HEADBANGERS BALLS, The Rainbow Warehouse, Birmingham 17/8/13

A quite fantastic cause this – and a brilliant idea. Unfortunately, though some background may be required before continuing as the mainstream media appear to have given it paltry coverage.

A few years ago Reign of Fury frontman Bison Steed was diagnosed with testicular cancer, this is his fifth year clear of the disease and to celebrate he decided to do something about it. What the band did was team up with promoter Andy Pilkington and the people at Intune PR and set up a 12 date tour across the UK with a frankly incredible cast of underground metal bands.

This Birmingham date is the finale of the whole thing and saw an all-day festival type thing take place. Hands up, here, RTM wasn’t able to make all of it, but we got here as soon as we could, as we weren’t going to miss this for all sorts of reasons.

We get there in time to see Bull Riff Stampede. The local group has been making a few waves recently – not least of which was their appearance at Bloodstock last week and they evidently have the drive, ambition to get themselves heard. They have the songs too, “Advance And Conquer” and “The Pit March” posses everything a thrash band needs to succeed. They are about to record a new album, so this bull is one to watch.

Another local band, Hanging Doll is next up, and their female lead singer, allied to male guttural vocal approach is an interesting alternative to the previous group. “Cradle To The Grave” is arguably their best track, but they too are worth keeping an eye on.

Reign of Fury are next – introduced by Krusher, who RTM hadn’t seen for years before his Bloodstock appearance, but now appears to be following us about…..We had last seen Worcestershire’s finest at Bloodstock a year ago in the New Blood Tent – originally intending to leave after half their set to watch Evile, however, they were so good we stayed. If they were good then, they are even better tonight. RoF play a brand of metal that deserves to be aired in front of far bigger crowds than this. The aforementioned Steed has a presence and their twin guitar metal/thrash songs – of which “Psycho Intentions” is the pick, are excellent.

As we have said before, at RTM we want to like I Am I, but haven’t quite been won over. We were at their first ever show last May, then we saw them support Skid Row in March. On both occasions we have found singer ZP Theart a little too overpowering. Tonight, though, he tones down all the antics and concentrates on being a singer – and no one has ever doubted he can do sing. Not quite as power metal as you might expect given Theart’s past, instead “Cross The Line” and “Kiss Of Judas” could sit on a mid-1980s rock album pretty comfortably. First single “Silent Genocide” remains perhaps their best song, but this is a band that is making vast improvements.

Beholder’s Simon Hall never cuts the air of a bloke who is at peace with the world. Tonight, though, he gives as angry and incendiary a performance as we have seen from him. He is upset with Metal Hammer for not covering this tour, he is irked by the beer prices in the Rainbow and he is downright cheesed off with cancer itself.  It all makes for a fantastic Beholder show, though. The band showed at Bloodstock that they are in fine form right now and it continues tonight. Afforded a slightly longer set than last week, they use it to play “Never Take Us Down” the song they wrote for the Sophie Lancaster Charity, but its defiance is oddly in tune with tonight’s vibe too. By the time they have raced through the rant of “Liar” and the closing “Footprints” which has the central point that we are all flesh and blood, it is absolutely clear that you are watching one of the finest underground metal bands in the UK right now.

A superb evening all to raise money and awareness for the Teenage Cancer Trust, the final word should go to Hall. “Thank you for doing the right thing,” he says. “Cancer is the biggest bastard out there. It took friends of mine and it took my hero Ronnie James Dio. Anything we can do to stop it must be done. Fuck you cancer.”

Well Simon, the picture of my mother in the living room of my house instead of her being there attests to the fact that it robbed my family too, so RTM agrees. And shame on any magazine that didn’t cover this event – but the unsigned scene will get by without support anyway, it always does. Just as someday, we will beat cancer. 

A tremendous and strangely life affirming evening.

SKID ROW, I Am I, Buffalo Summer @Leamington Assembly 12/4/13

On November 20^th 1991 RTM went, along with my still best mate, to the NEC for our first ever gig. Back in those days, ripped jeans and leather jackets were the order of the day.

What happened that evening had a profound effect on my life. Rock n roll has never again sounded quite as cool, or as dangerous as it did that night. So began a lifelong love of live music that has – despite many changes – never left us. The headline act that night – after LA Guns and Love/Hate had played – was our favourite band at the time, New Jersey’s Skid Row.

Arriving at the Leamington Assembly (or Academy as Skid Row’s frontman Johnny Sollinger refers to it as) we see people like us, and ok there might only be 500 of us as opposed to the 1000s from 22 years ago, but it is testament to what Skid Row meant to people.

Time will tell whether Buffalo Summer ever get that sort of following. The South Wales band are to release their debut record this month and on the evidence of their 25 minute set tonight they have some decent songs to go on it. “Waltz Right Through” and “Down to The River” echo bands like Heavens Basement, while reminding RTM of No Sweat, an Irish rock band from the late 80s/early 90s. This is hard rock with a bluesy tinge that has no pretensions to be anything else.

I AM I, though, have pretensions to be quite big. Any band with ZP Theart as its singer would. The former Dragonforce man has a rather overbearing stage presence, which you either love or hate. We are in the latter camp, which is a shame because we do like I AM I’s songs. We were at the band’s first ever gig, last May in Birmingham and the opening track was ruined by Theart’s microphone not working, strangely the same thing happens tonight.

