Oasis, Warriors and Death

Holy crap! What a week or so it has been!

Noel Gallagher is heading back into the studio to record some solo shizzle. Seeing as he was always the talent of Oasis we should be pretty stoked to hear what he has to offer.

The beautiful and talented, erm I mean beautifully talented Brandon Flowers treated homeland Las Vegas to his first solo gig boasting tracks off his debut Flamingo. 

A shock came from hardcore troop Crime In Stereo as they announced their break up via Twitter causing music media to question motives and possible hoaxes. The band had been forced to cancel many recent shows as a result of frontman Kristian Hallbert's jaw infection although it is yet to be confirmed if this is a contributing factor to their demise. Their final words came on August 9th via twitter. A very sad day.

In brighter news, Reading warriors Exit Ten are gearing up to show us what they're capable of as they get brand new tracks ready for their second studio album. Not just another bunch of hardcore lads, they treated fans to news of plans to begin recording their follow-up to debut Remember The Day, in October. Ryan and co, we are super exited for this one! Get your butts to iTunes and download their storming debut offering like, yesterday...or listen here: spotify:user:jessacres:playlist:4Q1A4gSrRtVZeIk6qWt38C

Want to know what the 50 best new artists are of 2010? You have two choices.
1) Get busy and compile your own list of this year's musical El Genios or
2) Let NME do the work for you.

Luckily for us, they already have! Find out who made the top 50 by getting over to http://www.nme.com/ for some of 2010's arguably best acts.

Dan's Metal Soapbox: Volume 2

Dream Theater are often accused of being way over the top, unnecessarily complicated musicians regularly trying to out do each other with over complicated soloing (that they sometimes just call their melody lines....). Who doesn't relish a wee bit of healthy competition though? I know where all these people are coming from and in essence they are correct in a lot of cases however; Dream Theater to me are a band that I would not class as metal, rock or even prog metal. They seem to class themselves, fitting nicely into a theatrical metal genre should one ever been conceived. Without a doubt, Dream Theatre set themselves as one of the most versatile bands I have ever heard of. They have one distinctive style, theatrical, and then take that "dreamtheaterness" and add it to any type/style of music that they fancy for that particular album. 


Their most recent album 'Black Clouds And Silver Linings' emits a sound normally akin to having the likes of Slayer and Cradle Of Filth playing in the tour bus on the way to the studio. The guitaring is very screechy and banshee like (very remiscent of Cradle Of Filth...oh, there's the shower of blood soaked studded hats dripping in rage heading straight for my head). Petrucci is a guitarist who makes most of us hate him with envy at the ease, accuracy and speed that he plays with. The drums for one are very heavy if not death metal like at times; it does help that drummer Mike Portnoy is in the drummer Hall of Fame as lets just say he is an epic drummer and is definitely over the top, but sometimes ruins a few things if you ask me. And i am huge fan of them but none the less he is inspiring. Keyboards supplied by Jordan Rudes teamed with vocals by James Labrie are what make no questions that it infact Dream Theater battering your frontal lobes with their signatures styles blaring out in every record. Rudes often sounds as if he is trying to out do Petrucci. If im honest I dont really like what he does live at all because it just becomes pointless and I think it can take away from the music. 


Finally we get to bassist John Myung. Myung is as necessary to Dream Theater as breathing is for life. He is very creative as a bassist and, in my eyes, very clever as he never seems to take anything away from the songs. One gimmik the band has is that each album they have ever produced always leads on to the next album, for instace at the end of the last song 'Finally Free' of the album Metropolis part 2 scenes from a memory the end of the song is that white noise from a tv channel with no tv coming in and the start of the song 'the glass prison' of the new album six degrees of innerturbulence it has the exact same white noise as if the songs where originally 1 incredibly long song!

Musical geniuses they may be but flawed they certainly are; in these flaws their unique style shines through making them the musicians we love.


Dan Colgan

Video Kills

My first week in London. It's busy, busy and, erm, busy! It's Saturday, the girls and I are slightly worse for wear after busting some shapes in Islington's The Old Queen's head last night where Foals put on a DJ set. Good, bad or ugly we can't be sure but what is helping us through the day is tea and music videos.

What Is Light Where Is Laughter and Lightspeed from Twin Atlantic (I couldn't pick just one!) are winners in every sense for me. If you're lucky enough to be seeing Blink 182 on their whistle stop UK 'tour' then do not miss their unparalleled support band.

Caroline is off to Sleigh Bells on Monday so her choice has naturally been from the New York Florida hybrid and scrappy electro-pop noiseniks.  Watch the Kids video.

Kele has caught the eye and ear of Miss Quick with his dreamy vocals, electro dance synths and bulging biceps. Tenderoni is the premier single of his debut solo album and this is the video that has her throwing some shapes around the living inbetween outbursts of Broadway choruses...did you get the hotplate?



For Shelley, sadly we couldn't get hold of any Moist Tights but we did manage to track down some Justin Bieber which, let's be honest, has about the same gross factor so will not be making an appearance on BBPD. Enjoy some Straight Lines instead, Shelley. Their Welsh like you are.