Nothin' but Trouble...

My first pilgrimage of the year last Monday. A trip down to the holy city of Wolverhampton to see the legendary Trouble at the Civic Hall. Well, the Civic Hall bar actually. Curse all you trend pandering, false metal felating bastards that would let such an iconic band be forced to resort to changing down venue from the Wulfrun Hall to the bloody bar of the big venue next door. Grrr. Anyways, said venue wasn't all that small, actually, being sized halfway between, say, the ABC 1 and the ABC 2 in Glasgow. Not exactly packed out, either, but then again Doom metal never was big box office (apart from, well, you know who). You're into it for the love of the damn thing.

None of that matters anyway. The band themselves were simply magnificent. Tighter than a constipated gadfly, heavier than four dozen buffalo stampeding on your cranium, louder than the coming apocalypse, yada yada yada. Have I really been waiting nearly twenty years to see them live? Brrrrrr. They ran the full gamut of their material, all the way back to the oldest, slowest, most funereal stuff right through the Jimi / Zep styled era of the mid nineties and then on to some new material which sounded super heavy in the old fashion - not that anyone will be buying it, sadly. I had heard that they will be on the same bill as Heaven and Hell on at least one festival line-up in Europe this summer. Probably in a land where the mullet is the official national tonsorial style - just a shame I can't afford the requisite hair weave.

Have to say that I really like Wolves the town. The lovely folk from the Midlands are generally pretty damn cool IME and you always get a nice bit of conversation with them, especially when they find they are talking to a Scot. Funnily enough, the town centre, to me, actually looks a lot like, erm, Hamilton... without the omnipresent shell suited, semi-human garbage polluting the shared psychic head space, obviously. Lots of great buildings with some beautiful architecture, especially the art gallery and St Peters church. Just, y'know, old-fashioned nice. I like old-fashioned nice. Defo worth a visit, I'd say.