Review by Ben Connolly
Boldness is not generally an adjective jumping to mind when you think of Kiwi band Shihad. With its skinny black-jeans clad legs planted firmly in the safe melodic-tinged rock scene pushed forth as the genre de jour of the late 90s and early 00s, you’d hardly seek out their albums to push boundaries or explore sonic adventures. Even more so in the past few years, where they’ve rotated around the all-too-familiar downward spiral of record-promote-tour-hope for relevance-rinse-repeat: it’s hardly a recipe for the cutting edge.
There is, however, an impressive boldness with the simple honesty with which they’ve approached their career crossroads moment: shunning the best-ofs and karaoke tour of their past glories in favour of a 38-song full career retrospective (a completist’s wet dream), a fly-on-the-wall cinema doco exposing the bands lowest moment of changing their name in a doomed attempt to storm the US market, and topping it all off with a solid live whip-around aimed squarely at the true believers.
Continue reading Live Review: Shihad @ The Hi-Fi, Melbourne – 6 September 2012
It’s been a long time coming for fans of Finnish band Apocalyptica to finally catch the band on Australian soil for the first time in their 16+ year career – and it was well worth the wait.
There is little more satisfying on a Sunday evening than experiencing some really top-notch live music, and the show put on by Kate Miller-Heidke and The Beards at Brisbane’s Hi-Fi last night did more than fill this need. Theatrical, funny, poignant and breathtaking, the two acts complemented each other perfectly to create an evening of bar-raising, quality music memories.
Thursday night saw the return of SLASH to our shores as he kicked off his Apocalyptic Love Australian tour.
With the annual Splendour in the Grass festival letting loose in Bryon Bay, the sideshow circus around the country was in full swing. Co-headlining Splendour was the infamous