Review: Steven Wilson, Warwick Arts Centre 15.3.18

The Warwick Arts Centre is something or other in order to fluff out an appropriate beginning to a review.

British musician Steven Wilson has spent the best part of twenty years on an uphill slope to mainstream exposure. Leading the much-missed Porcupine Tree for the first 100 years of his career, after putting them on ice and embarking on a successful solo jaunt he has continued to draw in audiences and earn a well-deserved reputation for quality music and having a formidable live show.

Tonight, his tour in support of new 'progressive pop' album To The Bone brings him and superbly talented solo band back to home shores. Having previously graced beautiful European cities, where better to progress to than Coventry?

In the first of many highlights of this damp Thursday evening, the venue allow for a seat swap for a few extra quid after your correspondent got the seating map the wrong way round and happily paid £40 for the back centre seat, instead of the front. Shelling out on the night results in being four rows from the front, sadly resulting in some of the impact of the impressive new visuals diminishing somewhat.

The Butterworth Hall is something of a large lecture theatre - the stage is about a foot off the ground, and there is a greater sensation of the performers and audience being in the same room, rather than the usual physical gap between both parties.

Pictured: record audience numbers

The setlist follows the same rough outline as previous tours: two main sets split by a twenty-minute piss break and some extra songs tacked on in the encore. It's generous in length, covering around 19 songs and indicating the same thoughtfulness Wilson gives to his music and which songs to show off - some mainstays of previous setlists face off against a smattering of new To The Bone material: Nowhere Now and Pariah kick things off, after a short film, Israeli musician Ninet Tayeb appearing on the new projection system, with the cinematic epic Pariah and the sliding tackle of People Who Eat Darkness, with another winning accompanying video from animator Jess Cope.

The very show itself is an inherent bonus, as Wilson already has the Midlands area 'covered' with an upcoming date at the prestigious Birmingham Symphony Hall, providing some relief to Coventrians sick of decades of venturing to neighbouring Birmingham to see a show. It's strange however that Wilson continues (self-deprecatingly and with self-awareness, however) to express personal preference for standing shows and the greater freedom of enthusiam-expression that they allow - yet every show on this leg is seating-only.

Surely every major region has a more rough-and-ready sticky-floored sweatbox to accommodate (step forward, Wolves Civic) to balance out the swankier ones (good morrow, Symphony Hall), and Wilson could have trod the boards barefoot in, say, the Academy - offering as it would a combination of standing and seating.

Anyway.

Wilson gets around this somewhat by instructing the audience to stand for the grinningly defiant 'Permanating', where middle-aged curmudgeons get a boogie on and the stage - and the rest of the room - becomes a huge disco. It's so much fun you almost want a chunk of the show to carry on in the same vein. Wilson however faces a difficult task whenever he hits the road in choosing the right combination of material from his seemingly never-ending back catalogue, a rapidly expanding world that grows in size faster than you can get into it. Indeed, he has more hours of music to his name than there are people in the world.

Rubbish pic added to fill space

He always rises admirably to the task, however, and somehow manages to make unlikely bedfellows stand shoulder to shoulder in the set without any loss of theme, quality, or momentum. The much-loved Porcupine Tree track Arriving Somewhere... But Not Here opens the second set before the aforementioned Permanating and by some weird musical voodoo the two are unquestioningly Wilsonian yet are some of the most wildly different examples of Wilson you could place together.

As the man himself points out later, when doing a Billy Brag-style rendition of Even Less using just an electric guitar and none of his cohorts, there are tons of songs his slightly younger fans (i.e. under 40) never got the chance to hear, and they all his songs anyway, so Wilson continues to pepper his setlists with well-recieved renditions of Porcupine Tree tracks, slotting in surprisingly well alongside his solo material.

In celebration of Deadwing and In Absentia having long-awaited reissues on vinyl, surprising inclusions of The Creator Has a Mastertape and Heartattack in a Layby also appear - sounding so damn powerful you suddenly realise there are no barriers to what Wilson can draw from his extensive back catalogue (Storm Corrosion material has been played, never forget). Can we expect some Bass Communion on the next tour?

To The Bone's predecessors Hand.Cannot.Erase. and the 41/2 EP continue to survive into the new era with the deployment of instrumental Vermillioncore later in the evening, with Ancestral and Home Invasion/Regret #9 making welcome appearances during the opening set, continuing to feel at home just about anywhere despite being removed from the wider context of the Hand.Cannot.Erase. album. The sprawling Regret #9 guitar solo originally laid down by Guthrie Govan (in one take, legend has it) continues to be a litmus test for the prowess of Wilson's latest stringsman, and new recruit Alex Hutchings ably proves his worth on it.