The band has changed since then, and it’s a better, more confident showing than that night. Theart, though is at the centre of everything they do, marching into the crowd during “Cross The Line” as he doesn’t feel its lively enough. “Kiss of Judas” is an excellent song, as is “Silent Genocide” but quite what possessed them to play John Farnham’s “The Voice” who the hell knows? A band that could, perhaps be excellent, but still has work to do.

The Ramones “Blitzkrieg Bop” blasts out as Skid Row join us. Perhaps oddly for the bands of the glam era, three of the original members, guitarists Scotti Hill and Dave “Snake” Sabo and bass man Rachel Bolan remain – this is crucial as the trio were the main songwriters in the band, and while the elephant in the room is that former singer Sebastian Bach isn’t here, his replacement Sollinger is an able singer, and Bach, a man of such …urrmm “character” that he makes Theart look demure, isn’t really missed. Perhaps the salient point here is that Solinger has been fronting Skid Row for 14 years and, as such has been there longer than his predecessor anyway.

The unmistakable riff to “Slave To The Grind” kicks us off and instantly, perhaps for one night only, Skid Row are the best band in the world again, the heroes of our youth, the most dangerous band in the world. “Big Guns” only reinforces that point as do “Piece of Me” and “18 and Life” both from that astonishing debut record.

However, if most of the set does come from the first two albums, this not just an exercise in nostalgic wallowing, there are two songs from the “Thickskin” album which are better than we recall,  but best of all are the two songs they play from the forthcoming new EP “United World Rebellion Part 1.” “Let’s Go” and “Kings Of Demolition” both – on this listen – sound like they are right up there with anything in the back catalogue.

The band know, though, that they have to play the classics, and seem happy to do just that. “I Remember You” and “In A Darkened Room” are two superb ballads, while “Monkey Business”- which they use to let Snake and Hill play a solo -  is still full of groove and menace.  

The encore is the punky “Riot Act” before “Youth Gone Wild” finishes things, just like it always used to. It might be a touch incongruous to see men in their late 40s (in band and crowd) talking about being young and rebellious but, as Solinger points out “it doesn’t matter how old you are,” which is a fair point and one which neatly sums the night up.

There is always a little trepidation in nights like this. You are desperate for your old heroes to still be good. Tonight, though, Skid Row proved they are a few notches better than “good.” They were proof positive, that if you have some of the finest songs ever recorded, then some of your original members stand up and play them, nothing can really go wrong, and it doesn’t matter whether its 1991 or 2013. 

I AM I, Primitai @Birmingham Academy 2 27/5/12

When ZP Theart planned the debut gig of his new venture I Am I, he probably didn’t plan it like this.

First, the Academy 2 is barely half full, despite a free t-shirt offer to all ticket holders and a reasonably cheap price, but then a Spinal Tap moment happened. The band starts up and Theart gallop on stage, opens his mouth and….nothing. Sound men below where RTM is sat get excitable and wave their arms about, but its not until he gets through the first verse and chorus that he remembers to turn his microphone on.

As starts go it is not the most auspicious.

Before all that, though, it’s the turn of Primitai to show their potential yet again. The Berkshire outfit have bubbling just under the surface for a while. RTM first clapped eyes on them a couple of years ago when they opened for White Wizzard and, although it is easy to see why they get lumped in with the current New New Wave Of British Heavy Metal (if you will) movement, they are not a retro sounding act.

They are currently recording the follow-up to superb second album “In The Line of Fire” and on the evidence of the one new track they air “Fortune Favours The Brave” it is going to be a fine affair.

It’s the songs from “….Fire” that continue to enthral most, however “Sin City” and a crowd participation heavy “Invading Hordes” sounding better than ever. If Primitai were Swedish or American then the magazines would fall over themselves to announce them as the “future of” something or other, but they aren’t, they are English, and as such, they survive on crumbs. However, their time could be now so let’s hope they can make it happen at long last.

Early sound problems notwithstanding this was always going to be a tricky sell for the Theart. I Am I’s debut album “Event Horizon” isn’t out yet (it isn’t even available here tonight) so essentially the only thing that anyone knows of the band are a couple of videos on Youtube and the singer’s career as the Dragonforce frontman.

Given that his acrimonious split from the ‘Force boys was apparently brought on by “musical differences” it is reasonable to assume that this was never going to be a Power Metal sword and sorcery romp. Even still, RTM wasn’t prepared for how mainstream this brand of hard rock was going to be. “Cross The Line” for example could have come straight of Bon Jovi’s 7800 Degrees Fahrenheit album from 1985.

As to re-enforce the 80s feel, the band are soon joined by a lady who plays piano on two real-lighters-in-the-air power ballad moments, which rather interrupts the flow of things, but a trio of more aggressive tracks “Wasted Wonders,” “Kiss of Judas” and “Dusk To Dusk”  brings the rock quota up again.

The encore sees Theart flounce his way through Queen’s “The Show Must Go On” before things end with the lead track from “…Horizon” “Silent Genocide,” which is definitely the bands stand out moment at this stage.

There is no doubt that the I Am I have potential, but equally that, right now, their trump card is Theart himself. He possesses a fine voice and the sort of effortlessly rude banter that marks him out as a sort of rock n roll Russell Brand.

What happened tonight, really, was that we all watched a band rehearse. It is a band with a future no doubt, but this was a promising rather than perfect debut. It will be interesting to see how they grow.