Currently reaping a pretty positive response for latest album ‘New Hopes, New Demonstrations’, Brighton’s Ghost of a Thousand are certainly one to watch in the coming months. We sent a few questions over to vocalist Tom Lacey, and he kindly took time out of his fairly hectic schedule to answer them.

Rock Blogster: How have things been going? Been busy recently?

Tom Lacey: Very busy, it’s been great although our main focus now in our July Tour in the UK in a couple of weeks.

RB: Some people might start hearing about you for the first time with this album – what kind of band would you describe yourselves as?

TL: I think we’re a black hearted rock’n'roll band that obviously grew up listening to a lot of punk and hardcore. I’m not sure how to describe it in a more concise way!

RB: Your new album is an impressive piece of work. How did you go about putting it together?

TL: We wrote it over 2008 after we stopped touring the first album, and recorded it over 5 weeks in Stockholm with Pelle Gunnerfeldt. It was super fun.

RB: What were the biggest influences on its themes?

TL: It’s all about how as a 26 year old all the things that defined your youth, your parents, partying, thinking you’re going to grow up to be a spaceman/doctor/vet etc etc all get taken away from you and how you deal with these things in a positive or negative way.

RB: The artwork is pretty impressive. Who did it, and how did it come about?

TL: That was me! We did have another guy that was set to do it but it didn’t work out so I decided to go ahead and make it myself. There’s loads of my art on myspace.com/mrtomlacey if anyone needs artwork done for them!

RB: There’s a lot of bands that have suddenly grown very resentful at the world they’re in. What really pisses you guys off the most?

TL: Really? I think a lot of bands are far too complacent about the world we live in. I find bands that bang on and on about their hardcore backgrounds and then write completely ball-less pop tunes quite frustrating.

RB: To combat these complaints, would you like to suggest some solutions?

TL: Ban Black Flag t-shirts, seriously, they’ve been split up for so long there are other bands you could be into too.

RB: What kind of things have you got lined up for the future?

TL: Touring in July is the big one, and then we have the Eastpak Antidote tour with Alexisonfire, Troy and Antiflag in Oct, that will be incredible. I’m doing the artwork for the This City album too which is taking up a lot of my time.

RB: What music have you yourselves been getting into as of late?

TL: The new Crystal Stilts album is brilliant, as is the new Mastodon. Our new record is pretty good too!

Papa Roach have responded to claims about a fan shitting in a moshpit during a gig in Manchester. Jacoby Shaddix, the vocalist, wrote to Rock Sound saying: “Fucking hell – this story is hilarious. The first we heard about this was when we were asked about it during an interview, the funny thing is that we did an interview before the UK gigs and Tobin said ‘bring your diapers because we are going to rock the shit out of you’. It looks like it really happened!” Well, no shit Jacoby.

In other news:

The splits for the Download Festival have been released. Joining Slipknot, Def Leppard and Faith No More as headliners are six other artists who share the top billing on two other stages. Motley Crue, The Prodigy and Trivium will top the imaginatively titled Second Stage whilst Meshuggah, Anvil and Go: Audio will top the Tuborg Stage.

Mastodon have announced a brief UK tour. The band will play four dates in June in Sheffield, Manchester, Glasgow and London. Full dates are up on their website.

A showcase for the impressive variety of artists that have had releases put out by Motive Sounds, tonight’s show promises an eclectic selection of delights. First up is Mt., a band making slow and steady progress to moving mountains, if you’ll excuse the very appropriate, but still unforgivably terrible pun. Unfamiliar with them and their sound at first, the band do a good job of impressing with their just about unique take on the post-rock stable, intertwining textured melodies with the odd bracing round of vocal choruses.

Next up is Over the Wall, who are fortunately very aware that those here tonight to see headliners Manatees might not get along with their sound so much. Not that they are shit – far from it in fact, as the two Glaswegian men on stage take us through a bizarre journey, some form of unhinged musical comedy act that at no point takes itself seriously. Which is just as well really, given the nature of their show – a laptop acts as a gloriously cheesy drummer, whilst Ben Hillman and Gav Prentice take advantage of some impressive multi-instrumentalism which puts a few smiles on some shady faces. Although the joke doesn’t go over well to some, the band play up to their somewhat unfortunate support slot, and are certainly the kind of happy-go-lucky act that might appeal to bigger audiences soon.

