English band Absolva released their fifth studio album, “Side By Side”, through Rocksector Records on 17th April. Ahead of the release of that album I had the opportunity to chat with singer and guitarist Chris Appleton about Absolva, the album and being part of Blaze Bayley’s band. We chatted via Skype on 27th February and you can hear that interview, along with four tracks from the new Absolva album and one from the new Blaze Bayley album on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 6th March. It was also repeated on the Show on 17th April, but can now be found on our MixCloud page - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-chris-appleton-from-absolva-6th-march-2020/
Read more: NI ROCKS Interview with CHRIS APPLETON from ABSOLVA
Dutch symphonic metal band Delain released their sixth studio album, “Apocalypse & Chill”, through Napalm Records on 7th February. It has been almost four years since the release of the last studio album in 2016, although the EP “Hunter’s Moon” had been released in February 2019. The Friday NI Rocks Show on 7th February included a promotional interview that had been recorded by the band’s founding member Martijn Westerholt. The tracks “Burning Bridges” and “One Second” have also been featured on the Show in recent weeks.
Read more: NI ROCKS Recommends "Apocalypse & Chill" by DELAIN
“Peach” is the debut album from English band Gorilla Riot and it was released on 31st January through Off Yer Rock Recordings. The band formed in 2013 and released four EPs between 2014 and 2018. Over the past few years they have toured with a number of artists, played in Europe and featured on some of the big-name festivals such as Ramblin Man and Download. The track “Still Doing Time” was included on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 28th February.
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 – all of which are still available from the On Demand Player. There are tracks by around 130 different artists on the Shows this month. Playlists for January were published previously and these Shows are also available via the On Demand Player – http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/news/rrni-updates/3722-ni-rocks-playlists-for-january-2020.html
This month the Friday NI Rocks Show included interviews with Doug Aldrich (Revolution Saints, Burning Rain and The Dead Daisies) and Jeff Pilson (Black Swan and Foreigner). All interviews can be found here - http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/interviews.html. There were also special promo features/interviews with Delain and Biff Byford this month to coincide with album releases.