Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

There can be nothing more that can make you suffer as if your ex-partner has run away with the one you left them for, or make you feel so elated in the same breath as if they had left behind their credit cards and a hastily scribbled note with their pin number on than feeling the dichotomy of watching a young band give such a performance and be so well appreciated that you cannot help but feel somehow you have wasted your life.

To watch Black Diamond is to know that the future is safe, to revel in the glow of such abiding talent that even the young drummer could, and would, hold his own against Lars Ulrich. Black Diamond they may be but they shine brighter than the sun whisking of its winter coat and heading off into a tanning booth.

There is a certain joy in watching a group that is able to smile broadly whilst playing and give the audience the impression that they are witnessing musical devilry at play, for nobody should surely enjoy themselves so much when playing songs that demand the concentration of an Olympic diver being asked to pull of the dive of their lives in a glass of water. Music though is there to be enjoyed, to be played as though it is a path way to redemption and throughout Black Diamond’s set that path was not only taken but clearly signposted and with a set of new adoring fans cheering on from the sides imploring their new heroes not to slow down or falter.

From the moment that the four young lads stepped on stage, from the moment the young drummer peered over his kit and took on the mantle of a legend in the making, the band collided with convention and convention threw up a white flag and surrendered.

By being there at the start of a, hopefully long, industrious musical career is something you don’t get to witness all that often and yet as each song was played as if dynamite had been sneaked into the tiny plectrums, as though each drum beat and twang of the bass string was the heartbeat of an disgruntled elephant rampaging and taking great pleasure in tossing aside every single poacher that ever lived, the more the reasons grew to savour the beginning.

With a set made up of four of their own songs and a couple of outrageously good covers, including the normally unobtainable AC/DC track Highway To Hell, Black Diamond blew the collected cobwebs of the summer dust, the webs of entangled corporate induced music, away.

The next time you hear a person of your acquaintance suggest that the young don’t like Metal anymore, that it only derives interest from the older generation, get them down to the front of a Black Diamond gig, let them hear tracks such as Take Me, Down In Flames and the utterly compelling Idiosyncrasies, then let their mouths drop and their insane statements crash and burn, for in the likes of Black Diamond’s hand, Metal will always remain as bold as brass, good as gold and as dynamic as dynamite.

Ian D. Hall