Not Irish but he sure seemed to like the colour green. To my knowledge his last visit here was in May 1997 when Type O Negative played the SFX. While I came to them slightly later than most, Bloody Kisses and October Rust became two of my favourite albums. I saw the band live at Graspop in Belgium and Wacken, Germany in 2007, getting pretty close to the front at the latter on what was a very memorable evening. Today is a very sad day.

For the record; I refer of course to today’s confirmation that Type O Negative frontman Pete Steele passed away yesterday aged 48. While the man may now be gone, his fantastic music will live forever. R.I.P

Mael Mórdha front man Roibéard Ó Bógheadhil gets a few things off his chest as part of an interview series filmed this summer for Cannons & Muses, a project aimed at enabling artists around the world to collaborate and create art in context of real-time crisis.

Well, rather miraculously I seem to have managed to keep this blog rockin for over a full year. I first posted on September 27th 2008 with the intention of blogging about the Irish metal scene on a regular basis. I haven’t quite managed the regularity I would have liked but I’m reasonably pleased to have clocked up just over 100 posts.

The plan now is to up the pace over the year ahead with more regular posts featuring some killer new content. One of my priorities too is to increase the interactivity. I’d rather not feel like I’m talking to myself here and while I know at least a few people are reading I think Paddy Metal will work better if we can get some real discussion going on the site. More on that to come.

Anyway, keep reading as I keep posting and more importantly let’s get some comments in and some discussion going.

Cheers

Crunch

Unfortunately I can’t make it to Metallica at Marlay Park this coming Saturday due to commitments at the other end of the country. I wasn’t too pissed off after the once rather decent line-up began to fall apart. No Thin Lizzy really took the shine off it for me.

That was until Glyder were added. These guys are enormously impressive and I’d really love to see them getting a run out on a big open air stage, on home turf. Unfortunately I won’t, but if you are heading along, be sure to get there early enough to check them out. I think they are on at 3pm.

Glyder in action:

Been working like crazy again all during April and had to put this on ice. Quite honestly I had zero time to myself.

Never fear, May looks a bit better so I’ll be back in action hopefully starting this week.

More to follow…

I’m back!

I have again been completely consumed by work for the past two weeks so apologies to those who read regularly.

Hopefully this is the start of normal service again. To begin with, here is some Shrapnel

The new devilmakesthree release, The Subservient, looks like this

Jonny’s back too

Metalireland.com reviews the recent Kamelot gig in Dublin

Northern Ireland’s rather excellent Bad Boat have unfortunately called it a day

State.ie on the Iron Maiden movie. It also has a Mastodon interview and a Therapy? one too! Fancy that!!!

Dublin’s Abaddon Incarnate have uploaded a new track ‘Deadend Messiah’ to their myspace. The track is from their forthcoming album Cascade

Here’s the new Therapy? video for the title track of the band’s new album Crooked Timber

The new THERAPY? album ‘Crooked Timber’, out March 23 via Global Music looks like this.

The new Steel Tormentor album, Return Of A King, out erm…soon, via an as yet unconfirmed label looks like this.

Gojira line up Irish dates

Belfast’s rather excellent Sorrowfall line-up Belgian dates

Zavvi sells five Irish stores to HMV

BBC News interviews 82 year old heavy metal fan

Given the relatively short lifespan of Paddy Metal so far, I won’t be doing a round up of the year on this occasion. Hopefully by this time next year there’ll be enough Paddy Metal readers to do a little poll of what people thought rocked during the year.

What I will say is that it shouldn’t go unnoticed that it was another extraordinary year for Irish metal. Primordial continued to go from strength to strength and took Irish metal with them to some (actually nearly all) of the world’s biggest metal festivals. However the fact that three other Irish bands, Mourning Beloveth, Waylander and Gama Bomb all released new albums to world wide critical acclaim was a far more significant, yet less recognised development in the growth of our little scene. Here’s hoping 2009 is as good!

Thanks for reading and see you next year!

AC/DC's Black Ice is the number 1 selling album in Ireland

Strange but great times!