Plus special guests Dead Identities, Kitty Hudson and Miss Vincent.

As Alice Cooper once noted, it’s hot tonight. Not so much outside but the Scream Lounge is a veritable sauna on this Bank Holiday evening due to the air conditioning being knackered. That hasn’t stopped the faithful from turning out though and it’s good to see such a healthy turnout for three bands who really deserve to be more widely known than they are.

Anyway, due to roadworks on the way into Croydon I end up missing openers St Evel so the evening gets off to a good start with Miss Vincent. The only one of the top four bands on the bill that I’ve not heard before, I’m impressed by their tight ferocious brand of punk that recalls the sadly missed Disarm with maybe a sprinkling of Teenage Casket Co’s more melodic tendencies chucked in for good measure. This lot may have to be investigated further methinks.

It’s always a pleasure to catch Kitty Hudson live and as they blast in with “24 Hours To Kill” and “MIA”, it’s almost as if they’ve never been away. Tonight is strictly a greatest hits run through and while it’s true that another Kitty Hudson album would be a most welcome occurrence, when your back catalogue is as strong as theirs is and includes such under-rated classics as “Bought And Sold” and “Homer J”, it’s easy to forgive them for it. A top set as always.

Credit I think is due to KH guitarist Keef who’s on double duty tonight with Dead Identities following the Hudson crew on the bill. Again, they turn in a good set which is a nice reminder of what a great band they are as “Long Way Out” and “God Bless Your Black Heart” get the crowd pogoing and bellowing along the lyrics in the sweltering heat. Again, hopefully a new album will be forthcoming from the DI’s soon.

On the subject of new albums, it might have escaped your attention if you’ve been living under a rock in the middle of the Cairngorms in recent weeks but tonight’s headliners the Eureka Machines have one out at the moment. And it’s also a bit of a cracker. Kicking in tonight with “None Of The Above” from said new effort, this evening’s set is a greatest hits affair which would be impressive from a band with far more than three albums under their belt as the Eurekas do. So we get old favourites such as the frenetic rush of “Champion The Underdog”, the epic “Story Of My Life” and the eminently hummable “These Are The People Who Live In My House” rubbing shoulders with soon-to-be-classics like “Love Yourself” and the rather fantastic recent single “Pop Star” which surely must rank as one of the best things they’ve done to date (and that’s not a compliment to throw around lightly given the high standard of this band’s back catalogue).

As the encore of the rather lovely “The One Who Wouldn’t Change You” from the Eurekas’ debut album and a closing run through the epic “Zero Hero” kicks in, frontman Chris Catalyst announces that thanks to the Pledge campaign being such a success, it’s not only stopped the band from knocking it on the head (as they were reportedly very close to doing a couple of years back) but also put them on a sound financial footing for the first time in their history. Good. In a world where most of the groups getting press and record sales sound like so much aural beige wallpaper, we really need bands like the Eureka Machines arguably more than we’ve ever done and it’s good to know that they’ll be sticking around for the foreseeable future.

On tonight’s evidence, the sky really is the limit for them.

Yes, Video of the Day is back!

Happy to report then that with “The Terror Of Modern Life”, we’re very much in the second scenario. This album sees John Robb and his brothers put the rather one-dimensional “Mutiny” safely behind them and return to the storming form of its predecessor, 2003′s “Rebel Songs”. Indeed, this is as impressively fierce an indictment of the greed and ruthlessness of the current coalition government of this country as that album was of the anaemic New Labour administration under Tony Blair and it makes you wonder why they ever wanted to deviate from this path at all. From the angry, lurching opener of “This Is War!”, “The Terror Of Modern Life” is the sound of the Blade saying “right, enough clowning around, it’s time to get serious now…”

Don’t worry by the way, there’s still enough punk swagger and catchy hooks and choruses here to make this album listenable on the likes of “Psycho Takes A Holiday” and the Cameron-baiting “We’re All In It Together” while the pure white hot rage of “Guilty” and “My Mind Is Like An Atom Bomb” should satisfy even the most hyperactive of mosh-hounds. But it’s the little tricks that take the Blade outside their comfort zone which were largely abandoned on “Mutiny” which make a very welcome return here and indicate that this band are anything but out of ideas. “Someone Stole My Brain” is sheer fury with its screamed vocals and swirling guitars while the appropriately titled “Serious Business” sounds like something the Clash might have come up with on their under-rated “Sandinista” album with its collision of reggae bass, dub rhythm and punk attitude. The sheer sonic chaos of the eight-minute title track meanwhile is pure Stooges (think “Death Trip” or “We Will Fall”) and puts an impressive full stop on the album.

