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Author Spenny

It is now a new decade, and the last time my Ave Noctum bio was updated, it was 2014. So much has changed since then, not least my time ravaged hulk having reached its half century. Vinyl has gone from being a thing of memory to a thing for the trendy and hip (but try going for a walk with that stereo in your pocket!), and tapes have gone from being a best forgotten “fragile”, in every sense of the word, memory, to the most kvlt of the kvlt and grimm offering! What has not changed, however, is my dedication to hard rock and heavy metal. Indeed, my formative years were saturated by the likes of Cream, Deep Purple, Queen, Pink Floyd, Black Sabbath, Genesis, Yes, and their ilk, as well as healthy chunks of Motown on the turntable that was the pre-internet stereophonic centre for entertainment in my mother's 70's single parent household, and my first “concert of choice” (I exclude some I was taken to/performed in against my will) was Motörhead in 1984 in Manchester. However, after living through the heyday of thrash when the “Big Four” were young and hungry, I still revel in the new generations of musicians who rally against the written by committee and autotuned blandness of modern popular music. Every couple of years the popular press features articles about “the death of rock”, whilst lauding the latest autotuned flash in the pan act, and then does a volte face to promote a short lived NME bait guitar act, but the fact is that metal and hard rock lives, and indeed thrives, below the radar of popular consciousness, and I, like my fellow Ave Noctum scribes, revel in that world. So, keep reading, keep supporting the scene you love by buying the music, purchasing merch, and going to the shows, and here's to another decade of excellent music that sticks a stiffly raised middle finger in the direction of popular opinion.

Oakfarm – Oakfarm (Pink Tank Records)

If you’ve ever been foolish enough to read more than one review with my name attached here on Ave Noctum, you’ll be aware I’m a big champion of the retro-rock scene, a movement that refuses to go away and provides… Continue Reading →

Saturday Night Satan – All Things Black (Made of Stone Recordings)

Despite the near absence from popular media, the realm of Metal is a vast sonic landscape, stretching across many countries, and many sounds and styles. Under the umbrella of the title are found everything from the most guttural of Nordic… Continue Reading →

White Dog – Double Dog Dare (Rise Above Records)

Readers of Ave Noctum, I believe the year of production for this long lost album is in fact 1970, and to put it in context the “policing action” raging in Vietnam and South East Asia is grabbing headlines in the… Continue Reading →

Saturnalia Temple – Paradigm Call (Listenable Records)

Part of the job of the editor for this fine site that you are reading is to ensure that the right reviewer gets the right music so the band gets a fair review, and the listener knows where to spend… Continue Reading →

Lucifer – Lucifer V (Nuclear Blast)

First review of the year for me, and well, I think 2024 is going to have to work impossibly hard to produce enough albums to force this belter out of my best of the year list. Why is that, I… Continue Reading →

Green Lung – This Heathen Land (Nuclear Blast)

It is now 2023 and Green Lung are about to release their third album in four short years. Now on Nuclear Blast, and with many of the dates on their forthcoming UK show sold out or upgraded to larger venues,… Continue Reading →

Dee Calhoun – Old Scratch Comes to Appalachia (Argonauta Records)

I imagine that like many folks who visit Ave Noctum, I would not describe myself as much of a Country music fan. The main reason is that the majority of music given that title that the public gets exposed to… Continue Reading →

Graveyard – 6 (Nuclear Blast)

If, for some reason, you decided to dive back in time through some of my older reviews, and heaven knows why you would, you’d have seen me use phrases like “a new wave of retro rock” and variations on that… Continue Reading →

Interview – Solar Sons

Dundee is hardly a city that immediately leaps to mind when thinking of classic rock and metal. Indeed, it is hardly on the tour schedule of any major acts, and the Caird Hall that once hosted the likes of Hawkwind,… Continue Reading →

Solar Sons – Another Dimension (S/R)

Ave Noctum is a site that very much dwells amongst the denizens of the underground scene, revelling in the music that flies below the radar of much of the metal media, let alone the mainstream, with submissions for review from… Continue Reading →

Hands of Orlac – Hebetudo Mentis (Terror From Hell Records)

Hands of Orlac are not an easy band to research. Put the name into a search engine, and what will pop up time and again will be references to the original 1920 book, the precurser of modern body horror, the… Continue Reading →

Godthrymm – Distortions (Profound Lore)

Sometimes life would be so much easier if things were just put into simple pigeon holes, a statement that applies to all aspects of life, let alone music, and its assorted subgenres. Maybe there was a long lost halycon past… Continue Reading →

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