Nottingham band KEE. are back with new single ‘The Party’. After the release of their debut single ‘Sound’ in late 2025 which garnered acclaim from the likes of The Noise Magazine, this new single released on the 3rd of April has already been scheduled for airplay by BBC Introducing East Midlands. The band recently played at Rough Trade Nottingham and The Water Rats, King’s Cross and have upcoming gigs booked at The Dublin Castle, Camden and festivals in Spring and Summer.
Restless Spirit present the final advance single, ‘Desolation’s Wake’, taken from their forthcoming self-titled album. Restless Spirit is chalked up for release on May 8, 2026.
In further news, Restless Spirit have announced a massive co-headling US-tour with GOZU to take place in May & June this year.
Restless Spirit comment: “We’re beyond excited to take the new songs on the road after working so hard to create what we feel is our best album to date”, vocalist and guitarist Paul Aloisio states. “We’re already curating a setlist that will cater to fans of all eras of the band, both old and new. By joining forces with Gozu there will be an abundance of heaviness each night and that we know for a fact!”
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Restless Spirit comment on the new single: “With ‘Desolation’s Wake’ we present the fastest song of our new record”, Paul Aloisio writes on behalf of the band. “This track is pure energy and fury, and it comes with one of my favorite choruses that we’ve ever written. Interestingly, ‘Desolation’s Wake’ was pretty difficult to nail despite it being one of our simpler tracks – at least, we thought it was that! Everyone will be able to hear it live on the upcoming US tour that we’re co-headlining with Gozu.”
With their self-titled full-length, Restless Spirit have reached a point in their career where the band of friends from Long Island, New York knows exactly who they are and where they stand. As the eight tracks on Restless Spirit are the most distilled version of what the trio is about, they saw no need for further explanation in the title.
So, what are Restless Spirit about? Pure metal, no more, no less. Born from the steel mills of Birmingham this musical style has deep English working class roots that the East Coast outfit translates into an American sonic slang with elements from desert and stoner metal and even the occasional progressive flourish. As a result, they seamlessly merge classic heavy solos with roaring guitars and a pinch of psychedelic fuzz.
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RESTLESS SPIRIT live US 2026 with GOZU 24 MAY 2026 Providence (US) Alchemy 26 MAY 2026 Rochester (US) Photo City 27 MAY 2026 Erie (US) Centennial Hall 29 MAY 2026 Lansing (US) The Green Door 30 MAY 2026 Chicago (US) Reggies Music Joint 31 MAY 2026 Minneapolis (US) 7th St Entry 02 JUN 2026 Kansas City (US) The Record Bar 03 JUN 2026 Denver (US) HQ 05 JUN 2026 Boise (US) The Shredder 06 JUN 2026 Seattle (US) The Funhouse 07 JUN 2026 Portland (US) High Water Mark 09 JUN 2026 Sacramento (US) Cafe Colonial 11 JUN 2026 Los Angeles (US) Knucklehead 16 JUN 2026 Austin (US) The Lost Well 17 JUN 2026 New Orleans (US) Siberia 18 JUN 2026 Nashville (US) Eastside Bowl 19 JUN 2026 Atlanta (US) Bogg’s Social & Supply 20 JUN 2026 West Columbia (US) New Brookland Tavern 21 JUN 2026 Raleigh (US) Chapel of Bones 23 JUN 2026 Richmond (US) The Camel 24 JUN 2026 Baltimore (US) Metro Gallery 25 JUN 2026 Brooklyn (US) Gold Sounds 26 JUN 2026 Philadelphia (US) Nikki Lopez 27 JUN 2026 Cambridge (US) Middle East Upstairs
I happen to know a fair few people who suffer from gout – which may be an indication of my age and the people I associate with – and they will all attest that it really is an ‘actual bastard’. But the title of this EP is also so, so Glaswegian. Living in Glasgow for four years, I came to appreciate that not only is Scotland culturally very different from England – something tourists probably don’t get to absorb in a week or two – but Glasgow has a culture, and a dialect, and countless turns of phrase which are unique to Glasgow. Following my time there, ‘Actual Bastard’ sounds like Glasgow, and the only way it could sound more Glasgae is if it was called Pure Bastard, Pure Wee Bastard¸ or maybe Fuckin Bawbag Cunt Bastard. Glasgow’s probably the only place on the planet where you can call a colleague a cunt in the office and not get into trouble because it’s a term of endearment as well as an insult.