Porcupine Tree's memory refuses to budge as the deathless (ha) Lazarus adapts well to the new visual presentation and the monolithic, lumbering beast of Sleep Together stomps around the room and erodes the vibrational integrity of the architecture with its downtuned power. While the prospect of the band ever functioning again continues to fadeaway (pun intended), Wilson's solo lineups continue to knock out impressive and satisfying renditions.

Song of I, Detonation and The Same Asylum As Before round out the rest of the second set, being Wilson's first ever 'sexy' song, another prog winner and a balls-out rocker respectively. The former gains more power in a live setting and continues to show off the new projection system and Detonation showcases the band's enviable tightness yet again.

The aforementioned just-Wilson Even Less finishes proceedings before the inevitable The Raven That Refused to Sing forms the habitual closing number. A Spinal Tap moment where the video fails to load on three attempts brings everything back to Earth a little, but without diminishing the show in any way - rather, an inadvertent opportunity to remind all present that for all the musical virtuosity and presentational bells and whistles, things can actually go wrong. It is quickly forgotten as one of Wilson's very best compositions draws an unforgettable evening to a close, and yet another unmissable tour by Steven Wilson gets properly underway.

Review: Killing Joke, Brixton Academy, 4.11.16

For some time, the legendary Killing Joke have been ageing like a fine wine, albeit one spiked with nerve poison. Defiant in the face of the natural aging process, the band – possibly in reaction to volcano-throated frontman Jaz Coleman’s doomsaying, prophetic lyrics actually being more relevant by the day – have only gotten louder, darker and better as the years have passed.

It is a good fortune and seemingly never-ending winning run only afforded to the truly special and prosperous, with fellow national treasures Iron Maiden being an immediate example – also having a back catalogue so crammed with gems a truly perfect setlist is impossible.

Nevertheless, they give it a bloody good go. From the minute the lumbering, shuddering nightmare of The Hum fills the equally historic Brixton Academy, the ‘Joke give a faultless lesson in how to keep any heel-snapping protégés away. Indeed, when they finally hang it up it’ll be hard to find an act with quite the same weird allure or blazing intensity.

1980s hit and deathless set-staple Love Like Blood follows, throwing back to their historic gothy-pop period and reminding us all of their expeditions into varying genre territories: the enduring, endearing result is, for the uninitiated, a nerve-racking proto-something or other that’s too heavy to be punk, too nuanced to be industrial, and not quite metal either, yet they outwit many of the greatest proponents of these genres by (still) being stubbornly uncategorisable and seamlessly blending them together, without losing sight of what constitutes a tune.

Stringsman ‘Geordie’ Walker, the immovable object against which Jaz Coleman’s unstoppable force collides, provides great textural cathedrals of sound with an utterly unmistakable and sought-after guitar tone, making the noise of thousands from only one pair of hands.

Legendary producer and bassist Youth is almost his complete opposite, stage left: barefoot, in a kimono, and grinning his teeth out, and why not? Most bands never make it past the big 3-0, most never manage to retain or reform their original lineup and sound this fantastic (the tragic passing of longtime bassist Paul Raven having preceded this, however, with the band taking a long hard look at their own mortalities and making the decision).

But Killing Joke are not ‘most bands’, and in a world of absolute fucking anaemic grey-arsed musical tedium they have only become more vital and desperately needed. New Cold War, from last year’s barnstorming Pylon album, ably explores its title’s subject matter like an essay set to music, with Walker supplying chilly atmospherics. They somersault into territories other bands refuse to enter.



Underpinning all of this sits the formidable ‘Big’ Paul Ferguson, a mesmerising sight during the rabbit-hole tumble of Unspeakable and, well, at any given point during the gig. It’s a testament to the man’s dizzying tub-thwacking that he can command your attention even with a pair of fire dancers blowing flames within singeing distance of Youth’s dreads.

The generous running time amounts to nearly twenty songs, and while some stones are left unturned, there’s room for the likes of Eighties, the venerable Turn to Red, underrated dancey banger European Super State, while failsafe early ‘uns like The Wait and Change square off against the furious Dawn of the Hive and I Am the Virus.

A delicious hat-trick of The Death & Resurrection Show, Wardance and a multi-dimensional Pandemonium ensure a winning send-off to a night of energy, dancing, sore necks and smiles all round.

