Deamons Child- Scherben Müssen Sein (Zygmatron Productions ZYG4)

Deamon’s Child are a German trio that plays some pretty intense and wild heavy metal with a kind of punk attitude at times. The title of the CD means “there must be Shards”.  The CD features 8 tracks with titles and lyrics all in German. Ana who sings and plays bass has a very intense and interesting voice. She is backed up by Tim on Drums and Sven on guitars. Das Vogellied starts things off. The guitar is very heavy metal with powerful drums and guitars and simple bass lines but they play with intensity! The fast guitar lines are quite melodic and sometimes the vocal as well. Quite a long track with a lot of movements. They site the Melvins as a big influence. Hum?? Zucker is very intense and reminds me of Ministry with a female vocalist.  Keine Zeit is a really fast track with speed metal like guitar and drums to start. Powerful thrash metal like stuff until the vocals when it slows down. Fucking intense. Geld is also very heavy metal riff rock (not many guitar solos). If you understand German you will get more out of this than I can on this track with all these start stop, fast, slow sections and a powerful ending. Schweinehund starts with some different style of drumming and back and forth with a plucked bass and guitar riff kicking in here and there before it all takes off. This track is totally different and sort of throws you off a bit but I like the change. Monster features a few English words but is another pretty intense and in your face track with a more noisy soundtrack at times. In Kinderschuhen is a track with a strange manipulated sample of some sort. The CD ends with Nichts, which starts off with like a choir of voices and a heavy more drony guitar before the drums and bass kicks in. Heavy riffy stuff and instrumental for the first 6mins and they go through some heavy parts til the end… Interesting record.

http://www.zymatron.de

http://www.facebook.com/deamonshome

The Flying Eyes- Poison the Well 7” (H42 Records 027)

The Flying Eyes are back with a cool new 7”, with one new song and a Stooges cover. Poison the Well is a pretty awesome short track, under 3mins with a cool stoney psychedelic sound and pretty hypnotic to start and then the vocals kick in it becomes a bit more melodic and the main theme returns. The song sort of fades out and makes you feel like you were right in the middle, there had been no guitar solo or real break.. Quite strange. I guess there is a full length version… Flip the sucker over and get ready for 1969 by the Stooges. Now you get some guitar….. opening with a wah solo and in your face drums. Great cover version for sure.. Look forward to hear the bands next step..

http://www.h42records.com

https://theflyingeyes.bandcamp.com/

https://www.facebook.com/theflyingeyes/

Sound Effect Record Weekend- Agusa and Methexis and Øresund Space Collective and Automaton- S.I.X. Dogs, Athens, Greece 02/12/16

This was a double concert weekend arranged by Yiannis from Sound Effect Records in Athens. Agusa on Friday and Øresund Space Collective, with most of the members of Agusa on Saturday… Different opening acts each night. We arrived around 13 on Friday flying in from Copenhagen and went straight to an apartment that we could have for the entire weekend. Super cool people and we all hit it off right away.  This place was 2mins walk from the Acropolis. Amazing.

The hosts took us out for an amazing lunch with squids, anchovies, sardines, greek salad, bread, fish.. beers, etc… amazing food. We were so hungry. We went back to the apartment and rested for a while and some went out to walk around and then over to the venue for the soundchecks.   These all went fine and around 20 they started letting people in. Both bands were being multitrack recorded and video taped with 4-5 cameras.

Methexis was a 4 piece band, with guitar (he did lead vocals), drums, bass and keyboards. They played some pretty intense art-prog rock stuff that reminded me a bit of Marillion at time but they also slipped into jazz and other stuff as well. The place was pretty packed with people, around 150 people I think.  I was resting my back and ears so I heard most of the set from the backstage upstairs. They also had some cool visuals. The audience seem to like it but you could tell they really wanted to hear Agusa.

Methexis

Agusa hit the stage about 10:40, quite late as the other band had a lot of gear to move and arrange, etc…  Agusa pretty much had the audience in the palm of their hand from the start and the band played a blinder of a concert. Wow.. Mikael is the leader and dictates the changes, solos, improvs and directions of the folk prog the band plays. Jenny is just a great addition with the flute and gives the band even more of a folk sound. I think sometimes the folk melodies of their songs are quite similar and you almost think they are repeating a song they already played but it is long passages with great guitar solos, great keyboards and very dynamic bass and drums. The flute is layered over the top and here and there. They played about 80mins I think and the audience loved it.. Great apprecitation. They sold a lot of Merch..   I should say the sound guy was great and the sound was amazing for both bands.

