Archive for October, 2026

Watch: ‘Unchained’ by Klone

Posted: 26 October 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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More than twenty-five years after their beginnings in Poitiers, France, progressive metal band Klone announce The Moon Is Witness, their upcoming album set for release on March 12, 2027 via V2 Records. Drawing on the band’s progressive metal foundations while exploring atmospheric arrangements and a strong melodic sensibility, the record brings together different facets of their evolving sound. ‘Unchained’, the album’s first single, offers an introduction to this new chapter.

“Both fierce and immersive, powerful and unifying, Unchained delivers raw, incisive energy driven by a cathartic chorus. Through organic and animalistic imagery, the lyrics explore the journey from captivity to complete liberation. A quest for emancipation that is both personal and collective.”

— Yann Ligner (Vocals / Lyrics)

The song’s original working title, Élan, reflects the sense of momentum that shaped its composition. For guitarist and songwriter Guillaume Bernard, that initial idea remains central to the track’s character.

“During the writing process, the working title for this song was Élan, which means momentum or drive in French. That’s exactly what the music evoked for me: a sense of movement, energy and freedom. It’s a pretty dynamic track, with quite a few little surprises along the way, and we really played with contrasts. We’re looking forward to bringing it to the stage and sharing that energy with the audience!”

— Guillaume Bernard (Guitar / Songwriting)

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Across its nine tracks, The Moon Is Witness explores humanity’s impulses, vulnerabilities and contradictions through the silent gaze of the Moon. An ever-present observer of both the best and darkest sides of human nature, it serves as the album’s guiding thread, with lyrics touching on love, death, fear, hope and the traces we leave behind.

“On this album, the Moon becomes a witness to the most beautiful things in human beings, but also the darkest. I wanted to write from that perspective, with the distance it offers to look differently at our choices, flaws and contradictions, without trying to explain or judge them, but simply to bring out their poetry.”

— Yann Ligner (Vocals / Lyrics)

Musically, the album revisits the weight of Klone’s guitar-driven roots while retaining the spacious arrangements that have shaped their more recent work. To bring this direction to life, the band reunite with Francis Caste, who previously produced their 2019 album Le Grand Voyage. Recorded, mixed and mastered at Studio Sainte-Marthe in Paris, The Moon Is Witness benefits from an organic production that balances instrumental detail with a powerful, expansive sound.

The album also features several guest musicians: Arnaud Roy on harp on ‘Wavering’, ‘Mirage’ and the instrumental ‘Moonlight’; Raphael Weinroth-Browne, known for his work with Leprous, on cello on ‘Mirage’; and Coroner guitarist Tommy Vetterli, who contributes a guitar part to ‘Molt’.

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Photo: Cindy Canto

Watch: ‘White Walls’ by I Ya Toyah

Posted: 25 October 2026 in Singles and EPs, Recommended Streams and Videos
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Polish-born Chicago-based alternative / darkwave artist I Ya Toyah returns with ‘White Walls’, a powerhouse offering about the hidden struggles behind the appearance of being okay, with video created by ALEX ZAREK. Released around World Mental Health Day, this haunting single supports her mental health advocacy, with initial proceeds donated to Backline Care, supporting the mental health of music industry professionals. Following ‘Feelings’, ‘Apology’ and her cover of Nine Inch Nails’ classic ‘Closer’ , this series of singles follows her 2024 album DRAMA, co-produced with and mixed by STABBING WESTWARD’s WALTER FLAKUS.

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‘White Walls’ is her fourth and final single in a series leading up to her Error Prospect: Human EP, which was developed in collaboration with Grammy-nominated producer Johnny K, (Disturbed, Staind, 3 Doors Down, Megadeath, Finger Eleven).  The first major release since her 2024 album DRAMA, co-produced with and mixed by STABBING WESTWARD’s WALTER FLAKUS, this new material expands I Ya Toyah’s sonic vision without losing the dark atmosphere, emotional intensity, and independent spirit she is known for.

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The Pixel Sky – A Sense of Danger

Posted: 24 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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29th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

Hungarian-born vocalist, songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Áron Siegler has been busy of late. Hot on the heels of the Glitching Sky EP – and I mean HOT, with a mere three weeks’ gap – The Pixel Rain drop their debut album, A Sense of Danger.