But when Manatees come on it’s no surprise the jokes are forgotten. We all know why we’re here – to have masses of shit soaked sludge spewed out at us from the tiny stage, and in a lot of respects the trio are more than happy to provide. Although it’s a short set due to some unfortunate stage time delays, they manage to provide a rough and ready guide to where they’ve come from, and what their new album ‘Icarus, the Sunclimber’ is capable of live.

There are a few regrettable moments that just don’t come across as well live as they do on the new album. ‘Out of the Sky, Into the Gutter’ loses the feedback screams that punctuate its unforgiving riff, not for the want of trying. And indeed, there seems to be a certain heaviness that is lacking from everything, as if this small venue is just unable to provide the power that courses through the album’s veins, but this is little fault of the band.

Manatees are doing a grand job of suggesting a real sense of heavyweight righteousness. There are areas to improve upon, but tonight’s show gives them a chance to throw it all out there, and the crowd is more than receptive to the rumbling effects of the sludge being poured over them. Tonight we just wish for a little more power, a little more oomph to throw us all out of the room, but with time that is sure to come.

Michael Copus

My Bloody Valentine have been announced as curators for this years ATP Nightmare Before Christmas festival. Sonic Youth and a few others have already been confirmed, with a lot more to come over the next few months. The seasonal festivity takes place December 4th-6th at Butlins Minehead.

Record Store Day takes place tomorrow, 18th April. Be sure to check the website for a list of local musical outlets that are supporting the cause, and keep an eye out for the plethora of exclusives that are being released for the event.

Killswitch Engage are planning to release their second self titled new album on June 30th. Apparantly it was too difficult to come up with an original name, so let’s just hope that it’s just because they used up all their imagination on the songs.

Octahedron, the new album from The Mars Volta is due out June 23rd. The first single for the yanks will be ‘Since We’ve Been Wrong’, a title that has been annoying me due to its similarity to a fucking Kelly Clarkson song.

Finally, in an example  of dribbling to put out a forest fire, the founders of torrent website The Pirate Bay are to be sent to the chokey for a year. One of the founders, still defiant even in defeat, Peter Sunde tweeted just before the verdict was announced: “It used to be only movies, now even verdicts are out before the official release.” The members are set to appeal the decision made by a Swedish court.

Placebo will be playing some warm up shows in May as they prepare for a busy summer of festival action (including Reading and Leeds). The band, who release new album Battle For The Sun in a couple of months, will be playing their first live shows of 2009 in Sheffield, Bournemouth and London as they preview new material. The tour dates in full are all on their website.

Trent Reznor has been taking part in the Digg Dialog series of interviews. The Nine Inch Nails leader answered the ten most popular interview questions voted for by users of popular social bookmarking site Digg and the interview can be seen here. Want to know what the most embarassing song is on his iPod? This might be your lucky day.

Kylesa and Torche will be coming to Europe in the summer, in order to deafen everyone within a five mile radius.

Finally, the entirety of The Beatles‘ back catalogue will be re-released worldwide in a remastered format on the 9th September (incidentally, also the same day when The Beatles edition of Rock Band also hits stores).

Muse first arrived on the scene in 1999 when they released their debut album, Showbiz. Between 1999-2000 the band were touring themselves to death, playing every country and booking slots at almost every festival imaginable in order to spread the word. Whilst they were touring, the band were starting to get experimental in their songwriting and their live shows were influencing their new material. Their riffs were heavier, the rhythms were faster and the operatics were increasing tenfold.

All of this was then honed as they recorded what would the Teignmouth trio’s second album, Origin Of Symmetry. New Born, the opening salvo, starts with a carnival-esque piano melody as frontman and guitarist Matthew Bellamy croons about a ‘birth squeeze’ and ‘growing like the new born’ (Bellamy has never been an amazing lyricist, it must be said) before breaking the mood with a monstrous riff and then hammering its way through the remaining five minutes. As opening songs go, you can’t really get more over the top than that and it has since been a long-standing live favourite.

The next six songs then follow at you with the speed of a death-defying rollercoaster. Following the arpeggios of Bliss is the piano-driven epic Space Dementia and is a great example of the band combining elements of classical music and hard rock. As the song disintegrates with a grandiose outro that lasts a minute and a half, it turns into the angst-ridden Hyper Music with Bellamy screaming his way through the choruses (“You know that I don’t want you, and I never did”). After the heavy rock pop of Plug In Baby (great riff, bloody weird video) comes the seven and a half minute Citizen Erased that shifts dynamics endlessly before cruising its way home with a piano ballad-esque outro. Micro Cuts with the band at the height of their OTT operatics as Bellamy unleashes an ear-shattering falsetto in the choruses before building to a riff-tastic finish. Phew.

