‘Blue Record’ heralds a new tour for American band Baroness. Their debut ‘The Red Album’ was already renamed Album Of The Year 2007 by leading heavy metal magazine Revolver. But the ‘Blue Record’ is already a classic-in-the-making too, with its layered structure and adventurous arrangements. Riffs and melodies meet in Baroness's world, and where captured on tape by producer John Congleton (Explosions In The Sky, Black Mountain). From southern rock to sludge-metal but just as easily from The Mars Volta to Thin Lizzy, interwoven with the dissonance of a Fugazi. ‘Blue Record’ also allows you hear a richer band than in the past, in songs like ‘Steel That Sleeps The Eye’ you can even recognize pieces of Moody Blues and Fleet Foxes. Leaving Decibel magazine (America's first real extreme music magazine) to conclude: ‘How they made what may be the album of the year’.

The trio Drums Are For Parades hail from Ghent and deal in the dirtiest sort of noise-rock. But with class ...and an eye for detail – see: their finely released (and now sold-out) 10 inch bearing the poetic title 'Artificial Sacrificial Darkness in The Temple of The Damned'. This EP was – remarkably enough – produced by Niek Meul from Das Pop and was released via the Skeleton Ears label. More still, the band also appealed to Niek Meul and Reinhard Vanbergen (both of Das Pop) as producers for their debut . They'll be heading into the studio soon but first the band will be road-testing a whole heap of their new material on the Baroness evening.