The Dark Side

​Just received an exciting press release from Overdrive : Irish doom supergroup Death The Leveller have unveiled the cover artwork and tracklist for their highly-anticipated debut EP, due for release on June 12th . Drawing experience from their work in legendary Irish outfits such as Mael Mórdha and Cursed Earth, Death The Leveller are already creating a stir. The track listing for 'Death The Leveller' EP is as follows: 1. A Call To Men of Noble Blood (available now on Bandcamp!) 2. Gone Forever 3. The Day Before The Night of Broken Glass 4. How to Break Pernicious Spells The cover art is by French artist and graphic designer Anais Chareyre, whose work has featured on the TV series Penny Dreadful. In a recent interview with Overdrive, drummer Shane Cahill commented about the cover art: "The concept behind this piece is based on the Egyptian book of the dead, where the heart of the deceased is weighed against a feather, to decide if they had lived a jus...

Blogs that begin with a 'hey guys, welcome...!' post have a tendency to stop updating shortly after that, so I wrote a couple of standard posts first: there are more lined up in the 'scheduled' section. This blog accompanies The Dark Side, a radio show and podcast based in Limerick, Ireland. We focus on heavy metal and other alternative genres, and are especially interested in the Irish scene. As of now, I'm only intending to cover Irish bands on the blog's gig and album write-ups, but that's a decision rather than a pledge; when the next Eluveitie album drops it may get more than a mention. Music criticism is a strange game in itself, and if you've read any of my articles you'll have noticed that there's more of a tendency to list things that are excellent rather than balance the bitter with the sweet. It's partially because I like to give good press to new, rising artists; but also because I'm freely choosing what to write about. It...

Hey all, welcome to the blog. That'll do it for intros. To start with, let's talk about last night's showing in the Kasbah Social Club, the smallest, heaviest part of Dolans, and home to most of BadReputation's gigs. It was the usual story; three bands, a few quid on the door, a hell of a night. If you're a metal type and you're in the Limerick area, you owe it to yourself to check these out. For starters, Xero, a brand new gang of young'uns from Limerick provided something in between groove metal and alternative rock. Their new album, 'Beyond the Glass' is a fine collection, and we'll get a review of that up shortly. Groovy rhythms (technical term!) are complemented by hard-rock clean vocals, and gain surprising melody from the addition of a keyboard. This is a band that are melodic and laid-back enough to appeal to alternative rock fans, but retain the necessary punch to be well at home among the Limrock metal scene. Hope to see them as a r...