Up until this very afternoon, I’d never heard of Jules de Corte, a blind Dutch singer-songwriter who won some European prizes in the ’60s and who died in 1996 at the age of 71. I’d also never heard of the improvisational Belgian quartet Linus. I had, however, heard of beloved roots-music weirdo Bonnie “Prince” Billy, so the news that he’s making a Jules de Corte tribute album with Linus demanded further investigation.
Slash feat. Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators have announced their fifth album, Flying Blind, and shared its title track.
Set for release on February 26 via Gibson Records, the follow-up to 2022’s 4 was recorded largely live with the group’s longtime producer Michael ‘Elvis’ Baskette at Studio Barbarosa in Florida.
The album track-list is:
1. Avarice And Greed 2. Good Time Girl 3. Thrill Seeker 4. One Of Your Kind 5. Flying Blind 6. Looking For A Miracle 7. Sweet Kill 8. Here In Babylon 9. Living The Dream 10. (Don’t) Thread The Needle 11. Rev My Heart 12. Stem the Flow
“It’s a really fun, kind of spontaneous rock ‘n’ roll record,” says Slash. “It’s very straightforward and down-to-earth and raw.”
The guitarist says that the album’s title track was “created in the studio while we were standing there in pre-production.”
“A riff came to me and started developing,” he explains. “I had nothing of that song prior to those guys coming in, and then we started up a night of rehearsal and played that riff. It came together really quickly. As for it being the first single, you never know what the first single is going to be until you’ve recorded it. When I started thinking about it, Flying Blind just seemed to have the right kind of melodic sensibilities and a hook to make it single material.”
Watch the video for the single below.
The band have also announced an extensive world tour for 2027.
“When we started, we didn’t have anything,” Slash says. “We weren’t setting out to conquer the world. It was just for the pure pleasure of it. So now, we get together and play, we have a really good time, and then we go out and tour and do it again the next time. As long as there’s electricity, we’ll keep plugging in.”
Slash feat. Myles Kennedy & The Conspirators tour dates 2027
Apr 02: Santiago Teatro Caupolican, CHL Apr 04: Mendoza Arena Maipú, ARG Apr 06: Córdoba Plaza de la Música, ARG Apr 07: Buenos Aires Movistar Arena, ARG Apr 10: Florianópolis Arena Opus, BRA Apr 11: Curitiba Live Curitiba, BRA Apr 13: Rio de Janeiro Fundição Progresso, BRA Apr 14: São Paulo Espaço Unimed, BRA
Apr 23: RenoGrand Theatre, The Grand Sierra Resort, NV Apr 24: Rohnert Park Graton Resort & Casino, CA Apr 26: Los Angeles The Wiltern, CA Apr 27: Los Angeles The Wiltern, CA Apr 29: Del Mar The Sound, CA
May 01: Albuquerque Route 66 Casino, NM May 02: Denver Fillmore Auditorium, CO May 04: Kansas City The Midland Theatre, MO May 05: Des Moines Val Air Ballroom, IA May 07: Windsor Caesars Windsor, Canada May 08: Niagara Falls OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino, Canada May 10: Boston Citizens House of Blues, MA May 12: New York Beacon Theatre, NY May 17: Nashville Ryman Auditorium, TN May 19: St. Louis The Factory, MO May 21: Norman Riverwind Casino, OK May 22: Tulsa Hard Rock Hotel & Casino, OK
Jun 07: Munich Zenith, GER Jun 09: Warsaw Letnia Scena Progresji, POL Jun 10: Nova Rock Festival, AUT Jun 12: Milan Carroponte, ITA Jun 13: Rock In Roma, ITA Jun 17: Azkena Rock Festival, SPA Jun 23: Stockholm Grona Lund, SWE Jun 28: Dusseldorf Mitsubishi Electric Halle, GER Jun 30: Cardiff Castle, UK
Jul 01: Scarborough Open Air Theatre, UK Jul 03: Dublin Trinity College, IRE Jul 04: Belfast Custom House Square, UK Jul 06: Halifax Piece Hall, UK Jul 07: London Eventim Apollo, UK Jul 09: Bospop, HOL July 11: Masters of Rock, CZE July 12: Zagreb SRC Salata, CRO July 14: Budapest Budapest Park, HUN July 16: Belgrade Luka Beograd, SRB July 18: Athens Lycabettus Theatre, GRE July 22: Istanbul Bonus Parkorman, TUR July 25: Hills Of Rock, BUL July 26: Rockstadt Extreme Festival, ROM
Molly Hatchet will release its first studio album in 16 years, Lost Horizon, on Nov. 27 worldwide through Steamhammer. The official lyric video for the album’s latest single, “Once a Gambler,” is out now.