It seems that for him, like many of a creative bent, the current state of affairs, globally and domestically has not only instilled a sense of danger, but a sense of urgency. At the time of writing, the UK government has just taken down a number of its sites online due to a cyber security threat, but has added a new ‘survival’ page with a list of essential items it recommends every household has in stock in the event of war, a more extensive cyber attack, or extreme weather disrupting supply chains – including water and electricity. If we learned one thing from the pandemic, it’s that telling an entire population not to panic while giving guidance such as this is pretty much guaranteed to create just that.

This climate of fear and suspense, the sense that we’re perpetually on the cusp of something seismic provides a large part of the drive behind A Sense of Danger, of which Siegler says,

“The main theme was the anxiety about how our society is edging closer to its collapse through politics, social media or climate catastrophes, but there were more personal topics as well simultaneously about toxic relationships, jealousy and a haunting past. Both ‘storylines’ ended up connecting with each other and found their inevitable end by the end of the album, which became surprisingly bittersweet even to myself.”

The musical inspiration for the album is the two-part structure of New Order’s Brotherhood, and he approached the writing process with the idea of giving the record two complementary halves, using the distinction between darker and more uplifting electronic sounds as a loose creative framework rather than a rigid stylistic division. The result, we’re told ‘is a cohesive collection of eight songs that moves through varying shades of tension, urgency, melancholy and melodic warmth’.

Four of the album’s eight songs featured on the Glitching Sky EP, although interestingly, while three of the EP tracks appear in the first half, ‘The Glitching Sky’ is placed as the album’s penultimate track.

This means that EP track ‘Sacrifice’, which raises the curtain on the album, sweeps in with a mix of grandeur and tension. When covering the EP, I described it as an ‘anthem’, and placing it up front makes for a bold, attention-grabbing opening, and the expansive, cinematic ‘Last’ follows, pitching bleak imagery against a thumping dance beat and widescreen guitars and sweeping synths. The production is immense.

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The first of the previously unreleased tracks, ‘All the Lovers’ drives in hard and fast, with some cybergoth / techno drum machine and bubbling bass action. At this point, industrial-tinged goth that takes cues from early NIN and later Depeche Mode has been done and done and done, meaning the field is crowded, and while it might not be the most gripping of the album’s tracks, the quality of the songwriting and the production once again stand out here. The title track closes the first half in grand and ambitious style, with expansive layers of synth once again going wide over a rumbling bass. Here, Siegler’s vocal sounds at it most tense, capturing that anxiety and paranoia which defines the album’s focus – and at the same time, coming closest to a delivery reminiscent of Dave Gahan’s soulful baritone.

The second half certainly feels lighter, more poppy: the rolling tom sweeps which pan through ‘Danse Macabre’ are evocative of arena rock, and the song breaks out into a buoyant Europop bopalong. It sets the tone, and while it certainly fulfils the rubric of the album of two halves, the second, in its more dance-orientated vibes, feels like something of a let-down. Tension and release in itself is often a good thing, but this is feels more like jetting off on a beach holiday in Spain and forgetting all the shit back home. And yes, ‘Pieces of Love’ goes full New Order in the break toward the end.

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I always found New Order disappointing – not simply in the wake of their flight as Joy Division, but for the trajectory they took after their dark and tentative debut, Movement. I feel rather the same way about this album. Hearing ‘Glitching Sky’ in this context, it does sound like a euphoric dance reimagining of New Order’s ‘Temptation’. Thankfully, – I suppose – the last song, ‘All Night Long’ isn’t a cover of the Lionel Ritchie song. But it is a mid-tempo electro-ballad, and anticlimactic in comparison to the promise of the where we started. It is certainly an album of two halves.

The Pixel Rain (Áron Siegler) by Evelina Klimova (Landscape 03) web

Photo: Evalina Klimva

Ministry – Hate to Go (Take Out Or Delivery)

Posted: 23 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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Cleopatra Records – 30th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

It’s hard to process the fact that at this moment in time, we are as far from 1985 and 1985 as from the end of the second world war. Similarly, it’s true that what might be considered ‘late-era’ Ministry has been in existence for longer than what one could call their main career. It’s been an interesting journey, from a largely forgettable synth-pop debut in ‘83, through a hardening sound as showcased on Twitch three years later, before things got really interesting and properly ugly with third album, The Land of Rape and Honey in 1988. Psalm 69 blasted them from being a cult act to a global force, arguably the definitive industrial metal act. They were on MTV with videos featuring William S. Burroughs. Although Filth Pig charted higher in many territories, and was a particularly, dark, heavy, and bleak affair, it was not a big seller, and everything since has been a case of diminishing returns, and not just in commercial terms. Not that they’ve ever been a particularly commercial band, despite major-label backing for some twenty years.