Shout it from the rooftops then, Goldblade are back on form and not before time. “The Terror Of Modern Life” should sit nicely in your record collection as a sister record to the Bermondsey Joyriders’ “Noise And Revolution” from last year as a damning indictment of these times we live in. Go give it a listen and then do the right thing and get thinking about how you can do your best to help sort this whole sorry mess out. Message over.

The thing is, even though they’re a good six albums into their career, American Dog still sound like they’ve got more guts and fury than any number of dead-eyed contrived Led Zep clones clogging up the pages of “Classic Rock” at the moment. And while there’s plenty of Crue-worshipping johnny come latelys in both Camden and LA who claim to be all about the sex, booze and rock ‘n’ roll, you suspect that if you put any of ‘em on a night out with American Dog they’d be running out of the bar for their lives well before closing time. Essentially, American Dog aren’t offering you anything you’ve not heard before – their music is basically one part Motorhead, one part Twisted Sister and one part Ted Nugent (with a bit of a sprinkling of ZZ Top and Skynyrd chucked in here and there) but they do it with such enthusiasm and gusto that you can’t help but enjoy it. Make no mistake, they definitely mean it man.

Songs like the frenetic opener “Devil Dog”, the bruised ode to touring “The Real Nitty Gritty” and the excellently titled “Just Like Charlie Sheen” will have your head nodding along and a smile breaking across your mush while the humour on the likes of “Splinterin’ Sally” (about the joys of dating a girl with a wooden leg) and “Bathroom Romance” (which sounds like Faster Pussycat strapped to a nuclear missile) is a nice relief from the sort of widdling bores who desperately wish it was 1975 all over again (blithely ignoring the fact that most music in that year was rubbish).

So yes, don’t expect the answers to the universe in here – this is very much the aural equivalent of tucking into a big steak dinner at the grill house or settling in for an evening watching the wrestling on TV. In other words, it ain’t big, it ain’t clever but it sure as hell is enjoyable. And really, that’s the most important thing. Recommended.

Sunday

A key point in the Hard Rock Hell agenda would seem to be to push traditional rock and metal bands to as broad an audience as possible. It’s an attitude that can’t really be sniffed at – old timers are given the chance to see a new wave of melodic rock pretenders, and younger attendees are offered solid performances from talented acts that for a variety of reasons failed to supernova.

Sunday sees a few of the newer acts invading the main stage. Opening up just after noon with a late, late breakfast grill are all-Finnish, all-female ham and eggers Barbe-Q-Barbies. A lazy hack might call this AC-DShe. I guess I’m easy like a Sunday… lunchtime.

Nubian Rose raise the bar with a sound at the heavier end of the AOR spectrum. It’s a mix of DIO, Whitesnake and Rainbow and, yowser, yet another wailing female vocal. This one is courtesy of the Sofia Lilja, whose catwalk grace befits a mid-set costume change. Several bands this weekend look suitably delighted about playing to a large crowd, and for Nubian Rose there’s the added bonus of their first ever UK appearance. To honour it, Sofia unveils a striking Union flag cat suit that doubles as a nod to local heroes Def Leppard.

The blue and yellow aural onslaught continues in the form of H.E.A.T, a six-piece, twin guitar wall of sound hailing from the same small Swedish town as poodle rockers Europe. Co-incidence or something more sinister? Wearing pop-metal hearts on denim-sleeves, you start to wonder if somewhere in the Swedish countryside lurks a heavy metal Hogwarts. If so, look past the D- for originality and you’ll find everything here that took that stadium rock to the masses.  Showcasing tracks from their latest album ‘Address the Nation’ the tunes are huge, infectious and buzz with a self-belief lacking in modern day performances from hair metal’s founding fathers. A sort of Smash Hits friendly version of Crashdiet’s Simon Cruz, Erik Gronwall is the band’s blue eyed, blonde haired, poster-boy. He covers every inch of stage available, and along with rest of the band assures an afternoon slot feels like a headline show. It’s the performance of the weekend.

