Life has it's ups and downs doesn't it.

Well, it's difficult to express my disappointment in The Wall Rock Radio's decision to cancel my show 'Monday Night Metal Magazine' on what is essentially based on a text conversation.

It was going so well, crept over 100 listeners and had interviews Michael Schenker, with Black Label Society, Overlord and backstage passes to Hammerfest in the bag. The show was getting a great reception and even the SM admitted it was the best show on the station.

Essentially I had forgotten the show on December 3rd had to be pre-recorded and was reminded a few days before, I openly admitted I had forgotten, but plenty of time to sort it. After being called 'Shit for Brains' I was hardly complementary in return and despite many inaccuracies in SM's text back he said to knock it on the head.

This also brings in the old problem of 'no emotion in text' argument, you can't see how someone is saying a comment. But essentially my feeling was correct he was not happy. Frankly it's probably not a bad thing it's been cancelled now as SM clearly has some social issues as a dig into his background has shown a history of falling outs and bullying.

Fortunately my good friends from Twitter had re-branded to Mosh and Destroy and accepted me back into the fold. So at least I can do stuff again, BLS and Overlord I've lost, but haven't lost from Hammerfest yet and have gained insight into some other bands.. sadly not my fan boy BLS!

Enough wallowing in misery, on the up side, Black Saint's first gig went down a storm, a great reception from our friends at the Vic Bikers Pub in Coalville and  we all came off satisfied, only seemed to be one mistake and it was only a minor one made by some twat with a guitar (Me!)

So on December 9th we play The Shed in Leicester, we are on at 7:45pm and need 30 people in attendance as well as be as good as we were at the Vic. So with any luck, numbers are just about there, we can get into Glastonbudget next year.. especially as last year was a great buzz!

More ups include:

• My girls are growing up beautifully
• Back on twitter and everyone seems to be cool
• Leicester are currently 3rd
• Seen Anthrax twice since previous posts

So it's more ups than downs.. 

The Burger Challenge

The Challenge!

One of my friends is leaving us, well for the next at least 18 months, whilst he pursues his career in Norway. We are both obsessed by Man Vs Food, we all thought the perfect send off would be the 'Flaming Challenge' at our local. It was time to 'man up' see who was the King of the ring.. this has a different meaning 24 hours later!! The question is: who could apply to become the next presenter of Man Vs Food?

"The Flaming Challenge"

Bring on the beast..

2 x 12 oz burgers
2 x Chicken Breasts
2 x rashers of Bacon

My plate by the end, none to shabby!

Chilli, Cheese and onions.
6 x Onion Rings and a plateful of chips


This is essentially 1kg or 2.2 lb of food... The contenders were myself, Dave (singer form Rezurrected), his bro Andy, John obviously, my 2 mates Guy and Jason and Tom (guitarist from Rezurrected). However Tom had a 'dodgy tummy' and so wussed out.. I shall show him how man up one day ;)

From the off Dave and Guy looked odds on favourties,

The Winner!

Results:

Guy won hands down, we reckon he finished it in 25 minutes! The guy to the right licking his plate clean is Guy (the plate gave it away right?). It was effectively just to beat me, he wasn't proud of huimself and had many a digestion problem! 

Dave came in a very close Second, by close it was closest to third and fourth than Guy in first! I was probably equal third with Andy.. There were literally chips in it.. Dave probably 10 ahead of me and Andy. 

Fifth goes to John, half a burger left.. and Jason well, we think he sniffed it... as not a lot of food appeared to be missing from his plate! When the burger came out 3 of us thought 'easy' didn't look as much as you think, but by the time it gets cold.. it becomes a different beast to eat. I think personally if it could have stayed warm I'd have had a better go at it, maybe even finishing with Guy..

The problem isn't in the pub eating the food, that's pretty much the easy part, yes there is some sweating, changing colour, apparently from green to white at one point! The problem lies in the next 48 hours.. getting comfy to sleep wasn't easy and the toilet was on overtime. Still we can say we've doen it, and potentially never doing it again!

Well there is the '666' challenge in Leicester...

I challenged the burger.. and it beat me :(

The winner and his badge

Jason merely sniffed his!

John and Dave

General Catch Up on Stuff

Anthrax
Blew me away, I knew they would, but an almost perfect setlist and such an intimate gig made it so special. As soon as caught in a mosh started the whole room went ballistic. No choice but to just get involved, which resulted in minor injuries to my neck. Was great to gig again with Daz and finally meet Mr.Gaz P, the man himself delivered as expected, top off and random Bush or Belladonna pop quizzes to people. The kebab on the way back was immense. Great all round night.

