Formed in England in 1976, heavy metal legends Diamond Head play the Spring And Airbrake in November.

 

After winning the televised Orange Unsigned Act contest, Tommy Reilly has been catapulted into the Music Industry. Beating 50 other acts single-handedly, Tommy captured the attention of the judging panel and the public through his ability to deliver a song whole heartedly but at the same time effortlessly. He spent the next six months shuttling up and down to London eventually winning the competition and days later he was recording Gimme A Call, a song written in a flash after a romantically disastrous night out in Glasgow. Days after that, he was in the charts. Winning the competition granted him a Record Deal with A&M (home of Duffy, Courteeners and Dan Black). Also impressed by him, was Duffy's producer Bernard Butler, who worked on Tommy's album with him. Bernard was taken aback by Tommy's versatility and raw talent. You won't find many he-shoots-he-scores songs on the debut album by Tommy Reilly. Rejection by girls, he happily admits, is a greater inspiration than striking lucky. Recently working on his second album, Tommy Reilly has been to the SXSW festival in Austin, Texas and Rockwood Music Hall in New York. His second album is due for release early June.

 

The Doors Alive is the No.1 tribute band to the legendary, Sixties, Californian rock guru's The Doors. They re-create the sound, look, presence and feel of a real 1960's Doors concert perfectly and effortlessly, transporting the crowd back in time with such classic hits as 'Light My Fire', 'When The Music's Over','Riders On The Storm', 'The End' and many more. The singer, Willie, captures the attitude, look and voice of the late, great Jim Morrison. And the other band members have honed the other Doors members playing styles note for note. To achieve that authentic Sixties sound, the band use the very same instruments that members of the Doors originally used. These include a vintage Fender Rhodes Bass keyboard, a vintage Vox Continental keyboard and a vintage Gibson S.G guitar. They have wowed audiences all over Europe and the U.K, from Orkney to Berlin and back again, and have played - and filled - some of the most respected venues around. In short - they don't disappoint! .

 

The country’s best Bon Jovi tribute band are back, Con Jovi have reformed and revamped and pack the kind of punch the originals would be proud of.

 

Rarely can a musical artist claim to be a true innovator, a creator of their own genre, a revolutionary amongst a sea of sameness. Having invented the “cyber metal” sound, Fear Factory is one of those rare cases. Combining death metal with an industrial influence, even Fear Factory’s earliest sound was immediately distinguishable by Herrera’s intense machine-like drumming and Bell’s tremendous dual vocal style, which seemed to effortlessly switch between animalistic growls and clear, operatic tones. Fear Factory had set a new standard in extreme music, a standard they would continue to bear to this very day. Releasing record after record, the band have been relentless in their output and still maintain the quality of their music, constantly evolving and offering something new to their fans. Their second album Demanufacture saw them break into the top 100 album charts and a headline spot at Ozzfest. Throw into the mix their work on Soundtracks for movies like Saw, Mortal Kombat and Resident evil, showed Fear Factory as one of the premiere artists of the extreme music scene. Their fifth album in 2005, Transgression, saw them working with the same producer as Metallica, Korn and Alice In Chains.

 

Featuring headline act Captain Kennedy with support from Cara Cowen and Leeward Side.

 

Wildstylez (Joram Metekohy) is a hardstyle DJ from the Netherlands. He’s signed to The Prophet’s Scantraxx label, and currently releases productions with Headhunterz under the Scantraxx sublabel, Scantraxx Reloaded . At the time Wildstylez joined Scantraxx, he was a newcomer to the scene. After releasing tracks like Revenge , Pleasure and Muzic Or Noize , his star rose higher and higher. Together with Scantraxx colleague and friend Headhunterz , he released a complete album in 2008 under the name Project One . Besides releasing various hits, Wildstylez has performed at several well known dance events like Defqon.1 Festival, Q-Base, In Qontrol, Hard Bass and so on. He’s travelling all over Europe to do what he’s good at. Wildstylez is a force to be reckoned with!

 

DJ Format, a producer and DJ who hails from Southampton, makes no secret of his dislike of current hip-hop, thankfully we're spared the "bi**hes, hoes and Hennessy" rhymes of modern "urban" music. He distinguishes himself from many of his DJ colleagues by keeping the cutesiness and special effects to a minimum, leaving the focus where it should be--on the tunes he's selected and on his tastefully wielded turntablist technique. DJ Format returns to Belfast to play the Spring & Airbrake on Friday 16th July after selling the venue out last year.

