Justin Farrington
153 posts
UMC / Polydor Greatest hits albums don’t count. Everyone knows that. If someone tells you their favourite album is anyone’s Greatest hits, they’re not a serious person. They’re a “whatever’s on the radio” person. They’re a “this is good at dinner parties” person. EVERYONE knows that. Except when . The Ramones. The Shangri-Las. Queen. When a band’s hits really hit. There aren’t many of them, but ABBA Gold […]
Mute / BMG Suicide are an odd band. Considered legendary influencers today, at the time (at least, according to the excellent No Dogs In Space podcast series on them) both reviled and adored — people hated the music, but loved Alan Vega and Martin Rev, so kept giving them gigs. Some people got it, though, perhaps most notably Bruce Springsteen, whose album Nebraska bears all the bloodstains of […]
London 22 February 2022 OK, so what with Covid an’ all, I haven’t been to a gig in OVER TWO YEARS (Julian Cope at The Barbican, if you must know, and yes, he was ace, and yes, once again I got lost in the venue for ages because Barbican) so it’s with some trepidation that I venture into The Grace to break this ridiculous losing streak. And while I […]
Relapse In a world ridden with plague, what could be more timely than black metal? And in a world facing impending climate catastrophe, what could be more timely that deep ecology? And in a world regulated by time, what could be more timely than timelessness? Fortunately, there’s a band who do all three. And a new album by Wolves In The Throne Room is just the kind of […]
Ear Music “Some people have a landscape written in their bones”, sings Justin Sullivan on Surrounded, his incredibly long-awaited follow-up to 2003’s Navigating By The Stars. (But cut the guy some slack, he’s been busy fronting New Model Army, one of the hardest-working bands in rock until Covid made it hard for bands to work. Still, they managed an epic fortieth anniversary live stream, so it wasn’t all […]
Constellation Godspeed You! Black Emperor are a very self-contradictory band. They draw you in and push you away at the same time. The arcane press releases, the obtuse packaging, all designed to confuse as much as entertain or educate. That exclamation mark in that unwieldy name. Everything about them says “difficult”. But then you bung them on and and they couldn’t be any easier to actually listen to.
26 March 2021 This pandemic malarkey’s weird as shit, isn’t it? Watching gigs online and all that. Sure, the seats are comfier and the beer’s cheaper, but it’s still a little odd. However, this particular online gig by Wardruna is just what the doctor ordered, what with me not having been able to see anything at all on the one occasion I managed to catch them in the […]
Music For Nations Despite being fronted by ex-Gorgoroth drummer Einar Selvik and having in the past featured Gaahl on vocals, Wardruna are very much not a metal band. Oh sure, metalheads love them, and they did a bunch of stuff with Enslaved, but they are not a metal band. Because they don’t play metal. But… hold on and hear me out… entirely?
Burning World Much like Tigger, the funny old thing about genres is genres are funny old things. They don’t really mean that much in and of themselves. Like nicknames at school, you can have them thrust upon you without consent (just ask Andrew Eldritch if the Sisters Of Mercy are a goth band — sorry, mate, you don’t get to choose), and it doesn’t really matter anyway
Blang Bit of a history lesson for you. Way back in the Before Times, when people used to do things outside together and Carole Baskin didn’t get blamed for everything by everyone, there were things called “festivals”. Now, what a festival was was when people would come from far and wide to sit in the sun (or, more likely, drizzle) with a bottle of cheap cider and watch […]
Blue Underground Blue Underground‘s 4k restoration of Lucio Fulci‘s The House By The Cemetery is a handsome beast indeed. Cloaked in a faux-3D lenticular cover, it consists of three discs — two blu rays featuring the movie itself and a really quite ridiculous amount of extras, and a CD of Walter Rizzati‘s soundtrack. The movie itself forms the final part of what is sometimes called Fulci’s Gates Of […]
London 14 November 2019 It’s weird being at the Electric Ballroom. Not that it’s a particularly weird venue in and of itself; I mean, it’s actually a good one. No, what’s weird about being at the Electric Ballroom is that we’re here to see New Model Army. In November. .
London 17 October 2019 “Crom! How do the Four Winds get in here?” one might be forgiven for thinking, stepping into the Shepherd’s Bush Empire through clouds of weed smoke from the pavement outside. And it would be entirely appropriate, as the first band to take the stage this evening are Liverpudlian “caveman battle doom” merchants Conan. And they are mighty indeed.
Riot Season The cover of The Cosmic Dead‘s new album Scottish Space Race appears to be making an impassioned plea for national independence, depicting as it does a Scotland that is so independent it has become an island away from all the bullshit going on in the rest of the UK. And right now I can’t exactly say I blame them. But it’s not a political album. It’s […]
Ear Music If you’ve ever read David Zindell‘s Neverness books, you will know there is nothing more badass than a warrior-poet. For nearly four decades now, New Model Army have been some of the hardest-working warrior-poets in the business, touring the world to their legions of fans (the NMA Family) and still somehow managing to find time to bang out album after album of finely-crafted rock music.
London 20 July 2019 It’s 6:30 — SIX FUCKING THIRTY — on a Saturday evening and I have never seen The Forum so packed so early (in fact, I’m not entirely sure I’ve ever seen it this early at all). The place is an oven. Fortunately, metal crowds tend to be the nicest crowds, so a room filled with this many daytime drinkers isn’t likely to erupt into […]
Peaceville It’s become something of a cliché to say “I like their early stuff”, but in Darkthrone‘s case I don’t actually know a great deal of their recent stuff. I loved the first few albums, especially once they really hit their stride with Under A Funeral Moon