Clutch are the archetypal band-that-nobody-has-a-bad-word-to-say-about. Go on. Try. You can’t think of one. At least not a honest one. See? Our man Gary Wolstenholme went on down to the Manchester Academy with his camera to capture Neil Fallon and co doing what they do best: being great.
Has it really been twenty years since the release of Troublegum? The Mercury Prize-nominated Therapy? album that went on to help define their entire career? Yes, yes it has. That’s why they’ve released a deluxe boxset re-release of the album, and are currently on tour across the UK playing that album in full. We sent our man Gary Wolstenholme over to the Manchester to dodge wave after wave of crowdsurfers that piled over the barrier at the O2 Academy 2 when the band played ‘Screamager’.
Sometimes, things go wrong. Things went wrong when we sent our man in Liverpool, Matt Thomas, along to photograph the Limp Bizkit-headlined Kerrang! Tour 2014. Some wires got crossed somewhere, and whole everyone else in Liverpool with a camera was allowed into the photopit to snap Fred Durst and co., we were barred and only allowed to snap the support acts – Crossfaith, Nekrogoblikon and Baby Godzilla.
Dual-headliner tours are always a weird one. No matter what fancy-pants arrangements the bands come to, no matter if they have a stricty-enforced on-off switch for who plays last every night, naturally one band rises above the other. And so it goes with Killswitch Engage and Trivium, who are currently enacting this age-old conflict at venues up and down the length of the UK. Our snapper in the North, Gary Wolstenholme, was on hand in Manchester to shoot both bands when they brought that unspoken conflict to the O2 Academy.
It’d be fair to say that 2013 is probably a year that Randy Blythe from Lamb of God would like to forget, having spent much of it dealing with his trial and subsequent acquittal for manslaughter of Czech fan of his band, Daniel Nosek. They’ve certainly not wasted any time getting their 2014 off to a running start, hitting Europe for a 14-date extension to their long-running Resolution tour. We sent Gobinder Jhitta down to Birmingham to catch Randy and co.
Metal Hammer’s annual Defenders of the Faith tour is usually a bloody good excuse to catch a whole crop of excellent bands all in one place – this year’s line-up was particularly impressive, with headliners Amon Amarth being backed up by the likes of Carcass, Hell, and Bleed From Within. We got our principal photographer, Mr Gary Wolstenholme, to head on down to Manchester to catch one of the last big metal tours of 2013 do its dirty business all over the O2 Academy.
MEGADAVE. We’ll never get tired of calling Dave Mustaine that. No matter how many stupid things he says off stage, no matter how many awful new Megadeth albums called Super Collider that he puts out, and no matter how many onstage temper tantrums he throws because he’s unhappy with the stage lighting, no matter how many homophobic slurs he wants to throw at people who’ve paid money to go watch him play live – despite all of that, he’ll still always be MegaDave.
We forgot to ask Gary Wolstenholme if there were as many annoying pricks wearing backpacks at Hatebreed’s Manchester Academy 2 show as there were when the band played London, mainly because Jamey Jasta’s face just brings out the urge to M0SH in us. Yep.
When are the Misfits not the Misfits? Well, legally speaking, the Misfits are the Misfits as long as founder member and bassist Jerry Only is performing in the band. After all, he and Glenn Danzig fought legal battles over this stuff years ago. That’s why the band that have just finished touring the UK bears very little resemblance to any of the classic line-ups of the band that have come over to these shoes before. They don’t even have Michael Graves as a vocalist anymore.
Although they’re forced to call themselves “Ghost B.C” in America now, here in the UK the Jägermeister Music Tour is still headlined by a band called Ghost. There’s no legal issues so far as we or anyone else we know can think of regarding Gojira and The Defiled being forced to use different name when stateside, so how about we cut all this introductory chit-chat and get right to the photos, okay?