Killing Joke, after thirty-plus years in the game, are still impossibly unique and utterly unsolvable. We shall not see their like again.

Review: Opeth's 'Sorceress' casts its spell

Soldiering on through their new growl-free era, Opeth have either musicially neutered themselves or continued to push progressive boundaries with quality music, depending on who you ask.

Splitting their fanbase down the middle with 2011’s infamous (but really rather good) Heritage album, guttural growls and heavy riffing went out in the window in favour of a greater emphasis on haunting, autumnal atmospherics and slight noodling, all drenched in 70’s worshipping prog.

This turned away a sizable number in disgust, with the rest (and music publications) praising the resultant music for what it was, rather than what it wasn’t: and crucially, it was really fucking good. 

The same was said of 2014’s Pale Communion, which tumbled deeper down the prog rabbit-hole.

The naysayers can be forgiven, however, for while both Heritage and Pale Communion were excellent slabs of music in themselves, there was certainly something strangely different. 

Where the likes of past albums Blackwater Park, Still Life and Ghost Reveries were genuinely awe-inspiring, almost maddeningly inventive works hitting a high clang on the how-did-you-do-that register, Heritage and onwards are merely really-quite-good in comparison, destined to occupy an interesting spot in Opeth’s gleaming back catalogue but never to knock the twin giants of Ghost Reveries and Blackwater Park off their (deserved) high perches.

With this in mind (and in one’s ears), 2016 brings us the mysterious Sorceress. Boasting a title-track with the first heavy riffing of any kind since 2008’s Watershed, this new gilded release, essentially, continues onward from Pale Communion – as it should.

A straightforward return to death-metal stylings would carry a 99% chance of being an obvious rehash and lazy genre-milking, so hats must come off to Mikael Akerfeldt and co. for having the confidence to writing from the heart with more deliciously classy prog-rock.

So to an extent, the listener knows what to expect – piano, acoustic guitar, tasteful flute, looming keyboards, etc – and is rewarded in kind with more achingly beautiful instrumentation, inspired passages, haunting melodies and Akerfeldt continuing to be one of rock and metal’s most favoured sons.

Simply put, the quality bar is still endearingly high and Opeth have reliably rewarded those deciding to stick with them in a brave new musical world. Their classic past albums will always exist for those who prefer them, and the band have long since earned the right to do whatever they damn well please, and the results are fantastic.

It's a strange, strange thing to be reviewing a Guns N' Roses tribute act in the knowledge that while you nod along to eerily detailed renditions of Civil War, You Could Be Mine et. al, the 'core' of the real thing are bulldozing through America on the will-they-won't-they reunion tour.

Before Axl Rose and Slash finally, finally buried the nuclear hatchet, the singular Guns alumni were, of course, in action in their various pursuits. Axl could be seen fronting enormodome shows under the GN'R name, from which drummer Frank Ferrer and stringsman Richard Fortus (10 and 14 years in the job respectively) have graduated to the current 'hybrid' reunion lineup. 

Slash, meanwhile, toured and recorded under his own name and Duff McKagan continued to be the coolest human being alive. But while the Great Trio can indeed be seen sharing a stage again, there's still no sign of a UK tour or even a London show.

Enter Guns 2 Roses.

It's been 14 years (geddit?!) of mirror-imaging the legendary Hollywood rock n' roll ensemble for this lot, and Bilston's Robin 2 - a routinely fantastic place to catch tribute acts - welcomed them back.

For Axl Rose has long been heralded and celebrated as having the most fearsome pipes in rock history, and I'll be damned if my wine-addled ears didn't hear Guns 2 Roses' frontman, who even has Axl's way of glancing at the audience nailed down, wail a long way up and down the holy fuckometer. 

Of equal attention-hogging ability is their Slash. Innumerable Halloween and fancy dress outfits over the years have proved just how easy it is do dress as the man, so ingrained in the rock n' roll consciousness , but G2R's representative actually has the right guitar strap as well. Oh, and he plays guitar really well and whatever.

No, really: he cranks a damn good sound out of a gorgeous Les Paul and Marshall amp - the inseparable rock n' roll marriage - for the duration and supplies, as Slash so memorably did (does?) wonderfully crunchy, warm tones and lets fly with excellently slick guitar licks. 

The evening is over all too quickly, and after a set that leans mostly on Appetite for Destruction material, it's tantalising to think what Guns 2 Roses might be able to do with a bigger room and a longer playtime - Estranged, maybe? 

