WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Hardship Starship by No Hot Ashes
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
No Hot Ashes
Hardship Starship
(Modern Sky UK)
NO HOT ASHES hail, like 10cc, from Stockport and although a generation apart they share an approach to music unbeholden to any genre in particular.
Intelligent and inventive arrangements deliver a studio sound that’s far richer and more complex than the band’s live act.
Isaac Taylor and Luigi Di Vuono’s guitars are intricate one minute and blasting their way through the next, while Jack Walsh on bass and Matthew Buckley on drums keep the adrenaline flowing.
There’s existential rather than political angst in their songs. “There’s not much more that I can take, Oh I’m sick of all these bellyaches,” sings Taylor in Bellyaches.
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