By The Beard & Little Johnny   Good evening friends, fans, and followers. It is your metal review team The Beard & Little Johnny and we are reporting from show #19 and bands #66-67 of our 2024 season. This evening, we are at the Coronado Theater in Rockford, IL for Queensryche, with special guests Armored Saint.      Although Little Johnny is sad that we are attending at a venue without a general admission mosh pit area, the Beard is quite content to be up in the balcony and away from the chaos in a comfortable chair with drink in hand. Johnny says the Be ..read more

By The Beard & Little Johnny   Greetings friends, fans, and followers. Tonight, your ever on the move Reviewing Duo, (The Beard and Little Johnny), will be attending show #17 and bands #63-64 as we review former Queensryche vocalist Geoff Tate and his band with support from Fire & Water. Now, having just seen Queensryche (the band) with singer Todd Latorre do an excellent job in Houston at Hell's Heroes, this represented a wonderful opportunity to review the other side of the coin by seeing the singer (without the original band) doing the songs. How would Tate’s 65 ..read more

Sure, sure Heart joined the long list of corporate whore rockers, well deserving of rockers' disdain for the band. However, in the 70s (and 1980's Bebe Le Strange) Heart mixed mellow moments with hard hitting rock-outs on their full lengths. For this playlist, The Mighty Decibel has compiled the best rock tracks from the band's early (and best) material. Kick it out!!!! Side One (0:00) Baracuda (4:21) Bebe Le Strange (8:00) Magic Man (13:27) Heartless (18:28) Kick It Out Side 2 (21:05) Even It Up (26:11) Crazy On You (31:01) Break (33:34) Rockin' Heaven Down ..read more

By The Beard & Little Johnny Hello again metal fans, friends and followers, it is your reviewing dynamic duo The Beard and, of course, Little Johnny and we are on the road again as we continue our never ending 2024 tour and a very busy metal month of April with show #16 and bands #59-62 as we hit Reggie’s Rock House in Chicago for: Faroe Islands based Viking metal band Tyr Norwegian folk metal band Trollfest North Carolinas melodic death/folk Aether Realm San Diego's pirate band The Dread Crew of Oddwood.      This is a sold out show, so the lad and I arriv ..read more

By The Beard & Little Johnny     Tonight, once again The Beard (reviewer extraordinaire), and Little Johnny (IPA drinker par excellence) are covering another metal show. Event #15 & Bands #55-58 are on the agenda at Reggie’s Music Joint (in Chicago) as we review metal B&D band Savage Master, Sweden’s Screamer, Utah’s occult rock act Blood Star, and Chicago Spanish band Oscuridad Eterna. Arriving about an hour early, we sat at the bar and had a pre-show beer. Johnny spotted a beer called Foggy Geezer by Warpigs Brewing and said, “Hey Beard, that beer is named after ..read more

We continue our 'The Year In Metal" series moving into the 90s ... not a great decade for the fortunes of heavy metal. This 1991 episode shows that no specific heavy sub-genre was leading the pack, instead we have as diverse a grouping as you'll ever find in our ever growing series. From extreme metal to folk metal, from punk to hard rock, from boogie rock to grindcore ... it's all represented in this ode to 1991. Don't worry though, metal will arise after the 90s!!! Side 1 (0:00) "Arise": SEPULTURA - Arise (3:26) "Homesick Blues": THE FOUR HORSEMEN - Nobody Said It Would Be Easy (5:58) "T ..read more

Our Hard'N'Heavy series of podcasts focuses on new traditional metal and hard rock releases ... along with the odd hard rock'n'roll and melodic punk outing. Basically anything that doesn't fit on our Extreme Metal, Hardcore Punk or Doom series! This edition we focus on March and April 2024 releases. Horns up!                                                  ..read more

Reviewed by: Joe B. Yes, the three bonus tracks on Judas Priest's new album, Invincible Shield are great. So great, that those songs are the difference between a top album for 2024 and a top five all time Judas Priest album. Invincible Shield is Judas Priest’s nineteenth studio album. The standard edition ends with eleven tracks. This is the middle of where the bonus edition gets red hot. It starts off with “Panic Attack” and ramps up into a frenetic pace with “Serpent and the King”. The title track has Metallica Kill Em All thrash. The album’s pace goes from blistering to savagely heavy ..read more

By The Beard & Little Johnny Greetings metal fans, friends, and followers. It is one hour to doors here at the amazing Hell's Heroes metal festival. As the final day three start looms close, we once again have perfect weather in the mid 70’s (although the Beard has learned after dark it does get cold fast in the wind.) Walking home last night with Little Johnny after the Queensryche set, the lad bitched incessantly about why we could not just get an Uber. The terms cheap &^%$%^& and stubborn donkey were tossed around. Today, I made him walk the two miles to the venue onc ..read more

Want to listen to the future of stoner metal? Well, you've come to the right place, because in this edition of our "In 40 Minutes" series we visit the discography of one of doom metal's best up-and-coming entities ... Green Lung. A truly one-of-a-kind unit, revel in the glorious vocals and atmosphere that this London, England outfit deliver in spades on their three full lengths to date. Come up for the harrowing ... !!! Side One Woodland Rites (2019) (0:00) Initiation (2:31) Call of the Coven Black Harvest (2021) (7:22) The Harrowing (9:41) Leaders of the Blind (14:22) Reaper's Scythe (18 ..read more