 

After three critically acclaimed solo records, dozens of world tours and TV appearances, Jesse Malin found himself back in New York City questioning his next move. From his days fronting seminal hardcore trio Heart Attack and infamous glam punks D Generation, then seven years on the road as a solo artist, Malin had cultivated a devout fan base. He’d shared stages with everyone from The White Stripes to Counting Crows, The Hold Steady to Lucinda Williams, but felt like he was losing the plot. Malin contemplated going back to school, becoming a standup comedian or a Las Vegas wedding DJ, and even started work on a documentary film about DC hardcore Rastafarians The Bad Brains. For over a year he didn’t play or record. When asked by a Hollywood screenwriter to pen songs for a film about author J.D. Salinger, Malin — a fan of Catcher in the Rye and other Salinger works — traveled to Cornish, NH hoping to speak to the famous recluse. In typical punk-rock fashion, instead of getting the interview, Malin landed at the local precinct for trespassing and was released only after the cops watched his video duet with Bruce Springsteen for “Broken Radio” on YouTube and were convinced he was just a writer doing research. Though he never met Salinger (who passed away this past January), Malin made the most of the experience by writing “The Archer” and “Lonely at Heart”—two songs that would make him want to work again and become the basis for his new album. Over the summer of 2009, in the basement of Avenue A watering hole Hi-Fi, the songs came forth. Malin, with impresario Don DiLego, drummer Randy Schrager, guitarist Matt Hogan, and bassist/DJ Tommy USA, worked with his newly formed band to bash out an album’s worth of gritty anthems, and The St. Marks Social was born. A solid band, but one with an open door to Malin's community of musician friends - longtime partner in crime Ryan Adams, pop singer Mandy Moore, fellow label mate Brian Fallon, and former bandmates from D Generation Howie Pyro and Danny Sage - the Social is a group effort to keep the P.M.A. Says Malin, 'To me, rock 'n' roll is an exorcism that begins every night when the sun goes down, the music starts playing, and the spirits start flowing. It helps to say things in public over dirty microphones. It’s a way to spit out the poison'. When Jesse met producer Ted Hutt (Lucero, Flogging Molly, The Gaslight Anthem) one drunken night at a local bar, their talk of making a record fast, loose, and raw, was the beginning of Hutt’s quest to create a record that would encompass Malin’s roots and evolution—from hardcore thrasher to punk/folk singer-songwriter. The album’s basic tracks were laid in three days at Greenpoint, Brooklyn’s Mission Studios, and the rest at Sonic Youth’s Think Tank Studios in Hoboken, NJ. Filled with the characters Malin does best—messengers and misanthropes, hipsters and hypocrites—and as always, his constant themes of redemption, nightlife, heartbreak, and survival, LOVE IT TO LIFE—a sentiment taken from a ticket stub Joe Strummer autographed for Jesse—was built with desperate optimism that shouts in gang vocals that no matter how bad it gets, you’re never alone. LOVE IT TO LIFE will be in stores on April 27, 2010. Jesse Malin and The St. Marks Social will start a residency this month at the Bowery Electric in New York to get warmed up for a run of dates with label mates Gogol Bordello in April.

 