"Fing is, they're not just one of the best tribute acts oi've seen - they're one of the best gigs oi've seen," blares a punter, and as I slip away during a spirited set-closing Paradise City to dash for the last tram back to Birmingham, I'm inclined to agree. 

Here come the drones: Muse return to Birmingham in grand form

Where next? Short of featuring inter-dimensional portals or a functional greenhouse onstage, Muse have readily fulfilled what it means to be an all-conquering stadium-slaying band. The Teignmouth trio, out in force supporting last year’s discography-uplifting Drones, have taken their already quite fucking mental stage show to new ceiling-punching heights.

A decade ago, the Black Holes & Revelations show was a retina-wrecking spectacle in its own right; the following Resistance tour featured three blooming towers in which Matt, Dom and Chris stood; while The 2^nd Law tour had a giant ensemble of dynamic screens that gradually closed over the band. Toss in a fair few stadium-swallowing treks and scorched-earth festival appearances and you’ve got a seriously formidable act.

As title-track Drones filled the Barclaycard Arena, the promised computer-controlled "swarm" of drones finally revealed itself. Only slightly sinister (so not completely in accordance with the dark imagery of the album and the rest of the show), they are in fact floating ping-pong balls, gently sashaying around the arena in an almost David Copperfield-esque moment of open-mouthed wonder.

The drones in flight, during Supermassive Black Hole.

In another Copperfield moment, the levitating ostrich eggs line themselves up peacefully down the stage’s runways, and we realise the act is introduction but also magical misdirection, as Muse finally emerge and swing into the gloriously punchy Pyscho.

Eager to please, the hoary old Plug In Baby is wheeled out and administers a good arse-kicking to everyone not already moving. Slightly irritatingly, classic notions of keeping the pacing are thrown to the wind as Dead Inside then lumbers into view, followed by The 2nd Law: Isolated System and another new'un, The Handler. 

All are objectively fine, but slow the show down and stand in the place of, say, New Born.

As if responding to this impression, Supermassive Black Hole moonwalks through the arena, bringing the drones out with it, wafting over the crowd. Bizarrely, the orchestral prelude to Survival then precedes the irresistibly anthemic Starlight, but the pair - now ten years old! - have become staples in their own right. 

The juggernaut that is Citizen Erased then thunders out from Muse’s back catalogue, pacifying any old-time fans and answering desires for several classics in one go, with Bellamy taking to the grand piano for its emotional wind-down. It is a treat indeed, possibly a magnum opus and always welcome. 

Note Bellamy's red 7-string guitar for Citizen Erased. The potato loved it.

While the intervals aren't as annoying as, say, the instrumental jams and guitar solos employed by Guns N' Roses in previous years, they make the fine line between presentation of art and a blast-through of songs wobble slightly. Happily, Muse are old hands at this and get the balance right, even if the more nuanced moments are nearly drowned out by mindless chatter from surrounding blithering boar-faces bores in the standing area, for no gig of this size is free of these eternal twats.

After the traditional drum-and-bass jam, Muse finally approach an uninterrupted run-through: the unashamed pop of Madness and giddying space-rock of Map of the Problematique are dealt out, only for another interlude: the John F. Kennedy speech sampled in the Drones album that precedes uplifting stomp-rocker Defector in its tracklisting - this is revealed to be another bit of misdirection when two of the old guard in Stockholm Syndrome and Time is Running Out get the crowd almost jumping high enough to knock the drones out of the sky. 

A couple of after-song riffs (including Led Zeppelin's Heartbreaker) and fist-pump anthem Uprising are given well-received airings, then Muse try out their arguably proggiest undertaking since the Exogenesis symphonies: The Globalist, referenced by Bellamy as something of a sequel to Citizen Erased. A hydra-headed musical beast, it is perhaps the greatest showcase of the new stage show and its themes, not least when a slightly wanky drone plane flies over the crowd and Matt revisits his piano. 

Ticker-tape tomfoolery for Mercy.

Before saying goodnight, the slow burning of Take a Bow and Muse's newest anthem, Mercy, with its accompanying ticker-tape explosions, set the stage for the immortal clarion call of Knights of Cydonia. 

There are probably around five artist and bands with anything approaching Muse's statesmanship, showmanship, and absolute dominance of the arena-show in the universe right now. While it's mind-boggling to think of how they can top this, in the meantime one of the great acts of our time are still readily available for your delectation. Got your ticket yet?

