Live Review: Steve Hughes - Big Issues (The Pun)

I’ll admit, I’m a huge metalhead (well, I am 6’2” and I have trouble getting caps to fit, but that’s another story). Steve Hughes has made major waves in the global comedy community as the straight-talking, logic-twisting Heavy Metal comedian. This acclaim shows, he nearly sold-out the main room at Melbourne Town Hall.

Read more at The Pun.

Live Review: Brenna Courtney Glazebrook presents More Than This (The Pun)

Is there More Than This? Brenna Glazebrook wasn’t convinced a few short years ago. Staring heartbreak and paucity square in the face, she moved to spider-infested Sydney to start anew. This provides the inspiration for a comically solid fifty minute trip into Glazebrook’s life over the last couple of years. Accompanied by her “Swedish Paul Shaffer” Maya, the iTunes Enter-key presser sat to the side of the compact Spleen Bar stage.

Read the rest at The Pun.

Live Review: Who Killed John Bearington III? (The Pun)

In an unceremonious alleyway, borderline sociopath, racist and philandering billionaire John Bearington the Third lies dead. This ‘muppet-noir’ stares Dylan Cole as the slick-talking, dressed-to-the-nines Detective Cole Feltz (the only human with a speaking part). We watch as he interrogates five likely muppet suspects who all had their respective gripes with the darkly departed Bearington.

Read the rest at The Pun.

Live Review: Lessons with Luis – Luis Presents: Kidney Kingdom (The Pun)

Out of the way and next to the Yarra, Signal is a simple venue fitted for the simple lessons from a wide-eyed boy named Luis. Luis and co are embarking on an adventure to the Kidney Kingdom (riffing off of the Wizard of Oz) to find his kindly father a new kidney.

Read the rest of the review which was featured at The Pun.

Live Review: Michael Chamberlin - Joy & Despair (The Pun)

By his own admission, Michael Chamberlin lives in a constant state of either joy or despair – no grey areas to be found in his life of loneliness, bewilderment and often crippling neuroses. A screenwriter by trade, Michael has written for Skithouse, Rove Live and Adam Hills in Gordon St. Tonight, and has even lent words to the legendary John Cleese. A veteran comedy writer and stand-up comic, Chamberlin has won acclaim far and wide for the last decade, but it seems that his dream joyride has now run into a wall built by despair.

Read the rest as well as many more 2012 MICF reviews at The Pun.

Live Review: Dave Purcell - Mix Tape (The Pun)

Dave Purcell looked a bit cramped on the Butterfly Club stage for Mix Tape, flanked by an upright piano and accompanied by his guitarist and drummer. The audience numbered no more than 20, but the room which scarcely fitted 15 was heat-choked.  Our backs ached on the wooden “pews” during this hour long set comprised of stand-up, self-deprecating storytelling and music.

Read the review and all things Melbourne International Comedy Festival at The Pun.

Live Review: Slipknot w/ Trivium at Rod Laver Arena (Metal as Fuck)

I felt a certain sickly dripping on the end of my nose on Thursday night. Grey blanketed the skies above. I’d seen about three shows in as many days, slumber in short supply while working a day job to pay the bills. Worst of all, my fucking (handsome, charming and ever so intelligent) editor sent me to review Trivium and god damn Slipknot of all of the bands on the Soundwave tour, scowling in the knowledge that my beloved Paradise Lost was playing their sideshow a mere five minute walk down the road.

Bollocks.

Find out if I actually enjoyed myself or not at Metal as Fuck.

Live Review: Devin Townsend Project and Meshuggah w/ dredg at the Forum Theatre (Metal as Fuck)

Devin Townsend and his project played unforgettably at the Forum Theatre on that Thursday night. Meshuggah and dredg on the other hand...well...funny you mention them... 
 
Stuck in horrendous Melbourne traffic, I missed dredg much to my annoyance. Having been a fan of their Catch Without Arms record, I was relishing the opportunity to see them in an intimate club setting prior to my Soundwave adventure due in a couple of days. Alas, I was just pipped by the line which had snaked its way back behind the dingy alleyway of the Forum Theatre, much in contrast to the classical opulence of its facade and interior (Read more about the decor of the Forum here, if you’re into that sort of thing.) One newbie approached me and asked, “Is this the line for Devin Townsend?” How did the legion of metalheads not give it away? It was either that, or his name emblazoned above the door?

Find out why I forgot all about Meshuggah during their own show at Metal as Fuck.

Live Review: Melbourne Soundwave 2012 (TheVine)

It’s the time when metalheads and punks are vindicated for one week out of the year - Soundwave Festival. The event, now in its sixth ambitious year, is most likely the greatest expression of rock music Retromania that one could ask for. A phrase coined by acclaimed rock journalist Simon Reynolds (blame him for the term “post-metal”) in his book of the same name, which asks “is popular music addicted to its own past?” The short answer? You bet your arse it is.

The long answer? Read on.

Read the long answer at TheVine.

Live Review: Zakk Wylde's Black Label Society and Hellyeah at the Forum Theatre (Metal as Fuck)

It was an all Southern affair in Melbourne as the shred king addressed his subjects from stately chambers, occupied in the name of the Black Label Order. 

Sultry, rainy, miserable. To the perpetually meteorologically bemused residents of Melbourne, experiencing all four seasons in the space of as many minutes is a given; we see rain, take a piss and by the time our flies are half way done up, it’s sunny once more. Ho hum, pass the butter. After two days of summer, it rained and rained. Fortunately this humid night just lent itself to the atmosphere. With beer in hand as the aroma of cheap cigarettes wafted over me, I felt like I was back in Atlanta, GA hanging out with pre-fabricated good ole boys wearing denim and leather kuttes direct from the merch desk - the real 1%ers were most likely cooling their boiling blood with beer as they planted themselves on the edge of the pit, their arms as thick as oak trunks folded together and just as immovable.

Read the rest at Metal as Fuck.