The view is full of the colours and noises that have informed his band’s music – widescreen, enigmatic matter with rock vigour and a pop heart. Birds and butterflies swoop across the sky. Horns honk from the streets. Down by the sea, fishermen play cards under palm trees. Songs, chants and chatter drift up from various devotees and monastic disciples, all of them here for the spiritual wisdom of Mataā Amritaānandamayīi Devic (or ‘Mother Amma’ as she’s often known). It was this apartment that Mikko moved into for seven years, back in the late 90s, following some hedonistic years in different touring bands. And it was…

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That old wax magic works for final lineup ‘best of’ spread over eight 45s. At a time when vinyl is getting sweet revenge after decades of compact disc domination, it’s something of a marketing masterstroke creating stripped down 45s from Motörhead’s CD singles and album tracks released between 1995-2006, and presenting them on wax in a handsome box. Opening 45 Sacrifice (their eleventh studio album’s title track) instantly throws a curve with Dee working mutant speed-Latin inflections into its flat-out onslaught (initially to Lemmy’s bemusement), also marking Würzel’s Motörhead swansong. Lemmy’s favourite Over Your Shoulder rears in dirty clanking live form on the B-side. 1996’s Overnight Sensation unveiled the final trio, I Don’t Believe A Word starting slow with Lemmy almost crooning before going apocalyptic (flipped by title track live).…

“It’s the longest set of our career. We play something from every album… We invite friends on stage and also people from the crowd.” Sepultura were formed in Belo Horizonte, Brazil in 1984 by Calavera brothers Max (guitar, vocals) and Igor (drums). The early 90s saw them became one of the world’s foremost extreme metal bands, and although the Cavaleras both departed – Max to form Soulfly in ’96, Igor a decade later – Sepultura refused to die. Guitarist Andreas Kisser, a member since 1987, explains why in their fortieth-anniversary year it’s time to undergo what the band term “euthanasia, the right to a dignified death”. Why are Sepultura “departing via a conscious and planned death” on this farewell tour? There were a few factors, including the fortieth anniversary. Surviving…

Visionary Britpop architects, back in harness, shine on. There’s something deliciously clandestine about the Temple Of Arts And Music. Walk past its anonymous portal three times and a shadowy figure will beckon you in, where the noise will lead you to an inner sanctum, a moshpit full of sofas and a mythic band making their first appearance in 37-ish years. That Boys Wonder are finally releasing the debut album they should have delivered in ’87 is one thing, that they’re actually back in harness and gigging is astounding. And the punters? Not so much fans as disciples, the BW faithful are only here to adulate. South East London twins Ben (vocals) and Scott (guitar) Addison, unlikely ex-Haircut 100 Steve Jones/Brian May hybrid Graham Jones, Jackson Lamb-alike bassist Tony Barber and…

‘Shouts of recognition go up as the pulse of Breathe starts up.’ Following the release of his new solo album Luck And Strange, DG returns for his first London show in eight years. As the opening chords to a surprisingly folksy Wish You Were Here sound out across a packed Royal Albert Hall, the bloke sat next to me turns and says, “It was on my bucket list to see this”. Mine too, I reassure him, settling in for a performance that feels as familiar and comforting as revisiting old friends. The crowd, predominantly white, middleaged, male, is united by their affection and warmth, here to be reassured and awed by Gilmour’s fluent way around a guitar solo, coruscating and searing memory upon memory. The gender bias is evident in…

Ex-Queensrÿche singer’s stopped in histracks by sound issues. Don’t make promises you can’t keep. “You’re gonna get everything tonight,” says Geoff Tate at the start of tonight’s show. “And I mean everything.” An hour later, technical gremlins are sinking the whole thing in full stride. The ex-Queensrÿche singer has stopped off at the Tivoli for what’s being trumpeted as a greatest hits set. It certainly starts that way with a spot-on Empire, a tanned and open-shirted Tate am-dramming his way through it like the lovechild of Ray Winstone and Gregg Wallace. Desert Dance and Sacred Ground aren’t ‘greatest’ anythings, but Operation: Mindcrime, Breaking The Silence, I Don’t Believe In Love and Screaming In Digital reset the balance, nailed-on classics all of them. Yet something isn’t right. The singer – in…