There is finally a chance to breathe on the acoustic-based Screenager. Drummer Dom Howard uses the unorthodox percussion instrument that are the skeleton bones (influenced by Tom Waits) on a song that is easily the quietest moment on the album. Dark Shines, a song about lusting follows and then what comes next is a cover of Feeling Good by Nina Simone. This should feel out of place and should not be any good at all but Muse make it their own by completely flipping the meaning of the song based on the heavy sound they give it.  The album finishes with Megalomania, which is one final, bombastic, church organ driven stab at ridiculously OTT rock and it is biblical, excuse the pun.

In the years that followed Origin Of Symmetry, Muse would record two more albums – the slightly more mature but great-sounding Absolution in 2003 and the underwhelming Black Holes & Revelations in 2006. None of those two records, despite holding some classic Muse songs between them, would top the sheer insanity that was Origin Of Symmetry. It’s understandable that for some people it’s just far beyond OTT, but that’s why I love it so. It’s a bold, bizzare and often brilliant listen.

Max Raymond

Formed just 18 months ago and following in the footsteps of Architects and the gone-but-not-forgotten Johnny Truant, Brides are shaping up to be the latest band to emerge from the sunny seaside of Brighton with the potential to become The Next Big Thing™.

“We’ve heard it all before!” I hear you cry. But, while Brides cannot claim total originality, it’s unarguable that what they do, they do very, very well. Album opener ‘Beholder’ gives little indication that what’s to come is a veritable barrage intelligent and superbly-written post-hardcore that sticks to the rules without ever seeming overly formulaic.

Compared to their peers, the quartet are far less predictable and sound far less generic, managing to create a sound of their own despite finding themselves in such an overcrowded genre. Tracks like ‘Serpent, I’m Nothing But Your Anchor’ and ‘Endless Sea of Dirac’ demonstrate a songwriting maturity that belies the band’s tender age, with the dual vocal attack of Max D’Albiac and Tristan Macfie – who both sing in admirably English accents – working effectively to further set Brides apart from the competition.

‘Ocular.Unveil’ is not without its flaws, however. Despite clocking in at just under 24 minutes in length there are one or two moments when it begins to feel ever so slightly repetitive, but on the whole these are far outweighed by the sheer strength of the majority of the material here. Brides might not be the real deal just yet, but you wouldn’t bet against them becoming household names in the not-too-distant future.

7/10

Joe Stephens

American Idiot to be made into a musical – shocker! Green Day have been unsecretive in their desires for their 2004 rock opera to be transfered into some sort of film or musical but now, nearly five years after its release, their vision is a reality as the play (also entitled American Idiot) will be performed at the Berkeley Repertory Theatre, California, from the 4th September-11th October. American Idiot, according to the press release, “follows working-class characters from the suburbs to the city to the Middle East, as they seek redemption in a world filled with frustration – an exhilarating journey borne along by Green Day’s electrifying songs.”

In other news…

• Fancy selling your soul being a drummer for the Smashing Pumpkins? Well now you can! Following the exit of previous drummer Jimmy Chamberlain, Billy Corgan is inviting wannabee drummers to audition for the vacant position. Corgan himself is currently preparing to record a new album when he’s not being embroiled in ticket company mergering controversies.
• Narrows (y’know, Botch Mk.II) will be releasing their new album on May 12th. It’ll be called New Distances, and it’ll be out on Deathwish Inc. And it will probably kick arse.

Much has been made of the circumstances surrounding Mastodon during the writing and recording of their latest album, Crack the Skye.  While half the band led quiet lives away from the media spotlight, guitarists Bill Kelliher and Brent Hinds found themselves enduring lengthy stays in hospital thanks to alcohol-related illnesses and System of a Down-inflicted head injuries respectively.  As if that wasn’t enough, a recent Grammy nomination for the quartet has made them one of best-loved metal acts in the world, and that rarest of things: a band who have managed to make it big while retaining the adoration of the fans who have followed them since the beginning.  And that’s not to mention that with their last two albums, Leviathan and Blood Mountain, they’ve managed to complete the near-impossible task of making prog rock cool again.  Clearly, the hype surrounding Crack the Skye was always going to be massive; the million-dollar question is “Is it justified?”