Robert Cray's This Time - the first studio album on singer-songwriter-guitarist. Cray's own imprint Nozzle Records, distributed by Vanguard Records - arrives at a vital juncture in the musician's career, marked by creative renewal and a key reunion with an old performing partner. The five-time Grammy Award winner summarized 35 years of mastery on the debut Nozzle release Live From Across the Pond (2006), an electrifying two-CD concert set drawn from a series of shows (opening for Eric Clapton) at London's Royal Albert Hall. When the time came to follow up that widely praised collection with a studio recording, Cray viewed it as an opportunity to move his sound in other directions. He found exactly what he was looking for by turning to one of his oldest friends and colleagues: bassist Richard Cousins, whose tenure with the Robert Cray Band began with its barnstorming regional origins in Eugene, Oregon, in 1974 and extended through 1991, encompassing such early high-water marks as Strong Persuader (1986) and Don't Be Afraid of the Dark (1988), both winners of the best contemporary blues performance Grammy. "I've known Richard for 40 years," Cray says."We go back to 1969, and we grew up in the same area together. We've always had a really good rapport together stage-wise. Richard and I have remained the best of friends ever since he departed way back in '91. I'd still see Richard, whether it was in the States or in Europe - where he still lives. He'd always come to see us at the gigs. We always remained close. We talked on the telephone all the time. 'It just so happened that last year, I wanted to make personnel changes in the band. So I asked Richard to come back.' Cousins' return to the Cray fold bonds him once again with keyboardist Jim Pugh, a cornerstone of the guitarist's group since 1989. In the hunt for a new drummer, Cray - with encouragement from Cousins - struck on a musician whose style and experience perfectly complemented his own: the road-tested Tony Braunagel, whose resume includes work with Bonnie Raitt (including her Grammy-winning Nick of Time and Luck of the Draw), Taj Mahal, Keb' Mo', and B.B. King. Cray recalls, 'I'd seen Tony work in a lot of different situations before. My first real opportunity to play with him was three years ago, when we did a benefit up in Portland, Oregon, for our friend Curtis Salgado. Tony was playing drums there, and Richard was there, too - they were the rhythm section. Richard was working really well with Tony, and they were kind of fronting the whole jam. It was great. I was talking to Richard after he'd rejoined the group, and I said, 'We need to find a drummer.' He just went, 'Tony!'" The refreshed lineup of Cray, Cousins, Pugh, and Braunagel came together at Santa Barbara Sound Design in Santa Barbara, California, to record what became This Time. Cray produced (though he notes, 'Every time I produce, it's like a communal effort'), with Don Smith engineering. Cray says of the sessions, 'I really looked forward to it -- to how Richard and I were going to gel together after having not played together for a long time, and to bringing Richard back to work with Jim, because we did all get a chance to work together for two years, before Richard left -- and then having Tony come in. 'Richard and Jim and myself have all known each other for a while, but when we added Tony to the mix, it was like, 'Hey, where you been?' We all get along really, really well. It was fun, and everybody brought something to the table. Tony's interpretation of what we were doing was just spot-on, and of course, with his background, all the music that he'd listened to and played coincided with the music we've listened to and played over the years. It was like the perfect hand in the glove.' All of the band members contributed fresh material to This Time. Cray brought in the title track, 'Chicken in the Kitchen,' 'I Can't Fail,' and 'Trouble and Pain,' and cowrote 'Forever Goodbye' with his wife Sue Turner-Cray. Pugh authored 'Love 2009' and 'To Be True.' Cousins and the Swiss soul/blues musician Hendrix Ackle collaborated on 'Truce.' And Braunagel and guitarist Johnnie Lee Schell co-authored 'That's What Keeps Me Rockin' As ever with Robert Cray's undefinable sound, the music on This Time remains stubbornly beyond category. He has been internationally admired as a stylist whose innovations have brought new life to the blues, and such punchy outings as 'Chicken in the Kitchen' and "That's What Keeps Me Rockin'" should satisfy the most demanding blues fans. But the new album's barrier-busting material - whether it's the soulful 'Love 2009' or the profound balladry of 'This Time' and 'Forever Goodbye' - demonstrate once again that attempting to slot Cray in a single genre is an exercise in futility. 'Blues is one of the foundations of our music, but it's not all that we play,' Cray says. 'When I first started playing guitar, I wanted to be George Harrison - that is, until I heard Jimi Hendrix. After that, I wanted to be Albert Collins and Buddy Guy and B.B. King. And then there are singers like O.V. Wright and Bobby Blue Bland. It's all mixed up in there.' He continues, 'Every time somebody asks me about where my music comes from, I give them five or six different directions - a little rock, soul, jazz, blues, a little gospel feel. Then there are some other things that maybe fall in there every once in a while, like a little Caribbean flavor or something. You just never know. I always attribute it to the music we grew up listening to, and the radio back in the '60s. It's pretty wide open. It's hard to put a tag on it.' Cray, who began 2009 with concert appearances in Brazil and Japan, will support This Time with shows around the country with his reconfigured band.

 