For a while, everything that follows feels like an anti-climax. Ten mark the drossier end of melodic rock market – it’s all grandiose soundscapes and the kind of technical ability that sounds impressive one moment, and bland the next. Music to crush cars by.

Influential blues merchant Uli Jon Roth clocks on for double time this weekend, with slots on both the Prog and AOR bills. For his AOR appearance, the card-carrying Hendrix-disciple and his band run through a collection of work from his early days with the Scorpions.

Elsewhere, stoking the Fire stage, Southampton upstarts Summers are a musical identity crisis. On ‘Rock Machine’ (a Lizzy-esque tribute to Phil Lynott) they look comfortable with testosterone-fuelled hard rock, moments later ‘Superhero’ is Busted after too many alcopops. There are sure signs of talent here, but it feels a bit reactive. It’s as if they are going through rock star motions rather than playing from the heart and seeing what emerges.

Rock star motions are not familiar territory to Moritz singer Peter Scallan, who has barely stepped on a stage since shoulder pads were de rigueur. It’s a brave move on behalf of the promoters to take a band who disbanded over a quarter of century ago upon failing to secure a record deal, and grant them a comeback so high up the bill. Someone clearly knew something we didn’t. In Scallan we might just have one of the great lost voices of British melodic rock, and In Moritz maybe a British Gotthard – but let’s reign in the superlatives for now, and reserve judgment for another day.

The main-stage headline antics belong to the big names, big guns and big vocals; Kip Winger, Skid Row and Jeff Scott Soto. Kip takes to the stage sans band (indeed, sans everything), armed only with an ego an acoustic guitar. If Kip was a winger, he’d be a right one. As the saying goes, if you can’t say anything nice… point and laugh. All jibes aside, unlike his set at Firefest a few years ago, tonight Master Winger seems happy to actually play Winger songs that people might know.

So are Skid Row AOR? Not a chance. This is hard rock played loud and played heavy. Stone cold-classics ’18 and Life’, ‘Slave to the Grind’ and ‘Youth Gone Wild’ are all duly delivered and with that the audience is ripe for tracks from the band’s new EP ‘United World Rebellion – Chapter 1’.

Living after midnight, rockin’ to the dawn. It’s left to rent-a-gob Jeff Scott Soto to collect empties and sweep up as he heads on stage just after twelve. The voice of everything from Yngwie Malmsteen solo albums to fictional metal giants Steel Dragon (as featured in the Mark Wahlberg movie Rock Star), Jeff’s extensive career also includes stints with Journey and AOR giants Talisman. He even supplied pipes for an album of songs inspired by the cartoon series Biker Mice from Mars. No really. He did. I am not shitting you. Right here, right now he opens with songs from his latest solo album Damage Control, and finishes with the fictional rock monolith ‘Stand Up and Shout’.

In Summary…

Overall then, kudos is due to the Hard Rock Hell brand for a successful new format. The addition of new bands and liberal definitions means there’s enough diversity on show as to bring new life and a new audience to a scene that might otherwise be happy to dine out on recycled mullet wine for the rest of its days. The established Firefest festival now has some serious competition as the UK’s premier melodic rock event, and it will be interesting to see how it responds.

As the show closes AOR2 is confirmed for 2014 and talk, later to prove correct, spreads of a return to Hard Rock Hell’s roots in Prestatyn. In a way it’s a shame as Magna feels like it could prove a suitable home for a regular rock event. However, much like the silent reminders of a bygone age that surround the venue, AOR is a genre heavily rooted in the past. Perhaps a change of scene is just what’s needed.

Words by Karl Eisenhauer, photos by Liam Fretwell

Missed our review of Day 1? Catchup here – HRH AOR Day 1!

www.hrhaor.com

The manor? Rotherham, South Yorkshire
The stage? A disused steel works reborn as a family friendly science attraction
The event? Hard Rock Hell AOR

Wait, what even is AOR? An effervescent Pure Rawk roving rock-donkey is despatched to investigate…

As titles go, Hard Rock Hell AOR is a bit of a mouthful. Conversely, in its abbreviated form HRHAOR reads more like someone hurling up a chunk or… let’s avoid such pleasantness. Shall we have a history lesson?

