GD TAKE'S ON THE WORLD: Knocking on Heaven’s Door [Gig Review]

Heaven’s Basement + Glamour of the Kill + The

Dirty Youth

Rescue Rooms

Nottingham

14.03.14

After travelling to pretty much all points of the compass including

Australia

New Zealand

USA

and

Canada

in recent months, those lovable hard rockers Heaven’s Basement have returned to more familiar shores. It’s only the second date of their Welcome Home tour and already they’re playing to a sold out show here at the rescue rooms in Nottingham, the tour covers most of the

in March and many countries in mainland Europe during April.

Over the last couple of years Heaven’s Basement have grown from strength to strength and with the release of their 2013 album Filthy Empire on Red Bull Records they have gathered around them an even bigger fan base than they had before.

I’ll keep the history lesson brief, I first saw the beginnings of this band a whole decade ago when they supported the mighty Queensrÿche in 2004, called Hurricane Party at the time the only member of that line-up in today’s band is drummer Chris Rivers. Moving on to the monsters of rock festival at Milton Keynes in 2006 and now going out under the moniker of Roadstar I caught up with the guys again, this show was guitarist Sid Glover’s first gig with the band so I’m reliably informed. 2008 and Roadstar become Heaven’s Basement but still many trials and tribulations befell the band until the beginning of 2011 when the current line-up of Aaron Buchanan (lead vocals) Rob Ellershaw (bass) Sid Glover (lead guitar) and Chris Rivers (drums) released the Unbreakable EP and thankfully three years later they’re finally breaking into the big time.

Nottingham has always been a happy stamping ground for Heaven’s Basement in the past (Trashstock, Wildside etc.) and tonight’s show is no exception, the enthusiastic crowd were packed into the rescue rooms to see the boys play a blistering set of old and new songs. As you might expect they opened up with Welcome Home the first track off the Filthy Empire album, a lot of the songs from that album are in the set tonight but I’m glad Heaven’s Basement haven’t forgot their older material. Lead guitarist Sid sings his now trademark song Paranoia about halfway though the show and the band finish off with a couple of old favourites, Reign on My Parade and Executioners Day as well as an encore of Jumping Jack Flash just for the hell of it.

It’s been about a year since I last saw Heaven’s Basement, this band have grown into a top act with stage antics by belt and braces front man Aaron Buchanan always making an impact, tonight he walked out onto the audience's hands and clambered up onto the balcony before later in the set, crowd surfing on his back whilst still singing, I remember seeing him at the High Voltage festival in London 2011 making a similar move, always impressive.

I would say tonight’s audience were bordering on 50% male to female ratio and as you probably know for rock bands this is unusual, I’m guessing both Heaven’s Basement and the main support band tonight, Glamour of the Kill are responsible for this statistic, to say they were eye candy for the girls would be a little rude so I’m not gonna say it (Oooops).

And so onto Glamour of the Kill and they’re a band I’ve not seen before, made in Yorkshire this four piece band more than held my attention for their entire set. Heavier than the headliners GOTK play slick heavy metal with very powerful double kick drum beats and a full guitar sound and although there was some ‘growly’ vocals on the whole you could hear the lyrics as being sung by front man/bassist Davey Richmond who is ably acompanied by Chris Gomerson (guitar/vocals) Mike Kingswood (lead guitar/vocals) and Ben Thomson (drums/vocals) I would go and see these guys again they seem like they’re going to be around for a long while yet.

Tonight’s show was opened by Welsh rockers The Dirty Youth, I saw them a couple of years back but sadly tonight with the show being sold out the delay between opening the doors and the first band coming on stage is very marginal for everyone to get into the venue in time to see the first band. Why it takes so long to get everyone through the doors I do not know, the queue meandered around the block so by the time I got in I only saw the last two songs of their performance. However on a more positive note the lead singer of The Dirty Youth Danni Monroe assured me they would be embarking on a headlining tour of their own later in the year so I’ll keep my eyes peeled for that.

Below: GD Manofmetal & Danni Monroe.