Stockholm’s heavy rock titans Lugnet have recently released a brand-new single titled ‘Fading Lights’, now available worldwide on all major digital platforms through Majestic Mountain Records.
Stretching across an awe-inspiring 11 minutes, ‘Fading Lights’ is far more than just a single, it’s a musical odyssey. With guest contributions from Dr. Carl Westholm (Candlemass) on keyboards and Hilda Norlin on vocals, the track weaves together towering riffs, soaring vocals, and sprawling instrumental passages. The result is a colossal opus that showcases Lugnet’s remarkable ability to channel the primal energy of the ’70s while forging something that feels undeniably vital today.
Re:O’s ninth single is a song of frustration, of dissatisfaction, about giving everything and receiving underwhelming returns. It’s a song about life’s struggles. And it takes the form of musical hybridity taken to another level. And when it comes to taking things far out, Japan has a long history of it. Only Japan could have given us Merzbow and Masonna, Mono and Melt-Banana, Shonen Knife and Baby Metal – acts which couldn’t be more different, or more wildly inventive. J-Pop may not be my bag, but on reading that Re:O take ‘the best of Japanese alternative music and combin[e] western metal and rock… Re:O has been described by fans as “Japancore” a mix of Metalcore, industrial metal, J-Pop, Darkpop, cyberpunk inspired symphonic layers with high energy and heavy guitar.” It’s a tantalising combination on which I’m immediately sold.
Hybridity in the arts emerged from the avant-garde, before becoming one of the defining features of postmodernity: the second half of the twentieth century can be seen as a veritable melting-pot, as creatives grappled with the notion that everything truly original had already been done, and so the only way to create something new was to plunder that which had gone before and twist it, smash it, reformulate it, alchemise new permutations. If the zeal – not to mention any sense of irony or knowingness – of such an approach to creativity seems to have been largely drained in the first quarter of the twenty-first century, Re:O prove that there’s life in art still after all.
With ‘Crimson Desire’ they pack more ideas into three and a half minutes than seems humanly feasible, starting out with snarling synths, meaty beats, and churning bass – a combination of technoiundustrial and nu-metal – before brain-shredding, overloaded industrial guitar chords blast in over Rio Suyama’s blistering vocal. And it blossoms into an epic chorus that’s an instant hook but still powered by a weighty instrumental backing. The mid-section is simply eye-popping, with hints of progressive metal in the mix.
The only other act doing anything remotely comparable right now is Eville, who have totally mastered the art of ball-busting nu-metal riffery paired with powerfully melodic choruses rendered all the more potent for strong female vocals, but Re:O bring something different again, ad quite unique to the party. It’s all in the delivery, of course, but they have succeeded in creating a sound that is theirs, and theirs alone. No two ways about it, they’re prime for Academy size venues, and given a fair wind, they could – and deserve to be – there this time next year.
San Diego/Los Angeles-based shoegaze outfit Distressor returns with their latest single, ‘Broken Glass’. Following their breakthrough collaboration with shoegaze giant Wisp on Tomorrow (via Interscope Records), the independent four-piece is carving a new lane for themselves—one that blends the haze and texture of shoegaze with the raw, melodic punch of early 2000s emo.
Formed in late 2017, Distressor has built a reputation for pairing massive, driving rhythm sections with high-register vocals and emotionally charged choruses that cut through the fog. Their 2023 debut LP Momentary established the band as one to watch in the new wave of heavy shoegaze, and ‘Broken Glass’ pushes that momentum further.
Originally a shelved demo, ‘Broken Glass’ came to life after new drum and bass parts lit a fire under the track, transforming it into a setlist staple almost overnight. Leaning harder into their emo roots, the band challenged genre norms on this one:
“We’ve grown a little bored of the classic soft shoegaze vocals,” says the band. “With ‘Broken Glass,’ we wanted something more pushy and hooky—a big chorus that hits just as hard as the guitars.”
The accompanying music video, directed by longtime friend Diego Guardado, captures the band’s raw live energy in an unpolished, visceral way. Shot in a small, sweaty LA room—while an island-themed church service played loudly (and out of tune) next door—the DIY spirit of the video reflects Distressor’s independent ethos:
“Even though music videos aren’t as popular anymore, we still love making them,” the band explains. “This one was nothing fancy—just us, some friends, a few Modelos, and a lot of sweat.”