Guitarist Bobby Ingram says of the song: “Win or lose, playing the game, living your life at high speed. Gambling that the winner takes it all. Once a gambling man, always a gambling man with every aspect of life. Always thinking you are ready to bet it all, having a fierce attitude with no regrets. Living every day with the positive attitude of betting everything. Even if losing it didn’t matter.
“The next day you were back at sitting down and gambling to win as much as you can. Never looking back, always looking forward and betting on your life’s winning to live another day and start it all over again but in another town when the winnings were good.”
For Ingram, Lost Horizon delivers a lifelong Southern rock dream. All 12 tracks were cut at Abbey Road Studios in London.
“In Studio 2, to be precise — that’s exactly where The Beatles worked 60 years ago,” beams Ingram. “We used the same studio and the exact same microphones that Paul McCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison and Ringo Starr had. What’s more, Chris Bolster was our sound engineer, he’s worked with McCartney, Elton John, Kate Bush, Oasis and the Foo Fighters. To me, it was an incredibly emotional experience to cut the new Molly Hatchet album under such awesome conditions.”
The record also links back to the band’s last studio effort, 2010’s Justice. Ingram is joined by longtime members John Galvin (keyboards) and Tim Lindsey (bass), along with two younger additions, Garrett Ramsden (drums) and Parker Lee (vocals).
“Garrett has brought a breath of fresh air to the band, and Parker brings to mind a young Danny Joe Brown, our unforgotten original singer,” says Ingram, obviously delighted. “Both are perfect for our kind of Southern rock and have been instrumental in making Lost Horizon one of our most emotional and profound albums to date!”
The first single, “Dixie Highway,” arrived in August and serves as a fair preview of the whole record.
Ingram says, “This song in many ways is a true story of growing up in the south and living life on the edge. We were fearless and ran with the wind. Driving down a famous highway in Florida with the pedal to the metal, looking in the rear view mirror to see what was passed by.”
Lost Horizon Formats:
CD digipak plus poster
2LP gatefold, 140g black vinyl, padded inner sleeves, two colored inserts
Exclusive LP version and CD/LP bundles with a shirt, available only through the Steamhammer shop
Download plus streaming
Molly Hatchet formed in Jacksonville, Fla., in 1971, though Ingram did not come aboard until 1987. All six members of the original lineup have died, as have the band’s second and third lead singers, Jimmy Farrar and Phil McCormack.
In June 2000, Ingram became the sole owner of the Molly Hatchet trademark, which he acquired from Pat Armstrong, the band’s early manager.
Molly Hatchet 2026 is:
Bobby Ingram / Lead Guitars John Galvin / Keyboards Tim Lindsey / Bass Garrett Ramsden / Drums Parker Lee / Lead vocals
In 2024, Belgian quintet Hippotraktor dropped Stasis, a monolithic blend of post-metal atmosphere, progressive ambition and groovy heft—somewhere between Psychonaut,1The Ocean and Meshuggah—that quickly earned them recognition, even landing on year-end lists. Their knack for hitting the sweet spot where djent, post-metal and prog collide set a high bar and third album, Annihilist, now seeks to surpass it by refining the group’s identity, the mystery behind their name, and the ongoing narrative of their nameless protagonist from the prior two releases. This chapter finds him suspended between solitude and humanity, fully aware of this forced, cyclical reincarnation and locked in rebellion against the entity that condemns him to do it.
Annihilist feels like wandering through a vast brutalist landscape. The album feels markedly colder and more distant, scraping with the coarseness of a pumice stone while reshaping the smoothness and refined textures of its predecessor into something denser and more immediate. Every track sits within a concise four-to-seven-minute range, never overstaying its welcome, and despite the shift in tone, the qualities that made Stasis so compelling remain firmly embedded in Hippotraktor’s DNA. One moment they drift through delicate passages that fall like raindrops against a windowpane; the next they erupt into towering walls of sound, unleashing seismic roars as crushing as collapsing concrete. “A Different Now,” “I Breathe. I Am” and “Builder of Eden” carry a primal, untamed energy, yet beneath the chaos lies a clear purpose. Their rhythmic backbone remains intact, with drummer Lander De Nyn’s Volastic beats and Jakob Fiszer’s weaving bass driving Annihilst forward, while Chiaran Verheyden and Kristof Du Jardin’s2 guitar work blends Meshuggahan chugs, subtle harmonies, and emotionally charged leads to advance Hippotraktor’s melodic knotwork even further.