Gout features members of Glasgow bands Lucia & the Best Boys and The Ninth Wave. As the bio notes, though, Gout is ‘a far cry from these projects, however’ (And having caught The Ninth Wave at Live at Leeds (I think) many moons ago, I can attest to this), Gout distils the intensity of hardcore with the low, driven crush of sludge forebears’.
No two ways about it: Actual Bastard is an absolute rager, with rabid, throat-ripping vocals raving and raw over filthy, low-slung churning riffs. The first track, ‘nmate’ lurches headlong into punishing, sludge-laden dirt, calling to mind The Jesus Lizard and the like, but scratcher, heavier, more overtly metal. ‘Too Bleak’ ratchets up the savagery, making for an eardrum-busting assault – but it’s tame in the face of ‘I Am A Beacon of Health and Wellbeing’ which sees the riffery go straight-up Godflesh and the tuning go way down to conjure the most ferocious hybrid of 90s noise rock and extreme metal.
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If ‘Junk Sick’ goes a bit easier, with clean chorus-tinged guitar and a slugging bass, it’s not without a brutal lurch into extremity, going early Pitch Shifter meets Fudge Tunnel around the midway point.
‘Tarmac’ brings peace at last with a spoken word narrative and clean guitar strum. ‘I’m the eldest of two / You’re the youngest of three / I’m just tarmac to you / you can walk all over me… just walk all over me’, Ally Scott mutters tensely. Here, it registers that this is not just a band doing it for a bit of a laugh: there’s real emotional depth buried amidst the tempest of noise. But of course this revealingly introspective moment is swiftly swallowed in a welter of noise. What does cut through is pure rage and anguish, a cathartic offloading of trauma, amidst a swirl of metal meets shoegaze. The impact level is high, and ‘Tarmac’ only elevates the power of Actual Bastard. I’m foraging for words here, in the face of overwhelming musical might.
Gout sure as hell don’t hold back, and Actual Bastard is a flailing, furious, rampant, relentless beast of an EP.
Bristol based progressive sludge metal band Urzah are set to release their new album A Tranquil Void on 5th June via APF Records (Mastiff, Video Nasties, Swamp Coffin). They’ve just shared 2nd single ‘Hunter in the Veil’, a track which draws on mythic symbolism and elemental imagery to explore cycles of power, death, and renewal.
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Formed in 2020, just before the pandemic hit, Urzah’s intensely collaborative and productive writing process was immediately evident, leading to the quick release of self-titled EPs ‘I’ (2020) and ‘II’ (2022). These laid the foundation for Urzah’s unique brand of ‘progressive sludge’. Inviting comparisons to Neurosis, DVNE, Mastodon and Elder, their forward-looking sound combines the abrasive elements of punk and post-hardcore with atmospheric post-metal passages and soaring melodies.
Urzah’s vision of ‘Earthen Heaviness’, combining oppressive darkness with moments of transcendence and cosmic awe, was realised on their critically acclaimed debut LP The Scorching Gaze (2024, APF Records). The band’s sonic world draws on both the intensely personal – rage, loss, grief and self-doubt – and a profound awe and vulnerability in the face of the celestial and natural worlds, framing visceral human struggle within vast cycles of death, decay and rebirth.
Since their debut, Urzah has refined their live shows across the UK, playing festivals and headline shows, and sharing stages with a diverse roster of heavy bands including Bongzilla, Tuskar, Mastiff, Greenleaf, OHHMS and Dopelord, as well as progressive atmospheric bands such as Hidden Mothers, Underdark and Nadja, demonstrating their strong cross-genre appeal.
The band recently announced that they are set to release new LP A Tranquil Void on 5th June 2026 via APF Records. The record marks a defining moment for the band, following up their critically acclaimed debut The Scorching Gaze (2024, APF) with an even more assured, mature and ambitious full-length. Conceptually, The Scorching Gaze and A Tranquil Void function as a visual, musical and thematic diptych; where their debut burned brightly with the rage and destruction of an erupting volcano, their new LP captures the cathartic, contemplative still that follows.
