Carmine & Vinny Appice: Drum Wars Live!

Carmine to the right of you, Vinny to the left.

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If you were weaned on 20-minute drum solos, or you like your rock shows laced with WWE-style gladiatorial glitz, then you’ll relish this percussive bombast.

The Appice brothers have revived and updated the drum battle, a showboating razzmatazz pioneered by jazz drummers Buddy Rich and Gene Krupa in the 1950s. The brothers’ diverse careers have Black Sabbath in common, with Carmine (beating the shit out of your right speaker) taking the Ozzy route and Vinny (ditto, left) taking the Dio route.

So when they’re not locked in combat they’re thrashing their way through Holy Diver and Crazy Train. But the audio is only half the battle – this should really have been a DVD./o:p

Hugh Fielder
Hugh Fielder

Hugh Fielder has been writing about music for 47 years. Actually 58 if you include the essay he wrote about the Rolling Stones in exchange for taking time off school to see them at the Ipswich Gaumont in 1964. He was news editor of Sounds magazine from 1975 to 1992 and editor of Tower Records Top magazine from 1992 to 2001. Since then he has been freelance. He has interviewed the great, the good and the not so good and written books about some of them. His favourite possession is a piece of columnar basalt he brought back from Iceland.