And while it’s true that Al Jourgensen has become increasingly fixated on blasting successive US presidents and their governments – particularly the Republican ones – one has to give credit where it’s due. It’s a worthy mission, and there’s a fair chance that he’d have called it a day sooner if he’d not had so much to rage about. He called it a day in 2013, only to return five years later with Donald Trump firmly in his sights in place of George W. Bush. The Bush years felt like an all-time low in US politics at the time…

And now we find the world at war, half the world on fire and the other half flooded, and wake up each morning wondering if it’s actually still here or if AI has ended it while we’ve been asleep. Small wonder Jourgensen had to have one last word on the state of everything. Sadly, it seems they’ve gone down the AI route for the videos, which is disappointing, particularly given the political context.

Singles ‘We Hate’ and ‘Singularity’ were promising enough: on the one hand, fairly standard fare for later-era Ministry in sonic and stylistic terms, but solid in terms of quality, and the album goes straight in heavy with ‘Crickets’. The guitars border on nu-metal, hitting like slabs of concrete, but the distorted vocals, samples, and driving percussion, all represent the Ministry hallmarks that go all the way back to songs like ‘Thieves’ – only here, there’s stab at a huge anthemic chorus. ‘Voices of Hate’ in many ways reprises ‘Hero’ from Psalm 69, with the speed metal thrash of Mötörhead, and while it’s solid enough, it feels rather predictable. This could serve as a summary for much of the album. It sounds like a Ministry album. Sludgy, metallic guitars grind away against relentless percussion, and there are samples galore. In fact, the samples take precedence over the vocals for the most part, and much of the supposed ‘commentary’ is represented by soundbite snippets of newscasts and the like.

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While sampling exploded in the early 80s with the likes of Throbbing Gristle and Cabaret Voltaire being early adopters of emerging technologies which facilitated (affordable) tape loops and the like, and hop-hop acts quickly took up and ran with it, it wasn’t until the late 80s and early 90s that samples became commonplace in a rock or metal context, and Ministry were at the forefront there. Thirty years (and more) on, it feels formulaic. ‘Delete’ starts out sounding like it might take a more experimental direction, but ultimately reprises parts of the backing for ‘TV Song’ before presenting a collage of samples against a dirty, low-slung-riff. The vocals are blazing with rage, but only partially intelligible. ‘We Hate’ adds a dash of glam to the chugging wall of grey fury, but not a lot else. The same is true of CD-only bonus cut ‘The White Man Lied’: it’s got some glammy swing and quite some groove behind it.

The six-and-a-half-minute ‘Grifter’ slows the pace and marks a welcome textural shift, too. It’s by no means one of Ministry’s best cuts, but its placement in the middle of the album makes it stands out, and there are Trump samples galore. All well and good, but snippets of Trump’s worst moments are added to social media on a daily basic. Every press conference, every rally, every post on ‘Truth’ social gives us more insane babble from his rapidly unravelling sociopathic narcissistic mind. Do we really need to hear any more of this demented shit? Maybe we do: the media has normalised his cracked rambling. And what Ministry do here is remind us that this is insane. And it IS insane. How the fuck have we reached this point where a dribbling, shitting, dementia-ridden dictator is the most powerful person on the planet? I say person, but at this point, he’s slipped beneath even being human. And still his supporters clap like seals at his every vapid statement, and proponents of the far right here in the UK lap up his endless shit and proclaim that following his lead is the way forward. The worst of it is that most of us don’t only feel powerless, but we are powerless when it comes to turning the tide, because we’re battling against billionaires and bots – funded by the billionaires. AI manipulation is rife, and we’re all fucked.

Someone I’m ‘friends’ with on Facebook spent a good few months posting AI images of herself and band they like, before announcing that they’d been made redundant, their job having been replaced by AI. Fast forward a few weeks, and they tell the world how, after searching and applying for new jobs with no success, they’re using AI to search for and apply for jobs for them. And this is where we’re at. No wonder Jourgensen felt the need to unleash another salvo of blasting fury at the world. Hate To Go is by no means the best Ministry album, or even an album that sounds like a definitive sign-off. It sounds more like a work of business as usual. But perhaps that’s to miss the point – or it is the point. What I’m trying to say is that while Hate To Go is the band’s official last statement, it’s one which shows an understanding that their work will never be done as long as capitalism reigns – a sentiment articulated on ‘Singularity’. This track seems to summarise the album’s purpose – to document the end of times, to place a marker in history where Al and co can say ‘we told you so, and we give u-p telling you now’.

