Mick Birchall Reviews

I’ve had some difficulty writing this one. I think the only way I can really explain why I like this record is by taking a time machine back to 2011. Let’s go back to before I turned 20 years old and to the first album by Craig Owens’ project Destroy Rebuild Until God Shows (D.R.U.G.S.). In all honesty back to the early days of my writing. I was a young blogger and would spend my days looking up new bands. I would spend hours on end listening to bands, then I would check out their record label, find all of their label mates and listen to those. Hours upon hours were spent on YouTube, PureVolume, Last FM, ReverbNation, SoundCloud etc. I remember first hearing Craig Owens in the band Chiodos and being engaged with his vocals. The album Bone Palace Ballet stands out in my memory really clearly. Also, Craig's vocal work on "You Can't Spell Crap Without 'C'" by The Devil Wears Prada . As I said, I spend a lot of time looking up bands and artists within the sam...

Credit: allabouttherock.co.uk There’s a saying. Never meet your heroes. Well, I’m breaking that rule here. I’ve been listening to Soil since was young. I don’t think I’m alone in saying their album, Scars was such an impactful record of the early 2000s. The band have been around since the mid-90s and has made a lot of great music in that time. On August 26th, Soil release their new album, Play It Forward . A collection of covers that the band have mixed together to create a really great playlist to help cheer us up after the horror of the COVID-19 pandemic (amongst all the other shit in the world right now). I reviewed the album on Valkyrian Music ( click here for the review ). I was very grateful to have the opportunity to talk to frontman, Ryan McCombs . A voice that I heard a lot while developing my music taste. As he was also the vocalist for a spell in, Drowning Pool . In this interview, we talk about the new covers album, writing during the pandemic, the love of live music an...

Another Friday night in St Helens and yet another gig in the hallowed grounds of Tank bar. The venue where patrons are squeezed for space but absolutely nobody cares. Metal Mayhem is an absolute staple of the venue, putting on some of the best local bands that the independent metal scene can provide. On this night, we were treated to four stellar sets that popped off the charts. I always have a good night when it comes to Metal Mayhem. So much respect, love and joy is shared. Drinks were drank, noise was made and the rest of the town centre wondered what kind of demonic sacrifice is being made in Chrom’s name. What I’m trying to get at is that it was a good night and if you’re ever interested in any of the lineups for one of these events I would urge you to try and make it there. Opening up the evening’s proceedings were Death Cadet . An up-and-coming heavy metal act that sounds like they came out of the mid-2000s. Very much that typical emo-punk metal sound; duelling clean and growl...

The thing I love about writing this blog is that I can possibly get to introduce people to a band that they may never have heard of before. Since I have you here you might be curious about the band I’m going to talk about at length. Readers, today let me introduce you to a band that I have been bumping to for about seven years now. The Japanese electro-rock sensation, Man With A Mission . I got into Man With A Mission a few years ago. They completely took me off guard when I first heard them opening for Zebrahead and Patent Pending in Manchester. I didn’t know what to expect and suddenly five guys in wolf masks appeared on stage to perform the most bat-shit crazy opening sets that I’ve ever watched. In fact, I ended up really preferring their set more than the other two bands. They truly captured my imagination to the point where I ended up buying all of their music. It’s really hard to define what style of music they play. I mean, I say electro-rock but that doesn’t really define th...