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The Day of the Crystal King music video;
Coming Soon:
Bitter Sweet Agony Video:Out NowThe official review of that album, coutesy of Chris Skoyles;
Without Motive – Live and Loving It
Cast your minds back, if you will, to earlier this year. In March to be exact, when we ranted and raved about a great new bunch of metal warriors we’d caught live in Preston by the name of Without Motive.
Truth be told, we enjoyed that night so much that we just had to relive it, and, as soon as was humanly possible, got our hands on ‘Live and Loving It’, the band’s new live EP partly recorded back on that storming night of musical madness in March, and partly recorded at a second gig a month later.
Kicking off with an epic intro unashamedly pinched from European favourites Manowar, things start properly with ‘Fire of the Phoenix’, a rough and trouble rocker that mixes serrated riffs with a an impassioned, wailing vocal from frontman Liam Armstead and solos that threaten to escalate into dramatic proportions before swirling back down and all over the show.
And as track two, the viciously venomous ‘Sharp Side of the Knife’, lets loose with a maelstrom of metal monomania it serves as a great reminder of the intensity and insanity that makes up Without Motive’s live performance.
If we had to pick favourites, we’d probably go for ‘Bitter Sweet Agony’, which gets underway with a screeching, piercing solo that lashes about like some untamed beast before easing into a skewed groove and going like the clappers towards a climatic finale, slowing down only slightly for a monolithic breakdown and build up part way through.
Yet as the EP continues, it’s clear that there’s much more to be enjoyed. Take ‘In The Dark’ for example. Perhaps far more accessible than anything we’ve heard so far, and with a haunting chorus the lyrics of which we probably couldn’t get away with printing here, it comes across like the sort of thing you might imagine Iron Maiden sounding like if they were a bit less pristine and polished. Heck, listening to this, you can almost imagine the Without Motive clan stalking an gargantuan stage with some big mummified-skeleton type thing looming in the background ala Bruce Dickinson & Co.
Seven tracks down, and one to go, this blistering collection of live performances finally wraps up nicely with a mammoth fifteen minute opus apparently titled after some fat bloke from your history text books with a penchant for getting married.
Still reminding us much of Iron Maiden in the power, force and sheer weight thrown behind this decedent monster of a tune, you hardly realise that a full quarter of an hour has passed by the time you’ve finished banging your head along to a breakneck drumbeat and a whiplash riff, both of which slow down, speed up, rock out and chill out at interspersed intervals yet ultimately raise two horns high in the air and a swift size 10 to the backside of all that sucks about music today.
Like your heavy metal fast, powerful, raw and altogether brilliant? Then check out Without Motive, you probably won’t regret it.
also coming soon, the remastered version of;our first music video recorded live at the venue on the 16th march;
