Line-up

Headliner
Black Stone Cherry Last time in Belfast: 2 years ago

Venue

Telegraph Building

124-144 Royal Ave, BT1 1ND, Belfast, UK

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Black Stone Cherry biography

Black Stone Cherry is a four piece American hard rock group from Edmonton, Kentucky, US. Their music can be brooding and heavy, but it also places emphasis on their southern heritage incorporating hints of rockabilly and folk-country.

Though Black Stone Cherry did not technically form until 2001, lead vocalist/guitarist Chris Robertson and drummer John Fred Young started up jam sessions in their early teens. The duo were eventually joined by the group’s remaining members: rhythm guitarist Ben Wells and bass guitarist Jon Lawhon. Drummer John Fred Young’s father Richard Young is a member of “The Kentucky Headhunters” and through him the band was able to receive some insight about the music business and use the Kentucky Headhunter’s practice space as their own.

The group jumped straight into recording, releasing their first CD demo “Rock N’ Roll Tape” in 2003 and began gigging in local venues around this time. The group was picked up by New York record label Roadrunner and released their self-titled debut in 2006. The band’s first album was a good mix of drawn-out southern grunge and stoner metal and managed to sell 110,000 copies. After this release Black Stone Cherry were considered local heroes and coasting of this success they played their old high school gym filled with 1500 people.The band developed a rather large following in the UK and went on to record and release their first live album in Astoria, London, UK. The live album was highly limited and at one point it was fetching £200 online.

The band’s next album “Folklore and Superstition” was produced by Bob Marlette, who had previously worked with Alice Cooper and Ozzy Osbourne and it was recorded in Martina McBride’s studio. The album did very well on the charts peaking to No. 1 on the UK Rock Album Chart and No. 50 in Sweden.

The band’s third studio album “Between the Devil & the Deep Blue Sea” was released on 31 May 2011. It entered the Billboard 200 charts at No. 29 and the Florida Georgia Line cover of their song “Stay” became a huge hit. This release saw the band opening up for Alter Bridge, Theory of a Deadman, and Chickenfoot. The group also embarked on a sold-out headlining tour of the UK with Rival Sons.

The band’s follow up studio album “Magic Mountain” came out on 6 May 2014 and made it to No. 22 on the Billboard 200, No. 5 on the UK Album Chart, and all the way to No. 1 on the UK Rock Album Chart. The band would go on to promote this album with a European tour.

Live reviews

You only need to take a look at the business end of the lineups for the major heavy rock festivals - Download and Sonisphere, sure, but the mammoth likes of Rock am Ring in Germany, too - to realise that hard rock, to put it mildly, remains a commercially viable enterprise. We can probably all agree that the likes of Alter Bridge and Black Stone Cherry are by no means household names, but they’re already veterans of the arena circuit in the UK, for a simple reason; they tap into a simple, age-old formula, and do it very well indeed. In Black Stone Cherry’s case, they tick all the obvious boxes; a genuinely engaging frontman in the form of Chris Robertson, whose southern drawl melds into a growl on the band’s big choruses, as well as freewheeling, technically proficient guitar solos and an insistence on making sure that absolutely everything is turned up very, very loud indeed. With the fourth full-length, Magic Mountain, having arrived back in May, they’ve lined up an arena run for October and November of this year in the UK; I’d recommend highly if you’re looking for little more than a good, old-fashioned rock band at the top of their game.

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