HEAVY FECKIN’ BELFAST

LET’S face it, with all this unseasonal sunshine and the thermometer sitting at stupid hot degrees centigrade, we rock and metal fans are left to glower at the showers of summer frocks and pink-skinned spides stalking Northern Ireland’s streets.

Well, you know what? They can piss away off because the only fashion sense you need is a black t-shirt and jeans of cammos. And if it really is too warm, get the scissors out. Instant cropped top tour shirt and trim those trous to shorts.

Because when you step inside the hallowed halls of metal, the temperature already is at boiling point and the bands just crank it that wee bit further, because when it comes down to it metal is stoked from the fieriest pits of hell.

Tonight, things get even hotter that any of Danté’s imagined circles of hell when Machine Fucking Head descend on to unsuspecting mortals in their pre-Download attempt to rip the Ulster Hall a new arsehole.

Hard to imagine it, but Rob Flynn and his merry band of metal monsters have been crushing like the proverbial two ton hammer for almost 20 years, but over the last three albums they have become a real force – like the plague of locusts that

And the allegory of locusts now stands as not only the band’s new(ish) album title track, but also like the fans who are becoming more ready to devour any output from the band.

And as far as Roby Flynn goes, playing metal, for as long as he has done now, ripping it up for fans is the only course he knows. He told one interviews:

“I’ve been playing in bands since I was 15 years old. I’ve been on tour since I was 18. I don’t really know anything else, so I’ve never had a Plan B — this kind of had to work.

“I think when you try and tackle something with that much tenacity you make it work. A lot of people told me how I should get a Plan B, but I don’t want a Plan B, this is what I want to do.”

If you want to see why Mr Flynn and his Machine Head compatriots do not need a Plan B then get down tonight to the Ulster Hall to see Machine Fucking Head, with retro-thrashers Evile and and Dead Label…

And  if that isn’t enough, think on fellow madmen and madwomen of the metal flock. Post-Download we have the mighty Lamb of God to come…Heavy Feckin’ Belfast indeed!