Gig review: THE DARKER MY HORIZON – The Acoustic Couch, Bracknell, 11 March 2017

The Darker My Horizon

The Acoustic Couch is a new live music venue in Bracknell, which it has to be said isn’t the easiest to find tucked away under a car park in a back street. Still once inside it is a fair sized venue making novel tables by utilising old electrical cable holders and even serving coffee and herbal teas!

A fairly decent crowd, however seeing as it was free entry (you could make a voluntary payment on what you thought the gig was worth on entry), shame not more folks came along.

New live venues, and indeed the more established ones, need music fans support as for many bands and musicians playing live is the only real way they can make a decent amount from merchandise sales/CD’s to keep their music going. Right, soapbox away, now onto the music…

Before The Darker My Horizon (TDMH) headlined the night’s music, we had an acoustic set by Horizon, who sadly I missed bar their last song and by all accounts they were very good. Next up with Fall From Perfection, who had a decent metal sound but the vocals were not great and my interest had waned after the first couple of songs.

TDMH have been playing a few dates recently in support of last year’s rather good ‘No Superhero’ album. Kicking off with the hard rocking ‘Functional Dysfunctional’, swiftly followed by ‘Prefect’. TDMH have honed their live sound well – new drummer Juba slotting in nicely with bassist Max Notaro in the rhythm section - and the band like to have fun which transfers over to the audience.

Vocalist Paul Stead is an affable frontman and in guitarist Mark Stephenson they can add the solos where required, like on their cover of ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’. When he switches to acoustic guitar we have the moving ‘Dear Olivia’, this has been getting a good reception both live and for the YouTube video.

Towards the end of the set we get a romp through the Bryan Adams classic ‘Summer Of ’69′, and the set closed with ‘Okay’. They may never becoming massive rock stars, however TDMH write good, memorable hard rock songs, enjoy the live arena, and keep their fans entertained.

Review by Jason Ritchie

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Power Plays w/c 9 December 2024

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