Review: The Metal Gods Meltdown
One of the great things about being in a rock band is getting the opportunities to travel to different places, play music to a lot of people and then hopefully meet and befriend many of them afterwards. The rock fraternity is a very close-knit community, a family that over the years you see expanding and it's also true that friends made remain friends and, even if you don't see them for a long time, meeting up with people you've befriended upon return visits to cities while doing a series of shows it just feels great and as if time had never passed at all! I'm not sure if there is the same camaraderie and sense of loyalty in other types of music, the heavy metal family is a unique one. Alison Caswell was a very special friend, her first encounter with Stormzone was when we were on tour with Tesla, so she and her excellent partner Seb Di Gatto were along for the Stormzone journey from very close to our beginning. The Tesla tour was fantastic for many reasons, meeting Alison and Seb for one and also sharing what we would class as very rare moments with Tesla. After our performance at the Newcastle O2 venue the Tesla guys were strolling around the backstage area waiting for their cue to leap on-stage. They had a fairly strict tour manager who really cracked the whip, everything had to go like clockwork and that involved us getting our backline off-stage and into our own touring van as soon as we had strummed our last note. Nothing particularly unusual about that, but what happened at Newcastle was a very unique event. All the Tesla guys told us to stop carrying our equipment and to set it down. They then all grabbed an amp or cab or whatever and told us that it had been 25 years or so since they had had to do what we were doing, they wanted to experience it again, and they proceeded to bring all of our backline through the backstage area, out onto the street and with exceptional precision managed to pack everything into the van, maybe making five or six journeys each in order to manage it. This was the legendary Tesla getting right back to basics, they said that they enjoyed it and that it was a great feeling getting back to their roots!
The next time that we met Alison and Seb was in Glasgow we were on tour with Sebastian Bach. I think it's fair to say that our reunion with the wonderful pair could be classed as a repeat occasion, but I don't think you need us to tell you that Sebastian didn't help us out of that show with our equipment, lol. That was in 2012 and we had just released our third album Zero To Rage. Back then Alison was a rock journalist for the Mayfair Mall website and maintaining her fondness for Stormzone she had volunteered to review the new album but promised to be discerning and honest. The review is absolutely amazing, a 10/10 score and excerpts from it can be read a little further down. I don't want to interrupt the flow of my words because the exceptionally sad circumstance as to why they are being written is that the review of Zero To Rage was actually just sent to us today, along with the saddest of news that Alison had passed away some months ago after many years battling breast cancer, which she seemed to have defeated on four occasions but she sadly eventually succumbed to the cancer and Seb lost his beloved partner of 25 years.
So in honour of Alison "Bear" Caswell we proudly publish her review of Zero To Rage, seen here for the first time because of a mix-up at the website it was originally intended for at the time it was written. We might have lost Alison but she will never be forgotten, and Seb Di Gatto can be assured that he has the thoughts and support of this amazing rock family that both he and Alison most definitely belonged to!
RIP Alison.
Harv, Graham, Steve, Jr & Jonny
For me, this is the best album I have heard for a very long time. Every song on the album is truly great. This is an amazing body of work, and it’s creators can be truly proud of what they have achieved.
Everything about this album is top notch, the drumming, guitar work, vocals, everything !!!!! If you love heavy metal, that is melodic and lyrical, then this is definitely for you.
I saw Stormzone when they supported Tesla and they are awesome. It surely can’t be long before they take their place up there with the Gods of Metal.
Review by: Alison "Bear" Caswell Score:10/10
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