Hippotraktor’s ability to balance soaring melodicism with crushing heaviness remains Annihilist’s central throughline. They navigate the tension between chaos and cohesion with confidence and precision, as massive grooves, expressive vocal melodies, ritualistic percussion and explosive crescendos form the pillars of Annihilist’s foundation. Whether it’s the warm hooks and dynamic zenith of “I Breathe. I Am” or “Everything is Permissable,” the techy riffs of “Oblivion Walker,” the polyrhythmic pulse of “Courageous Apathy,” or the ancestral beat running through “Builder of Eden” and “A Different Now,” Hippotraktor excel at guiding listeners through complex terrain without ever losing direction. Verheyden and Du Jardin’s background harmonies in “Oblivion Walker” or “Courageous Apathy,” and their tastefully understated lead work in “Annihilist” and “A Different Now,” provide added depth, enriching the djent heft without overshadowing it, while De Nyn’s phenomenal drumming—funky hi-hat work (“Builder of Eden”), dancing rhythms (“Courageous Apathy”) and complex patterns—lend the record a distinct weight and identity that sets Hippotraktor apart from the countless Tool acolytes of the world.
Unlike Stasis, vocalist Stefan De Graef and Kristof Du Jardin co-wrote the vocal arrangements on Annihilist, resulting in a dual approach that pushes Hippotraktor’s sound forward. Their soaring cleans and burly growls carry much of the album’s emotional weight,3 with tracks such as “I Breathe. I Am,” the title track, and “Everything is Permissable” delivering memorable hooks and sing-a-long melodies that immediately draw you in. Multi-layered harmonies (“A Different Now”), chants (“I Breathe. I Am”), and subtle baritone choral passages (“Courageous Apathy”) add further dramatic depth, and a guest appearance by Loïc Rossetti (ex-The Ocean) on “Builder of Eden” fits the track’s mood perfectly. The production highlights these nuances despite the album’s density. While heavily compressed and occasionally claustrophobic, it sounds far better than its DR 6 score suggests.
On Annihilist, Hippotraktor chose to refine rather than reinvent, taking the qualities that made Stasis shine and compressing it into a mold of density and emotional weight. I initially worried the songwriting felt too episodic and would have benefited from a bit more breathing room. Likewise, I was concerned that the record’s identity was a bit too close to its predecessor. However, repeated listens erased those doubts as the record sank its hooks within my psyche. There are no real weak points here and Hippotraktor strikes a near-perfect balance between djent, progressive, and post-metal that I simply adore. Annihilist stands as one of the year’s strongest progressive metal releases and has guaranteed its presence come list season.
Six-string master Shane Parish has been in these (web)pages a fair amount in recent years, both for acoustic ventures like translating Autechre and Aphex Twin songs to guitar and electric pursuits like the Bill Orcutt Guitar Quartet. We also caught up with him last month at Philadelphia’s Making Time ∞ festival, where it seems he was dealing with some health concerns. As a result, there’s a new surprise Shane Parish album out today.
Winter Sect have discovered one of goth’s better-kept secrets: graveyards can be funny places. Not funny in the sitcom sense, unless your sitcom happens to involve velvet sleeves, low fog, marble angels, and a bass player turning cemetery dirt into a dance floor, but funny in the grand old rock-and-roll sense that the concept of memento mori has always looked a little less terrifying once somebody places a wreath of backbeat on the coffin.
Made up of Sister Ex alumna Claudia Neuman on bass and vocals, guitarist Anthony Piazza, keyboardist and vocalist Heather Wayward, and drummer Darryl J. Dardenne, the DC/Baltimore group have previously favored the colder end of Gothic psychedelia and glam rock. Graveyard Girl, however, loosens the corset. Funk, garage rock, indie pop and even bossa nova slip into the bloodstream, bringing a loose, easy groove beneath the song’s ’60s pop whimsy while the band keeps one boot planted firmly in post-punk soil.
