Circle of Iron

Pickin’ On Pearl Jam is a collection of some of the biggest and best-loved songs from the Seattle legends reinterpreted through the framework of classic Bluegrass instrumentation and vocal stylings. Series stalwarts Iron Horse are an Alabama-based quartet who’ve rearranged and performed these new versions of alt-rock classics using earnest sensibilities and traditional technique. There’s no winking irony to be found here. Just four guys from Muscle Shoals putting forward an honest, heartfelt tribute to the music of five guys who’ve never been anything but honest and heartfelt.

Whether you call Camille Yarbrough a street poetess, proto-rapper, or urban politico, there is no doubt that this woman contributed an enormous amount of fire, passion, and strength in all those guises.

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.