Artists:  Fury UK & Babylon Fire

Venue: Trillians Rock Bar, Newcastle  

Date: 22nd October 2010   

Well just two weeks after rocking out the O2 Academy in support of the mighty Y&T, Manchester’s Fury UK headed out on the road again, this time headlining their own tour in support of their excellent new album ‘A Way Of Life’.  So as soon as they said they would be returning to Newcastle, we like many others made a bee-line to Trillians Rock Bar for tonight to see the band perform live again.

We arrived to an already packed Trillians and saw many of the same faces that had been around at the Y&T show a few weeks earlier.  There was also a few familiar faces that were present at this very same venue when we first caught the band live in action as they supported Diamond Head.  Back then lead singer / guitarist Chris Appleton was a fresh young thing who quite literally blew us away with his excellent guitar work.

Now, before the main event it was the job of the guest band to get the night underway, again a band from the Greater Manchester area.  Babylon Fire are a band who we first caught live earlier this year at the legendary S.O.S. Festival in Radcliffe, Manchester. A festival at which Fury UK were also playing.

The band showed their metal credentials well and truly tonight as Mark D and the rest of the guys powered through a set that took no prisoners.

Opening up their account with ‘Freight Train’ and then ‘New Day’, it was clear that the band had come to kick some serious ass tonight.  The full on metal just kept coming with great songs like ‘The Day The Angels Died’ and ‘Strength’ beating the crowd into submission.  Even the bands hard edged cover of Iron Maidens 'Phantom Of The Opera' went down a storm with all the metal heads in tonight.

Like an out of control roller-coaster the band rocked the place loud and proud before rounding off a great set of pure no-nonsense metal with ‘Clarion and the show stopping closer ‘Rise Through Babylon’. 

With the amount of Fury UK t-shirts on display in the crowd tonight it was easy to see that the band have built up a massive following here in Newcastle, and why not these guys really know how to rock and really went to town (or should that be toon?) with their set here tonight.  They'd promised a longer set at the Y&T show and tonight they delivered it with well over an hour of pure riff laden no frills Heavy Metal.

The set got underway with ‘I See Red’, the opening track from the band's new album ‘A Way Of Life’.  A storming start to the set with Luke firing out the chunky bass lines while Martin simply set about destroying the skins on his drums, all the while with Chris throwing out lick after lick as well as taking up the mike duties.

There was no time for idol chit chat as the band kept the momentum going with ‘Fall From Grace’ and 'Alien Skies' again taken from the new album, before rolling back time for the superb ‘Game Over’ from the bands ‘VR’ album.

Keeping with the 'VR' the melody rich metal of ‘The Hostage’ fires out from the power trio, who I must say deserve the big stage treatment, never mind the Big Four metal acts of Metallica, Slayer, Anthrax and Megadeth, come see the big three Chris, Luke and Martin!

The titanic metal just keeps on coming as it's back to the new album for the excellent ‘Nemesis’, a one for the traditional metalheads with grinding riffs built round a massive rhythm section.  Then it's Chris who made the six string light up with the excellent ‘The Saviour’, before the band treat us to mellower but equally excellent tones of ‘Athena’.

Chris then dedicated the next song “to all the true metal fans in tonight” ... “because we are brothers” ... and what else could follow but ‘The Brotherhood’.  Always the perfect showmen, the band leave the best to last with two mighty metal anthems.  First up it's ‘Call To Arms’, a song that they had to leave off their set during the recent Y&T show, but Chris promised it would be played tonight and play it they did.

The set was then rounded off with what I can only describe as the best Heave Metal track in recent years, the sublime ‘Death By Lightning’.  This is the band's party piece, a show stopping frenzy of fiery guitar licks, an earth shattering bass and drum back-beat, this one really gets the crowd going and wraps up another great set by a band that I have high regard for.  If any band deserve to be playing the big metal festivals next year then it should be Fury UK, because these guys have metal flowing through their veins and are Britain’s finest Heavy Metal band around at the moment.

 

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