Some things are just meant to be. Thus it was that Ritzy Bryan and Rhydian Dafydd met at school and discovered their shared love of music. The pair, opinionated and deeply in love with the whole idea of being in a band, started to spend time at North Walian music mecca The Buckley Tivoli, gaining inspiration and experience from the procession of touring and local bands that took to the stage. With Ritzy's parents enormous, exhaustive record collection delivering an encyclopaedic library of popular music in all its forms the die was cast. Nevertheless, in an otherwise provincial, sleepy setting, itchy feet and a fleeing were inevitable; Ritzy to Washington DC and Rhydian to Manchester, where they enjoyed separate but strangely parallel journeys as singer songwriters. It was a single phone call that reunited them, this time they would write and record together. Back in North Wales a flurry of early recordings revealed a voice emerging; the beauty of their surroundings against the sadness of personal circumstances tugging conflictingly in their songs and selves. They decided to move, choosing London as their new home and a base for their live aspirations. With Matt Thomas on drums, a conjoint surrealist and raw, forceful drummer, The Joy Formidable thrived on the live front. Soundscape layers spiked by the nakedness of a 3-piece, gargantuan, clamorous bass and guitars that come in waves laid down a musical bed on which Ritzy’s voice could seethe and coo in equal measure. Little wonder that early shows gained the band a well deserved reputation as a band you had to see, pushing The Joy Formidable into the public consciousness from the very beginning. With a sound that melds the huge expanses of their native Mold countryside to the hectic nature of their new domicile, The Joy Formidable create a music that is by turns sublime and gothic, punctuating passages of sheer beauty with shards of dissonance and anger, a new loud quiet dynamic for a new decade. The move to London also determined a working ethos that survives to the present day. The band’s bedroom is a chrysalis that mutates daily from sleeping quarters, to studio, to workshop. It was here they recorded the singles Austere, Cradle and Whirring from their 8 track CD “A Balloon called Moaning" - a defiant release of optimism against their own heavy hearts - and it is here that new single, ‘Popinjay’ and the forthcoming debut album are being put together by the trio, independent of any outside influence. Having sold out multiple UK tours throughout 2009 and taken to the road in this country in support of the likes of Editors, this self contained band, recording studio, label and design company in one has also made their mark across the globe, touring Europe with The Temper Trap and visiting the US with Passion Pit, where support dates were supplemented by their first two headline US shows, both sold out and the subject of high praise amongst the cognoscenti of New York City and the US music scene. Now, The Joy Formidable return to home ground for their most extensive UK tour to date, including their largest ever show on these shores, at London’s Electric Ballroom. Already high on the list of bands to break through amongst those in the know in the first year of this new decade, The Joy Formidable continue to hold their futures firmly in their own hands. Like we say, some things are just meant to be.

 

The Harp Ice Cold Big Gig is getting back to its riffier roots with another three fantastic bands to get your teeth into. Local legends Black Bear Saloon are the sort of band that make you want to do a flying kick off a bus shelter. The band return to the Big Gig this time taking the top slot after an amazing year that saw them amaze at the Glasgowbury festival and astound with new releases. The band is cut from formidable cloth with its members coming from a list of previously well respected bands running the length of your arm. Lead singer Aaron Abernethy was also one of the principle architects of the incredibly successful Belfast for Haiti event as the band is further imbedded as bedrock of the Northern Ireland scene. For some time everyone has been talking about the Cahier Collection. A four strong vanguard of voracious rock with a live show that has stunned audiences throughout Northern Ireland's best venues. Critics have been calling them one of the best emerging bands in the country and shoveling superlatives at them at an exponential rate. Really not to be missed. Opening on the night are one of the most fascinating bands to break through in recent times - The Vires. The band secured a record deal with local label Audio Ill after beating off major competition in a province wide competition and the band are in the midst of recording their debut album. Their haunting and engaging music is led by one of the most unique vocal talents on scene as the band continue their accelerated journey to big big things. Black Bear Saloon, The Cahier Collection and The Vires appear at the Harp Ice Cold Big Gig on Friday May 28 in the Spring and Airbrake, admission £4. Drink promotions on the night.

 

Three bands compete for a chance to perform at this years Pride Party in Belfast on Saturday 31st July.

 

15 years since the release of any new material, FM's hugely anticipated album METROPOLIS, was released in March 2010. An album packed full of brand new, soon to be classic FM songs will see them propelled back to their rightful place as the darlings of the British melodic rock scene. Metropolis is a masterful showcase of this band's considerable talent. With 13 classic tracks and a running time of over 60 minutes the boys are definitely back. FM have announced a Belfast show

 

Having topped the charts in seven countries with her first single, the infamous internet hit 'I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker', and shifted a million copies of the ensuing LP, Scots-born Sandi Thom is officially the 47th biggest selling female of the 21st century. Late in 2009, Sandi was invited to tour the UK and Europe by new blues powerhouse Joe Bonamassa and the result is "Merchants And Thieves", a new album set for release in May 2010, that highlights Sandi's ability to diversify and explore deeper and more organic musical roots. 'As striking a musical reinvention as you're likely to witness this year. Upcoming album 'Merchants & Thieves' is now firmly entrenched on our must-hear list for 2010.' - Barry Nicholson, News Of The World.