Penultimate track ‘Burned Out’ is one of the album’s strongest, a driving nihilistic assault that finally sees Ministry hitting the mark in brutal fashion and harking back to Filth Pig.

Closer ‘We’re Still Here’ features Paul Barker, and with its electro-driven intro also represents a late return to form as well as an unexpected expansion on the usual sound, unleashing a choir for the finale. I’m not sure I love it, but credit due for a late left-turn.

So where does this leave us? Who knows? Is this even the final final album by Ministry? Maybe we should ask this again in another five years. In the scheme of the Ministry oeuvre, Hate To Go is nothing special, and in many ways adds little to their corpus. But at the same time, it feels like an album that had to be made.

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Virgin Birth – The Dead End

Posted: 22 October 2026 in Albums, Reviews
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16th October 2026

Christopher Nosnobor

Well, this is bleak. And in reading the blurb which accompanies The Dead End by The Virgin Birth, which is described as ‘a collection of songs about exhaustion, isolation, dread, and the feeling that the path forward has narrowed considerably. It’s industrial punk for a world that seems to be running on fumes. There’s no solution waiting for you at the end of these songs… only a dead end’.

The Kentucky act have form for forging uncomfortable, challenging music, which at times harks back to the electroindustrial sound of Wax Trax! in the late 80s and early 90s, and occasionally with the confrontational, antagonistic stance of the power electronics scene, as exemplified by the likes of ‘From Behind’ (2024). Their last album, Total Annihilation, released in May of 2025 was every bit the exercise in nihilism its title suggested, and mined a seam of dark electronica with a sharp, serrated edge.

Now a trio, The Dead End sees Virgin Birth continue that trajectory, combining electro, punk, and industrial, and as the release notes point out, ‘where previous releases looked outward at collapse on a larger scale, these songs feel closer to the ground… more immediate, claustrophobic, and personal’.

And I want to focus on a couple of those words in the description before I plough into the detail of the songs themselves: ‘exhaustion’ and ‘dread’. Everyone is exhausted. All the time. to the extent that we’ve almost stopped mentioning it in conversation: it’s become the backdrop to life – or, perhaps more accurately, existence. It seems hardly any of us are really living any more: everyone is just dragging themselves through each day. It started during lockdown. In the UK, the bombardment of information, from the daily statistics to the ever-shifting lockdown rules, while everyone was trying to balance work and / or finances thanks to reduced furlough pay, while managing home-schooling, was beyond comprehension. We were mentally fried. And while I’m no conspiracy theorist, having read Naomi Klein’s Shock Doctrine, I have absolutely no doubt that many agencies – governmental and corporate – exploited that period of vulnerability. Five years on, we’re free to move… but the world is at war, we’re surveiled by CCTV and on-line virtually ever second of the day. Our movement and speech are constantly monitored. And tell me, honestly, if you never think your phone is spying on you? No wonder your exhausted.

And so to ‘dread’. As I already mentioned, the world is at war. Climate change has accelerated at such a pace that it’s less a question of if, but when, low-lying land will be submerged and crops fail, but AI could bring about the end of humanity before it happens. Call me a pessimist, but we’re fucked. But how, or when? It’s impossible to tell, but that sense of impending doom… it’s not paranoia, it’s not you. This is the news media, and social media, relentlessly prodding away with darkness. These day, I wake every morning at 6:30 and immediately check my phone – Facebook, news channels – to make sure the world hasn’t ended before I go downstairs to feed the cat and make a cuppa. It isn’t right, it isn’t healthy, but this where we are.

With The Dead End, Virgin Birth – now expanded to a trio – nail it in terms of capturing that fear and dread and intensely claustrophobic paranoia. The title track is an absolute rager, pat NIN, part Filter, part Stabbing Westward, part Pitch Shifter, it’s abrasive, full-throttle, and ‘PICK UP YOUR SKIN’ goes all out for the thudding techno groove, and also slams down some heavily processed guitar noise.

‘BEEF PONY’ sounds wrong and feels wrong: a glitchy collision of industrial and hip-hop that seems to draw influence from Faith No More and Godflesh, and drags in a bit of country and trance, too, but its success is all the attack. It’s also a reminder of just how impactful drum machines can be when used correctly. Here, the bass beats kick hard, and dominate the sound.