Hammerfest
Again another meet up, met and carried lots of luggage for Dawn and Sharon, Also good to see Gaz. B and Becky again. I only went for the Friday and saw the delights of Sci Fi Mania (half naked ladies with fire, monkeys with metal grinders and a big robot mascot), RSJ, Chimara, Anthrax and Evile (some others, but I can't remember them). Anthrax and Evile were solid, as above almost same set but it didn't stop me headbanging away! Thank you to Dawn for the generous pass down of tickets.

Radio
How I dream of a radio show, just weekly.. not being too greedy. Well a new station is opening for the East Midlands called The Wall, demo sent, demo approved and it should begin in June hopefully. I'm thinking a metal Monday show potentially :D Also still waiting to hear if Hermitage FM can fit me into their schedule, they are on FM in North West Leics and online. Going to tricky to get a metal show into such a varied community station. But that's not my decision, I can merely wait. It's been years since I was a regular on a station and to do it again would make me so happy.

Glastonbudget
My band Rezurrected have been picked to go on the Big Top Stage! We expected a tent near the toilets to be honest, certainly not 1 of the 2 main stages! So excited now.. plans are a Metallica/Slayer ending.. we're working on it next week :D We also have pre-Glastonbudget party arranged for May 6th at the Vic Bikers pub in Coalville, all very welcome.

TFFM
April 6th (Good Friday) I have a show, filling in for someone. I'll probably just help out in this respect from now on, going for a 'growing up with the Corbetts' show as my brother is going to break his broadcasting virginity. I also have 2 members of the same band calling in, no not mine, a proper thrash band, trying to get another band sorted as we speak..Tune in from 8pm peeps! www.twitterfamily.co.uk

I'm so excited

Today I am excited. It's a very simple reason for my childish behaviour today. Tonight I see Anthrax at the Oxford O2. Yes, I have seen them before, but never so intimate.

I can hear you now, Anthrax aren't that great, why the excitement? We all have our favourite bands, and then we have our first loves. My 3 were Iron Maiden, Metallica and Anthrax, as a small boy I would play Live after death, ..and justice for all and state of euphoria over and over. To the point were I didn't realise they had other albums. Imagine my excitement when finding The Number of the Beast, Master of Puppets and Among the living..

The 3 mentioned bands I will always defend, I will always get uptight when people slate them. I can pretty much defend anything they produce, except for Lulu. I don't care who sings for Anthrax I can live with both Bush and Belladonna, tonight Belladonna will be in charge. For me it's the sound Anthrax generate, there is something amazing to come from their moments of chugging, I hope that sound is replicated live in a smaller venue.

I've seen Maiden and Metallica many times in their own tours, even exchanged high fives with James Hetfield (just slip that in there). But never Anthrax, I have only seem them at festivals where I was clearly the only excited person around, so had to contain myself. I also will be treated to the new album stuff, frankly Worship Music was a stand out album of 2012, not the best, but certainly a stand out and great return to form from them.

So for these reasons I am genuinely 'pit of my stomach' excited.. Roll on 3pm when I can leave work and hit the roads.. oh and please please play be all end all.. thanks.

I'm sure I'll have a wee picture or review or similar for tomorrow.. and with any luck a sore neck.

Shouty Nonsense

I'm a bit of a fuddy duddy when it comes to vocals / singers. Songs and tunes could be plowing away I'm all up for the next greatest band in the world and then the singer either shouts or makes silly noises and I'm instantly turned off. An example of this would be Machine Head, I should technically love them, but as soon as his vocals come in I just can't listen anymore.

However just recently I have noticed shoutiness appearing in my bands and selections, am I becoming more tolerant of the beast I hated. I have recently found Ektomorf and Meshuggah tolerable. I also don't mind the Gallows, he's all cockney shouting too.. I may as well be at Upton Park. But still something I don't mind about it all.. They should be in my binned section. Strangely I find myself going back to Ektomorf for a shouty fix.

Surely I can dig this now?

I like a lot of bands that can deliver heavy but with clean vox, Evile, Fury - Even gone back through the archives to Annihilator, Municipal Waste, Forbidden, Armored Saint. Trawled back catalogues and still they're not fixing me as Ektomorf do.

So with all of the above in mind it was time once again to hit Unto the locust by Machine head, knuckle down and listen in, after all my music taste was changing, surely tolerating shouty music is going to come in handy?

No, sorry. I still consider it shit. Off to dowse myself in TCP.