 

Bloc Party singer Kele Okereke is set to release his first solo album called The Boxer. Released through Wichita / Polydor on June 21st it sees the enigmatic frontman push the boundaries of pop and electronica to boldly step out as a genuinely thrilling artist in his own right. With Bloc Party currently in hiatus, Kele had originally intended to walk away from music for a year. He began his sabbatical at the gym, learning to kick-box and settling into the flat he had just bought, something he refers to as 'the first grown up thing I had ever done.' He simply could not leave his creative impulses alone and booked some exploratory time in the EMI recording studios. 'It was just me and an engineer. I plugged in synths that I had no idea what they would do. I began programming drum beats, which I had never done before. It was completely back to the drawing board. It was exciting and terrifying. In most cases I sat down, pulled a drum beat out of nowhere and arranged stuff around that. This was as exciting to me as the first time I picked up a guitar.' He found being the sole decision maker around his musical direction surprisingly to his taste. 'The key for the sound of the record was to take things as harsh and as physical as I could make it. The reason for going there was that these are the sounds that make me the happiest in the world.' By the time he had written the freeform, cascading techno meltdown that constituted the second half of the song Rise, he had an emotional blueprint for what would become this, his first solo record, The Boxer. Kele found his natural ally recording in New York with XXXchange, the Brooklyn-based bedroom production prodigy that crafted the sound of the last Spank Rock record. Melting the distinctions between dance music and cerebral pop, with influences ranging from Gary Numan and Adam Ant to Michael Jackson, they've made a wild and fearless album marked by both its ambition and its sense of the new. First single to be taken from the album is Tenderoni and will be released on June 14th. Kele is confirmed to appear at a number of major festivals this summer, including Reading / Leeds, the Manchester Warehouse Project Festival and Ibiza Rocks. More festival appearances and headline club shows to be announced.

 

These Charming Men from Dublin Ireland were formed in 1995 and to this day continue to charm fans of The Smiths and Morrissey all around the globe with their finely tuned energetic and passionate live shows. These Charming Men have been playing live shows at the Annual Smiths/Morrissey Convention in Los Angeles since 2001 and were requested to appear in Morrissey's absence at the Fuji Rock Festival in Japan 2004 to play to an audience of some 35,000 people.

 

Paradise City Belfast Belfast's Only Old School Classic rock Club NIght, with DJ Monk. Where are you gonna find a tracklist that features the likes of Lee Aaron, Accept, AC/DC, Airbourne, Angel, Babylon Bombs, Backyard Babies, Black Crowes, Blackfoot, Black Sabbath, Blue Murder, Britney Spears, Britny Fox, Bullet Boys, Cherry Bombz, Children Of Bodom, Cinderella, Alice Cooper, Cowboy Prostitutes, Crank County Daredevils, Crazy Lixx, Crossfire, Damn Yankees, Death, Deep Purple, Def Leppard, Diamond Head, Disneyland After Dark, Dio, Dokken, Enuff Z Nuff, Exodus, Falling Red, Faster Pussycat, FM, Lita Ford, Great White, Gun, Guns N Roses, Hanoi Rocks, Hardcore Superstar, Hawkwind, Heart, H.E.A.T., Hellion, Helloween, Honeymoon Suite, Icon, Iron Maiden, Journey, Keel, Kings Of The Sun, Kiss, Kix, Krokus, L A Guns, Leatherwolf, Led Zeppelin, Johnny Lima, Lion, Lit, Little Angels, London, Loudness, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Machine Head, Magnum, Mama’s Boys, Megadeth, Metallica, Zodiac Mindwarp, Motley Crue, Motorhead, Nazareth, Ozzy, Pantera, Peer Gunt, Poison, Pretty Boy Floyd, Pretty Maids, Princess Pang, Queensryche, Quiet Riot, Quireboys, Rainbow, Rammstein, Ratt, Roxx Gang, Roxy Blue, Runaways, Saxon, Scorpions, Shy, Skid Row, Slaughter, Slayer, Smashed Gladys, Stage Dolls, Tesla, The Rods, Thin Lizzy, Thunder, Tigertailz, Tipsy Wit, TNT, Towers Of London, Treat, TSOL, Twisted Sister, Tygers Of Pan Tang, Ugly Kid Joe, Vain, Vader, Vamp, Vixen, Warrant, WASP, White Lion, White Sister, Whitesnake, Wig Wam, Wildhearts, Winger, Wrathchild, XYZ, Y&T, Rob Zombie, ZZ Top and much more in one fucking awesome night in one fucking awesome place? The awesome night is Thursday 6 May. The one awesome place is the Limelight. Monk returns to his spiritual rock 'n' roll home after an absence of almost two decades --- and is guaranteeing one thing - one awesome party!!!