After the snarling industrial dance stomp of ‘GOOD BOOK’, ‘PERFORMATIVE LOSING’ delves into darker territories and I’m reminded of NIN circa ‘The Perfect Drug spun with late 80s Ministry. It’s ball-bustingly heavy, and is the perfect summation of the Virgin Birth sound. Heavy, intense, laden with anguish. It hurts. Don’t plead for mercy: accept that this is life now: constant punishment. Endless brutality. Relentless hurt. The brutally fucked dance piece that is the last track, ‘MYSTERY MAN’ is everything you need to know. It’s noisy. It’s intense. it’s claustrophobic. It’s bloody brilliant.

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Chameleons / Lol Tolhurst / Kahula – Stylus, Leeds, 21st October 2026

Posted: 22 October 2026 in Reviews, Live
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Christopher Nosnibor

Chameleons might be considered as being among the ‘also-rans’ of the early days of goth, along with the likes of, say, Rose of Avalanche and The March Violets. Despite gaining a solid cult fanbase early on, due in no small part to a stunning debut album, subsequently signing to Geffen in the mid-80s, as well as receiving substantial critical acclaim, they somehow failed to take off. Calling it a day after the release of their third album, Strange Times in 1987, they reconvened briefly at the turn of the millennium. Their latest reunion, now five years in, is approaching their longest continuous run, and has also yielded a new album and EP. And so here they are, arguably as popular now as they’ve ever been, and not as a nostalgia act but a going concern. The number of younger people in the audience tonight is also testament to this.

The doors are early – 7pm – and Kahula are on early doors – 7:10 – so play to a mere smattering of an audience. The five-piece from Manchester are like many of the new, younger emerging bands who are taking the post-punky / goth sound of circa 1984 as their template. They’re a bit early U2, with vocals which evoke Lloyd Cole and Ian MacCulloch. They’re competent, but uninspiring, and they’re met with polite applause.

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Kahula

Lol Tolhurst by way of a support act is quite something, and a definite draw here. In the wake of his two books, the most recent being Goth, which has been well-received, the co-founder of The Cure has been enjoying something of a career revival after the wilderness years which followed his expulsion from the band circa Disintegration.

Of course, his set of early Cure songs – from the period where was an active co-writer – isn’t a solo set, and he has a bassist and guitarist (who covers the vocal duties) accompanying his drums, and they open with a super-slow and supremely dolorous ‘The Holy Hour’. The bassist throws Peter Hook lunges. And then they’re straight into ‘A Forest’, which would have been more expected as a closer. ‘Siamese Twins’ is next after an intro from Lol which references the closing line and Sylvia Plath. Of course it’s bleak.

Tolhurst’s drumming is simple / sparse / motorik depending on your perspective, but hearing these early Cure songs live and in a – comparatively – intimate setting (Stylus has a capacity of 1,000) is, almost inevitably, moving, even in the absence of Robert Smith’s unique vocal. You can see from the body language that they’re feeling it onstage, too, inhabiting these oppressive sonic spaces.

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Lol Tolhurst

Their rendition of ‘A Strange Day’ isn’t instantly recognisable, and it doesn’t quite gel, mangling that essential lead guitar part. ‘M’, however, sounds perfectly crisp and brittle. The singer seems to struggle with some of the notes on ‘The Hanging Garden’, where the other two seem at their most comfortable. Lol introduces ‘All Cats are Grey’ as a ‘slightly different version’, and reminds us that they’re his songs too. He seems to have revisited a demo version or something for it, and it does provide an interesting insight into his contribution to the writing process for those early albums. It’s drummier than the studio version. Again, it’s the vocals which are the weakest element, and it’s perhaps worth noting that the guy onstage isn’t the one featured on the tour promo. Or perhaps not. ‘Three Imaginary Boys’ prefaces a band intro, before they give us ‘Boys Don’t Cry’, and at their scheduled end time, launch into ‘10:15 Saturday Night’ by way of a finale. And having promised a set of Lol-era Cure songs, that’s what they gave us.

Chameleons open a set loaded with newer material (five of the seven songs from Arctic Moon feature in the seventeen-song set) with ‘Where Are You?’, and they sound fantastic. Their LED backdrop is like a movie through the set., and I suspect some of it – at least – is AI generated, and I find a certain discomfort in this. Still, there’s nothing remotely artificial about the musicianship or the enthusiasm with which they play the songs.

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Chameleons

The jangling indie of ‘Lady Strange’ lands third, and sits comfortably alongside the older tunes.