With ‘Broken Glass’, Distressor continues to evolve beyond nostalgia, pushing shoegaze into modern, emotionally honest territory while staying true to their roots.
A year on from my review of Yorkshire Modular Society’s Fiery Angels Fell, I find myself presented with another release of theirs on LA label Dragon’s Eye Recordings, and I can’t help but contemplate the circuitous routes by which music travels, since the release landed in my inbox courtesy of a PR based in Berlin – while no-one in my sphere of acquaintance, which includes a broad swathe of electronic artists around York and, indeed Yorkshire as it spreads in all directions – appears to have even the first inkling of the existence of YMS, despite their connection to Todmorden. But then, I often observe that what holds a lot of acts back is confinement to being ‘local’, and it’s a lack of vision, or ambition – or, occasionally, practical matters – which prevent them from reaching the national, or international, audience they deserve.
Yorkshire Modular Society clearly have an audience, and it’s not going to be found at pub gigs in their native county. This is true of most experimental artists: there’s no shortage of interest in niche work globally, but it’s thinly spread. There are places, predominantly across mainland Europe, and like Café Oto, which cater to such tastes, but they’re few and far between, which explains why most such projects tend to be more orientated towards the recording and release of their output, their audience growing nebulously, more often than not by association and word of mouth.
This release – which is the first collaborative album from Yorkshire Modular Society with Peter Digby Lee – could only ever really be a download. With ‘a suite of four ambient compositions shaped by intuition, ritual, and shared resonance’, it’s over two hours in duration, giving recent Swans a run in terms of epic.
The story goers that ‘The artists first crossed paths not through conversation, but through shared vibration — at the resonance Drone Bath in Todmorden. A quiet alignment. Some time later, Peter sent over a treasure trove of sound: samples he had recorded and collected over many years — textures, fragments, and moments suspended in time. From this archive, Dominick Schofield (Yorkshire Modular Society) began to listen, to loop, to stretch, to shape… What followed was a process of intuitive composition—letting the materials speak, revealing what had been buried in the dust and hum. This album is the result: four pieces, each unfolding from the source material with care and curiosity, a shared language spoken in tone, breath, and resonance.’
The title track is soft, gentle, sweeping, lilting, serene, floating in on picked strings, trilling woodwind and it all floats on a breeze of mellifluousness, cloud-like, its forms ever-shifting, impossible to solidify. With hints of Japanese influence and slow-swelling post-rock, it’s ambient, but also busy, layered, textured, thick, even, the musical equivalent of high humidity. It moves, endlessly, but the breezy feel is countered by a density which leaves the listener panting for air. The sound warps and wefts in such a way as to be a little uncomfortable around the region of the lower stomach after a time, like being on a boat which rocks slowly from side to side. ‘Beneath the Hanging Sky’ lays for almost thirty-six minutes, and it’s far from soothing, and as a consequence, I find myself feeling quite keyed up by the arrival of ‘Glass Lung’, another soundscape which stretches out for a full half-hour. This is more conventionally ambient, softer, more abstract, but follows a similar pattern of a slow rise and fall, an ebb and flow. Here, the application is emollient, sedative. I find myself yawning, not out of boredom, but from relaxation, something I don’t do often enough. And so it is that this slow-drifting sonic expanse takes things down a couple of notches. You may find yourself zoning out, your eyes drooping… and it’s to the good. Stimulation is very clearly not the objective here.
Third track, ‘Echo for the Unseen’, is the album’s shortest by some way, at a mere twenty-two minutes in length. It’s also darker, dense, more intense than anything which has preceded it, and as ambient as it ss, the eternal drones are reminiscent of recent both latter day Swans, and Sunn O)). The epic drone swells and surges, but mostly simmers, the droning growing more sonorous as it rolls and yawns wider as the track progress. There are harsher top-end tones drilling away in the mix as the track progresses. It makes for a long and weighty twenty-two minutes, and we feel as if we’re crawling our way to the closer, ‘Spiral of Breath’, which arrives on a heavy swirling drone that’s darkly atmospheric and big on the low-end. Instead of offering levity, ‘Spiral of Breath’ is the densest, darkest piece of the four, as well as the longest. With no lulls, no calm spells, no respite, it’s the most challenging track of the release. It’s suffocating. There is no respite. There is, however, endless depth, and eternal, purgatorial anguish.
