Posts By Mark Wong

Depeche Mode have always held a very special place in my heart. Whenever I listen to their music I have very fond memories of my time at college. During this part of my life my music technology teacher introduced them to me by recommending their 2001 album Exciter. After doing extensive research into Depeche Mode’s discography, my life was never the same again as I learnt to love and appreciate the electronic music genre.
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So to celebrate the last day of my academic studies, I decided to buy a ticket to one of John Mayer’s only two UK shows at the London O2 Arena. The agonising four hour drive to the venue had me constantly worrying about whether I would miss a bit of Mayer’s set since this was the first time I was seeing him live.
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There’s no question that when Depeche Mode released their visionary album Violator in 1990, it firmly established four boys from Basildon as one of the most influential electronic groups in the world. The technical masterclass that was displayed in their predecessor would present Depeche Mode with the colossal task of trying to deliver something as innovative for their sophomore album; Songs of Faith and Devotion.
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In 2006, John Mayer had already established his musical career quite comfortably with two successful pop rock albums to his name. However his third album Continuum would lean heavily towards more blues and soul influences. The burning question is would these genres translate well into his previous pop orientated sound?
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As soon as I typed out the name ‘Babymetal’ in my word document, I immediately realised the amount of constructive criticism that I was going to receive from my Rockhaq peers. Babymetal are a Japanese pop metal group composed of Suzuka Nakamoto (Su-metal), Yui Mizuno (Yuimetal) & Moa Kikuchi (Moametal). The trio have somewhat grown to become a peculiar phenomenon within the metal community due to their controversial approach to the genre. Metal Resistance is the sophomore album to their self-titled record Babymetal.
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In case you’ve been living under a rock for the last couple of months, La La Land is one of the films that has been generating serious Oscar buzz this year due to the way it’s resurrecting the musical genre. La La Land’s theme is about two artists who are striving to achieve their dreams in life: Sebastian (Ryan Gosling) a pianist who is deeply passionate about jazz and Mia (Emma Stone) who is an aspiring actress.
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Back in 2011 when Blink 182 announced they were back with a brand new album called Neighborhoods it looked promising that the San Diego trio had mended their fragmented friendships and were here to stay with us. However in 2016 when Blink 182 confirmed they were going to continue making music without co-founder Tom DeLonge, there were doubts that had me obsessing over how the end result would turn out.
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After a shaky start on Friday where the heavens decided to greet me with an insane downpour of rain, my dampened spirits needed to be amended immediately. Ever since Black Sabbath announced that Download would be their last UK festival date ever, I simply had to take the opportunity to see them, no matter how much Donington’s weather and mud baths tried to destroy me both physically and psychologically.
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So it’s five months into 2016 and yet again the music world brings us more heartbreaking news that Minneapolis’ musical prodigy Prince Rogers Nelson has passed away. Prince is often considered as a pivotal cornerstone for 1980’s music. Starting his career at the age of 17 by writing and producing his first record, you knew Prince was always going to be the only rock royalty we needed in this world.
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Pretty Odd is the second album from Panic at the Disco. The album shows a drastic change from its predecessor A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out as it takes on more musical genres and incorporates a diverse range of instruments. The interesting thing that happened with this album in the pre-production stage is that guitarist Ryan Ross scrapped all of the original recordings they had and decided to start again, completely fresh. This daring decision could have smashed their musical reputation to smithereens, but as a result it paid off and proved how the band didn’t need to depend on a typical formula to be relevant to their fanbase. Welcome to the bizarre world of Pretty Odd!
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