Year of The Dragon

In the spring of 1959, eighteen-year-old Bruce Lee returned to San Francisco, the city of his birth, and quickly inserted himself into the West Coast’s fledgling martial arts culture. Even though Asian fighting styles were widely unknown to mainstream America, Bruce encountered a robust fight culture in a San Francisco Bay area that was populated with talented and trailblazing practitioners such as Lau Bun, Chinatown’s aging kung fu patriarch; Wally Jay, the innovative Hawaiian jujitsu master; and James Lee, the no-nonsense Oakland street fighter.

Double bassist Russell Hall is a heavy presence on the New York scene and has just released a fierce version of Herbie Hancock's The Sorcerer, the first single from his upcoming Dragon of the South (La Reserve, September).

One could view the past year as lost time, as a bleak era where live music was few and very far between. But the flipside of that perspective is a time of opportunity, specifically for a band to hone their craft in a songwriting and studio capacity, and that was precisely the road taken by one of Switzerland’s hottest new metal acts Burning Witches. Already three albums deep into a career that has only spanned about 6 years and riding high off the strong success of their 2020 LP “Dance With The Devil,” in spite of the pandemic curtailing the possibility of promotion via touring, this order of dark conjurers have taken the occasion to continuing channeling the spirit of heavy metal’s classic elite with their own unique twist. Thus the fourth chapter of this ongoing tale of black magic dubbed “The Witch Of The North” has come in just over a year, bringing some new twists to go with the familiar territory of crushing riffs and banshee wails.

The opening shot in the battle for planet Earth was fired when the Saiyan warrior Raditzh exploded into an unready world. But the worst is yet to come. Raditz has foretold the coming of his Saiyan brethren, two mercenaries who subjugate entire worlds and sell them to the highest bidder. Earth’s only hope lies with Goku, only there’s one horrifying factor. Goku is nowhere to be found! Goku’s way back to Earth lies along SnakeWay, a twisted highway fraught with unbelievable peril. For in one year’s time the Saiyans will arrive. Can Goku make it back…or will the planet be lost forever?