Category Archives: Music

Niall McCabe: Rituals. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Everyday, whether we are conscious of it or not, we adhere to Rituals, to established practices or long-term traditions that have built up over time; to leave home by a certain time to avoid traffic, to listen to that last favoured song on the radio till its finale so that you ensure a good day, or even wearing a certain item of clothing, a colour that guarantees your endeavour is a success; we all do something that we have come to depend upon that gives our life a structure, a determination, a resolve that comes from deep within us and which materialises in the world around us.

Niall McCabe: Rituals. Album Review. full post

(368 words, estimated 1:28 mins reading time)

In Autumn: What’s Done Is Done. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

If you want blood, if you want uncontained rage, and if on top of that you want to see aggression of sound succeed, then in the period of autumn’s splendour shall you discover it; all you have to remember that the emotions uncovered are spectacular, that the beat of the Italian embrace of dark doom and ear-splitting destruction is what’s left when What’s Done Is Done and given the freedom to stomp all over the remains of the naysayers and the terminally dull.

In Autumn: What’s Done Is Done. Album Review. full post

(328 words, estimated 1:19 mins reading time)

Magnum: Here Comes The Rain. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Rarely are we presented with a moment in time in which we grieve as an artist leaves us just as their art is released into the world; it feels seismic, a moment the fan remembers for all time.

To focus on Magnum’s Here Comes The Rain without acknowledgement or understanding of the sense of loss to rock music and the band as the fiercely upsetting news of the passing of the phenomenal Tony Clarkin on the eve of what will be considered in time as perhaps a final studio hurrah, one that when delved into deeply finds the band, as always fronted the extraordinary voice of Bob Catley, arguably placing Time at the very forefront of their release.

Magnum: Here Comes The Rain. Album Review. full post

(420 words, estimated 1:41 mins reading time)

Little Man Tate: Welcome To The Rest Of Your Life. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

It is a modern phrase designed to kick start our physical appetite for change, a symbolic gesture of how at some point in our development we reach a crossroads, a place where we are given no choice, no alternative but to move forward and take a greater degree of responsibility for the events that surround us, and have it shown to us as though it is a carnival of experience that we our glad to accept, but which in truth is a double edged sword, a reminder of a side of adult hood we are never truly prepared for.

Little Man Tate: Welcome To The Rest Of Your Life. Album Review. full post

(375 words, estimated 1:30 mins reading time)

Today Was Yesterday. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

To be unafraid to undertake an adventure, to explore beyond what is expected by a society, is to understand that all you have achieved so far life in your time on the spinning planet we call home has been nothing; for if Today Was Yesterday then tomorrow is what we must raise ambition for in the present and its victory.

The debut self-titled studio album from Today Was Yesterday is one of spectacle and illumination, it holds a duo of musically intoxicating guest appearances that make the hair stand on end and a lump in the throat quiver with emotional resonance.

Today Was Yesterday. Album Review. full post

(417 words, estimated 1:40 mins reading time)

UFO: Lights Out (2024 Reissue). Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Lights Out, revel in the sound that the darkness brings to your door and the senses, for there is a renewal of friendship and love ready to explode in your heart as UFO release the latest reaffirmation of metal history as their back catalogue receives the 180 gram and extended offering to a new generation of listeners and appeases those who have kept a lit vigil of their prowess from the start.

UFO: Lights Out (2024 Reissue). Album Review. full post

(501 words, estimated 2:00 mins reading time)

Gentle Giant: The Missing Piece (Steven Wilson Remix). 2024 Re-issue Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

The catalyst for change does not always present itself with such acuteness as the rise in the popularity of a music genre which came to define a short-lived era but which would come to have huge repercussions to larger scales of music, to a genre that caught the attention of those with more than a simple hook in their minds to please.

Gentle Giant: The Missing Piece (Steven Wilson Remix). 2024 Re-issue Album Review. full post

(469 words, estimated 1:53 mins reading time)

Dust Bolt: Sound & Fury. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Era’s end, they have to, unless the sound of the universe you are searching for is the crippling regret of entropy and the slow hand clap of performance that sneaks into the set from decay.

It is though what we replace an era with that gives us hope of continuance, of making sure that after the grief of universal upheaval and loss, that we can rebuild in a form that thrills us, guides us, makes us rage and shake our fists at the sky as it falls around us, and makes us want to double down on the love we feel for the world, our home, our reason to be.

Dust Bolt: Sound & Fury. Album Review. full post

(515 words, estimated 2:04 mins reading time)

10cc: 20 Years – 1972-1992. Album Box Set Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * * *

To examine a line from a poem and believe that you can find a meaning to a full life can be misleading, it may offer insight to a moment, to an instant where the writer was overwhelmed by an emotion, but in regards to explaining an entire career, to sit there and insist that a single line can explain everything away, is best preserved in the role of academia and by those to whom can make a living from deciphering a message from a single line of text.

10cc: 20 Years – 1972-1992. Album Box Set Review. full post

(536 words, estimated 2:09 mins reading time)

Thunder: Live At Islington. Album Review.

Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

If you are one of the fortunate ones to have witnessed Thunder strike home on stage and whip the crowd into a majestic rock frenzy, one of thought as well as deed, then you just immediately understand that they are rightly lauded as one of Britain’s finest rock acts of the last forty years, and one to whom the public cannot allow to pass by into the shadows without being acknowledged as the ones to host a party, the party of a lifetime.

Thunder: Live At Islington. Album Review. full post

(437 words, estimated 1:45 mins reading time)