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
I’ve been digging GSXT for a whole decade now and shouting about it whenever the opportunity arises. I’m not sure how many people have been paying attention, but anyone who hasn’t has been missing out. They took their timing building up to their debut album, released in 2022, with half a dozen EPs preceding it. ‘Cosmic’ is the first material since Admire, three years ago, and this new single continues their trajectory of extending their repertoire, taking the form of a slow-building expansive brooder.
A cinematic piece of post-punk desert rock, and with hints of recent releases by Earth ‘Cosmic’ tones down the snarling overdrive that’s the duo’s signature sound in favour of something more hypnotic, in the vein of ‘Sonores’. It suits them well, as it happens: Shelly X’s voice drifts and aches through the bass-led verses, floating in a growing swirl of guitars in the chorus before a straight-up rock guitar solo swoops in.
To describe ‘Cosmic’ as commercial would be rather misleading, because it’s certainly no sell-out. But it does mark a significant step. What’s more, it’s absolutely huge, and immediately accessible, making it the cut which has the broadest appeal yet. Maybe now they’ll listen up, eh?
FÏX8:SËD8 present the hard-hitting track ‘New Eden’ as the first single taken from the forthcoming sixth album of the German dark electro act: Octagram has been scheduled for October 3, 2025.
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FÏX8:SËD8 comment: “The song ‘New Eden’ comes with an epic buildup that is almost reminiscent of 70s progressive rock – just executed with electronic means”, mastermind Martin Sane explains. “I am particularly happy how the lyrics turned out and also with my vocals that change style several times over the course of those 8:45 minutes until it all culminates in an epic finale. The length of ‘New Eden’ is also not accidental but rooted in an ambitious concept that structures the whole album. Each of the 8 songs on Octagram consists of several different parts and is 8 minutes long. They were not created as ‘extended editions’ of shorter tracks, but every song follows a meaningful dramatic composition, with huge introductions, changing drum patterns and time signatures. I went to great lengths to ensure that nothing appears just stitched together but rather comes seamlessly fused into one complete piece – and admittedly to even my surprise: it finally worked out!”
American Dark Metal veterans NOVEMBERS DOOM have released a new video single for the song ‘Major Arcana’, the title track of their forthcoming new album. The twelfth full-length from these purveyors of dark and brooding metal is scheduled to be released on September 19, 2025.
NOVEMBERS DOOM comment: “The title track ‘Major Arcana’ represents significant growth for us, exploring new ideas and taking ourselves out of our comfort zone – both musically and thematically”, vocalist Paul Kuhr states on behalf of the band. “Yet we are still staying true to who we are and the artistic legacy that we have created for so many years now. Each of us pushed hard to challenge ourselves as performers as well as songwriters, and we could hardly be any prouder of what we have accomplished with ‘Major Arcana’, both in terms of the song itself as well as the new album as a whole.”
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In further news, NOVEMBERS DOOM will also reissue a 20th Anniversary Edition of their cult album The Pale Haunt Departure (2005) on October 3, 2025. This collectors’ edition full-length will be released on vinyl for the first time and as a lavish artbook including 7 exclusive bonus track, rare images, and liner notes. Mailorder customers, who order both albums, will receive The Pale Haunt Departure early and together with Major Arcana on September 19.
The Norwegian–Swedish collective Orsak:Oslo returns with Silt and Static, their most emotionally intense and musically ambitious record to date. Set to be released on September 5, 2025 via Vinter Records, the album marks a profound new chapter for a band long celebrated for their introspective blend of psychedelic haze and dystopian post-rock.
Recorded spontaneously, Silt and Static captures the band at their most stripped-down and unfiltered, balancing atmospheric fragility with crushing depth. With tape rolling and no roadmap, the album emerged naturally, giving shape to a sound that’s both deeply personal and bleak yet beautiful.
“This is the most honest and emotionally charged record we’ve made to date,” says the band. “Silt and Static is not a concept album, but it still carries a distinct atmosphere that sticks with you. It maintains a fragile balance between friction and flow, born in this session that at times felt like it was on the verge of collapse, yet somehow kept enough momentum to find a winding way forward. None of the songs were written with a specific audience or genre in mind, they simply emerged while the tape was rolling. The entire album came about spontaneously, and we did our best not to get in the way of where it wanted to go. It’s not meant to be perfect, but it is meant to be real.”
“We hope there’s something, somewhere, in the space between the ugly, the fragile, the beautiful, and the unbreakable that stays with the listener as the needle approaches the runout groove on the final side of this double vinyl.”
