Posts Tagged ‘anthem’

Watch: ‘House Of Rain’ (feat. Ann-Mari Edvardsen) by Novembre

Posted: 26 October 2025 in Recommended Streams and Videos, Singles and EPs
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Italian masters of doom Novembre are back today with the second single from their new album Words Of Indigo, set for release on Peaceville on 7th November. Speaking about the new track, titled ‘House Of Rain’, songwriter Carmelo Orlando shared –

“The moment the main motif of ‘House Of Rain’ poured out, I knew we had something special. It’s not the kind of theme you stumble upon every day. It’s an instant sing-along and had to be handled with special care if we didn’t want it to go to waste on a two-bit tune. That’s why we decided to put extra effort into putting this track together. Once it was done, I felt it needed another vocal line an octave higher to go along with mine. That’s where the idea of female vocals came in. Luckily, one of my all-time favourite singers, Ann-Mari Edvardsen, ex-singer of the Norwegian legends The 3rd and the Mortal—with whom we had already collaborated years ago on the album Novembrine Waltz—had just moved to my hometown in Sicily. It only felt natural to give her a call and suggest a second collaboration, which, to my surprise, she happily accepted. So I flew back to Sicily to meet her in a studio, and that’s where the magic happened.

Then the band was phenomenal, the rhythm section thundering ahead like a train, and the central solo lifted the piece to soaring heights.

And like something out of a fate-driven novel, it all came together—Ann-Mari, my return to the old country—and the lyrics could only be about an old house, the houses we leave behind, and the silence they must have carried all those years without us kids tearing through its rooms. Do they miss us? Do they feel lonely?”

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thumbnail_NOV-BAND credit Giacomo Mearelli

Novembre by Giacomo Mearelli

Eville – Monster

Posted: 15 March 2024 in Reviews, Singles and EPs
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15th March 2024

Christopher Nosnibor

Following the stop-gap single release of their remixed version of their debut, ‘Messy’, Eville are back and firing on all cylinders with their first new material of 2024. While it incorporates the defining elements which made their previous two single, ‘Messy’ and ‘Leech’ – namely hard-driving nu-metal guitar slabs juxtaposed with electronic drum ‘n’ bass, which combine to drive a ‘a huge pop chorus,’ ‘Monster’ represents a clear step up, and is, as the title suggests, a monster.

Having a specific goal can provide vital focus in the creative process, and this was central to the creation of ‘Monster’.

If Yard Act are striving to make hits, self-professed ‘brat-metal’ trio Eville are all about the Pits, as Eva (Guitar and vocals) explains the objective for ‘Monster’: ‘We are building on the success of our singles by keeping up the standard our fans expect. ‘Leech’ and ‘Messy’ have done us proud, but we are ready to move up a level with ‘Monster’, I wanted to write a feral tune that would be perfect to open up mosh pits.’

It may be old-school, the notion of making music that will hit live and by playing support slots and touring to build a fan-base, but unless you’ve got massive label backing and PR that can score bags of radio play, it’s the only way for an independent act to grow. And it seems to be working pretty well for Eville.

With its stuttering electronic beats and muted, twisted, heavily filtered synthesized sound at the beginning, we’re instantly reminded of The Prodigy and turn of the millennium Pitch Shifter. Being in the demographic where the arrival of ‘Firestarter’ proved to be an absolutely pivotal moment in music – where a rave act brought in hellish guitars and brutal aggression and went absolutely stratospheric – hearing ‘Monster’ evokes the excitement of that time. It was a seismic shift from grunge, and while grunge served to articulate angst, what followed was more aggressive, more nihilistic, more angry.

What goes around comes around, and it figures that a nu-metal revival would ultimately happen following a lengthy grunge renaissance – but more than that, the generation of new bands are coming of age in truly shit times. It stands to reason that they’re feeling angry and nihilistic. And after many missed out on key life experiences during the pandemic, they’re now finally finding the cathartic release of going mental at a gig. The moshpit is the perfect release.

And yes, ‘Monster’ delivers the potential for an all-out mosh-frenzy. And it’s also got huge alternative radio potential, too. The production is super-crisp, ultra-digital sounding, in the way that on their emergence, Garbage slapped us with a sound that was at once dirty and slick. There are some mammoth guitar chugs, and they’re big and chunky, but smoothed and polished. It may only be a fraction over three minutes long, but this is a massive tune.

Watch: ‘Lock & Key’ by Feral Vices

Posted: 13 June 2023 in Recommended Streams and Videos
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Louisville KY alt-duo Feral Vices take on abusive religious systems on new single ‘Lock & Key’.

