Nuggets - 25 May 2007

Various - Lost & Found compilation
By Jeremy Hodges
If this is the cream of British folk music then New Noise wants out. With their first compilation, Invisible Hands Music have assembled a gaggle of the most overrated folk (we use the term very loosely) artists to have ever been let near a microphone. The terminally dreary Nerina Pallot, the relentlessly grim Tom McRae and the frankly pointless Martha Tilston all crop up in an album that labours under its own indifference. British folk music has some supremely talented musicians young and old none of whom appear here. To deign to label this watered-down pap as folk is cruelly unfair to all those who’ve gone before.

Brotherly - One Sweet Life
By Charlotte Otter
With smooth Brazilian samba and funk grooves, heady soulful singing and deliciously smooth singing, you would think that the Leeds-based Brotherly were the bomb; and that’s before you mention that Giles Peterson, king of obscure jazz and soul acts, is a fan. So why does it feel so... blah? The singing is note perfect but utterly indistinctive, the beats and melodies leave you feeling cold and the whole album just blends into nothingness, with little to differentiate between the distinctly unexciting songs.

Cephalic Carnage - Xenosapien
By Nadeem Ali
Never has there been a more appropriately named band than Cephalic Carnage. Their aural cacophony is complete carnage, in the best possible way. ‘Xenosapien’ offers us a far out take on experimental metal that defines the word excessive. Its excesses take in grind, doom, jazz and far out spacey arty blistering noise-rock. It is always heavy and it is always intense. ‘Touched By An Angel’ is fast and furious grindcore, ‘Molting’ is beautifully depraved death metal and ‘G.lobal O.verhaul D.evice’ encompasses all the band’s influences in six minutes of unbelievably genre defying genius. Cephalic Carnage match metal muscle with brains and subtlety without wimping out to so-called maturity.

Turisas – The Varangian Way
By Jeremy Hodges
Viking metal, think Lordi but with horns and fur coats, from the newly-crowned Finnish rock gods. In Turisas, we have another cartoon metal band who do nothing but compound the theory that Scandinavian metal is repellent in every way. (Nice sweeping generalisation there Hodges! - Ed) Having taken much of their influence from Finnish folk tales, the album is a series of sea shanties with wailing guitars and pounding drums that rapes and pillages your ears from beginning to end. According to Warlord Nygarn, chieftan songwriter, Turisas actually believe in what they’re doing. Shame, because we don’t.

Sonata Arctica - Unia
By Jennifer Perkin
Power metal is not to be dabbled in; it is a genre forever stuck in  the 80s and like many things from that decade, you have to have either a strong sense of irony or no sense of it at all to appreciate it. For all the big hair and leather accessories conjured by the squealing guitars on 'Unia'; the cheesy vocals and dated keyboards bring it closer to Richard Marx than Slayer. The bands singer Tony Kakko describes the album as "soul food" but you probably have to be Finnish (And again! - Ed) to crave this kind of spiritual nourishment - the single 'Paid In Full' has just gone number one in their homeland. 

Lo Fi Fnk – Boylife
By Charlotte Otter
Take a drum machine, atmospheric smoke and lycra. Add in camp Swedish vocals, 80s synths and some beats that get your hips shaking. Mix together for about twenty seconds before adding laser blips, keyboards and a dash of handclaps for good measure. Leave to simmer for half an hour before pouring into a disco ball to set. Sprinkle on some glitter and a little side-step action and post to Moshi Moshi, who will love it so much they’ll call the result ‘Boylife’ by Lo-Fi-Fnk. Follow up by putting on your sunglasses and plump up your asymmetric haircut as 80s disco beats are back and this time with attitude.