‘I wish these songs weren’t still relevant,’ Mark Burgess opines before they drop the first truly vintage track of the night in the form of ‘Up the Down Escalator’ from Script of the Bridge.

Burgess’ voice is remarkably strong, and with two guitars, they sound muscular. Burgess looks office casual, and pretty limber, too. He swaps his bass for a 12-string acoustic for the epic ‘David Bowie Takes Me by the Hand,’ another one from the new album.

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Chameleons

He warns that Trump is just the prelude of worse to come before ‘Saviours Are a Dangerous Thing’, and they land ‘Soul in Isolation’ at the hour mark – and if my ears don’t deceive me, there are nods to The Beatles’ ‘Eleanor Rigby’ and ‘There is a Light that Never Goes Out’ by The Smiths’ slipped in along the way, giving something of a medley feel to this already huge tune.

Hearing ‘Swamp Thing’ with fresh ears and in a live setting, it’s easy to understand why they were hailed as they next U2. Meanwhile, the epic ‘Feels Like the End of the World’ is one of the standouts on Arctic Moon, and so it proves to be in tonight’s set, too. They wrap up a colossal set with the killer brace of oldies, ‘Second Skin’ and ‘Don’t Fall’. It’s incredible that songs of this vintage can still sound fresh, but then, it’s incredible that Chameleons are this good after all this time.

Watch: ‘Mort’ by SICKY

Posted: 21 October 2026 in Singles and EPs, Recommended Streams and Videos
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British alternative artist SICKY gets into the spirit of the season with ‘Mort’, the first track on his forthcoming full-length Redland album – his fourth to date. Once again, he delivers an earful that is full of mischief, attitude and a darker sense of humour with a song inspired by the book MORT from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld.

In that novel, an awkward farm boy named Mort becomes the apprentice to Death — a tall, cat-loving skeleton personage, who decides to take a sabbatical to experience human pleasures — and must learn to navigate the immense cosmic responsibility of harvesting souls while attempting to outsmart his master and alter fate itself.

SICKY is the solo project of Mick Butler, whose brand of melodic Britpop-infused indie rock spells good news for fans of Beck, Supergrass and early Blur. Originally from the Black Country region of England, he is now based in Shropshire.  After a run of playing in bands — from the brass soaked pop of Papa Mantra to the dirty stomp of SUMO — he now derives pleasure from banging out tunes and crafting new material as a true independent creator.

“This song was inspired by the wonderful Terry Pratchett’s Discworld novel of the same name. In the video, Death (played by the ever-dark Lily) is featured doing everyday mundane stuff. In the novel, he hired Mort to take his place so that he could experience human life for himself,” says Mick Butler.

“This video and song were recorded in my hometown, Bridgnorth. The making of the video turned a few heads — a miniature Death carrying a scythe in a supermarket tends to do that. This was my first attempt at recording my newly bought piano. A certain amount of pointing a mic and hoping for the best went on, but hopefully it has worked out okay.”

‘Mort’ is also the second single from the Redland album, following‘Bubblegum Party’, each showcasing SICKY’s playful, infectious pop-rock sensibilities and off-kilter style.

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Redland is an album about friends lost along the way and it’s a good bit darker than past albums. While the new record presents some other shady moments, ‘Swim’ and‘Bubblegum Party’ are not among them, presenting SICKY’s buoyant cheekiness, the latter track telling of a gloriously messy breakup party, served with a crooked grin as sweetness meets spite, chaos and a wicked sense of fun.

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Blacklist Union – Heavy is the Crown

Posted: 20 October 2026 in Singles and EPs, Recommended Streams and Videos
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16th October 2026

Christopher Nosnibor

I’m likely one of the last people to champion anything retrograde, cliché, whatever. I don’t hate nostalgia, but I absolutely detest the nostalgia industry that’s grown over the years which specifically exploits the latest cohort of an ever-ageing population. Gen X used to scoff at Boomers listening to golden oldies radio shows and watching nostalgic cack like The Golden Oldies Picture Show. Now we’re all splashing out hods of cash on thirtieth anniversary expanded reissues and spending long weekends at festivals like Shiiine On and packing out arenas to see acts from the 80s going through the motions as they crank out all the hits. I like hearting my favourite songs as much as anyone, but to live in the past is tantamount to being dead. As such, I’ve not much truck with acts who continue to exist solely to play the nostalgia circuit. But bands who continue to face forward, and to create, even when they’re beyond any career peak? I have more timer for them. A fair bit more.

