There are two NI Rocks Shows uploaded each week on Rock Radio NI. These are the playlists for those Shows for the month of February 2025 – all of which are still available from the On Demand Player. There are tracks by around 170 different artists on the Shows this month.
Playlists for January were published previously and those Shows are also still available via the On Demand Player - https://www.rockradioni.co.uk/news/rrni-updates/3923-ni-rocks-playlists-for-january-2025
There were new interviews with Josh Hamler from Shaman’s Harvest and Francesco Marras from Tygers of Pan Tang & Screaming Shadows this month.
There were also special promo features with Cristina Scabbia from Lacuna Coil, Jesse Leach from Killswitch Engage, Tobias Sammet from Avantasia and Eric Bass (from Shinedown) – all talking about their new albums.
All of our previous interviews can be found here - http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/interviews.html and on the NI Rocks MixCloud page as well - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/ .
There are also monthly Spotify playlists for the Friday NI Rocks Show which feature most of the tracks from each Show that month.
The “NI Rocks Recommends” feature on the Rock Radio NI website covered new releases from Thundermother, Juliet’s Not Dead, Crazy Lixx, XIII Doors, Francesco Marras, Avantasia and Robin McAuley.
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A regular recap highlighting some of my favourite album releases each month. I don’t do “reviews” – this is simply a few words about the albums that appeal to me and about the artists releasing them. Tracks from these albums will have been featured on the Friday NI Rocks Shows over the past few months. This month we focus on new albums from Thundermother, Juliet’s Not Dead, Crazy Lixx, XIII Doors, Francesco Marras, Avantasia and Robin McAuley.
Read more: NI ROCKS Recommends - Album Releases in FEBRUARY 2025
Francesco Marras will probably be best known to many as the current guitarist in NWOBHM legends Tygers of Pan Tang or in his own band Screaming Shadows. However, he also has a career as a solo artist, taking on the role of lead vocalist as well as guitarist. His latest solo album, “Out of the Fire”, was released on 21st February and it features guest vocalists on four tracks alongside the six tracks Francesco sings on. I spoke to Francesco on Zoom on 25th February and we talked about the new album, Screaming Shadows, Tygers of Pan Tang, his other projects and future plans. You can hear that interview on the Friday NI Rocks Show for 28th February.
The interview will be uploaded to our MixCloud page soon and will be available to read here shortly.
Back in October we shared the announcement about the launch of the BEL-AOR ROCKS Festival in Belfast in May (https://www.rockradioni.co.uk/news/local-rock-news/3915-bel-aor-rocks-the-ultimate-aor-experience-arrives-in-belfast-this-coming-may ). More bands were announced in November and further acts were announced last week. You can check out the press release below. This is definitely an event you will not want to miss!!
Read more: More Artists Announced for BEL-AOR ROCKS Festival in MAY 2025