“Worlds Apart” is the first album from a new collaboration between singers Russell Allen and Anette Olzon and it was released on 6th March via Frontiers Music. Another key element in the package is multi instrumentalist and producer Magnus Karlsson (who was my guest on the Show last October). Together those three have delivered a great melodic metal album – hardly surprising really, given the calibre of the artists involved. The album’s title track was included on the Friday NI Rocks Show during January and the track “Never Die” the following month.
Read more: NI ROCKS Recommends "Worlds Apart" by ALLEN / OLZON
“Damon’s Rage” is the sixth solo album from former Silent Rage front-man Jesse Damon. It was released on 28th February by AOR Heaven. The album is very much a two man show with Paul Sabu doing the production as playing bass and keyboards, performing backing vocals and doing the drum programming. Jesse Damon plays lead and rhythm guitar as well as doing lead and backing vocals. The track “Love Gone Wild” was included on the Friday NI Rocks Show back in January.
Read more: NI ROCKS Recommends "Damon's Rage" by JESSE DAMON
There are two NI Rocks Shows uploaded each week on Rock Radio NI. These are the playlists for those shows for the month of March – all of which are still available from the On Demand Player. There are tracks by around 150 different artists on the Shows this month. Playlists for February were published previously and these Shows are also available via the On Demand Player – http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/news/rrni-updates/3736-ni-rocks-playlists-for-february-2020.html
This month the Friday NI Rocks Show included interviews with Chris Appleton from Absolva and Greg Fraser from Storm Force and Brighton Rock. All interviews can be found here - http://www.rockradioni.co.uk/interviews.html. There was also a special promo feature/interview with Code Orange to coincide with a new album release.
Guitarist Gus G will be known to many as Ozzy Osbourne’s guitarist for eight years, but long before he joined up with Ozzy he started a band called Firewind. On 15th May that band releases a new album through AFM Records simply called “Firewind”. If you include a 1998 demo release, it is the tenth studio album to be released by Firewind. Over the past twenty years Gus G has also released an album with Ozzy, three solo albums, three albums with Dream Evil, three albums with Mystic Propecy and two albums with Nightrage; as well as contributing to numerous others.
I recorded an interview with Gus on 3rd April and we chatted about Firewind and the new album, as well as the current Coronavirus crisis, his solo work, a potential instrumental album and much more.
That interview was originally broadcast on the Friday NI Rocks Show on 10th April, but at that point we could only play one track from the new album. It was repeated again on 15th May; this time with three tracks from the new album. The latter Show is now available from our MixCloud page - https://www.mixcloud.com/NIRocks/interview-with-guitarist-gus-g-from-firewind-ozzy-osbourne-etc-15th-may-2020/