LA hard rock / punk act Blacklist Union are marking twenty years as they release ‘Heavy Is The Crown’, the third single from their forthcoming album, The Good, The Bad And The Notorious, due for release in spring 2027.

I shall momentarily defer to the press release for more context, before coming to the single: “‘Jackson’, the first collaboration between Blacklist Union frontman Tony West and Femme Fatale’s Lorraine Lewis, saw the pair reimagine the Johnny Cash and June Carter classic, blending outlaw country, punk attitude and rock ’n’ roll swagger. It was followed by ‘Madame Butterfly’, an open love letter from West to Lewis, and it seems the song did the trick. After completing Blacklist Union’s recent UK & European tour with Faster Pussycat and Femme Fatale, during which Lorraine joined the band on stage at the end of every Blacklist Union set to belt out ‘Jackson’, Tony and Lorraine headed to Paris, where Tony proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower. She said yes.”

Who saw that coming, eh? But ‘Heavy is the Crown’ sees them resume business as usual: unreconstituted hard rock riffery collides with punk and there’s a dash of post-punk style and some big-bollocked swaggering attitude behind it all. As much as it’s old-school, it’s got a dash of contemporary industrial going on, which gives it that vital edge. It’s that edge that pushes ‘Heavy is the Crown’ into a place where it matters, and is worthy of the ear of new listeners.

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Blacklist Union - 2 - George Reed photography

Photo: George Reed photography

Listen: ‘If You Found This It’s Probably Too Late’ by Hellripper

Posted: 20 October 2026 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Scotland’s ibex-obsessed blackened thrash bastards of Hades otherwise known as Hellripper continue to globally promote their fourth studio album Coronach which was released via Century Media Records earlier this year.

Next up, Hellripper are embarking on a first complete North American tour in October/November and in order to whet the appetite for the upcoming activities, Hellripper have already released a digital double-single with the cover versions of Seattle’s legendary speed-metal-punks Zeke of the tracks ‘Let’s Get Drugs’ and ‘Mainline’. Hellripper have now also unleashed a blackened metal reimagining of an Arctic Monkeys B-side track ‘If You Found This It’s Probably Too Late’.

Hellripper’s mastermind, guitarist/vocalist and songwriter James McBain comments on the Arctic Monkeys cover song as follows: “I wanted to record something that would perhaps be a little unexpected, and this Arctic Monkeys B-side was screaming for the Hellripper treatment. It may be kind of surprising to some, but they’re one of my all time favourite bands, and though it may not be immediately evident in my music, they have always greatly influenced how I approach songwriting and production. Enjoy!”

AA

Hellripper – Live:

