Hunting Lodge's Album Launch, 3rd Dec

Before going out to see Geisha for the nth time this year, I read on their singer's livejournal that this will be no ordinary set:

"Dr. Sean Talbot will be playing the standard drum kit. Dr. Steve James will be playing a gate I found outside work, this device will be played by power sander, multi speed power drill and sticks, as well as saw. Dr. Anton Maiof will be playing a radiator also with drills and sticks, he will also be creating ebow guitar loops and yelling."

I think he must be joking, right? Wrong. The radiator and metal fencing are in full view in the Louisiana's upstairs room. The ebow guitar loops start us off, eirie sounds and Steve, bass conspicuously absent, begins to hammer away at his piece of metal fence like a man possessed. This continues in a weird industrial early Nine Inch Nails vs. Kodo-drumming vein, Anton screams words you can almost understand and eventually it builds up enough for Sean to kick in some great rhythms. The sounds created by hacksawing or industrial sanding a metal fence are stunning, the drills produce deep bassey drone-noises and people are almost dancing! This is Geisha, but not as anyone has seen them before, even more weird and wonderful than their fully acoustic performance last year. It is said there is a recording... I look forward to it greatly.

King Alexander are a lo-fi early 90's britpop-punk trio, fronted by a shouty girl and a shouty boy. In fact they are much more than this, the first impression recalls that period when they threw the composition out of music. However this band have a lot more complexity. At times the music becomes more interesting than being just punky songs, there is a song in 5/4 time (ooh how daring!), at times it is tinged with metal and rock. I enjoy them more than I wanted to, given my resentment of this basic punky noise, it's just that KA are somehow better than that. Perhaps the alcohol is starting to take effect.

Mugstar hammer some sense into me. They have maybe one song with vocals, vocals you can't really hear. The music, a relentless pounding of distorted one-chord songs, like they couldn't be bothered to spend half an hour building up and just jump straight to the good bit. Like Circle, the loud bits of Mogwai and Godspeed with extra saxophone. Cables trail the room as the band seem incapable of staying on the stage, we respectfully get out of the way, at the front I am in constant danger of being jabbed in the eye by the bass guitar.

My Way My Love are hard to describe, they are a great strange rock metal band with punk tendencies and tons of er... Pedals. There you go.

That this was all in aid of Hunting Lodge's album launch, didn't mean I would stay for the main band. I didn't want to get cross so I had to run away from their set. Well I stayed for the first five minutes then couldn't get out fast enough. Those who did stay have been reported to have liked it though.

Dark Tranquillity, 4th Dec

His eyes are wild with excitement, hands trembling. You here for the gig? He enquires, after asking whether my gloves are snowboarding gloves. Do you snowboard? No. His eyes are wide, I wonder how much speed he's actually taken, or whether he really is this excited. I'm pretty excited myself to be honest, but I'm far too grown up to let it show. Miserable git. I love snowboarding. Are you here for the gig?

We are sitting in Scruffy Murphies, a cool metal pub just round the corner from the Birmingham Academy and they are hammering out Judas Priest and Arch Enemy and all sorts of other delights to the heavy metal crowd. As usual they manage to pull out some songs by the bands we are about to see, I look around and watch excited goth faces lighting up, seeing how many people are going to the gig too. I'll see you in the mosh pit! Our new friend says excitedly, making the sign of the devil.

We catch the tail end of Hatesphere, fast shouty metal with crunchy riffs and widdly guitars. There is a big open space, a circle of death if you will, in the middle of the audience. This is where the carnage happens, but it is starkly empty. I wonder why it's even there, if no-one if actually moshing.

When Dark Tranquillity take the stage, you can tell that most of these metal kiddies have no idea who they are. They have that air of determination about them that they won't like this band, however good they are. The sullen faces in the front few rows hardly move during the gig but behind them, we are headbanging like crazy. It is a glorious performance, fast - loud - beautiful - quiet - SHOUTING - fast - furious - angry - lovely epic metal. There are devil signs all over the place and despite one guitarist looking bored to tears and jealous that the other guy gets all the solos they pull out all the stops. There is a pretty poor song in the middle where the singer stops shouting and actually sings, but they play some of my favourite tunes, Monochromatic Stains, The Treason Wall, Damage Done amongst others. I sustain light damage from the crazies when we move towards the middle because the audience are so dead around the edges.

