US dark-pop duo Magic Wands have released a double single today (1st August) that couples the brand new song ‘Across The Water’ with a remix by Stargods of their ‘Hide’ single issued exactly a year ago. The latter is accompanied by a new video that can be seen here:
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They describe ‘Across The Water’ as “setting the tone for a sonic journey through time, transporting us to a 16th-century French European landscape and evoking the essence of a bygone era. Its repetition invites interpretation, allowing listeners to weave their own narrative and connect with the music on a deeper level.”
‘Across The Water’ is the opening track on a brand new album by the duo entitled Cascades, which is set for release on 24th October via Metropolis Records. It also includes the original single version of ‘Hide’, plus the previously issued ‘Armour’ and ‘Moonshadow’. The album will be promoted with an appearance at the Substance 2025 festival in Los Angeles on 7th November, with further shows to be arranged.
We haven’t been keeping up. The last time we featured break_fold, the solo musical vehicle of Tim Hann, former front man with Leeds’ finest, i concur, was in the Spring of 2023.
He’s slipped out a couple of releases since then, and is threatening a few more in the near future. This flurry is spearheaded with the release of the single ‘The Bairns’, of wioch he writes, “’The Bairns’ is a song that I wrote about my younger cousins, who are brothers, and were toddlers at the time. I remember them bounding around my parent’s house chasing each other and playing games – the song is supposed to represent the sound of the two boys causing havoc!”
COVENANT announce the release of the new Andreas EP. The EP is dedicated to the memory of Swedish band’s former member Andreas Catjar-Danielsson (March 3, 1973 – July 29, 2024) who sadly passed away from cancer on this day one year ago. All proceeds of Andreas EP will go to charity in benefit of his wife and children.
Dependent Records will waive all proceeds from the vinyl EP in contribution to this important charity.
In further news, COVENANT present the track ‘Winter Kills’, a cover of legendary British synth-pop duo YAZOO, as an advance single taken from the Andreas EP. You can hear it here:
Cowabunga! BONGINATOR are back with a vengeance! The New England death metal posse is steaming full weed ahead with their sophomore full-length Retrodeath, which will be out on October 24, 2025. As an obvious sign of insanity, with ’80s synthwave added to death metal brutality, the video single Pizza Time featuring their vocalist buddy Vinny Castellano (BELUSHI SPEED BALL) is now being unleashed onto an unsuspecting metal world that will never be the same!
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BONGINATOR comment: “Cowabunga, bitch!”, audio torture tortoise Erik Thorstenn states matter of fact. “This is our righteous new banger best enjoyed with Bonginator’s favorite meal, pizza! Remember – chicks love dudes who eat out! On this one, our metalocity is off the charts! This is a bodacious rager for doing bong rips and stage diving. Just don’t tell Master Splinter about the primo kush that we got, yeah? Anyway, go stream this one, and if someone doesn’t dig it… what the shell?”
UK mathcore outfit Wolves have announced their long-awaited debut full-length, Self Titled, set to be released on September 5th on Ripcord Records. Alongside the announcement comes the explosive new single ‘Reformed (Try Love)’.
“The ‘Stop The Boats’ narrative was a last gasp effort to hold onto power by fear-mongering to appeal further to the right,” says Mark Howes. “The song is a tirade against what I and my fellow Wolves believe to be an ignorant and vile ideology, foisted upon people by others who are exploiting fear for personal gain. Try having some dignity, or compassion, or courage, or some basic fucking empathy. Or heart, or respect, or honour, or wisdom… or love? Try love.”
Formed in 2016, Wolves is the culmination of over a decade of chaotic riffs, bloodied stages, and shared history. Born from bands like Bludger, Finish Him!, EFK, and Ashes of Maybelle, and featuring members who’ve played with Hundred Year Old Man, Conjurer, The Grey and more, Wolves emerged as a full-force unit shaped by scars, trust, and unfinished business.
Their debut EP, Gone Are The White Flags, captured their raw energy, leading to wild live shows alongside Sectioned, LLNN, Renounced, and others. After pandemic delays, Wolves regrouped in 2021 to create Self Titled, a ten-track blast of Every Time I Die swagger, post-metal atmosphere, and Dillinger-grade chaos.
Recently signed to Peaceville, Scorpion Milk have shared their first new music today, alongside news of the debut album Slime Of The Times (out 19th September). The new single ‘Another Day Another Abyss’ arrives with a brand-new video, revealing Scorpion Milk’s darkly imaginative universe for the first time.
