A trip up the motorway to the iconic Rock City which has hosted many of the who’s who of music over the years and tonight is no exception.

With the final sundowning of winter we approach tomorrow’s spring equinox with hope renewed and re-energised. It's a time of balancing light and dark with the life-giving strengths of the former gaining ascendancy as the frigid bony grasp of winters begins to relent.

It’s a cold rainy night in Belfast and tonight the Liverpool quarter Carcass are in town, we got to the Abattoir sorry The Limelight to see they guys as they are playing a Glasgow show and a 3 date Irish warm up before they cross the pond to tour the states.

So, it’s a miserably cold day once again, the drizzle just starting as I, again, point my car in the direction of Wolverhampton.

If there’s ever a better, more appropriate, opening line to an opening track of a set then I’m yet to hear it. This one line of just ten words encapsulates this evening’s genre-blurring headliner in its simple beauty.

Three years of waiting for the rescheduled State Of Unrest tour that was put together originally for 2020 – man, what a long awaited treat that was always gonna be. A magnificent leviathan is created by Essen’s long living legends Kreator and all time favourites Lamb of God to deliver a tour to send shock waves through the land.

A sold out Black Prince in Northampton played host to the pre-launch gig for Empyre’s soon to be released latest album ‘Relentless’. The band had already held an album listening party earlier in the day for yet another sold out audience, many of whom had headed across for a double whammy of Empyre rock in one day!

Ulster’s finest? You betcha! I’d put my bottom dollar on this and then some. Alongside the likes of The Damned and The Clash this Antrim outfit sits, rightfully, at punk’s top table.

Glasgow had to wait a lot longer than the rest of the UK to play as she was ill the last time she was meant to perform here but tonight we had a world first that more than made up for it.

Mighty Welsh rockers ‘Bullet for My Valentine’ have embarked on their UK & European tour, tonight brings them to the O2 Academy in the heart West Midlands.

Way below the steelwork furnaces, fed by the Valley collieries, burn incessantly. Storm clouds brew out on the western horizon.

For far too long Clwb Ifor Bach – or Little Ivor’s Club – has been, for us, the swanky looking venue on the opposite side of Womanby Street to our usual haunt, when in the Welsh capital, of Fuel Club.

A Saturday night in Belfast, the splendid setting of the Ulster Hall, and by the laws of averages no work in the morning for the majority of attendees all amounts to a good night on the town.

It seems like an age since I have seen King King back at a hometown show and like a comfy pair of joggers the pleasure is unfathomable. The support tonight is a bit of a funny choice in Glenn Tilbrook. Neither blues or Rock but as a lot of us old heads grew up in the 80s I suppose there would be enough interest.

Tempestuous briny narratives are yarned over a pint or three in the safe harbour of the waterside tavern. Here the log fire crackles as the hearthside hound gently steams. Wait though for a moment, for there might just be a droplet of truth amongst the anecdotes of which most register amongst tall.

When the words “Megadeth are doing a one off show” suddenly hits, you take that seriously. Given that it’s a one off show held in Japan and there you have it, one sold out show in Budoken and the proof is in the pudding really that Megadeth hit hard and big as much as they did 40 years ago.