The main band tonight are Chimaira, a fact that becomes drummed into our brains as the crowd chant the name. They are an American hardcore metal band who do fast chugging hammer at your brain noise with shouting. A bit too much shouting if you ask me. For some reason, although the crowd is going more wild than any of the other bands the empty space reserved for moshing has closed as the crowd surfing gets under way. There is carnage at this gig, we get bashed around quite a bit, for most of the gig though, I have this guy next to me who is protecting his woman by punching the headbangers in a deterrent sort of a way, and thus protecting me. The toilets are sprayed with blood from a bust nose or something, the kiddies love this band. I don't know why, they're pretty rubbish. Chug chug chug shout chug shout chug shout chug shout... Oh but the best thing was everyone grinning like idiots and chanting together I hate you all. This is heavy metal alright! Plus I get to do the climbing over everyone just to shake the singer's hand at the end thing... Rock and/or roll.

There are an astonishing number of shoelaces on the broken plastic-strewn floor when everyone has left, along with the odd torn out piercing and loose change. At the door we meet our nutter from the pub, he is jabbering excitedly at the doorman and doesn't recognise us when we pass, even when I pat him on the back. Wicked gig, hey? I say. The bus on the way home is covered in graffiti and my ears are ringing so much I lose my hat somewhere along the line.

• - My photos can be seen HERE
• - (Pretty much all the photos in this review are of Dark Tranquillity, except for that last, green one)

Angel Tech (and others), 11th Dec

After a hard day's cleaning following our pretty damn successful giant Christmas dinner for friends, I fail to get any of them to come out with me to see the consistently amazing Angel Tech for free, with noodles. Not one to miss (often) a good gig just because no-one will go with me I plug in my shut-out-the-world headphones and wander into the misty night.

It is Rose Kemp's Birthday, so Mr Wolf's is full of balloons. Balloons and noodles and Chokers. The Secret Ego is playing as we come in, just a guy with a loopstation and an electric guitar and a drum machine. He sings some songs that I generally ignore, through buying beer and chatting and whatnot, but the overriding feeling I get is that the machines are running the music more than he is.

To qualify, it is a sad coincidence that lately I have been getting annoyed with the current proliferation of loopstations in 'the' music scene. From pop chart types (KT Tunstall *spit*) to underground musicians, they seem to be cropping up everywhere and not many people can make them sound fresh and unique with actual songwriting skill and talent. Like all this bloody vocoding/autotune in dance music. It's all about keeping your interest. Even bands that play one chord over and over again can make it interesting, like Mugstar or Godspeed. Local musicians who manage to do something good with a looper include Team Brick (who is never dull), SJ Esau (great songwriter) and Rose Kemp (amazing singer).

The real problem I guess, is that people set up a loop, play over it, sing for a bit and then realise that there's nothing else to do. How do you build it up? How do you change / add a chorus even end? The Secret Ego suffers from all these problems. He is best when he's just playing the guitar with a bit of a backing track. Still, he's much better in A Lion, but we'll come to that later.

This year I've consistently failed to have the full Team Brick 101+ experience, so I was quite looking forward to today. They don't dispapoint, two drumkits on opposite sides of the room, playing mid-paced two-chord prog-post-rock (if you had to give it a name). They are all improvising, the violinist takes turns with Team Brick to sing and shout incomprehensible things (sound not so good for the vocals). The soundman has endless troubles with the volume, turns the guitars off, can't make the vocals loud enough and eventually shouts it's too fscking loud!, hands over his money to the promoter and leaves. It's brilliant. Luckily there are at least a couple of guys who can actually take over and do a much better job.

A brief They Might Be Giants cover from SJ Esau and Max Milton puts a big smile on the birthday girl's face and A Lion plug themselves in. Again, this is my first 'Lion experience and it is pretty good, loud distorted songs that are, well different to most rock music and better for it. The only one I know is The Cold Hands of Lucille, which isn't loud rock, but is a Good Song. Ok. I don't know what to say. I wish they had a real drummer because the programmed beats didn't really work very well, even when we could hear them.

Tim from Angel Tech introduces me to his band mate saying this is Dash, he writes nice things about us on his blog. You haven't written anything bad yet, have you? No reason to, I say, you've been consistently good. Secretly I wonder if today will be the Bad One, but really I know it won't. They are fully plugged in this time, electronic drumkit, electric guitars and the songs are more together, more complete than I've seen so far this year. The songs are still stunning, witty, beautiful, euphoric, slightly disturbing and overal generally wonderful. Well I'm feeling very Christmas Holiday-ey, leave me alone! Anyway, hopefully this means the long-awaited album will be out soon. One of the newer tracks, Calm Down, can be found on their Myspace page: CLICK HERE.