The last time I saw the Mighty Maiden, in Toronto on their 2017 Book of Souls tour, I marveled at the energy they still generated on stage after delivering almost 40 years of uncompromising in-your-face metal to the masses.
This time, though, catching up with Eddie and the boys wasn’t quite so satisfying.
On April 20, at around 5:30 in the evening, I finished a lazy two-mile run around the neighborhood.
It was an unremarkable way to end a remarkable sequence. A 475-day #runstreak, encompassing 2,285.52 total running miles, had come to an end.
As any runner will tell you, catching up always brings its own set of problems.
Especially when you’re really behind. Continue reading
Make no mistake. The Coffin Train isn’t your father’s Diamond Head album.
This eighth album by the Stourbridge metal warriors may feature plenty of nods to the bands’ now forty-year-old roots. But at the same time, it points toward an altogether different future — hard rocking, of course, but also more progressive and complex than its forebears.
Which is in no way a bad thing. Continue reading
It’s been a while since The Guv’nor caught up with Diamond Head — almost two years, in fact, since he waved goodbye to the band after their show at Sharkey’s in Liverpool, NY.
Since then, the rollercoaster ride that is DH has continued unabated. Problems with management companies, record labels, and tour promoters have gone hand-in-hand with a difficult yet ultimately triumphant tour of Europe and a groundbreaking new album, The Coffin Train.
To find out everything that has happened to the band since September 2017, The Guv’nor caught up with guitarist Andy “Abbz” Abberley, bassist Dean Ashton, and vocalist Rasmus Bom Anderson.
Here’s what they had to say.
If the concerts I am attending this year have a collective theme, it would have to be Catching Up.
With Bruce Cockburn, it’s been almost a decade since last I saw him (May 2011 at The Egg in Albany to be exact). That was the year the normally prolific Canadian singer-songwriter released Small Source of Comfort; since then, the rest of the world and I have had to wait for the follow up, 2017’s Bone on Bone.
Now nearly two years’ old, the album has become a worthy addition to the Cockburn canon, as the night’s set opener, “States I’m In,” perfectly illustrated. If there was anyone in attendance who was unfamiliar with his work — which is hard to believe considering Cockburn’s career is now well into its sixth decade — it was the best possible introduction.
There are some advantages to running a race more than once. At least you know what you’re in for. You know every twist and turn of the course. You know how to train for it. You know your strategy by heart.
But repeat appearances also have their share of problems, and my second New York City Half Marathon was a combination of both. Continue reading
