Joiners Arms, Southampton
Entering the Joiners on a Sunday night after a sunshine drenched day, we head to the bar and bask in the chilled out vibe that seems to permeate the venue! Texan four piece The Sword are in town promoting their excellent concept album The Warp Riders!
First things first though and opening the shindig are Dendera from Portsmouth. From the sound of them these guys listen to a lot of Iron Maiden, which is no bad thing, but I would have liked to hear them put their own stamp down! They have the skills and ability to progress, so I for one will be keeping an ear out for some more original sounding Heavy Metal tunes!
With the crowd now warmed up (I’m not joking, it was sweltering in there!) The Gentlemen’s Pistols took to the stage and proceeded to blow everyone away with their unique brand of classic 70’s Hard Blues Rock. With hips-a-shaking and hair-a-flailing you couldn’t help but get sucked in to the rockin’ and rollin’ of songs like Widow Maker & Lying And Fooling. Definitely a band I’ll go out of my way to see again in the future!
When The Sword tread the Joiners boards even the walls are sweating! The anticipation was high, and these boys didn’t disappoint. Coming straight out of the traps and sounding like the bastard son of Black Sabbath and Kyuss, they proceeded to tear the Southampton audience a new one! Colossal planet-crushing riffs flattened the crowd as song after song hit like tidal waves of sonic awesomeness!
The set ends all too soon and as we filed out into the balmy night I noticed a lot of smiles around me, looks like I wasn’t the only one who dug it!
Set highlights for me were the excellent Tres Brujas, The Chronomancer I: Hubris, The Warp Riders and a sweet cover of Thin Lizzy’s Massacre!
Set list
Acheron/Unleashing the Orb
Tres Brujas
Arrows in the Dark
Barabel’s Blade
How Heavy This Axe
The Chronomancer I: Hubris
Freya
The Horned Goddess
Astraea’s Dream
The Warp Riders
Massacre
Tears of Fire
Winters Wolves
http://www.swordofdoom.com
http://www.myspace.com/gentlemanspistols
http://denderauk.wordpress.com/
Words, pictures, and videos by;
