Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
Respect is something that is short supply in the modern world but this is hardly a new tale, a new belief; for no matter what an artist or person on the street may do, there will always be someone who finds it easy to belittle the effort, the strength of character it took to return to a place where heroes once swore battle and where the first images of insight first shone through.
Liverpool Sound and Vision rating 8.5/10
People forget just how much America is a country that is arguably divided between its own extremes, of the huge and imposing cities that dominate the East and West Coasts, the mega towers that lay in between and the heartlands, the ranges and flatlands that can only look upwards and onwards with either envious eyes or more frankly with pity. It is the extremes, the separation in wealth, poverty, attitude and political alienation that drives the country to its position of dominance and its ability to give music of most genres the fair crack of the whip; after all such diversity will always throw up new heroes to worship and Kentucky is always wild about a new hero.
Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10
The devastating effect that a exploding volcano has on the surrounding earth and the serenity of the once peaceful air is never surely lost when a rock gig comes to town, especially one born out of a series of bands, one after each other that allows the intense heat and atomic like measure to flow evenly for a period of time before culminating in one final blow out, the landslide of love and affection overtaking the surge of rock endeavour. Volcanoes come and go, it is in their nature, however for Kentucky’s Black Stone Cherry, the impression they left on the minds who made their way to the Echo Arena on a cold January night will live on beyond the fertile cooling down of the Earth beneath the Rock lover’s feet.
Photograph by Ian D. Hall
Originally published by L.S. Media. March 16th 2012.
A great and astounding gig can sometimes be defined by what happens at its end rather than during the whole. If an audience as passionate as the people of Liverpool can be with some of their own home grown talent, can sing with great heart and outdo a Birmingham crowd, normally more adept at taking on the task given to them by one of the heavyweights of 21st Century Metal, then you know that Black Stone Cherry truly and utterly demolished any preconceptions that Liverpool doesn’t do the genre.