I feel the need to share Ad Astra with you all

A day after doing a 'maybe' album review quote, I feel the need to pick up the err keyboard and blog about the album I've just finished listening to. The band are 'Spiritual Beggars'

Here's there:

• wiki
• myspace
• last fm
• purchase here

This album (Ad Astra) has impressed me from song 1 all the way through, it has power, big riffs and subtlety in equal quantities. One of the most impressive elements to this album is the quality throughout, all 13 songs stand out in their own shape or form. On that basis it is difficult to pick 'stand out tracks' but I shall try. 

1. Mantra.. main riff and solo section is unbelievably good on the ears. 
2. Left Brain Ambassadors.. what a way to start the album, fast and lively
3. On Dark Rivers.. Something about the sound of guitars before the break/during main twiddly bit just make this substantially brilliant.

It has taken me 12 years to find this album, and I'm pleased to know they last released in 2010 as I need to see these guys live.. so hopefully this can be fulfilled.

I'll never give a 10 for an album as that's it the music pinnacle has been found.. However this album goes very very close at 9.8 out of 10.

Too many bands too little time

Thanks to a wonderful website (www.mp3va.com) and some great tweeters (Beardy, Carly, Woohoo-ey and Mancy)  I have had my world opened to a vast array of new and old bands.. Not sure how to summarise it, so I've gone for a big list and a score next to them. For those who don't know me, anything 4 - 6 is pretty average, 7 or 8's are good probably 2 or 3 plays a year, 9 and above are into my 'favourite' list..

This isn't based on listing to entire albums, they get the first 3 tracks, generally those with a low score have been moved on, although I will allow them the next couple of starts to get me intrigued. Those with high scores are generally left to play. To the right hand side is the "Gallery of 9.5"

Dozer

Acid Bath 7.5
Acid King 7
Acrimony 9
Animal Alpha 7.5
Atomic Bitchwax 8.5
Baroness 8
Benjamin Francis Leftwich 6.5
Black Tusk 8
Butterfly Effect 7.5
Cog 7
Danzig 7.5
Dario Mollo & Tony Martin 6.5
Dead Letter Circus  6.5
Dozer 9.5
Driven 8.5
Ektomorf 9

Spiritual Beggars

Exhorder 7.5
Fudge Tunnel 8
Ghost 6.5
Helmet 8
High on fire 8
Holy Grail 5.5
Jettblack 7
Karma to Burn 6
Mish 7
Mnemic 4
Mortal Sin 9
Mustasch 8.5
Nebula 6
Obssessed 7

Unida

Pentagram 8.5
Primordial 8
Refused 4
Sahg 7.5
Saint Vitus 7
sHeavy 7.5
Snot 8
Spiritual Beggars 9.5
Sunny Day Real Estate 7
Swallow the Sun 5
Taking Back Sunday 5.5
The Sword 8
Thursday 7
Uneven Structure 4
Unida 9.5
Valient Thor 7.5
Witchking 6.5
77 - 7.5

For those wondering how I get time to do this, I'm a web developer and we are allowed to wear earphones whilst we work, as long as we don't stream anything we're cool to put our tunes on. So I get 8.5 hours a day with these bands and my earphones.. Coding without music would be very boring and somewhat uninspiring. I can't imagine my designs without my music.

I do double check each band on a preview system using mp3va's inbuilt player.. so all those shouty bands get removed before I download! You'll probably gather from the list above I'm not a huge fan of shouty rock and metal bands. 

I'm sure I'll be adding plenty more bands in the future, and for those scoring 9 and above I may even go whole hog and do an album review.. maybe.

Feel free to comment let me know what you think of these bands, feel free to suggest more.. the more the merrier.

Finally taken the plunge

I've finally taken the plunge and dropped into blogging. Not blogging totally, that comes with my job, but this is a personal blog. I've never really felt the need to engage in a blogging process, but a few thoughts have come to mind and a lot is happening. Sometimes 140 characters doesn't do it and sometimes I don't really want facebookers commenting, as I know who will and exactly what they will say.

Not entirely sure how this si going to go as yet but I hope to be blogging on my girlies (seen in the background), becoming a father again (3rd), more than likely a rant on Leicester City, probably rants on other subjects too, music, Rezurrected (my band), and my radio history past and present. 2012 holds a lot for me

I'm up to around 1400 followers on Twitter and feel more engaged with my community than ever before, so I hope to share thoughts and ideas without having to worry about 140 characters!

For those wondering, the baffoon on the left is me (pulling a silly face) and the gentleman to my right is my brother, taken at an Iron Maiden concert, although I believe the T-shirts gave it away.