‘Toasty valve amps, cracking drums and new sonic heights.’ A rip-roaring masterclass from the married Danish-Brazilian retro rockin’ duo. Flavia Couri has leapt from the stage, strutted her way through the adoring throng and climbed on a table to the side of the venue. As she holds her guitar to her shoulder like a machine gun to fire a volley of string bends and scrapes, hands reach out to her while others applaud wildly and the everincreasing whoops and cheers from the rest of the audience affirm the love that’s being generated in this north London venue. Back on the stage, drumming husband Martin Couri holds down the beat with aferocious precision that anchors the controlled yet devastating explosion that is Boom! Dynamite! The Courettes have found themselves at an…

Having risen to fame in the early 80s as frontman with Finnish glam legends Hanoi Rocks, flamboyant vocalist/saxophonist Michael Monroe has delivered a dozen solo albums, most recently the collection that he considers to be his best yet, I Live Too Fast To Die Young. Currently touring a solo live 40th-anniversary commemoration of Hanoi Rocks’ 1984 masterpiece Two Steps From The Move, Monroe returns to London’s Electric Ballroom in November, but not before choosing some choice examples of the music that made him the man that he is today. THE FIRST MUSIC I REMEMBER HEARING My mother and father listened to classical music when I was a kid. Symphonies, Sibelius. My maternal grandfather played cello and double bass, and his father was an oboe player. So I listened to classical…

ALEX VAN HALEN As if he needs any introduction to the readers of Classic Rock! Alex Van Halen is one of the co-founders of Van Halen, and this issue we have an exclusive extract from his brand new autobiography Brothers (HarperCollins) from page 30. Alex says of the book: “This is my tribute to my brother; my way of saying goodbye. Ed, I love you and miss you. When I see you again, I’m gonna kick your ass!” NEIL ZLOZOWER Zloz has shot everyone in the world of rock from AC/DC to ZZ Top. We’ve run many of his photographs in Classic Rock, and this issue we delved into his extensive Van Halen archive for our cover and feature shots (from p24). Zloz’s latest photography book is Ed By Zloz,…

He co-wrote some of the Eagles’ biggest hits, Hincluding Best Of My Love, New Kid In Town, Victim Of Love and Heartache Tonight – but John David Souther never sought to join the group. “I didn’t want to be in any band,” he told Classic Rock in 2009, volunteering: “I’m not a very good team player. If I don’t get my way, I’m not the most cooperative guy.” Souther was born in Detroit. After moving to Los Angeles during the 1960s he and future Eagles star Glenn Frey formed the band Longbranch Pennywhistle, followed by a self-titled solo album and eventually The Souther-Hillman-Furay Band. He also wrote for Bonnie Raitt and James Taylor, sang on albums by Don Henley and Christopher Cross, and co-produced Linda Ronstadt as well as forming…

Tito Jackson has died following a heart attack Tat the age of 70. Toriano Adaryll Jackson grew up in Gary, Indiana. As a member of The Jackson 5 he sang and played lead guitar and synthesiser alongside siblings Michael, Jackie, Jermaine and Marlon. The group’s hits included ABC, The Love You Save and I Want You Back. In America they achieved 17 Top 40 singles in five years, before Jermaine left and they simply became The Jacksons. In the mid-80s, Michael and Marlon quit the group. Across both permutations of The Jackson 5 and The Jacksons, 150 million records were sold worldwide. At the height of their fame, a cartoon series called Jackson 5ive ran from September 1971 to October 1972. In later life, The Rock And Roll Hall inductee…

Kris Kristofferson, the iconic, Grammy Award-winning singer, songwriter and actor who played a key role in advancing a strand of country music into a more raw and confessional direction now recognised as outlaw country, has died peacefully at his home in Maui, surrounded by family. He was 88 years old. Dolly Parton took to social media to write: “What a great loss. What a great writer. What a great actor. What a great friend”, while Barbra Streisand, with whom Kristofferson shared the spotlight in the 1976 remake of the film A Star Is Born, declared that she had known her co-star was “something special” from the moment that she set eyes on him. Born in Brownsville, Texas, Kristofferson’s remarkable music career saw him release 18 solo studio albums – plus…