For the uninitiated, AOR stands for Album-(or Adult)-Oriented-Rock. A largely American creation, AOR was born out of late 60s licensing regulations prohibiting radio stations from using the established singles format on the new FM frequencies. Fresh ‘progressive’ formats were born with DJs granted license to playlist an album’s longer or more mature tracks.

Listeners to early 70s AOR stations could expect a broad mix of rock, jazz, funk maybe even R&B and soul, but as the fight for audience share increased, programme directors seized back control, and over the next 20 years shook off the more eclectic edges until only the commercial, radio-friendly sheen of 80s corporate arena rock remained. As the 90s blew in new styles like grunge and hip-hop, AOR stations closed the gates and the genre was frozen in carbonite.

Skip to the end…

So if AOR today remains largely unchanged from 31 December 1989, does that mean this is a weekend awash with multi-tracked guitar sounds, bands that come with complimentary MOOG synthesizers and an overall atmosphere that’s pining for super-sized drum risers and dry-ice machines? Well yes. However, thanks to some canny promotion that’s not all on offer here.

Alongside it’s sister festival Hard Rock Hell Prog (taking place simultaneously down o’er end t’ mill), the inaugural Hard Rock Hell AOR festival stays true to the format of its heavy metal forebear – that annual pre-Christmas metalhead invasion of a Pontins holiday camp in North Wales otherwise known as Hard Rock Hell.

The line-up therefore throws together genre veterans, fresh-faced youths and reuniting heroes in an isolated industrial setting. It’s a long way to the shop if you want a sausage roll, but attractively priced hot-dogs are available from the concession stand at the rear of the hall.

Saturday

Carpet. At a festival. Carpet? Indoors. At a festival. Carpet? No mud? Warmth (sort of)? This could take some getting used to.  At one end of a hall large enough to make Gandalf the Grey’s knees knock, a temporary bar is dispensing reasonably priced alcoholic beverages, at the other veterans of the UK melodic rock scene Dante Fox are easing in today’s assembled throng with most atypical AOR pleasantries (yes, they’ve got a keyboard). I make no bones about which end I head to first, but allons-y, beer in hand, it’s time to adult-oriented rock.

The Dante Fox calling card is evidently the soaring vocal prowess of front-lady-face Sue Willets and it raises the band from an otherwise el generico eighties rock chug. As Sue cracks the whip between songs, it’s easy to imagine on another day the tongue-in-cheek snipes towards her male band-mates could carry the matriarchal jest of a dominatrix. Today though, with the crowd yet to find its voice and Sue clearly not feeling 100%, such commands come off a little more like a primary school teacher admonishing naughty schoolboys.

Romeo’s Daughter draw the strongest crowd reaction so far and it’s not really a surprise. Here’s a band whose star shone brightly enough at the time of their debut as to tempt legendary producer of all things multi-platinum Mutt Lange into twiddling knobs on their first album. The evidence available today reveals why. The band are tight and the sound is polished pop-rock with a deep, sultry, Chrissie Hynde vocal. Tracks from 2012’s comeback release ‘Rapture’ sit comfortably with more familiar material, and it’s enough to get the masses moving for the first time this afternoon.

Technical issues delay the opening of the second stage, leaving Danny Vaughn to hold court unchallenged in the Big Hall. Cleveland native Vaughn is unashamedly American; brash, upbeat and owner of the pearliest whites in rock and roll. The voice of Tyketto treats his audience like old friends, and they respond in kind with warmth and adulation to a selection of crowd and personal favourites from a prolific back catalogue. Track after track delivers, and when a slow road crew response to a faulty cable threatens to derail the occasion, you’re able to empathise with Danny’s grumpy snark. He’s a performer coiled to deliver rather than a spoiled child deprived of his toys.

By comparison, FM’s polite mid-tempo pop genesis feels like a step backwards. In search of something livelier, it’s time to seek out the Fire stage. Unlit open-plan science exhibits and the remnants of Magna’s steel mill heritage create a unique poetic ambience during the short walk between stages, as does Ned Kahn’s mesmerising ‘Fire Tornado’ a modern art exhibit that greets you on arrival at the Fire pavilion.