AGUSA

 https://agusaband.bandcamp.com/

Day 2

It was a late party and some of the guys did not get to sleep until 5 in the morning! I crashed at 01:30 but was up early at 8:30 and went out for breakfast before anyone else was up and over to the Acropolis museum, which was just around the corner. That was cool. What an amazing historical site. 

This was a pretty relaxed day and some went around and others just hung out and we headed over to Sound Effect Records and what an amazing record store. If you are trying to find any of the records from European psych, heavy, stoner, spave rock labels, everything was in this store. I was totally blown away. Highly recommended!  We hung out across the street at a small bar/restaurant and had some nice food and beer and at 17:30 we went to the venue to meet the Automaton guys and do a sound check. Everything was very slow and took a long time but the sound checks were great and it was so cool to finally meet the Automaton guys since I recorded some stuff for their last record. We played most of the set at the soundcheck and it sounded super heavy and spaced out. Wow.. So much louder than the ØSC sound check.

Anyway, doors did not get to open until 21 so Automaton started late. We started with a spacey instrumental piece that lead into the mid paced Mount Ida! Intense track…..  the next one was a total killer though, when we played Going Down. This is the one I did for the record and I had a blast with them live… Fucking killer psychedelic doom band…  The set ended with a very heavy version of One of the Days by Pink Floyd.. About 45min set and people were into it.. I had a blast.

Set List: Space Intro jam (10mins), Mount Ida, Going Down, One of the Days 

Automaton with Dr Space (Soundcheck)

ØSC did not start until nearly 11 and sadly, the place was not as full as the night before but the people here were really dedicated. We played a super high energy show. Tim was just kicking ass on the drums. Johan was coming up with some killer riffs and Jocke just grooved..  Jonas was great but had a rough time hearing his own keyboards. I had not used a couple of my modules for Automaton so I could mix up and come up with some different sounds than before.  It was great and I think we did 6 jams in 85mins. We could have played one or two more but Mikael felt we had done our job and did not really want to play anymore. Pity. I would have liked to do one more but in the end it was the right decision as I was blasted and had been on stage for nearly 4 hrs if you include all the sound checks..  It was fun to meet the fans and sign some autographs as well.  So cool to play in Greece. Hope we make it back again. Thanks to Yiannis and Emilios and all the music fans in Greece.

You can hear the ØSC concert at the link below

https://archive.org/details/OSC2016-02-13.FLAC

BluesClub- Eel Pie Club, Twickenham, UK 1/28/16

This was the first concert of the year for Sue and me. I had always wanted to go to a show at the Eel Pie club, a quite famous rhythm and blues place from the 60s in Twickenham, UK. They only do shows at this place every other Thursday. We arrived about 25mins before they start the show at 21 and got a beer. No real English beers at all on tap or in the fridge, a shame.

The Blues Club is made up of a lot of local guys including the drummer and keyboard player from Dire Straits (Guy Fletcher and Danny Cummings), William Topley (The Blessing) on vocals, Robbie McIntosh (Pretenders, Paul McCartney) on guitar, Peter Hope-Evans (Pete Townshend) on harmonicas and jews harp.  Alan Rogan played the bass.

The place was about 60% full and pretty packed around the upper floor of the bar. There were some young kids that were totally into it but overall it was an over 60 crowd!! The band played two sets of about an hour each, mixing blues classics with a few originals. The first set was mostly all short tracks 3-4mins long and not a lot of smiling and joking around but the 2^nd set opened up with a Canned Heat track and that got the place really going and they had a lot more fun with this set and did a lot more solos on all the instruments. Guy also played a lot of lap steel and fewer keyboards. Peter was very dominant on the harmonica though, sometimes too much. Just one song with out massive harmonica for every moment would have been nice.  Great version of the classic song called 44..  It was a fun night and a few local stars showed up like Pete French (Leafhound) and Mick Avery (The Kinks) as well. Fun night… All pictures by Jennifer Noble. Thanks.

http://www.eelpieclub.com/

Pothead-Huxley’s, Berlin Jan 15-16th, 2015

 It has been 5 years since Sue and I came to stay with my friend Silvana to see Pothead and interview the band. Berlin is usually quite cold in January so Sue decided not to come this time. Sure enough it is -2C and some snow on the ground. The Friday show is not sold out but the Saturday show is.  The band released the Jackpot album since the last time we saw them and Pottersville as well. I guess they will play some new songs and probably different sets each night. We will see.