As a co-founding member of The Sisters Of Mercy – together with Asinger Andrew Eldritch – guitarist Gary Marx was a key architect of the postpunk sound that would later be dubbed ‘goth’. And now he’s back with Green Ginger Jive, a stomping glam rock album featuring guests including The Mission’s Wayne Hussey (the first time they’d recorded together since the Sisters’ 1985 debut album First And Last And Always), The Wonder Stuff’s Miles Hunt and The Membranes’ John Robb. How do you view your time with The Sisters Of Mercy? All of the petty arguments are out of the way, so what’s left are the recordings and lots of them I’m really proud of. I’m very comfortable now to be the guy that set up The Sisters of Mercy…

In the late 80s, as increasingly faceless hair farmers with names like Rodd Thrustt (hair by Aqua Net, chorus by Desmond Child) swamped the rock scene, the Dogs D’Amour burst onto the radar with a raffish charm and bluesy sound redolent of the Rolling Stones and the Faces. Their mix of gutsy raunch’n’roll and acoustic melancholy set them apart, with only the Quireboys and The Black Crowes (the Dogs’ support band on their 1990 UK tour) as kindred musical spirits. While their reputation for excess was entirely merited, the Dogs worked as hard as they partied, and scored four UK top 40 albums between 1989 and 1993, showcasing the underappreciated songwriting of frontman Tyla J Pallas. Since 1994, bon viveur Tyla has maintained a creative hot streak, balancing solo albums…

Slaughter & The Dogs Do It Dog Style CAPTAIN OI If you’re finessing the perfect UK punk vinyl collection, this debut from the Wayne Barrett/Mike Rossi-fronted, Dolls-indebted, Roxy LP-featured, Wythenshawe savages has got to be a shoo-in. Where Have All The Boot Boys Gone? and a bonus Come On Back? Get in! 8/10 World Party Goodbye Jumbo SEAVIEW An undervalued second LP that provides an assured masterclass in post-Beatles songcraft thanks to a brace of Karl Wallinger-penned college radio classics (Way Down Now and Put A Message In The Box). Back on ‘worldly’ coloured vinyl. That’ll be blue and green then. 8/10 The Fall Grotesque (After The Gramme) ‘Live’ BELLA UNION Following on in the tradition of Slates Live, live versions of all tracks from The Fall’s third studio album,…

‘Rock In Rio is like a Westfield that’s taken a sack of party drugs.’ A varied line-up of rockers go down South American way. Imagine, if you can, a razzle-dazzle West End musical called EAVIS! Dancing cows, huge pyramidal set, giant metal spiders can-canning across the stage to the most tits-and-teeth Radiohead tunes, the works. Well, every day at Rock In Rio’s 40th anniversary edition, their equivalent plays to packed houses in a vast arena: the story of founder Roberto Medina, an advertising executive who, in 1985, chased his vision of creating the world’s biggest rock festival – 1.5 million people! An entire specially constructed City Of Rock! Queen! – to the brink of financial ruin, and ultimately four decades of glory. As troupes of office underlings dance across gigantic…

Stoner icons find themselves green around the gills during their jade anniversary. Nobody sells cosmic weirdness like Dave Wyndorf. But even Monster Magnet’s Space Lord seems bewildered as to how his band have made it to the 35 year mark, much less inspired stoner rock itself with their pulpy space oddities. Support act Margarita Witch Cult might have more obvious allegiances to Black Sabbath and Motörhead in their heady mix of doomed overtones and petrol-huffing riffs, but there’s a kernel of warped psychedelia in the mix that could only come from the Magnet camp. Between eminent headbangers Annihilation and Sacrifice plus a cover of White Wedding so sludgy it sounds like it’s from the bottom of a bayou, MWC show how stoner continues to usher in superb new talent. Unfortunately,…

Cult alt.rockers from Boston touring new album Jump Rope. The smallest things can put the strangest kinks in any live show. Tonight, the cymbal wingnut on drummer Tom Maginnis’ kit refuses to stay put each time he hits the cymbal – and he gives it merry hell throughout the evening. Off comes the nut into the air and onto the stage, prompting the roadie to stroll on, drop down onto his hands and knees to search the floor like a man missing his contact lens. The band, who have been doing this forever to greater or lesser degrees of success, take it with grinning good grace. Chatting to the sold-out audience, genuinely amazed that the room is this full on a school night, singer/guitarist Bill Janovitz marvels: “I don’t even…

