Thin Lizzy

Valkyrie – Shadows

Well, kudos for the name for a start! Opening with ‘Mountain Stomp’,  Valkyrie nail their colours to the mast. This fine tune is somewhat…

Black Wizard – Young Wisdom (2)

Hellbound Metal: “Young Wisdom is the perfect showcase of a ravenous young band that’s been doing everything right – cutting its teeth on the local live scene, building its audience, generating its buzz, and now the time has come to unleash their magic upon the world.”

Free Fall – Power & Volume

Hellbound Metal: “Free Fall takes you back. Waaayyy back. Their style is so classic rock that you can almost smell leather jackets, hear the clickety clack of cowboy boots and envision swinging suede fringes from each garment.”

J.P. Gaster of Clutch: The Hellbound Interview

“I think they would see the band touring and we had a very solid touring fanbase and we would sell a consistent amount of records album to album. And I think the record label saw that and they’d get excited about that and they thought to themselves “Well surely this band can sell this many tickets and can sell 100,000 records. With any kind of help at all we can make this a gold band or even a platinum band.” It didn’t take them long to realize that it’s tough work to sell real music.”

Matt Hinch in conversation with J.P. Gaster, timekeeper for Maryland hard rockers Clutch.

Deep Purple is touring Canada in February like it’s 1974. If only they’d bring back those ’70s ticket prices!

By the time you read this, tickets for the Deep Purple gig at Massey Hall next year will have just gone on sale. The band will be spending the entire month of February in our country on a 17-date Canadian tour that includes not one, but two gigs in Newfoundland, five concerts in Ontario, and at least one show in every other province except PEI and Quebec. I could be wrong, but I don’t think that a major non-Canadian recording artist has embarked on a cross-country tour of this magnitude in decades. Too bad they couldn’t turn back the clock on those ticket prices…

The end of the road for Judas Priest?

I gotta say, I’ve always been more of a Maiden man. Put it this way: I heard “2 Minutes to Midnight” before “Living After Midnight.” Well, maybe not, but the former made more of an impression on me. However, when Judas Priest announced their Epitaph farewell tour in the summertime, I didn’t think twice about getting a ticket–even though Kyuss Lives! went on sale the same day. Finally, after several months of waiting, the time has come for their final Toronto gig: Tuesday, November 22nd. I’ll be there with bells on.

Hammers Of Misfortune – 17th Street

7th Street is another impeccable notch in the Hammers’ collective belt, and while it may be their most sophisticated and accessible album to date, it is without a doubt sonically and thematically classic Hammers of Misfortune. One of the must-have albums for 2011.