Robert

Brad

Silvana and I arrived about 10mins before the show was to begin. She saw some of her friends and I ran into Helmut (Berlin Record Dealer). I had a foto pass so I could take some pictures during the first 3 songs. They were actually not caring so I could take anytime I wanted but I took mainly only shot from the first 3 songs. The stage was pretty cool and they had a few movies now and then. This was the first time for me to see them with the new drummer Robert. The band was all dressed in matching shiny suits. Brad’s was a bit too baggy and he looked like Andy Warhol in Charlie Chaplin pants with a Les Paul! It was a new fresh set from 5 years ago including some songs from the latest record, Jackpot and quite a few from Pottersville  as well but they went through the classics like Funkenbus, Henry and Mabel, I’m a Sinner (Which causes the lady next to me to cry), Black War, Chess, Indian Song, etc..  I just love this band. Great grooves, great songs… they were clearly having a really good time even though Jeff and Brad keep their distance, only crossing the front of the drum riser a few times. Biggest smiles were the small mistakes.. I think they played about 2hrs. The place was ¾ full. The show tomorrow night is sold out.

Approx. Set List (I have the list and it has 39 tracks but I know for sure they did not play all these in this order)

Trouble With Pothead Intro, Burnin’ Blue, Rock Child, Stand. Stadium, Satisfied, Wild Weed, Tacoma. Fire, New Chapter, C’Mon, Constantinople, Chess, James, Rock On, Allison, I’m a Sinner too, Bombay, Funkenbus, Emotion of the Potion, Toxic Fluid, Remember, You should Try that, Black War, Rock Satellite, Frame in your Mind, Could not Deal, Tiagiato, Henry and Mabel, Indian Song

We hung out for a while and had a backstage pass to meet the band. There was about 25 people crammed into a small room and a lot of smoking. I could not hang out in there so stood in the hall way with the security guy waiting for them to come out. Siggi (their Manager) told me Jeff was in the hall so I went out and chatted with him after he finished talking with some fans.  We eventually got to the real backstage and I met Brad. We had a great time talking and he was in a super political mood, so we talked a lot about the USA and the election, etc..  At the end of the night we made a personal bet for 1€ to meet next year at this time to see who was right about the next president!   It was about 2:30 when Silvana and I left. She had hung out a lot with Markus and his girlfriend. Markus, played drums with Pothead many many years ago and has been a long term friend of the band.  It was a great night..

Show 2

Jeff Dope

            We arrived just into the concert and it was snowing a lot outside. The place was really full and much warmer than the night before. Brad and the guys looked the same and his voice was really great tonight.  The band played the same concert as the night before as far as I could tell except instead of ending with Indian Song, they came out and played two extra songs after Indian Song. Y Road was maybe one of them.  Anyway, we hung out and they were playing great classic rock through the PA, Stones, AC/DC, Golden Earring, ZZTop so there was still a party going on. I noticed Jeff just people watching from near the stage but behind the barrier so I went and chatted with him and then the owner of the Niagara bar, an old friend of the band (and Silvana also knows here well) came over. We talked about their new suits, etc..  Eventually we ended up at the backstage party, which seemed like fewer people on this night. I was able to get Brad to myself for about and hour and then Jeff came in and Robert the drummer) and then it was the whole band plus Silvana and Yvvone (?). Robert left pretty soon after, perhaps he could not follow the stoned conversation or did not find it very interesting. It was so fun to talk to these guys about the early history of the band (I want to write a book on them), their new studio, the band stating to do jam records,  the USA, marijuana, politics, religion.. Brad is quite well read but he also makes a lot of stuff up that is really far out, just to fuck with you (I hope)… a crazy storyteller….. what a blast.. We left at 3:30 in the morning…  So great to see the guys. Special thanks to Siggi their hard working manager. See you again next year...