2nd single ‘Hunter in the Veil’, according to the band, “draws on mythic symbolism and elemental imagery to explore cycles of power, death, and renewal. A graceful but menacing feminine presence, the Wolfess evoked in the track exists between worlds as an archetypal force. Death and transformation are portrayed as sacred processes rather than endings, and the sombre outro expresses how our bodily ash returns to the soil and our memories feed rebirth.”
Exit Void represents the coming together of no fewer than six notable names from the Austrian scene. Some may even designate them the title of ‘supergroup’. Their bio spins it that ‘EXIT VOID functions as a spontaneous search for sound, where the distinct artistic signatures of Manfred Engelmayr (Bulbul), Katrin Euller (Rent), Alex Kranabetter (Drank), Wolfgang Lehmann (Voyage Futur), Anja Plaschg (Soap&Skin), and David Reumüller (Reflector) collide in productive friction, giving rise to music that remains open to the unpredictability of the moment.
For context, they first played together in September 2025 at Dom im Berg in Graz, and first came together to work on a soundtrack for a video installation, and we learn that ‘the ensemble combines electronic and acoustic instruments with structured compositions and open improvisational passages’.
There’s little room for experimental passages on this single release, though, with ‘Void of Escape’ clocking in at just over four minutes, and virtual flipside ‘Residual Breed’ at a minute and a half.
The former is an off-kilter and intriguing composition that builds – from a lone, mournful trumpet, subsequently joined by slow drumming which is simply immense, positively industrial… but is nothing compared with the powerful vocal performance. The lyrics themselves are sparse, but Anja Plaschg’s delivery is nothing short of devastating in its power.
Lately, I myself have struggled to articulate the thoughts circulating – or moreover frothing in a wild frenzy – about my mind. I can’t keep pace with the news. I lived through and watched – compulsively – the Falklands War, and the first Gulf War. I was a kid, and it felt exciting, especially living near an RAF base and during the Falklands I would the planes take off over the back garden, and later see them on the news. But right now is the worst and most scary shit we’ve ever seen unravel in real time on TV, streaming live 24/7, and then there’s social media… It’s hard to find the words.
On ‘Void of Escape’, Exit Void keep it simple and focused ‘War in the East… War in the West…’ Plaschg sings, with all of her lungs. And that’s it – succinct, simple, direct: there is war everywhere: the world is at war.
‘Void of Escape’ hits hard, a powerful musical experience and a statement of… of what, exactly? It feels like music for the apocalypse. It’s music of the moment.
Chicago alt-rock outfit The Joy Thieves are back with ‘The Wrong End of Your Rifle’, the first single from their full-length album Apocalypse Pending, out June 5th via Armalyte Industries. Featuring Chris Connelly (Fini Tribe, Revolting Cocks, Ministry, Pigface) on vocals, this ripping track addresses the intense frustration we’re all feeling over corporations and billionaires seemingly able to do whatever they want, whenever they want, without consequence.
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Revolving around musicians-producers Dan Milligan and James Scott (a.k.a. Joy Thieves Productions), The Joy Thieves is a musical supergroup that includes current, former, and touring members of Ministry, Stabbing Westward, The Rollins Band, Killing Joke, Pigface, RevCo, PIG, David Bowie, Blue October, Machines of Loving Grace, Depeche Mode, Nine Inch Nails, KMFDM, Naked Raygun, Foetus, My Life With the Thrill Kill Kult, Pegboy, Nitzer Ebb, Die Krupps and more.
A jagged, cynical critique of the intersection between state violence, corporate greed, and digital voyeurism, ‘The Wrong End of Your Rifle’ portrays a world where human life is devalued and even the most violent acts are packaged as content or conveniently filtered, filmed yet ultimately ignored by the screen-numbed masses.
“When the billionaires are accountable for nothing, and force their will by suppression in the streets, we have to become inventive. As we are forced to watch corporations create for-profit prisons, we must remember that we can’t argue or reason with bullets,” says Chris Connelly.
Since signing with legendary London alternative-industrial label Armalyte Industries in 2018, The Joy Thieves have delivered 11 critically-acclaimed releases. Produced, engineered and mixed by Joy Thieves Productions at Populist Recording + Mastering, Apocalypse Pending is the newest record to blaze a mind-bending trail.