Nick Gravenites was a cornerstone of San NFrancisco’s rock scene. He was a blues singer, guitarist and producer who fronted The Electric Flag, collaborating with Janis Joplin and Mike Bloomfield. The 85-year-old had been suffering from diabetes and dementia. Born on the south side of Chicago to a Greek family, after meeting Bloomfield and Mike Butterfield, he took up the guitar. His song Born In Chicago was recorded by the Paul Butterfield Blues Band. The Electric Flag were formed in 1967. Gravenites dropped in and out of various Bay Area groups, becoming lead singer of Big Brother And The Holding Company after Janis’ exit, and he also ‘helped out’ Quicksilver Messenger Service. His association with the latter inspired Nick Gravenites–John Cipollina Band, co-starring QSC guitarist Cipollina. In 2003, Gravenites was…

The popular and talented English drummer has lost a six-year battle with cancer. Known for a versatile, hard-hitting technique and a personality that can only be described as irrepressible, 54-year-old Robin Guy had a huge appetite for life and music, performing with a wide-ranging series of acts, from the indie-glam of Rachel Stamp to Bruce Dickinson, Sham 69, All About Eve, Tigertailz, Sack Trick, Mr Big’s Eric Martin, AntiProduct. He even deputised for Faith No More’s Mike Bordin on Top Of The Pops. He was also the ‘G’ in power-trio GMT, with former Gillan bass player John McCoy and completed by guitarist Bernie Tormé. “I’m so sorry to hear this news,” said Slash. “Robin Guy was a great drummer. May he rest in peace.” Ginger Wildheart said: “Robin was a…

“Let the music take over and see where it takes you.” Five crazy diamonds badly in need of a shave and a haircut, their clothes reeking of bong smoke and time travel, Sacri Monti are bassist Anthony ‘Ant’ Meier, Brenden Dellar on vocals and guitar, Thomas Di Benedetto on drums, Dylan Donovan on guitar, and Evan Wenskay on organ and synth. From Oceanside, California, a beach city in San Diego, they all met in high school in the early 2000s and began jamming. “Our first show we made two songs last for fifty minutes,” chuckles Brenden. “That’s how it began. Not so much putting on shows as improvising in front of people.” The band are named after nine sacred mountains in northern Italy, and their music has been described as…

When Xavier Dphrepaulezz was 12 years old, he was thrown out of the family home by his tyrannical father, and tumbled through the California foster care system into a life of crime. Music threw him a lifeline, and having formed Fantastic Negrito in 2014, the songwriter finally addresses that scarring relationship in the fuzzed-up alt. blues concept album, Son Of A Broken Man. “Every song,” he explains, “I wanted it to be about how I felt about my daddy.” Your father sounds like he was a very complicated man. He was brilliant, but he was horrible too. Maybe he is the quintessential explanation of human beings, and how we are. Y’know, how we can cure polio and make an HIV vaccine, but then we drop nuclear bombs and put people…

Soul, swagger and Slash, Beth Hart delivers on album number eleven. Like a heavy weather warning, there’s not much you can do once Beth Hart decides she’s coming through. The assumed shorthand for Beth Hart is blues siren, but she’s far more than that, even if this latest album opens with the fiery Savior With A Razor, which struts in like a cowboy kicking open saloon doors before Slash comes in through the window like Paul Kossoff with a grudge against his Gibson Les Paul. Very good it is too, and no one would blame you if at that point, a light bulb went off above your head and you thought, ‘I get it; Beth Hart, blues siren’. Because when Hart throws back her head and lets rip; we all…

Wendy James The Shape Of History SELF-RELEASED James’ tenacious career trajectory since Transvision Vamp has hardly been stratospheric. This charming 10th LP succeeds because she plays to her actual strengths. Sympathetic production reveals theservicable 60s chanteuse behind the overstated punkpop plasticity. 7/10 Okmoniks Afterparty Fever!!!! SLOVENLY Tucson-born, Pebbles-weaned, Bay Area-based, Farfisa-driven garage-psyching foursome Okmoniks sound a lot like how you imagine the late Donnas might, if they’d felt the same way about the Mummies as they felt about the Ramones. Groovy, unhinged, exclamatory. 7/10 The Calamatix The Calamatix HELLCAT Tim Armstrong’s latest signing finds the Rancid prime mover indulging his much vaunted passion for ska/rocksteady with Raylin Joy-fronted quartet Calamatix (not as easy to say as it looks). Joy’s got fine poppy, lover’s rock pipes, a trombone parps, but…

