How to Steel Fire

Countless country artists have borrowed sounds and production tricks from rock music. Brantley Gilbert takes it further, drawing on heavy metal’s menacing guitar riffs, snarling, low-slung vocal delivery, and theatrical sense of danger to amplify the personal and spiritual stakes of his songs. On his fifth album, Fire & Brimstone, he once again plays the part of a small-town ruffian who chases wild times but wrestles with his conscience and surrenders to his tender side.

If you've been wondering what's been keeping Lee Southall busy all this time, you're about to find out. On Iron In The Fire, the former The Coral guitarist brings the outside world in through quality songmanship - showing that whichever paths our lives may take, our exposure to the elements will remain the same. Taking an alternative path to each of his Coral cohorts, when the group disbanded in 2012, Lee left behind his native seaside town of Hoylake on the Wirral, and moved 75 miles inland to the 'tops' of Hebden Bridge. In search of a fresh start, the dramatic wind-beaten and changeable landscape gave Lee time and space to craft Iron In The Fire but equally, it lingers like the taste of the salty air hanging above the coast. 'I've lived by the sea and watched weather roll in, but it's the same in Hebden, watching storms roll over the moors,' Lee says. 'The place is changing all the time and sometimes looks a bit chocolate box, village of the year, but when the tourists are gone it can feel like the set of a 1970s BBC folk horror - a bit Wicker Man.'