MO 26.10.2026 Roseville, CA (USA) – Goldfield Trading Post ^

TU 27.10.2026 Berkeley, CA (USA) – Cornerstone Berkeley ^

WE 28.10.2026 Los Angeles, CA (USA) – The Regent Theater ^

TH 29.10.2026 Fresno, CA (USA) – Strummer’s ^

FR 30.10.2026 Las Vegas, NV (USA) – Backstage Bar Billiards ^

SA 31.10.2026 Mesa. AZ (USA) – Nile Theater ^

MO 02.11.2026 Dallas, TX (USA) – AM/FM ^

TU 03.11.2026 Austin, TX (USA) – Come and Take it Live ^

WE 04.11.2026 Houston, TX (USA) – Warehouse Live Midtown ^

FR 06.11.2026 Atlanta, GA (USA) – Masquerade (Hell) ^

SA 07.11.2026 Nashville, TN (USA) – Basement East ^

SU 08.11.2026 Asheville, NC (USA) – Eulogy ^

MO 09.11.2026 Richmond, VA (USA) – Canal Club ^

WE 11.11.2026 Baltimore, MD (USA) – Baltimore Soundstage ^

TH 12.11.2026 Harrisburg, PA (USA) – Capital City Music Hall ^

FR 13.11.2026 Boston, MA (USA) – Brighton Music Hall ^

SA 14.11.2026 New York, NY (USA) – Racket ^

SU 15.11.2026 Lakewood, OH (USA) – Mercury Music Lounge ^

TU 17.11.2026 Detroit, MI (USA) – Catacombs at the Sanctuary ^

WE 18.11.2026 Chicago, IL (USA) – Reggies ^

TH 19.11.2026 Kansas City, MO (USA) – Recordbar ^

FR 20.11.2026 Denver, CO (USA) – Gothic Theatre ^

——————

WE 25.11.2026 Montreal, QC (Canada) – Piranha Bar

TH 26.11.2026 Quebec, QC (Canada) – La Source De La Martinière

FR 27.11.2026 Ottawa, ON (Canada) – Dominion Tavern

SA 28.11.2026 Toronto, ON (Canada) – Supermarket Bar & Variety

——————

SA 09.01.2027 Mangualde (Portugal) – Mangualde Hardmetalfest

TH 14.01.2027 Rio De Janeiro (Brazil) – Experience Music

FR 15.01 2027 Curitiba (Brazil) – Basement Cultural

SA 16.01.2027 Sao Paulo (Brazil) – Burning House

SU 17.01.2027 Belo Horizonte (Brazil) – Caverna

TU 19.01.2027 Buenos Aires (Argentina) – Uniclub

WE 20.01.2027 Santiago (Chile) – Sala RBX

TH 21.01.2027 Lima (Peru) – Vichama Conciertos

SA 23.01.2027 Bogota (Colombia) – Ace of Spades

SU 24.01.2027 Quito (Ecuador) – Necronik

TU 26.01.2027 San Jose (Costa Rica) – Amon Solar

TH 28.01.2027 Monterrey (Mexico) – Cafe Iguana

FR 29.01.2027 Hermosillo (Mexico) – London Pub

SA 30.01.2027 Tijuana (Mexico) – Dragón Rojo

SU 31.01.2027 Mexico City (Mexico) – Circo Volador

——————

SA 13.03.2027 Eindhoven (The Netherlands) – Dynamo / Welcome To Hell Festival

TH-SU 25-28.03.2027 Oslo (Norway) – Inferno Festival

FR-SA 28-29.05.2027 Kirchdorf bei Haag (Germany) – Bavarian Battle Open Air

FR-SA 28-29.05.2027 Buchenbach (Germany) – Boarstream Open Air Festival

TH-SA 03-05.06.2027 Stykkisholmur (Iceland) – Satan Festival

FR-SU 11-13.06.2027 Leeuwarden (The Netherlands) – Into the Grave Festival

FR-SA 23-24.07.2027 Freißenbüttel (Germany) – Burning Q Festival

TH-SA 26-28.08.2027 Næstved (Denmark) – Næstved Metalfest

^ w/ Havok

And many more shows to be announced soon!

AA

Hellriper2

Forensics – Dogtown

Posted: 20 October 2026 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
Tags: , , , , , , , , , ,
0

Gotta love the Leeds scene. It keeps on throwing up noisy bands who really capture the zeitgeist. Sure, the city’s been redeveloped and gentrified and is a world away from the dingy days of Thatcher’s Britain, which saw it become the heartland of the early 80s goth scene. But for all its plush shopping centres and slick office spaces, home to wealthy finance firms, and for the way university life is now less The Young Ones and more the domain of the well-heeled – most often from overseas – who can afford to take on forty grand’s debt with only limited hope of a better job – it’s still a place where there is considerable poverty.

My generation was lied to: we were promised ‘graduate jobs’ which paid salaries well above the national average. Call me a failure: after a three-year degree in English literature – followed by an MA, and then a PHD, I failed to land a job which paid a ‘graduate’ wage and eventually, twenty-five years after graduation, I had my three student loans written off. Yes, I’d advocate staying poor as a career choice, naturally.

I digress somewhat, but the Leeds scene has always been, and continues to be, different. More recent years has seen the city’s sound move away from goth to noisy shit. This fashion started in the mid 00s, with the likes of That Fucking Tank, Pulled Apart by Horses, and These Monsters, and there was oddball stuff like Forward Russia! And This Et Al, and while lumped in with the post-rock trend. iLiKETRAiNS (later I Like Trains) always stood apart. Leeds has long been… well, different.

Forensics are different, too, and quintessentially Leeds, too. As they pitch it, they’re ‘Influenced by a desire to establish a sound that was as gritty as it was unrelenting’ and ‘have set straight their objective from the start; to put the world to rights as an unforgivably noisy 5 piece unafraid to incorporate influences from noise to hardcore punk, from black metal to garage rock’.

‘Dogtown’ is raw and biting. It’s built around a dingy, grainy garage-rock bassline, and during the verses, a sinewey guitar line twists through skewed angles in a fashion that calls to mind The Jesus Lizard, and, by some kind of default, Blacklisters. Then the chorus drives straight ahead with a racing urgency, the rabid punk vocals reminiscent of a screamier Wayne Barrett of Slaughter and the Dogs. It’s fierce.

AA

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