Lead vocalist and guitarist Alexander Hoagland says, “’Lock & Key’ is about the abusive religious systems that I think a lot of us grew up in where leaders were taking advantage of their positions for money, power, sex, or some combination of those. Being in that world, you’re taught that this is a blessing or that is a blessing when in reality you’re being taken advantage of and are forced to experience the evils of it alone because once you start tugging at the strings of that, the whole system falls apart. It’s a very hard and lonely place to be even though you’re surrounded by people and I think that makes it even harder to get out of or acknowledge the reality of. So, this song was my way of talking about that and processing it for myself.”

Watch the video here:

As a two-piece alternative rock band out of Louisville, KY, Feral Vices has created a sound and feel all their own. Drawing from influences ranging from Queens of the Stone Age to Refused to The Jesus Lizard and even The Dillinger Escape Plan, lead singer and guitarist Alexander Hoagland and drummer Justin Cottner bring a feel to the world of two-piece bands not yet well tread. Constantly touring and releasing new music, the prolific duo has earned spots on the stage with bands like Four Year Strong, Microwave, Save Face, and more. As well as having their song "Mass Produce Your Revolution" as the end credits to the Scott Adkins and Ray Stevenson film Accident Man: Hitman’s Holiday, Feral Vices is a band to keep an eye on.

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Photo: Riley Aaron (@imrileyaaron)

Third Lung – No Names

Posted: 7 October 2022 in Singles and EPs
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7th October 2022

Ahead of the release of their debut LP, Gameplay, out next month, Third Lung have crashed in with the third single released in advance of it, and its message of self-affirmation, it’s not only an anthem, but something of a message to both themselves and their peers, with its refrain of ‘Go big or go home’. Third Lung have gone big since day one, and it’s clear that their musical ambition and ambition in terms of audience are both immense. It’s clear they won’t be content with touting their wares sound the pub circuit for long, and that they have their eyes firmly fixed on those academy venues as a minimum. So many bands do, of course, and they’re completely deluded. Where Third Lung differ is that they have the material to get them there, and ‘No Names’ is yet another huge, huge song.

With a hazy guitar washing over a thumping beat, they’re very much taking their own advice: ‘No Names’ sounds immense and builds from a nagging intro to a smouldering verse, and it’s one of those songs that builds and builds. It’s not that Third Lung really sound like 80s U2, but they have that passion and edge (no pun intended) that evokes the spirit of U2 in the run-up to The Joshua Tree – so it’s more their Unforgettable Fire, in a sense, or the space between that and War. But hopefully you get the idea: this is bold and ambitious, without the aura of pomp or overbearing ego or the mullet.

Third Lung have a clear knack for killer tunes and know how to bring them with a rush of energy that’s totally infectious. If they don’t go massive in the next twelve months, then there is absolutely no justice in this world.

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Holy Coves – The Hurt Within

Posted: 4 April 2022 in Singles and EPs
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Yr Wyddfa Records – 25th March 2022

Christopher Nosnibor

The latest offering from Holy Coves (who hail from Holy Island, Anglesey, renowned for its long historical links with pirates) is a bold, mid-tempo stroller. Infused with psychedelic and stoner rock, above anything, it’s got arena-friendly anthem stamped all over it – although I don’t mean that as the insult it could be taken. Not everything has to be edgy to be any cop.

Popular doesn’t have to mean weak, watered-down, lowest common denominator, and sometimes artists are popular because they’re good, rather than in spite of the fact. And there was, after all, a time when U2 and Simple Minds both made decent music, and they were packing out immense venues long before they became pompous, overblown parodies of themselves. It from this seam of 80s upscaled sound that ‘The Hurt Within’ is mined: everything about it feels huge, effortlessly amalgamating The Cult and Bruce Springsteen and coating it in a smooth reverbiness.

Holy Codes may or may not have aspirations to be immense, but their sound most definitely is, and it’s got that big, spacious feel; there’s probably an equation that involves ambition plus songwriting and production somewhere, and if there isn’t, then someone should map the co-ordinates of ‘The Hurt Within’ and take it as a blueprint.

New enough to grab anyone with ears, nostalgic enough to appeal to the forty-somethings and perhaps even older, and solid enough to stand up in its own right, it’s hard to fault from where I’m sitting.