Joy Thieves Productions crafts their surprisingly cohesive signature sound from the contributions of its ever-growing 80+ roster of members, drawn from a diverse range of genres, including industrial, rock, punk, darkwave, hip hop and experimental music, they produce a sound that The Joy Thieves describe as being created by “all of us. And yet, none of us”. This approach has allowed the band to create a sound all its own. Aggressive, yet precise. Confrontational, but refined. Harsh, yet layered with melody.
Many of the songs on the new album began with producer-drummer Dan Milligan re-recording iconic hip hop breakbeats with modern drum sounds. ‘The Wrong End of Your Rifle’ began exactly that way — with a modern re-imagining of the one of the most famous breakbeats of all time (‘Ashley’s Roachclip’ by The Soul Searchers). This formed the basis upon which the entire track was built.
Swedish extreme metal project Since The Death have unveiled a brand new video for ‘The Blackest of Days’, taken from their upcoming album Entangled, due out on April 24 via Nordic Mission.
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Founded in 2016 in Linköping by multi-instrumentalist Oscar Rask, Since The Death has operated as a singular studio vision, blending the ferocity of death, thrash, and black metal into a sound that is both razor-sharp and overwhelming.
With Entangled, the project reaches a new level of intensity and precision, pushing its fusion of extreme genres into darker, more intricate territory. ‘The Blackest of Days’ offers another glimpse into this evolution, relentless, aggressive, and tightly controlled, while still carrying a strong sense of atmosphere and tension.
The upcoming release also marks a new chapter for Since The Death, as the project prepares to step out of the studio and onto the stage for the first time, with a full live lineup and a confirmed appearance at Light The Dark.
With his debut release, Abel Autopsy makes his ambition clear, announcing that uunder is envisioned as a journey within a three-part series, with the next two releases in the series being overr and outt, and promising ‘dark, melancholic, shapeshifting worlds that slide between light and shadow’. Although the inconsistency of the double letters on this first release from those projected to follow disturbs my sense of necessary balance, I can close my mind to it while opening my ears and concentrating on the music.
The nine tracks take the form of layered, atmospheric synth-dominated compositions, and Abel Autopsy sets out the context for these thereal works, which evoke haunting (super)natural landscapes by electronic means.
“This started in my youth – pulling apart various musical instruments (battery powered) while in the woods of Appalachia. There was an eerie, ethereal vibe almost like something ‘other’ in the wilderness with me. That permeates through all of the songs and is woven in the mental tapestry throughout. This album is an exercise in capturing that – the balance between light and shadow, feeling another ‘presence’ with you that is not entirely from here.”
The vocals on ‘ghostride’ are muffled, indistinct, the words – if there actually are any – indecipherable, serving more as another instrument than anything else. The pieces are bold, sweeping, cinematic, the ambient tendencies given form by solid mechanised beats which are up in the mix. ‘unfound’ and ‘gates’ land in the space between later Depeche Mode and Nine Inch Nails, the latter also spinning in dance tropes and the haunting monasterial sounds of Enigma music.
He is very partial to the big thunderclap blast when making a change in key or tempo, or simply stepping up the drama – perhaps excessively so, as there are moments when things do feel a bit formulaic – something compounded by the comparative uniformity of the track durations, which are all within the range of 3:01 and 3:37 (three of the nine have a run time of 3:37).
‘mycenae’ tweaks the template to accentuate the contrasts between light and dark and thanks to a super-full, extra-low bass, goes darker than anywhere else on the album, and the crackling static which fizzes through the introduction of the heavier, more distorted ‘nihill’, which concludes the set, brings a sense of decay and a doomy finality.
There are some neat ideas spread across uunder, and the execution is similarly neat, with a clear attention to detail. More variety, particularly in terms of tempo and dynamics would likely create greater impact, but it’s a promising start, and it will be interesting to see how Abel Autopsy evolves over the next instalments of the trilogy.
French cinematic progressive metal collective No Terror In The Bang return with a brand new video for ‘GOAT,’ taken from their new EP Existence, released April 3rd via Klonosphere Records. Directed by Les Maan, who previously worked on the band’s earlier videos, ‘GOAT’ was filmed at La Fabrique des Savoirs in Elbeuf, a unique museum space filled with animal figures and striking scenography that perfectly complements the project’s aesthetic. The video also incorporates elements of contemporary dance, shadow play, and experimental visual techniques, enhancing its immersive and organic atmosphere.
