Travels With Nate

Monday night I went along to the Finntroll, TYR & Skalmold event at Epic in Norwich. I’d only ever been to Epic once before, for a TV recording so I had absolutely no idea what to expect from it as a live music venue. When the bands play live, the raised seating at the back is taken away, and the stage is higher up, separated by a barrier as expected but with two massive HD Screens either side of the stage so you can see everything clearly, regardless of where you are in the venue. We thought this was an awesome idea. The beer selection at Epic was, well, pretty much a standard gig venue selection. On keg there was a choice of either Stella Artois, Beck’s Vier or Marstons Smooth along with some bottles and cans of yet more crap. Prices were £3.80 a pint, which hits what I was expecting pretty much. Now, onto the music! Skalmold were up first with their haunting brand of Folk Metal playing such an upsettingly short 30 minute set, mostly comprising of stuff from the...

Devin Townsend is a rare kind of man. It really is hard to capture how awesome and magical he is and put it into words, especially once you’ve seen him on stage.

On Monday, I went to see ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead at Norwich Arts Centre. Although I’ve been a fan of theirs for years, this was the first opportunity I had to see them so I was pretty excited. ...Trail of Dead is a progressive rock band and was formed in 1994 by Conrad Keely and Jason Reece. They originally started playing music in the indie rock town of Olympia, WA but eventually relocated to Austin, TX where they became the band they are now. They currently have 7 albums out, in which each is uniquely different to the last, with their 2012 release Lost Songs out tomorrow but more on that later...

On 17th September, if you remember, I had the pleasure of interviewing Jonny Davy from Job For A Cowboy . Afterwards, I thought it would be rude to not go and see them live. They were supporting Dying Fetus, along with Revocation and Cerebral Bore. I first saw Job For A Cowboy live in 2007 I think. They were supporting Megadeth at the UEA in Norwich which is a fucking big score for quite a young band. In that case, they had a massive stage to work with and managed to pull it off brilliantly. I was quite excited to see them again, to be honest. Just to see how their live performance has progressed over 5 years. I'll start off by saying, they were playing in The Studio at The Waterfront which is pretty small. The stage is absolutely tiny. It was my first ever gig up there; I'd only previously been there for Wraith club nights before, all other gigs I've seen at The Waterfront had been in the main Auditorium. Job For A Cowboy managed to work with a small stage incred...

Another guest blog for you here from a chap you may already know... his name is Glyn and he is more commonly known as Rabid Barfly on twitter . He sent me a message on twitter last week informing me that he was going to see Bruce Springsteen on Saturday (lucky bastard) and would like to do a review but his blog isn't really the right place for it and could he do a guest blog. At first I was going to say no out of jealously but he's a good man and he did share a bottle of Cantillon Gueuze with me on Friday so I thought, why not?