Michael Schenker returns: 9-date January UK tour announced

LEGENDARY SCORPIONS, UFO GUITARIST RETURNS


Legendary six-string wizard Michael Schenker will return to the UK in support of Spirit on a Mission, the acclaimed follow-up to 2013's Bridge The Gap. Kicking off at the Robin 2 in Bilston on January 20th, the trek will also take in two Scottish dates, plus Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and London.

Schenker will be performing as Michael Schenker's Temple of Rock, backed by the formidable rhythm section of Herman Rarebell and Francis Buchholz (who played together on the classic 1979 Scorpions album Lovedrive), Wayne Fidlay supplying keyboards and 7-string guitar, and the formidable vocalist Doogie White fronting the group.

Spirit of a Mission looks set to be another highlight in Schenker's expansive career, with an impressive cv featuring The Scorpions, UFO and The Michael Schenker Group.

"I always write in the same way but this time, especially driven by a precise concept. The picture was album balance for me and combine many years of emotions in one," says Schenker. 

"I wanted lots of double bass drum to keep the fast songs rolling like a train with lots of energy covered with interesting elements, a couple of my UFO days-type of mid tempos and the 7 string low sound to get a very wide range of sounds and emotions."

Spirit on a Mission is available now. The tour begins January 20th at the Robin, 2 Bilston.
Tickets are available at http://www.michaelschenkerhimself.com/tour.php

Turn to red: the legendary Killing Joke slay Birmingham

There are bands, and there are cults. There are concerts, and there are religious experiences. There are fanbases, and there are devout followers. 

There is an endless void, and there is Killing Joke.

Those wise enough to make this distinction and spend All Hallows' Eve crammed into Birmingham's Institute enjoyed a rollicking set of the Joke's special brand of indescribable purifying noise: cackling over the end of the world and presenting landscapes drawn from a sonic palette so indefatigably punishing and relentlessly brutal that it is, in its own way, unerringly beautiful. 

Touring in support of their fifteenth album, the shit-kicking Pylon, Killing Joke - returned to their original line-up after bassist Paul Raven's untimely passing, with a rare Absent Friends dedicated to him - take to the stage then take the stage itself, their autonomous zone for the night. 

Ploughing through an exploratory career-hopping set, due reverence is given to their position as venerable statesmen, with the tunes to match: a suitably boinging Eighties is judderingly relevant, despite being older than some of the crowd (hello). Pandemonium closes the set, after the likes of Turn to Red going toe-to-toe with the assault of newer cuts. 

Theirs is a tribal-industrial lot - if forced to categorize - pummelling the Institute and instigating a two-way energy exchange. Bassist Youth lighting incense sticks or whatever the fuck it was christ I'm tired who reads this shit anyway was a touching addition. 

Love Like Blood and Requiem, two foremost set staples, are tucked inside the middle of the set for once. Security lies in the understanding that the band could fart them through a kazoo and the respective gorgeous ache and fantastic stomp of these two would still transmit, and still incite no less applause. 



After thirty-eight (thousand?) years in the game, frontman Jaz Coleman is also no less the most hypnotic frontman of his generation. Still keeping any heel-snapping newcomers at bay, looking away is an impossible task as it is searingly clear from his expressions that every word carries megatons of weight, delivered accordingly. 

Guitarist Geordie Walker, meanwhile, is a mystery no easier to figure out even when working a few feet away. Chordal oddness and sheer inventiveness mixes with a guitar sound that is completely and utterly unmistakable, with bludgeoning riffing giving way to effortlessly illustrated textures, housed inside great cathedrals of sound, making his underrated status all the more criminal. 

Geordie Walker's Gibson ES-295: a conduit to chaotic noise

There are precious few acts where each and every member makes their mark through sheer force of personality as well as musical and technical skill. Skinsman 'Big' Paul Ferguson emits kidney-puncturing beats, perfectly undercutting the band's sound and quite possibly vibrationally eroding the venue's infrastructure. Aforementioned Martin 'Youth' Glover's driving bass dances around it wonderfully, fulfilling an overall sound that is, upon reflection, something not to be repeated. 


It is sobering to think of the oft-cited bands who Killing Joke left a (claw) mark on - the likes of Metallica, Tool, and Nine Inch Nails may command bigger audiences and their own degrees of fan loyalty, but know this: there will only ever be one Killing Joke, with an unrivalled intensity and singular identities of sound. Miss them at your absolute peril.