SEYMOUR are gearing up for some capital entertain-ment after clinching a slot at London's celebrated Rock Caf in Convent Garden.

The Bromyard three-piece have stretched their small-town roots since ditching their covers-band limitations and producing a wealth of new material.

Their new six-track album, Seymour Live, contains tracks such as Ride, Shine On and Thankyouville.

The band, featuring bass player George Elliott, drummer Lee Harris and guitarist and lead vocalist Neil Ivison, have already given the new material a run-out, in venues all over the county and beyond, in Birmingham and Nottingham.

Neil's the first to admit that switching from hackneyed covers to striking out on their own has resulted in less crowd support but ditching the old days couldn't have come soon enough.

It was something that was coming for a while the shirts were getting spanglier and we decided we couldn't carry on doing covers, he recalls.

The reaction to our original stuff wasn't so intense. When we were playing covers, you could rely on a large percentage of the crowd recognising it.

But I'd rather have two people recognise our new songs than 50 cheer for covers.

We feel our new material's much more intense and grown up.

This doesn't seem to have stopped their progress: Seymour will head to London later this month having already won a battle of the bands in Chelsea last year.

You can catch them on Saturday, May 5, when they join Malvern's Sons of Spock and others for a benefit concert at Willie Thorne's snooker club.

Or at the Marr's Bar, Worcester, next Friday.