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Third Lung – Dialogues Of The Fatal Few

Posted: 28 November 2021 in Singles and EPs
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26th November 2021

James Wells

Following on from the single releases of ‘Climb’, ‘I A Fire’, ‘Hold the Line’, and ‘What is a Life?’, Reading four-piece Third Lung have delivered their much-anticipated new EP, Dialogues Of The Fatal Few.

Three of those aforementioned tracks are featured here, and while it would have been obvious and easy to have released a five-track EP featuring all four with the new song on offer here, that they’ve gone for a more succinct release means that Dialogues Of The Fatal Few is a much more focused and cohesive release, and not a complete rehash and compilation.

Opening with ‘I A Fire’ sets the stall out nicely, and while it’s mid-tempo, it’s bold and anthemic, and recalls the spirit of circa 2004 when Keane broke through with ‘Somewhere Only We Know’ and the single releases from Coldplay’s A Rush of Blood to the Head were all over the radio. Bear with me. In context, these weren’t bad tunes which hinted at considerably more than the tedium that would follow from both bands. ‘Hold the Line’ is perhaps the strongest song in the set, balancing brooding and dark with a blossoming sunburst chorus

Piano ballad ‘The Art of Stealing’ reveals a different facet of the band, and while it’s clearly not a single track, illustrates the benefits of EPs and longer form releases. It also provides a well-placed change in form in context of the EP, bringing things down a notch or two between the monster tunes.

There’s more to Third Lung than straight-up anthems: lyrically, they’ve got some depth and are worth listening to, although I suspect that’ll likely be secondary to their career trajectory, and with such a knack for big tunes, it’s surely only time before they’re big, too.

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Moses – Mirror Magic

Posted: 24 October 2021 in Singles and EPs
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Space & I Records – 17th November 2021

Moses are clearly aiming for the stars. The band name alone, with its biblical allusions, connotes epic, a band with enough ambition to part a sea (although they’re actually named after their singer, Victor M. Moses. The four-piece act are gunning for arenas, and fair play, but what makes this release a win is that their primary focus is on the song, and on the guts, and on the meaty delivery and solid production.

It’s a chunky, psych-hued hypnotic, cyclical guitar riff that lumbers in and swaggers its way through the song’s three-and-a-half minutes. It’s got all the vintage crunch, the reverby haze, and all the fretwork. It nags away incessantly, and it’s got balls. It’s followed by a shaking, snaking bass, and the vocals are swathed in reverb to seal the retro vibe. There’s a lot of energy here, and some good vibes,

‘Mirror Magic’ has a lot going on – mostly some chunky guitars and solid drumming. It feels like a strong statement of intent, and a taste of things to come – so let’s see what happens next.

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Sophomore – Social Distancing

Posted: 14 May 2020 in Singles and EPs
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Christopher Nosnibor

Here in Britain, sophomore is such a music journo word: because of the structure of our education system, it simply doesn’t occur in any other context. The fact the same is true in Australia perhaps makes it an odd choice of name for an Australian band, but one suspects there’s a degree of knowingness around this, paired with the fact that the band is essentially a second project for noisy alt-rock duo Mannequin Death Squad, which sees Elly and Dan joined by Vanessa and Shelly in a quest to pursue a slightly more indie / pop direction.

‘Social Distancing’ is, as you might expect, another in a blizzard of recordings inspired by current events – or, indeed, non-events, as the days melt into one another – but does stand out as being particularly good. Maybe I’m biased; maybe it just resonates: it’s not the virus that’s putting me in a psychological spin, but news and social media, through which the landscape changes by the hour.

‘I can’t breathe / with all this information thrown at me’, are the opening lines, and it pretty much encapsulates the experience a connected digital society in which everyone has an opinion and data overload is more of a syndrome than something theoretical. I feel that communication with even me closest friends is becoming increasingly difficult as we all become zombified by bewilderment.

From a quiet, picked guitar intro, in classic grunge style, it breaks into a big, guitar-driven chorus, but the guitars chime rather than drive, and the vocal harmonies are so sweet as they advise ‘don’t listen to the radio /don’t listen to those TV shows’. I’ve been feeling the pain of government disinformation a lot lately, and much as keeping informed is useful, I’m beginning to question the validity of the exercise. But the real crux comes near the midpoint on the refrain ‘and the lonely get lonelier’ and it lands hard. Because it’s true. We all feel isolated to varying degrees, because we are, literally, in isolation – but some are more isolated than others.

Stuck indoors with your family may be tense and torturous, and only having text or Skype or similar may be a woefully weak substitute for human contact, but what about those without any of these things? The sentiment is touching, and it’s also a belting tune, that ultimately lands like The Pixies doing anthemic.

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