GrumpyRocker

British advertising bullshitter and sometime amplification manufacturer Blackstar has unveiled its latest state of the art marketing nonsense. The company describes its latest verbal slight of hand and customer misdirection as revolutionary.

"We were a technological innovator with our introduction of the phrase 'Pure Valve' in our mostly transistor-based technology in recent years," said Blackstar CEO Bob Scraggs. "However our world class engineers have been hard at work delivering more powerful state of the art bullshit that's sure to be a big hit with clueless customers and puny editorial lapdogs such as Guitarist Magazine."

"Today Blackstar is proud to unveil our latest product phrase 'True Valve Power' which we will believe will fool even more customers than ever before. With 'True Valve Power' we're extending our previous abilities of not having many valves in our valve products to now having no valves in them instead. Raising our 'no actual valves' to 'valve based marketing bullshit' ratio to 100 percent. I believe Blackstar is the first amplifier manufacturer to completely remove valves from over-hyped valve related products. This will enable us to continue to charge British-built prices for a range of Korean-made tat."

'True Valve Power' marketing bullshit will be available as an expensive range of literature and badges this summer, and will be bundled with a free modelling amplifier that's almost as good a Line 6 Spider for three times the money.

The presence of any valves has yet to be announced.

Full press release follows.

More than a few people intrigued by my purchase of the Laney Ironheart amplifier have asked how I'm getting on with. Perhaps they are thinking of trying one themselves, or perhaps know like many guitarists we buy gear and discard it at a silly pace.

The Ironheart is still with me and I'm enjoying its sound and features more than ever. As with my amps I did go through a after-the-honeymoon period with it. Couldn't quite get the high-gain tone I was after and was struggling a bit all round to feel satisfied.

I discovered the main problem was concentrating too much on trying to get a good metal rhythm tone using my Les Paul Traditional. The Gibson 57 pickups in that guitar are pretty low output but more importantly their EQ profile isn't naturally lent to chugging metal. Once I shifted my metallic search to my PRS SE Custom - loaded with Irongear Hot Slag pickups - I soon found the sounds I was looking for.

Normally you'd find me spending time on here either bringing you news on up and coming releases, tours or the staple album / single reviews that our loving music PR companies keep us occupied with. However, rewind two years and you'd have found me on the sadly defunct Ukmusicreview website. It was through a fellow reviewer on there, that I found and fell in love with Sleigh Bells. In fact as it was December 2010, it was an amusing time to discover them and their debut album Treats.

On the 20 February 2012, Sleigh Bells release their second album Reign of Terror and if you read after the jump you'll be able to watch the video for Comeback Kid and listen to the Soundcloud track Born to Lose, both featuring on Reign of Terror.

I can't be the only one dismayed by the goings on behind the scenes with the Black Sabbath reunion. It's clear that Bill Ward isn't being treated fairly - and not for the first time.

Sharon Osbourne has denied she's to blame - but her track record isn't good in this regard - just look at the way Ozzy band members Bob Daisley and Lee Kerslake were treated. Both had their contributions to early Ozzy albums deleted and re-recorded - a spiteful move by Sharon following the musician's litigation for fair payment for their work.

Anyway I could rant all day about Sharon's spiteful treatement of other musicians, but I've something more entertaining here for you in the form of a guest post from Dawsons Music's Tahera Dudhwala who delves deeper into the mystery over Bill Ward's treatment.

Harry has already written the Official Grumpyrocker Best Albums of 2011, but those who actually read any of my reviews, will know at times I might slightly deviate from the style of music preferred by the site creator and the man I should treat deferentially and call 'boss'. However, I couldn't let 2011 pass without musing a little of what has happened in the past seven months.

2011 has been a great year for rock music, in particular for progressive rock and melodic death metal. While I still hold that 2009 was the best rock music year of recent times I still think there are plenty of great records that should be on your shopping list when those Christmas vouchers come flooding in next week.

There have been some notable misfires too. The second Black Country Communion album pissed me off. Leaves Eyes’ Meredead and Sirenia’s The Enigma of Life were just plain shite. Meanwhile Mayan’s Quarterpast confused the hell out of me. I suppose we should be glad Mark Jansen got all of that nonsense out of his system before recording another - hopefully great - Epica record.

Then of course there was the Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration Lulu. This wasn't just the worst album of the year it might actually be the worst record ever released, yes much worse than the reggae version of Waltzing Matilda Joe Dolce release, or the Soft Cell version of Tainted Love. All involved should be very ashamed of themselves.

Any road up let's get back to good music, there were some bloody great records that didn’t make it into my top ten of the year. So let's start with a rundown of great records that would have populated my top top 20 records, in no particular order. And we'll also check out my favourite song of 2011.

There was a time when "Later..." the live music show presented by Jools Holland was essential viewing. On a BBC that knows so little about music that in every documentary it trots out the usual bollocks about how important punk was¹ Jool's show was a breath of fresh air. Not only did it present bands playing live - something Top of the Pops producers would have you believe was technically impossible - it offered a real interesting variety.

But those days are gone. Instead every week you have exactly the same show. Of course the band names change - but the actual show is pretty much identical week after week.

I've just completed a list of all the guitar gear I've owned over the years. Some of which I still own. What strikes me is the number of cheap and nasty multi-effects units I've wasted my money on.

And how many lovely electro-acoustic guitars I've had to sell because I was so brassic I couldn't afford to eat. This actually happened to me twice - thanks to two separate period of poverty.

Of course among all the junk there's still some very good gear in there. My Vintage VS6 is one of the least expensive guitars I've owned but one of the best. The PRS SE is ridiculously good for the price and my LP Traditional is very special.

And what of the amps? A pretty terrible solid state effort followed by some rubbish modelling amps. However things got tubey later on and I've got a couple of good amps now. No not expensive boutique nonsense but I'm not a great believer in hand-wired snake oil.

Anyway should you be interested in seeing how much junk I've owned over the years check out the list after the jump.

There's an awful lot of music around that claims to be metal. This stuff is often noisy, tuneless crap and nothing like real metal. Real metal - whether lighter melodic NWOBHM or super heavy black metal - still features musical qualities. After all, these are sounds created by musicians and behind the distorted guitars everything can be expressed on the musical stave.

But much of the noise pedalled by kiddy rag Kerrang and MTV these days is not just devoid of artistic merit - it's just not metal. Unfortunately many of the eejits making this racket seem unaware that they are as metal as The Jonas Brothers. For their education and yours I present the following guide to knowing whether you are metal or not.

One could argue - if I was a bit more flush I might have a go - that you can have too many guitars. I certainly have a few - but by no means a ridiculous collection. The current count is six if I ignore wifey's bass guitars.

The six are an Epiphone 435i, Epiphone Les Paul Standard, Fender Squire Bullet Strat, Aria 12-string semi acoustic, PRS SE Custom 22 Trem and finally a Gibson Les Paul Traditional.

So the question is how many of them do I actually play and therefore actually need?