First New Rock / Metal Releases first half Aug 2016

This is a real week for bluesy rock-n-roll. There's Blues Pills – Lady In Gold which you'll love if you love Halestorm. Then a surprise (to me) new release from Blackfoot - Southern Navive. Slightly weird situation; I'm not sure what's wrong with Rickey Medlocke but he's no longer playing, just 'shepherding' the new band. It's good solid stuff but I'm not sure I like the cleaner vocal sound.

Then there's the Dead Dasies album - Make Some Noise. Initially I was a bit stand-offish with it because I've been seeing heavy advertising for this album all over the place for months. Not sure why that turns me off but it does. Now I'm listening to it and wow.... It has everything that the Blackfoot album is missing; the upbeat boogie-woogie, the driving rhythms, the dirty, lived-in vocals.

It had gone into the recent favourite albums playlist when not even half way through. Five stars from me.
★★★★★

If you like a little bit more metal with your  rock'n'roll then there's Jackyl - ROWYCO. These are the guys who gave us the genius that is the chainsaw solo.
★★★☆☆

For solid metal there's Necromancing the Stone - Jewel of the Vile. Besides the puns, they have driving metal, verging on old-school thrash in places, in a Kvelertak kind of way.
★★★★☆

And back to the more melodic, Brick - Faceless Strangers. Sounding a little more American than Scandinavian (I'm getting Trucker Diablo.) Am I hearing a hint of boogie-woogie piano in there? Low in the mix but I'm sure it's there. And cowbell!
★★★★☆

Iron Savior - Titancraft : I recommend this if, like me, you're a fan of old-school metal. Besides outstanding music, there's a whole backstory, this and other Iron Savior albums are based on a sci-fi / Atlantis story.
★★★★☆

Infinite Spectrum - Hunter of the Dark : I'm a fan of H P Lovecraft and one of my favourite albums is the proggy Non-Euclidean Spaces by Anthropia. This is a very similar album. Complex music and an album based on a Lovecraft story.
★★★★★