A regular feature highlighting some of the best album releases each month. I don’t do album “reviews” – this is simply a personal recommendation to check out an album - just a few words about the albums that appeal to me and about the artists releasing them. These will also be albums from which I’ll have been playing tracks on the Friday NI Rocks Shows recently. This month there will be albums from Jeff Scott Soto, Halestorm, the Graham Bonnet Band, The Big Deal, Junkyard Drive, Skills, Lonerider and Last Temptation.
Californian rock band Rival Sons tour the UK and Europe during June and July and make a return to the Limelight in Belfast on 1st July. They are supported on the UK and Ireland dates by another Californian band – Dirty Honey. The tour celebrates the tenth anniversary of the release of the Rival Sons album “Pressure & Time” in 2011 and the band will be playing that album in full. I had the opportunity to chat with guitarist Scott Holiday on 25th May and we talked for around 30 minutes about the tour, “Pressure & Time”, a new album and much more. That interview and six tracks by Rival Sons was on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 27th May. An edited version with four tracks is now available from our MixCloud page -
https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-scott-holiday-from-rival-sons-on-the-friday-ni-rocks-show-27th-may-2022-edited/
Read more: NI ROCKS Interview with SCOTT HOLIDAY from RIVAL SONS
There are two NI Rocks Shows uploaded each week on Rock Radio NI. These are the playlists for those Shows for the month of April – all of which are still available from the On Demand Player. There are tracks by around 160 different artists on the Shows this month. There are also monthly Spotify playlists for the Friday NI Rocks Show featuring most of the tracks from each Show that month.
Playlists for March were published previously and most of those Shows are also available via the On Demand Player – http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/news/rrni-updates/3839-ni-rocks-playlists-for-march-2022
There was a new interview with former Kansas frontman John Elefante on the Friday NI Rocks Show this month – talking about his new solo album. The Show also included special promo features with Halestorm and Reef.
All 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/ .
The “NI Rocks Recommends” feature for April includes album releases by Dare, Riot Act, Black Swan, Treat, Nazareth, Ronnie Romero, Udo Dirkschneider and Stone Broken. Recommendations for a few releases from 29th April still need to be posted.
Into May we go with the 75th show which has a great mix of all things Hard Rock, Grindcore, Prog Metal and everything in between. This month we are moving into Festival season and will be playing some of the great bands that have at last returned to the live arena and some that will soon be saying their farewells. As promised below is the tracklist for show number 74.
Skyforger - When Usins Rides
Trouble - End of My Daze
Debridement - Dissolved in Acid
Regurgitate - Devoured By Ghouls
Deep Wound - Deep Wound
Dinosaur Jnr - No bones
Slauter Xstroyes - City of Ciratel
King Crimson - Red
Eric Wagner - Isolation
The Saints - Nights in Venice
Sleep - The Clarity
OM - State of Non Return
Dr Feelgood - Milk and Alcohol
Rose Tattoo - Rock N Roll Outlaw
Manes - Ende