GRAVE REVIEWS

What's new on my record shelf: Soundgarden's Outshined

What’s new on my record shelf? “Outshined” by Soundgarden, 1992, A&M Records. 12″ vinyl record.

I fell in love with Soundgarden when I was 14, sometime in the mid 2000s. It was before YouTube, Wikipedia, all that. Band information and media came from fanpages, and you still had to buy albums to listen to them. “Outshined”was one of the first Soundgarden songs I’d heard – I had got into the…

A big emptiness has been growing around the world of live music. This review looks at how we fill the void with Idiot Prayer, Nick Cave alone at the Alexandra Palace.

‘Idiot Prayer’ serves as the final film in a trilogy—along with ’20,000 Days on Earth’ and ‘One More Time with Feeling’—and is its luminous and heartfelt climax. ‘Idiot Prayer’ is a prayer into the void—alone at Alexander Palace.  I hope you enjoy it as much as I enjoyed making it.

Nick Cave

A big emptiness has been growing in these lockdown times. It’s a lack of live music, much more than…

Songs that hurt: Anna Calvi's "Hunter". Pain. Heartache. Anguish. Agony. Let's talk about songs that hurt your heart.

Pain. Heartache. Anguish. Agony. Let’s talk about songs that hurt your heart, but in a good way. “Hunter” by Anna Calvi is one such song for me. It begins with heartbeats, breaths, before moving into full-on desire. But, that chorus… “Nothing lasts”. That’s the bit that rips my heart apart. It’s intense, it’s gut-wrenching.

Sadly I’ve found it’s very rare to hear such raw and true emotion…

Live Review: Last Podcast on the Left, Edinburgh Queen’s Hall, 07.09.19

Last Podcast on the Leftis your dream podcast for all things spooky, true crime-y, and weird. They’re taking their podcast show on the road, and today’s subject is their recent stop in Edinburgh at the Queen’s Hall. Queen’s Hall is a fancy looking old building, nestled in Edinburgh’s Old Town amongst haunted pubs and estate agents alike. New meets old, weird meets normal. Kind of like the Last…

Embrace to bring "Songs from The Good Will Out" and "Out Of Nothing" tour to Leeds and Manchester! #embrace #embracetour

Yorkshire brit-rock legends Embrace are bringing their influential albums “The Good Will Out” and “Out of Nothing” back to the stage with a special tour in March 2020! Plenty of time to dig out your CDs and get the words down off by heart. The band are set to play the following dates:

6th Dec 2019 – Alexandra Palace, London – SOLD OUT 7th Dec 2019 – Alexandra Palace, London – SOLD OUT 6th March…

Metal legends Tool add full music library to Spotify #tool #toolband

Prog/metal legends TOOLhave gone and done it – they’ve added their music to Spotify (and other streaming services). Streaming music does have its downsides, but at least now we don’t have to dig out our CDs or old PCs with .mp3s. Tool have always been anti-streaming, instead choosing other more conventional means of distributing their music. The general consensus to just why the band have changed…

Featured track: “I Dream Guillotine” by IDLES

IDLESare a band I’m just starting to get into, but I already feel that they’re gonna feature in my music library quite a bit. They’re intense, but not in a “heavy rock” sense. As in: there’s no screaming – hell, the vocals are only half-shouted, not full whack. They have strong punk attitude, but can actually play their instruments. They say country may be going to shit (if you don’t think it was…

FEMUR’s new single “Second Twin” is Grave Reviews’ latest featured track. Second Twin is menacing, dangerous. It’s a dark grunge groove. I feel that FEMUR have proudly perfected their distorted sound with this song, and in doing so have brought something fresh and cool to the Sheffield scene.

Catch FEMUR live at Cafe Totem during the Tramlines Weekend – event info here.

Listen to Second Twin…

Featured track: “Fringe Runner” by Fat White Family



Fat White Family‘s “Fringe Runner” is Grave Reviews’ latest featured track. Fringe Runner is built up around a cool beat, with a few tocks on a wooden guiro layered over a bunch of messy synths that just happen to work really well together. A bit of that Fat Whites magic – it feels like it shouldn’t work, but it does.

And how does the new album fare?

This song is taken from the band’s new album

The Wildhearts - A review of new single "Dislocated", disjointed, disappointed.

How does the new Wildhearts single “Dislocated” fare?

Bloat rock [bloht rock] Noun. The music created by a band well past their best years that is typically characterised by auto-tuning to cover up missed notes, verses & choruses that go nowhere, and a lack of musical growth or innovation.

With The Wildheartsreuniting with old band member Danny McCormack and diving in to a new tour, it was…

New Playlist: Good stuff at Tramlines 2019

Get to know the upcoming good stuff at Tramlines this year

It’s time for another specially curated playlist from Grave Reviews. This time it’s all about the good stuff that’ll be coming to Sheffield’s very own Tramlines festival this year. In 2018, we had the likes of Stereophonics and Noel Gallagher, but this year things are getting bigger. There’s big names (to me at least!) such as Manic…

Killer Tunes – a playlist about serial killers

Time for another playlist. Grave Reviews’ last playlist focused on the spookiness and festivities around Hallowe’en, so this time I’ve taken things to the more real, evil side of humanity. A table of who each song is about is at the end of this post.

Disclaimer: Grave Reviews does not support any of the killers, cult leaders or grave robbers referenced in any of the following songs.

Son of Sam by…

Hallowe’en is here! Time for a new playlist…

Happy Hallowe’en! It’s the most wonderful time of the year, so get in the spirit with this spooky little playlist put together by Lawra and I. Expect all kinds of music from The Sonics, to Michael Jackson, to Queens of the Stone Age.

Sheffield Tramlines 2018 in Review, ft Bad Bug, Femur, Stereophonics.

So, Sheffield’s ever-popular Tramlines festival has grown up massively in the past couple of years. This growth has taken it from the tiny Devonshire Green, to the big slope locally known as Ponderosa park, to its new home in Hillsborough. And with this big growth comes a two-edge sword – the attraction of big acts like Stereophonics and Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, but this meant the…

Live Review: Fat White Family, Record Junkee, Sheffield, 15.06.2018

The Fat White Family (or their team) chose Record Junkee in Sheffield for a tiny string of warm-up shows ahead of their summer festival activity. This was an unusual spot for such an energetic gig: upstairs in an instruments/record hybrid shop, the vinyl records neatly pushed away behind barrier fences on one side of the room, a little tapless bar counter in the corner (definitely ‘tapless’, and…

Thee Unholy Innocents: "White Jesus" and debut gig announcement

Thee Unholy Innocents is a band/project that comes highly recommended by Grave Reviews. They’re predominately a garage-rock band but their new track, “White Jesus”, has got a bit of menace to it. The band take influences from everywhere, including a hint of gospel as you can hear in their new single.

Thee Unholy Innocents are set to play their debut show next week in London – on the 4th of July…

Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind announce new album: “CollectiV”

Jim Jones and the Righteous Mind have announced their second album, the follow-up their debut “Super Natural” released last year. “CollectiV” will be Kickstarter-driven, meaning that fans can get their hands on rewards and special items – the details of which are to be released this Thursday (14th June 2018).

The band posted the following on their Facebook fan group:

We’re very excited to…