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Forging a sound defined by tension and contrast, No Terror in The Bang move between fragility and fury with striking precision. Expansive atmospheres collide with sudden eruptions, creating music that feels both intimate and catastrophic. At the core stands Sofia Bortoluzzi, whose shape-shifting vocal performance anchors the band’s identity, seamlessly weaving ethereal clean melodies with visceral, gut-level screams.
Conceptually, Existence explores humanity’s downfall across multiple dimensions: cosmic, physical, social, environmental, and mortal. Each track exposes a different layer of collapse, questioning destiny, purpose, and our deeply rooted self-destructive instincts. A dark, immersive release that pushes the band into heavier, more oppressive territory, without sacrificing emotional impact.
Following the acclaimed albums Eclosion (2021) and HEAL (2024), Existence marks a decisive step forward for No Terror in The Bang, a release that confronts discomfort head-on and transforms it into something cinematic, intense, and deeply human.
What better pairing could there possibly be than the gods of grindcore paired with the supreme lords of sludge? It’s hard to think of one. They’ve toured together under the Imperial Death March banner in 2016 and 2025, but this is their first release together – and it’s not a split album, but a truly collaborative work, featuring members of both bands. It was recorded at the Melvins’ Los Angeles studio, with Buzz Osborne (vocals/guitar) and Dale Crover (drums) joined by Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway (vocals), Shane Embury (bass), and John Cooke (guitar).
And as advance single releases ‘Tossing Coins into the Fountain of Fuck’ and‘Rip the God’ forewarned, so it is that Savage Imperial Death March is one absolute fucking beast of an album. It’s ‘Tossing Coins’ that kicks it off, a rabid overload of guitar mayhem, grindy riffery and wild guitar breaks underpinned by dingy riffs, all played at breakneck speed. Greenway gives guttural growls all the way and it’s nothing short of a sonic blitzkrieg. It’s very much a positive to summarise it as being a sum of the parts.
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The nine and a half minute ‘Some Kind of Antichrist’ is much more Melvins – with the weight of Bullhead, but as if the 33rpm album was being played at 45: thick, megalithic, speaker splitting riffs, but on Red Bull, and Buzzo’s hyper vocal countered by Greenway’s salivating growl. It’s a wild, filthy mess, and it goes on, and on, and it’s fucking fantastic – even when, or especially when, it goes weird about four minutes in. because weird is, good, and Melvins are good at being weird. Sometimes, they’re not quite so good at being weird, as the Prick and the ‘Cowboy’ single attest, but like they give a fuck. Melvins have always pleased themselves, and that’s reason enough to love them, if not necessarily all of their releases. You could hardly call Napalm Death crowd pleasers, either, and their lineup’s as been as evolutionary as their sound.
‘Awful Handwriting’ is a brief experimental electro-led interlude that’s daft and noisy in equal measure, and stands in total contrast to the grungey post-metal crossover of ‘Nine Days of Rain’ which immediately follows. Credit where it’s due, this album brings some stylistic surprises which sound like neither band, let alone what you’d expect from the two combined, and this is very much one of those songs.
After the sludge-grunge of ‘Rip the God’ which marks the start of the album’s second half and is very much on the side of the Melvins’ style, there’s a rush into the fast and furious, and while it’s wild and heavy and full-on and loud, it’s also fun, and entirely serious, it is not. With operatic vocals and bold, cinematic synths, ‘Comparison is the Thief of Joy’ leans very much toward the experimental side, while the final track, ‘Death Hour’ just goes all out of the riffery and guitar overload, with raving raw-throated vocals courtesy of Greenway sitting alongside Buzzo giving it his most Ozzy, before once again, shit gets weird. It’s as if they can’t help themselves. Ach, we’ve done some riffs, let’s fuck shit up and go weird… yeah, man. And why not? Neither band has anything to prove after all this time. And now it’s time to embrace the strange… but the keyboard riff from Van Halen’s ‘Jump’ played limply at the end…? That might be a step too far.
Aural Aggravation 