What’s immediately apparent is that Crack the Skye is not like any Mastodon album that has come before it.  Whereas both Leviathan and Blood Mountain drop you straight into the thick of the action and never let up, opening track ‘Oblivion’ is broody and atmospheric, building expectations to an almost unbearable level before the tension is finally broken by Hinds’s vocals.  Only this time he’s not screaming – he’s singing.  And, even more astoundingly, it doesn’t sound out of place, because the rest of the band aren’t hammering away at full speed behind him.  Instead, there seems a more calculated, almost reflective, approach to the music, infinitely less frantic than on previous offerings.

That’s not to say Crack the Skye is any better or worse than its predecessors, because that would just be oversimplifying things.  But it is a little bit, well, difficult.  Lead single ‘Divinations’ sounds like it could well have appeared on Blood Mountain, but apart from that most of Crack the Skye is initially slightly underwhelming.  Potentially epic tracks like ‘The Last Baron’ and four-parter ‘The Czar’ feel convoluted and even contrived, and the overall impression is one of a band who have sadly got too ambitious for their own good.

Don’t despair, though – put it on again.  And again, and again, until eventually things start to fall into place; the transitions that at first seemed clumsy and unnatural, particularly in ‘Oblivion’ and ‘The Czar’, begin to make sense as you come to terms with the frequently odd feel of the music.  Instrumentally speaking, it’s a similar story – the arrangements on Crack the Skye are as dense as anything Mastodon have ever written, and on the first few listens there’s simply too much to take in all at once.  Closing track ‘The Last Baron’, for example, is fully 13 minutes long and rammed full of guitar solos and soaring vocal lines that is nothing short of overwhelming during the first sitting, but on repeated listens it becomes captivating; almost like a book you can’t put down, once it starts you simply have to listen to it all the way through.

Make no mistake, this is not the Mastodon you know and love.  Of course, some will have been expecting a Blood Mountain Part II and, as a result, there will be an extreme minority of fans disappointed with Crack the Skye.  And that’s a crying shame, because for everyone else it’s absolutely essential.  It might not be as insanely heavy as Leviathan or as instantly gratifying as Blood Mountain, but persevere and before long you’ll discover a masterpiece; a truly epic piece of work worthy of your immediate and undivided attention.

9/10

Joe Stephens

Album Review:

There’s a surreal contradiction at work on this album. Despite its themes being taken from the age old fable of Icarus flying towards the sun, the music backing the themes sounds as if it was created within the deepest, darkest bowels of the ocean. This is an album so heavy and compressed that it feels like the very walls are crushing in around you. A remarkable juxtaposition to how Icarus must have felt moments before going out in a blaze of foolishness.

A lot of it is initially extremely incomprehensible. Vocals are two tectonic plates grinding against eachother, guitar riffs ooze out of the speakers like treacle, and the drums are buried underneath a ton of molten sludge, writhing as best they can to escape. But slowly Icarus, the Sunclimber starts to let in cracks of light into its foreboding world.

The pace is never hurried, and if anything rather repetitive. This allows the six tracks to wallow in their dankness, turning slight alterations to their sound into cataclysmic shifts in direction, a trick that ISIS used to pull off with ease back in their glory days. But despite the danger of monotony, the band has an uncanny knack for deep grooves that takes more influence from the likes of Black Cobra than Aaron Turner’s post-metal prodigies.

Icarus… is an album that revels in loud volume. ‘The Sunclimber’s gigantic force is at its best when exploding out of a pair of speakers, barely able to contain the overwhelming density of the guitars. And when the same track drags out the reverberating bass of Alex Macarte only a few minutes later, chills are sent down the spine. These longer reflections are divided by comparatively brief bursts of feedback induced grinding, such as the bowel moving turn of ‘Hyperion Altitude’.

It’s rare that a UK bank who are getting a lot of press behind them are actually anything worth bothering about. But Manatees have proven their worth with an album that is somehow both relentless and full of tortured emotion. The true contradiction on this album is the puzzle that something so anti-commercial, so violently determined to sound like the world falling apart, is actually one of the most enjoyable releases of the year so far.

9/10

Michael Copus