“It is about trying to stay upright under the daily flood of catastrophe, the headlines, the numbness, the helplessness. But there’s a double edge to it: the only way to get through the abyss is to become it. To move through the darkness, you have to carry some of it inside you.” – Mat McNerney
Watch the video here:
“I used AI to create the video because we’re living inside the very dystopia we fear the most. The song deals with the psychological weight of modern catastrophe, and AI as both a tool and a threat, mirrors that perfectly. A mirror can be humorous but also diabolical. It’s an aesthetic artistic choice, but also a commentary: our nightmares are now automated.” – Mat McNerney
Scorpion Milk is the new project from Mat McNerney; the founding creator of Beastmilk’s highly-revered Climax album and the subsequent three Grave Pleasures albums. Infused with elements of Beastmilk’s original DNA, debut album Slime of the Times marks the most direct, raw, and explosive evolution of his self-defined genre: Apocalyptic Post-Punk. An eclectic artist in his own right, McNerney’s roots are also firmly in the black metal underground of Finland and Norway, and continues to work in that genre (having formerly featured as vocalist for Dødheimsgard, among others), plus is also currently active with his band, Hexvessel.
Continuing the lineage of Mat’s cult post-punk and goth-metal hybrid music, Scorpion Milk draws from the decaying spiritual core of UK anarcho-punk and 80s post-punk with an opus ideal for fans of Killing Joke, Godflesh, Crass, Flux Of Pink Indians, Crisis, The Fall, and early Sisters of Mercy, yet also set to resonate with contemporary audiences into Health, Drab Majesty, Soft Kill, High Vis, Molchat Doma, Creeper, and Uniform.
Between the Buried and Me offer fans a second preview of the prog-metal titans’ upcoming album, The Blue Nowhere (Sept. 12, InsideOutMusic) with the release of the new track, ‘Absent Thereafter’.
Tommy Rogers describes how the song captures the spirit of the upcoming album: “To me, ‘Absent Thereafter’ feels like the quintessential BTBAM song – fun, intense, spacy, and still fucking heavy. I like to think it takes the listener on an unexpected journey, with ear candy waiting around every corner. It’s a deeper dive into all of the dynamic places you’re taken within The Blue Nowhere!”
Dan Briggs elaborates on the musicality of the single: “This song moves arrangement-wise in two parts divided by a key change and tonal shift of the chorus, but is ultimately the big fun time bombastic energy of a Van Halen shuffle with Huey Lewis and the News horns going through variations that are sometimes heavily syncopated, sometimes lost in space, and sometimes inspiring you to break out into a do-si-do. Grab your washboard and let’s go!”
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Tour dates:
July 30 Istanbul, TR IF Performance Hall
July 31 Râşnov, RO Rockstadt Extreme Fest
August 1 Budapest, HU Monolit Festival 2025
August 2 Wien, AT Szene *
August 3 München, DE Free & Easy Festival
August 4 Berlin, DE Hole44
August 5 Katowice, PL Miçdzynarodowe Centrum Kongresowe
August 6 – 7 Jaroměř, CZ Brutal Assault 2025
August 9 Kortrijk, BE Alcatraz Metal Festival
August 10 Utrecht, NL Pandora
August 11 Tilburg, NL 013 Next Stage
August 12 Köln, DE Luxor
August 14 Dinkelsbühl, DE Summer Breeze
August 15 – 16 Compton Martin, UK ArcTanGent
August 17 Carhaix-Plouguer, FR Festival Motocultor
September 14 Philadelphia, PA Union Transfer
September 15 Boston, MA Royale
September 16 Ottawa, ON Bronson Centre
September 18 Toronto, ON Danforth Music Hall
September 19 Montreal, QC Théâtre Beanfield
September 20 Portland, ME Aura
September 21 Albany, NY Empire Live
September 22 New York, NY Warsaw
September 23 Sayreville, NJ Starland Ballroom
September 25 Raleigh, NC The Ritz
September 26 Charleston, SC Music Farm
September 27 Atlanta, GA The Masquerade
September 29 Ft. Lauderdale, FL Culture Room
September 30 Orlando, FL House of Blues
October 1 New Orleans, LA The Joy Theater
October 2 Houston, TX Warehouse Live
October 3 San Antonio, TX Kill Iconic Fest
October 4 Dallas, TX Granada Theater
October 7 Phoenix, AZ The Nile Theater
October 8 Riverside, CA Riverside Municipal Auditorium
October 9 Las Vegas, NV 24 Oxford
October 10 San Francisco, CA August Hall
October 12 Portland, OR Revolution Hall
October 13 Seattle, WA The Crocodile
October 14 Vancouver, BC The Pearl
October 16 Edmonton, AB Union Hall
October 17 Calgary, AB MacEwan Hall
October 19 Spokane, WA Knitting Factory
October 20 Boise, ID Knitting Factory
October 21 Bozeman, MT The ELM
October 22 Missoula, MT The Wilma
October 24 Denver, CO Summit Music Hall
October 25 Wichita, KS TempleLive
October 26 Des Moines, IA Wooly’s
October 27 Chicago, IL The Vic Theatre
October 28 Columbus, OH Newport Music Hall
October 29 Nashville, TN Brooklyn Bowl
October 30 Charlotte, NC The Fillmore
July 30 – August 17: Performing Colors in its entirety
September 27-October 30: Co-headlining dates with Hail The Sun
US electronic musician and vocalist Mari Kattman has issued a video for ‘Typical Girl’, the opening song on her new album Year Of The Katt, released in late June by Metropolis Records. The clip was shot in downtown Providence (Rhode Island) by Mark Allison of @401FilmsPVD.