Gonzo glam greatness. Nothing wrong with stroking your chin to the likes of Radiohead, but sometimes you need to throw a few shapes to something patently ridiculous yet undeniably great. This is where Mötley Crüe’s fifth and, by some considerable distance, best record Dr Feelgood comes in. Reissued yet again to celebrate its quick-think-of-something 35th anniversary, this is where the reprobates who made Aerosmith seem abstemious and resembled what might arrive if you ordered Guns N’ Roses off Temu got it utterly, and perhaps unexpectedly, right. Sobering up at least a bit and drafting in the production know-how of Bob Rock, they birthed an album so gloriously over the top it’s coming down the other side screaming and shouting. Kneel in awe before the titanic title track which sports a…

Art rock icons’ explosive “tightly wound” punk-era debut with juicy extras. How many other bands can you think of that emerged so fully formed, so focused, so tightly wound, so ready to explode… and then went on to even greater heights? Not a note is wasted, not a lyric superfluous. The bare bones of funk, stripped and exposed, daring you to dance. Building from Tina Weymouth’s monstrous bassline on Psycho Killer and tracing its way backwards through New Feeling to the unnerving Don’t Worry About The Government, this album oozes anxiety and tension. And yet it’s so precise. David Byrne’s vocals are sharp and brittle and, in places, pure psychosis, while Chris Frantz’s drumming is so tight it rivals James Brown’s legendary JBs. Every track, every beat… To label this…

Britrock heroes still put on the biggest party in town. “Shit hot!” Considering their distinctly northern Britrock sensibilities can be found everywhere from Massive Wagons to Eureka Machines, it wouldn’t be quite right to say they broke the mould when they made Terrorvision. Nevertheless, the rowdy Bradford bunch remain a distinctive creative force and wherever they go, a party is never far behind. And with new album We Are Not Robots out, there’s plenty to celebrate. Thundering out to Discotheque Wreck, Terrorvision’s anti-fashion sense and boundless energy makes them feel more like a Beano streetgang brought to life than your average middle age rockers. That’s supported by the almost cartoonish energy of frontman Tony Wright, bounding around the stage as riffs clatter and clang, new tunes like The Night That…

‘Superlungs’ at 74: still plenty of puff. Terry Reid’s vocal style is still very much ‘iron fist in velvet glove’, delivering chest-bursting bars that lay claim to the ‘superlungs’ sobriquet he first earned some 55 years ago, edged with a touch more gravel, but no less soul. Reid’s two-and-a-half-hour set is well stocked with reminiscence and name-drops. Before sliding into warm, weeping opener Faith To Arise, Reid recalls time spent with Graham Nash, who produced his Seed Of Memory in ’76, and was instrumental in obtaining what Reid refers to as ‘gardening expenses’ during its recording. That album features strongly in the night’s setlist, fluently tempered with impassioned covers of Bobby Darin’s Things and a samba rendition of Don’t Worry Baby, that segues into Sam Cooke’s You Send Me. The…

Grooves, rictus grins and NWOBHM theatre with Aussie freakniks. As the lights go down, and the sonorous Pie Jesu Domine chant (fresh out of Monty Python’s Holy Grail) starts up, you know it’s either going to be the best, or the worst thing you’ve ever seen. The opening chords are massive and organ-y – part NWOBHM, part Andrew Lloyd Webber. The band look like the weirdest Eurovision contestants, dressed by Rob Halford, with a Dante’s Inferno theme. It’s all very Judas Priest via Terry Gilliam. All of which would wear thin extremely quickly in anything other than the smartest of musical hands. Happily Battlesnake – session players by day, back home in Australia – are just that. First-class musicians with a punk spirit, erring on just the right side of…

The filth, the fury and the fuck-ups; London’s heavy metal OGs roll on. “This is what it’s all about!” Three songs into Orange Goblin’s set, and the Sabbathian riff of Saruman’s Wish becomes a strangled squelch as guitarist Joe Hoare tangles with a busted pedal. He tries again. Nothing. Third attempt. Nada. Then on the fourth, those Iommi-inspired licks burst to life and vocalist Ben Ward shrugs. “I love this – when we fuck up you know we’re not using a fucking click track or backing tapes!” On the precipice of their 30th year as a band, Goblin are somehow still caught in the hinterlands between being criminally underrated and rightly revered as British stoner metal heroes. After support Conan – a band so malevolently claggy you could use them…