Following the album’s gripping first single, ‘084 Salt Stains’, the band now unveils the second single, ‘083 Petals’, a brooding and hypnotic track that reveals the emotional tension at the heart of the new album. A track built on contrast and collapse, it begins with a sense of control before slowly disintegrating into distortion and desperation.
“For us, ‘083 Petals’ was an exercise in contrasts,” the band explains. “It began with confidence but quickly unraveled — a mask slipping, dignity hanging by a thread. It had to almost fall apart before it could come back together. Somewhere between muted cries and atonal screams lies this track.”
From the slow-burn psychedelia of their earlier work to the more introspective and improvisational textures of Silt and Static, Orsak:Oslo has never sounded more cohesive or more exposed.
Formed between Norway and Sweden, Orsak:Oslo has firmly built a loyal following over the years, with a sound that channels post-rock, krautrock, doom, and ambient psychedelia into captivating sonic landscapes. Their ability to stay unpredictable, while always sounding unmistakably like themselves has set them apart in the post-rock underground.
Silt and Static is a culmination of that journey: a double LP that breathes, fractures, mourns, and moves forward.
One of the strongest cases in favour of attending shows at local grassroots venues is that a punt may reward by striking pure gold with the discovery of a band that absolutely blows you away. It may be rare, but when it happens… POW! And so it was that a few months ago, I witnessed Glasgow’s Cwfen’s first live performance south of the border in the middle of the lineup for a £6 midweek gig at my local 150-capacity venue. Even before I learned that they were signed to New Heavy Sounds – a label which consistently delivers on the promise of its name, in finding bands which are heavy, but offer something new, something different, and have homed so many outstanding acts through the years – and had some much bigger shows lined up, it was clear that this was a band of rare talent, and who wouldn’t be playing 150-capacity venues for long. On stage, they had that quality that you only know when you see it. And they had songs.
And here they are, recorded in the studio, on their debut album, Sorrows. The huge, riff-driven epics are interspersed with brief incidental instrumental pieces, appropriately entitled ‘Fragment’ and numbered sequentially. The first provides a soft intro before ‘Bodies’ blasts in with seven minutes of supreme chuggage. It’s a gritty hard rock behemoth, but it’s more than just another monolithic riff monster: there’s a shade of goth sensibility about it, not least of all in Agnes’ brooding vocal, but there’s also the brittle-edged lead guitar work, and the song brings a powerful sense of drama and theatricality, building to a rabid, demonic climax… and straight away, it’s apparent that this is something special.
Cwfen have a supreme grasp of dynamics, of mood, of atmosphere, and Sorrows has all of these in spades. Single cut ‘Wolfsbane’ grinds in, meshing together gothy lead guitar, rich with chorus, and reverb-laden vocals which are simultaneously haunting and commanding, while a thunderous bass nails things down tight at the bottom end. Next up is ‘Reliks’, released as their debut single, and it’s different again, an atmospheric mid-tempo song which soars, managing to incorporate elements of classic 80s rock and shoegaze, while at the same time bringing the atmosphere of Fields of the Nephilim. Nothing’s overdone, and nothing’s underdone, either: everything fuses together in perfect balance, while ‘Whispers’ melds 70s rock vibes with a hard rock, delivered with a hint of anthemic power ballad. And in the background, raw banshee screams fill the swell of sound towards the end with pure emotional release. ‘Penance’ brings the weight with thunderous drums, squalling feedback, and a crushing riff behind a demonic howl of a vocal, which switches to achingly magnificent melody for the chorus. ‘Embers’, meanwhile, makes for a megalithic monster of a tune, delivering seven minutes of crushing riffery and standing as the heaviest and maybe one of the most overtly ‘metal’ song in the album – although full-force closer ‘Rite’ plunges deeper into darkness, a blackened anthem by way of a finale to a superlative set.
On Sorrows, Cwfen deliver on their name: magical, mystical, menacing, haunting, dark… but they bring so much more, and certainly do not belong in any given pigeonhole. While this is indisputably a ‘heavy’ album, it’s accessible – without going pop or being overly polished. It’s an album which makes a high-impact first impression, but reveals more depths and layers with subsequent listens. Sorrows is a masterful work, which ventures far and wide in its musical inspirations and touchstones, meaning it’s never samey, never predictable, but at the same time, Cwfen demonstrate an intense focus, forging a sound which is distinctive, rather than derivative. A rare gem, and a standout of 2025 so far.
Aural Aggravation 