Out to start fires of their own, rising force The Morning After provide anathema to the festival’s maudlin moments – imagine the metallic symphony of Frontiers-era Journey shot into orbit with relentless high-BPM overdrive. Many bands in the last ten years may have claimed to be the modern day answer to 80s stadium rock, but The Morning After could just be the ones who justify it. Rampant and glorious, this Essex quintet must be seen live.

Mia Klose plays it more by the numbers. Think Kiss, Kix and Canadian metal queen Lee Aaron. 5ft nothing she might be, but in drive and determination this Swedish little voice is every inch late-night dynamite. It was rare even in its heyday to hear female fronted glam metal, it’s rarer still in 2013. Therefore it’s reassuring to discover that, along with pushing a strong leather-clad blonde bombshell look, Mia’s vocals are more than up to the task. Her show is upbeat, good-time rock and roll, and worthy of the growing attention.

The biggest draw of the Saturday line-up are headliners Tesla, probably best remembered as the opening act on Def Leppard’s mammoth Hysteria world tour. Like Romeo’s Daughter and FM, Tesla were another band hotly tipped for a level of super stardom that never came. Unlike those acts though, the Californian band ploughed on through the hostile grunge years, and that added experience has clearly paid off. Throughout the set you feel in the presence of a band as comfortable with their identity as say Aerosmith or Cinderella. They might lack for hit singles, but what they do have is a variety of ballads, heavy harmonies and fist in the air bluesy hard rock. Tonight on tracks like ‘Signs’ and ‘Modern Day Cowboy’ they stand toe-to-toe with their peers.

Words by Karl Eisenhauer, photos by Liam Fretwell

Want some  more? Click here to read all about Day 2!

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The overcrowded Dickensian squalor of Soho’s Borderline club, just off Manette Street (named after Dickens’ Dr Manette from a Tale of Two Cities, trivia fans), is a most apt venue for  tonight’s gig by London’s top steampunk merchants, The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing.

But first, sadly we have to contend with the painful incident that was Thee Faction. It would appear to be an attempt at some form of Marxist Comedy Loungecore, which is surely iffy enough territory to begin with, but done seemingly without any attempt to say anything with the subject matter, instead just throwing some lefty words into some bloody awful songs. This is the musical equivalent of someone repeating back what you just said in a loud squeaky voice and thinking it’s really really funny. It’s not, it’s just very annoying. They’ve been around since the 70s, and appear to have some admirable credentials in the arena of working class struggle, but unless I’ve missed something, on the evidence of tonight they really are just dire.

All of which makes the entrance of The Men That Will Not Be Blamed For Nothing all the more welcome, blasting away the cobwebs with punk, thrash and wittily written tales of Victorian England. You’d think such a leftfield approach to punk rock could be a little dry, but with everything else that’s going on, they do seem to be able to whack in some cracking choruses to shout along to as well – I mean, who could resist the opportunity to shout ZOMBIE ALBERT (x3) in a song about the late Queen Victoria’s husband Albert, recently risen from the dead and hungry for commoners brains?

It’s not all manic crashing about though, they do find space for a few quieter moments, the esteemed Mr Heintz breaking out the musical saw for haunting interludes in songs such as The Great Stink, about the man who designed London’s sewers, and the fairly stripped down The People’s Common Sense Medical Advisor, a jaunty little number about wanking being the root of all ill health.

Whilst they’ve always been a fantastic live experience, tonight’s show really did see them at their strongest, honed down to a solid set of all hits with virtually no fat around the edges. The new material is some of their strongest yet, with the one about the Necropolis Railway Company (Frist, second and third class – even in death!) being a personal favourite. This was their biggest ever live show, and they packed the place out, as in fact they have the last three times I’ve seen them, so take the hint guys, you’re ready to play bigger venues! Maybe next time I see you, there’ll be space to breathe in the room, perhaps even get to the bar.

If you get the chance, you really should catch this band – once you’ve got your head round the idea, it is just pure unadulterated fun. Who knows, maybe by the end you too will join the rest of the crowd pumping your fist in the air for the great Victorian engineer, Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Yes, that happened.

www.facebook.com/blamedfornothing

Words by Sexy Dave Ashworth, pictures by Sophie Garratt