SteveXFR

High on Fire at The Fleece on Sunday night. It's going to be LOUD and heavy. I'm not sure Matt Pike's wall of Orange amps will even fit in the building let alone on the stage

I really like it there. It's 10 minutes walk from home, the beer is great and the sound is excellent. I've seen loads of great bands there including White Lies, Airborne, Damned, Pigs x7, The Editors The Stranglers, The Skints, Dreadzone, Zion Train and loads of others. Pretty amazing for a small town venue. The PA in there came from the West Holts stage at Glastonbury so it's more than up to the job.

I forgot about them. Good band

I got two emails within about 10 minutes from my local small live music venue. The first announcing Paul McCartney is playing there tomorrow night. The second to say it's sold out. Same venue that Foo Fighters played their Glastonbury warm up. They do manage to punch above their weight for an old cattle market.

Cemetery sex - Doyle Wolfgang Von Frankenstein

This morning Killing Joke are drowning out the sound of road works right outside our house.

Love like blood - Killing Joke

In fairness to the guitarist, he's far from flash. His solos are short, to the point and he doesn't use any fancy tricks. He's even got a smaller pedal board than me and mine is tiny (just ask Mrs XFR)

F**kin up - Neil Young

So have I. When I got home and saw the TV coverage, it was nothing like the actual experience I had. The biggest problem by far though is the risk of being effected by the horrors of Coldplay.

I've been to quite a few Glastonbury festivals and what they show on TV is always the extremes. I've been there wet years and seen the TV crews filming the very worst spot on site which is nothing like the majority of the site. There's always shade somewhere when it's sunny and an endless supply of free water. The crowds can be pretty extreme at the pyramid stage but I've always found better music and much more bearable crowds at the smaller stages. It's not for everyone but don't believe what you see on TV and in the papers, journalists like to sensationalise a bit.

Our style is heavy metal with a lot of grunge influences. Line up is lead, rhythm, drums and bass. Singer is yet to be recruited. Drummer is pretty sensible, he wants to stay out of the way for the solo with just a couple fills and not too heavy on the ride. Just me and rhythm can't quite work out what we're doing.

I'll see if I can cut out the solo from the track. I'd rather not hear examples, I know I'll end up too close to one of the examples and then it's not really my idea. I'd prefer pointers in the right direction.

Egg raid on mojo - Beastie Boys

I'm having a bit of trouble and hoping to get some tips. I can generally find a groove behind a guitar solo but our guitarist has just come up with an awesome heavy solo which isn't leaving me any space so I have to fit behind him rather than fill the spaces. I'm just not finding a groove but it must be there. Any tips for working around a solo would be useful.

Bloodmoon by Chelsea Wolf / Converge is a favourite.

I've found quite a few and many are to suit the more discerning metal head but there's one with a wider appeal who stand our, Hey Colossus. My favourite of their songs is The Mirror which features vocals by Mark Lanegan on the Dances / Curses album.

Body Farm - Cattle Decapitation

Benzin - Rammstein

Shellfish - Brittany Spears

Excellent firing! He probably would have kept threatening to leave for the next ten years.

Walk - Pantera

It's not me, it's you.

We're advertising for a heavy metal vocalist at the moment and I got an email this morning for someone who was interested. Turns out I saw his last band quite recently and he was bloody awful. Excuses were made as to why he might not be suitable (I didn't want to tell him he's crap). It wasn't easy to come up with convincing excuses on the spot and I think they were fairly crap.

Works for me every time. That and informing them that I'm a love albatross