What a Friday! Mick from Nothin To Lose put on a great line up of sleazy hard rock n roll bands at Camden’s Purple Turtle. While Mick and his ultra-sleaze vocalist and flying-V axe-work were brilliant, Mad Dogs stole the show with some out and out craziness: shoulder lifts, unrivalled showmanship and an ambitious stage dive from the balcony that nearly killed singer The Captain.

I’d never seen Crowning Glory before, but they were wicked. A great voice and a great show. Damn, that reminds me, I’ve got to track those guys down and get a CD.

It’s nice to see an underground hard rock scene existing and growing underneath all the metalcore bluster. Let’s see if London can produce it’s own Skid Row…

ta luvs

Gill

For those of you who don’t remember the genius and joy of Photo Magic! here are a few reminders. Because we will be starting the magic again - email us your shonky live pics from your phone and we’ll put them here. metalhammer@futurenet.co.uk

 wil from Aiden

 Casey Chaos from Amen

  Dani Filth fromCradle of Filth

 Brian from Shadows Fall

 Nikki Sixx from Motley Crue

 Mazza

 Lemmy

 Justin from The Darkness

 Glenn Tipton from Judas Priest

 Dio

Any guesses as to who these guys are, playing the Islington Academy earlier this week?

Thanks to Kirsten for the pics x

In Flames rocked the Forum last night. With a clever light show and enough pyro to do their name justice, the Swedes were little short of sensational. Gotta admit, my fear was that they’d be upstaged by Sepultura, a band that shouldn’t really be supporting anyone at this stage of their career. I’ve watched the Brazilians’ rise (or perhaps ‘Arise’) since their very first UK appearance opening for Sodom at the Marquee. I rate much of the work they’ve done since Max Cavalera left them after a 1996 gig in London and have a lot of respect for current frontman Derrick Green. On last night’s evidence, however, they’re running out of steam. Ex-Soulfly man Roy Mayorga was a surprisingly good stand-in for the absent Igor Cavalera and the crowd went apeshit to Refuse/Resist’, ‘Troops Of Doom’, ‘Beneath The Remains’, ‘Arise’ and an encore of ‘Roots’ but their lack of patience for material from the new album ‘Dante XXI (’Convicted In Life’, ‘Buried Words’) was all too obvious.

The headliners seemed to have a bee in their bonnet about Trivium, singer Anders Fridén demanding that two fans in the front row remove their Trivs T-shirts and replace them with specially supplied In Flames garments, and introducing the new track ‘Vacuum’ as “a Trivium cover song”. It seemed rather petty, especially as with a mixture of oldies like ‘Behind Space and ‘Moonshield’ and such recent material as ‘System’, ‘Trigger’, ‘Black And White’, ‘Crawl Through Knives’, ‘Take This Life’ and a thunderous ‘Cloud Connected’ the quintet had the Forum eating out of their hands.

Dave Ling
Check out Dave’s blog here, www.daveling.co.uk/diary.htm

Do any of these guys look familiar?