Worcester Music Forum

Another week of cross-border action kicking off with a Sonic Titan (aka Kane Sumner) metal promotion at the Herdsman in Hereford. Power metal with melodic shuffles from Rebellow who are the rebranded Original Bondage featuring the number one axeman in the two counties Adam Huyton up front. A plethora of classy riffs and twiddles from the local classic-rockers.

'We haven't practiced for a while' said Jivestick's Dave - well you could have fooled me lads 'cause this was the best outing I've seen yet from the local up-and-coming grungers, with a nice bit of banter between the strictly-numerically-sequenced stoner numbers.

Great to see Jules of Johnny and the Outtakes, Holly of Ladybird and Mike of PaperScissorsRock fanzine - shame though to hear that Simon Denyer has taken a philosophical sabbatical from the music scene - hopefully for not too long though!

First of the out-of-towners were speed metallists Mondo Cada from Oxford

- who've got a vibrant Sabbathish-Silver Tequila overtone. Particularly appreciated the bottleneck guitar work - why don't we see more of that?

Headliners for the night were Brummy doom-rockers Aluna - who are apparently the UK's biggest shakers in this genre - which I will freely admit I'd never heard of until tonight! It's essentially goth-metal-rock with a psychedelic undercurrent - check out fanzines like Load Of Noise and Bad Acid for more info if this is your bag I couldn't stay to see them though - so I'll refer you to PSR! for what they thought about Aluna!

A great bottley backdrop at the Marrs Bar for the Zebedy Rays' album launch - the fourth on the Little Hellfire label along with AWWBLOT and Gamble Gamble - quality product! Late replacements for The Firing Irons were lively Redditch ska-popsters the Lipstick Gypsies. Haven't seen this sharp outfit for a while so an unexpected little treat to kick things off.

'Don't use my stage as a cloakroom Hickman' was the terse admonishment from Girls On Film's Pete Adams to the Zebedy Rays frontman after a momentary lapse - you've gotta know where to draw the line. A classy and bawdy set from the AWWBLOT spin-off - but was it a good idea to include a song written in 20 minutes a couple of days before along with 'He-Man'

and 'Living Dead' - well apparently the audience thought so

Crowd-pleasing jumping stuff from regular visitors Gravity Crisis from Birmingham with their emo-ish rocking set - particularly liked closing number 'Take The Medicine' - and they've been featured on Zane Lowe and Steve Lamaq's shows recently as well.

A superb packed house on the night - schmoozes to Dave and Joe of Expedestrian, Willis of Cape Of Good Hope and Dave of The Irony - shoulder to shoulder to cheer on Malvern's favourites the Zebedy Rays.

Their trademark pulsating drum-banging intro kicked off the tightest set I've yet clocked from jazz-rockers Adam, Danny and Josh. Guest appearances from Pete 'Mr Worcester' Adams and some added ska from Donns' saxophonist Hannah were an added bonus on top of the best live act doing the rounds - knock 'em dead at Nozstock guys!