2005 Demon Days

To open this oddball supergroup's debut, Paul Simonon hints at "Guns of Brixton," and when Tony Allen's flex rhythms come in, there's a shadow of Fela Kuti, too. Then Damon Albarn's slow grit of a voice enters–framed by Simon Tong's flecked guitar. And collectively, The Good, the Bad, & the Queen is quickly sui generis, adamantly different than anything you think you've heard. A band with this much power has at least two options: to cut loose raucously or to mute their overt power for a more covert, dub-inflected atmospheric potency. Smartly, Albarn and his crew opt for the half-light of elastic bass lines, the clouds between the parentheses of drums–the covert. It's not until "Kingdom of Doom," the erstwhile 'single' of the album, that motion expands beyond the languorous. And even then, Tony Allen largely sits out. You get the full flush of Simonon and Allen on "Three Changes" shuffling time even while holding the tempo to a dubbish gait. It's not Blur, the Clash, Fela, the Verve, or Gorillaz. It's more than just names on albums.

Blur dissolved slowly so it follows that their reunion was protracted – a halting reconvening that produced understated singles and excellent concerts spread out over a period of six years. Finding a headlining appearance at Japan's Tokyo Rocks festival canceled in the summer of 2013, the band holed up in a Hong Kong studio for five days, producing several reels of jams they abandoned until guitarist Graham Coxon decided to shape them into songs with the assistance of producer Stephen Street, the collaborator behind their greatest albums of the '90s. It's an unwieldy history for The Magic Whip, a record that's casually confident and so assured in its attack it feels like a continuation, not a comeback.

Demon Music kick off an Ocean Colour Scene reissue campaign with Yesterday Today 1992-2018, a massive 15CD box set. The large format package Includes all 10 of their studio albums. They are: Ocean Colour Scene (1992), Moseley Shoals (1996), Marchin’ Already (1997), One For The Modern (1999) , Mechanical Wonder (2001), North Atlantic Drift (2003), A Hyperactive Workout For The Flying Squad (2005), On The Leyline (2007), Saturday (2010), and Painting (2013). Additionally, there’s five bonus discs featuring a very large selection of B-sides and rarities including the Free inspired ‘So Sad’ and ‘Men Of Such Opinion’, ‘Huckleberry Grove’ featuring the Jamaican ska legend Rico Rodriguez, and the more sedate ballads ‘Robin Hood’, ‘I Need A Love Song’ and ‘Mrs Jones’ and a cover of ‘Day Tripper’, featuring Noel and Liam Gallagher. The package offers 230 tracks in total.

Millenium is a Polish five-piece neo-progressive band with Polish vocals on their 1st album and English vocals dominating after their 2nd production, generally in the Pendragon and early MarIllion styles but also with some spices of Pink Floyd and classical Genesis. There are influences of older Polish bands like Collage (as you can in every Polish neo-prog band).
In order to promote their new album Exist (2008) the band went on tour in 2009 and then released a double live CD in 2010.

Since 1989, Canada’s Annihilator have not stopped putting out records and touring the world. Despite the ever-changing climate of the Metal World (and releasing a series of "different" Metal records with various lineups along the way), Jeff Waters and company have consistently delivered strong albums since the band’s debut "Alice In Hell" (1989).
"For The Demented" (2017) captures some feel from Annihilator’s 1985-87 demos mixed with the first 4 Annihilator records. Back to the thrash meets melody but with some pure Waters guitar riffing, up-graded lead guitar shredding and vocals back to the demo-days meets the "King of The Kill" record.

When you're 36 years and 17 albums deep into your career, it's a pretty safe assumption that you've achieved veteran status. Likewise, the stumbling block of sticking to what one knows becoming self-plagiarism looms all the more, yet for some reason Jeff Waters' flagship thrash metal enterprise Annihilator repeatedly manages to walk that tightrope with few incidents. With the days of 90s groove metal experimentation now two decades in the rearview, it can be safely stated that this outfit, which has tended to flirt with being a two person project with Waters doing it all minus the drums, is poised to make the 2020s a reprise of the consistent foray of technically-charged speed thrashing mayhem that defined the 2010s, at least insofar are Ballistic, Sadistic, Annihilator's 17th studio LP is concerned…