“Typical girl. People say it constantly, so much so it feels almost criminal to be female by birth,” Kattman states when explaining the meaning of the song. “Like it’s vulgar or something to carry characteristics that are even remotely female. That it makes you difficult, unlovable or crazy when it’s not packaged up and tied with a pretty bow or something. There are so many misunderstandings about what it is to be a woman.”
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Kattman has recently announced a UK tour in October 2025 as the special guest of Assemblage 23, the electronic act founded in 1988 by Tom Shear, who is Kattman’s collaborator in the electronic duo Helix and her husband. Dates are as follows:
15th October BRISTOL Exchange 16th October MANCHESTER Rebellion 17th October GLASGOW Ivory Blacks 18th October SHEFFIELD Corporation 19th October LONDON The Dome (downstairs)
Following recent tours with Wardruna and God is an Astronaut, composer and sound designer Jo Quail is set to release her 7th album Notan on 12th September.
Notan is the seventh album from composer and sound designer Jo Quail—a work of striking contrast and graceful power. Drawing its name from the Japanese concept that explores the interplay of light and dark, the album unfolds as a deeply personal journey through polarity: presence and absence, softness and intensity, expansion and return.
What began in June 2023 as a series of raw, looped improvisations evolved into something far larger: a symphonic tapestry titled Ianus, now destined for recording with full orchestra in late 2025. But Notan is not that orchestral vision—it is the source from which it sprang, and the space to which it returns.
In these solo iterations, the music breathes with both intimacy and grandeur—cello, electric cello, and piano intertwine in richly layered textures. The sounds Jo creates on both acoustic and electric cello range from the traditional to the highly sculpted; all sound design and modelling is her own, forming the distinctive sonic identity that makes her music instantly recognisable. Each track is a live take, with every looped section performed in full, capturing the immediacy of live performance while allowing for a more considered control of sound—one that honours the context of making a record.
Across its arc, Notan evokes archetypal energies. ‘Butterfly Dance’ embodies matriarchal authority—stately and untouchable in its raw grace. First single, ‘Rex’, by contrast, traces Jo’s own evolution. First appearing on her 2010 debut as a tentative, fragile offering, the piece was left untouched for years. Reawakened during the solitude of lockdown, it transformed—emerging here as something altogether more commanding: majestic, grounded, and complete. Jo comments,
The first single from Notan is Rex, some of you who’ve been with me since the early days might remember it first appearing back in 2010. It’s a piece I’ve returned to in live performance, and over time it’s evolved and reshaped itself. This version is something quite different: a reimagining that feels both familiar and entirely new. I’m really proud to be releasing it now — and yes, it’s over 9 minutes long (a bold choice for a single, I know!).
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Jo Quail is also set to tour the UK in September to support the release:
Skål! German death metal militants SCALPTURE unleash the new video clip ‘Schwedentrunk’ in the wake of the release of their new full-length Landkrieg (‘Land Warfare’), which hit the world hard on March 7, 2025.
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The title ‘Schwedentrunk’ (‘Swedish Drink’) refers to a torture method, which was allegedly used at first by the troops of Gustav II Adolph, King of Sweden but got quickly adopted by all marauding troops ravaging the German lands during the 30 Years’ War (1618-1648). It was executed by forcing liquid manure and sewage down the throats of its victims.
The video clip was partially shot during SCALPTURE’s release show at Rare Guitar in Münster, Germany on March 7, and on the subsequent tour with CARNAL TOMB.
SCALPTURE comment: “The track ‘Schwedentrunk’ has quickly grown into a favourite both of the band as well as during our shows since Landkrieg was released in March”, guitarist Felix Marbach writes. “Much of the footage was shot at our release show and also during the tour with Carnal Tomb. The live video captures the raw ferocity on stage, but it is also a reminder of the intense time that we were able to share with so many of you. With some summer festivals on the horizon, we are going to pick up right there, where we left off.”
Aural Aggravation 