Album Reviews - X Is Loaded - Raw Nerve (album/ Music For Nations) By Steve Rudd

This Bath-based band is one of the hottest and most exciting rock bands to really step-out in the past couple of years, blasting out with sky-scraping Emo-rock guitars, beguilingly soulful vocals (delivered by photogenic frontman Jake) and plenty of on-stage energy necessary to enthrall anyone who has ever had the luck to see them play live. After hell of a long wait, here comes their swaggering debut album, jacked to the nines with twelve scorching tunes spread stealthily over 45 life-enhancing minutes, with one of the finest anthems up first in Zero, that exhilaratingly rears and roars for all its worth.

Moody, melodic and magnificent in every respect, X is Loaded share a similar sense of explosive dynamism with Muse and - albeit to a slightly lesser extent - Bush, as dark guitar riffs and thumpingly strong drumbeats dominate their sound. Appropriately, their rock is raw and refreshing, with One More Razor's wailing riff preceding the much mellower Start Of Everything in which these guys manage to remind of The Dawn Parade, before they can hold back the sheer volume no longer and loud guitars and drums crash back into the equation.

Both their debut Laugh, Point & Wave single and the more recent Thirteen Days release are mightily presented back-to-back, before the title track itself in Raw Nerve bustles in as an epic and static-drenched masterpiece that exudes similar vibes to the music of Amplifier in its heaviest moments of glory. Having been produced by Chris Sheldon, who has previously produced the likes of Feeder, all the songs are melodic in their own rights, but none as much as Last Chance - a gloriously love-obsessed indie-pop-rock anthem that's been knocking around a few years now since it first appeared when Jake used to front a lesser-known but genuinely fantastic band called Tenner.

Still, for the most-park, X is Loaded's music is damn heavy, as Bleeding The Shapes vibrantly testifies, streaked with passionate nu-metal vibes, before Fallout finishes the album in style. Having toured and toured and toured over the past year, I really do hope that this album brings them the fame and fortune (relatively speaking) that they have worked so hard for. Fittingly, X is Loaded deserve to be just that. (5/5) www.xisloaded.com Release Date: July 5th 2004.

Album Reviews - Salako - The Story Of Our Life So Far By Nick Quantrill
	Oh, the frustration of being a music fan. After whining long and hard about how recent years have been a lean period for good music and searching high and low for things for something to excite my ears, it came as somewhat of a surprise to find it lurking under my nose in Hull. Read more...

Album Reviews - The Trailers - From The Top - 7 track EP - By the Sea By Steve Rudd
	The DIY punk ethic is still alive and kicking, even down the East Coast of England in the semi-sunny seaside town of Bridlington. While there aren't many great bands kicking-out of Bridlington at the moment (save for the mighty Goth-Rock spectacular that is Torso Horse) Read more...

Album Reviews - Blue Sand - Changed Names and Slaves EP By Michelle Dee
	I was given the enigmatically titled Blue Sand EP and after a couple of hearings I was hooked. Blue Sand have played the Linnet and Lark on Princes Avenue and the newly refurbished Ringside venue in recent weeks. The title track has a touch of early Placebo Read more...

Album Reviews - The Alarm - In The Poppyfields (12-track album - Snapper Music - 2004) By Steve Rudd
	25 years down the punk-rock 'n' roll line and The Alarm - assembled around the ever-photogenic mainman Mike Peters - is still going strong. In fact, the Cardiff-based Alarm's ringing louder than ever on the back of some fabulous media exposure that vaulted right around the world and back because of the fact that Mike craftily decided Read more...

Album Reviews - CD Reviews - Emma Rugg - When I Looked at You (single) By Steve Rudd
	Still riding high on the uber-successful crest of her astounding debut album Isolated Impression, Emma's first glimmer of new work comes in the form of this exceptional song. On the back of her album, Emma ventured Stateside to record a couple of songs with Michigan songwriter Read more...

Album Reviews - Cracktown - Songs in the Key of Fuck Off (Pure West) By Steve Rudd - With the Knighthood Video!
	This gloriously outspoken Hull-based outfit revolves around the musical and lyrical talents of, err.. Silver Fox and King Rat?!?!!!!! Mmm - so says the CD cover! I don't honestly know why the two guys who shield their identities under the murky guise of Cracktown don't want their Read more...

Album Reviews - Ricky - The Summer Sun Still Echoes By Nick Quantrill
	Why exactly is there a review of a band from Portsmouth on a website about Hull you're probably thinking? I could talk about the similarities between the two cities as a reason, well, the naval traditions of them. I think I still feel deprived that my only school trip whilst at Hull Trinity House was a rather tedious Read more...

Album Reviews - The Uncle Devil Show - A Terrible Beauty (P3 Music) By Steve Rudd
	The Uncle Devil Show is actually a trio of very experienced and hugely respected musicians, all three of them Scottish. Just like ex-Pulp frontman Jarvis Cocker has recently emerged from the dark with an identity crisis on his part to play in the Cocker-disguised Relaxed Muscle incarnation, ex-Del Amitri frontman Justin Currie is one of the prime components of this new band (who's now ominously known as Jason Barr), who's Read more...

Album Reviews - Todd Rundgren - Liars (Sanctuary Records) By Steve Rudd
	All of these songs are about a paucity of truth. At first they may seem to be about other things, but that is just a reflection of how much dishonesty we have accepted in our daily lives. We are raised from birth to believe things that cannot be proven or that are plainly not true. People will often brag of their honesty, when there is so much they have simply chosen to ignore or leave Read more...