Neuman’s bass is responsible for the initial crime, strutting around with the casual confidence of someone who has found the liquor cabinet during a wake. Wayward’s keyboards add splashes of color around Piazza’s guitar, while Dardenne keeps the song moving with a lightness that gives its cemetery imagery room to grin. The melody has the cheeky charm of a vintage pop single, its tuneful bounce making the invitation to wander among the graves sound suspiciously like a proposition for a Sunday afternoon date. Siouxsie and the Banshees, March Violets, Strange Boutique and more hover somewhere in the family tree, although Winter Sect sound especially amused by the possibilities of their own material here.
According to Wayward, that playful turn happened almost accidentally during rehearsal: “The song pretty much started with Claudia grooving out on a bass line,” she says. “It was catchy and I thought let’s do something completely different and not so serious and macabre. First the hook was discovered and we built from there. So with that funk of a groove my mind started walking. Where? Through the graveyard of course. It came together in a cool way and a little twist at the end just makes it fun.”
That sense of fun carries into the video, which sends the band wandering through the necropolis in slow motion among candles, veils and fog. Somebody communes with the departed, everybody looks appropriately dressed for the occasion, and the solemn machinery of Gothic imagery gains a sly little wink. You half expect one of the headstones to start keeping time.
Watch the video for Graveyard Girl below:
Winter Sect began in late 2023 when California native Neuman and Piazza formed the project around feedback-heavy goth, New Wave, industrial and psychedelic influences. Mystic Twin and Haunted House followed in 2024, with Say Goodbye appearing in 2026.
Graveyard Girl, taken from the forthcoming EP Offering, suggests Winter Sect have figured out that darkness becomes far more interesting when somebody remembers to leave room for mischief and a tune you can hum on the way home.
Listen to Graveyard Girl below and order the single here.
Slash Featuring Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators, better known as SMKC, has announced its fifth studio album, Flying Blind, and released the title track with an official music video. The record is due worldwide February 26, 2027, via Gibson Records. It lands 15 years and five albums into one of modern rock’s longest-running partnerships.
The album was tracked mostly live with longtime producer Michael “Elvis” Baskette at Studio Barbarosa in Florida. Its 12 songs feature Slash on guitar and pedal steel, Myles Kennedy on vocals, Todd Kerns on bass, Brent Fitz on drums and Frank Sidoris on rhythm guitar. The band finished the bulk of the record in roughly a week, often cutting two songs a day with everyone playing in the same room.
“It’s a really fun, kind of spontaneous rock ‘n’ roll record,” says Slash of Flying Blind. “It’s very straightforward and down-to-earth and raw.”
The “Flying Blind” single is out now on all digital platforms. The video was shot at The Viper Room in Los Angeles and directed by John Harvatine IV.
The song was born during pre-production, when Slash floated a riff as the band got ready to rehearse. It came together fast, pairing SMKC‘s usual hard-rock drive with a big melody and a hook that made it the obvious choice to lead off the album.
Slash explains, “Created in the studio while we were standing there in pre-production, a riff came to me and started developing. I had nothing of that song prior to those guys coming in, and then we started up a night of rehearsal and played that riff. It came together really quickly. As for it being the first single, you never know what the first single is going to be until you’ve recorded it. When I started thinking about it, “Flying Blind” just seemed to have the right kind of melodic sensibilities and a hook to make it single material.”
Kennedy says the lyric deals with people looking for shortcuts on the road to fulfillment. “I really enjoyed putting a melody to this song. The way the chord progression starts in the beginning had a nice flow to it. The lyric is about how sometimes people try to take shortcuts and try to find the easy way to achieve happiness or enlightenment.”
To mark the release, SMKC has teamed with Fandiem on a charity sweepstakes. The winner gets a trip to Wales to meet Slash backstage at Cardiff Castle. Proceeds go to the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) and the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI). The winner and a guest receive round-trip travel to Cardiff, a three-night hotel stay, guestlist tickets to the Cardiff Castle show, a backstage meet-and-greet, front-of-house viewing, access to preshow soundcheck, a Slash merch pack, a South Wales sightseeing tour and a pre-show dinner. Fans can donate and enter at www.fandiem.com/slash.
SMKC still works the way it did at the start: get in a room, play and see what happens. That approach shaped Flying Blind, the band’s first full-length since 2022’s 4. Some songs grew out of Slash‘s demos and fragments, and others took shape on the spot with the players jamming together.
Slash brought the early material to Kennedy, who wrote vocal melodies and lyrics before the tracks were built out into full-band arrangements with Kerns, Fitz and Sidoris.
“He’s an incredible riff writer,” Kennedy says of Slash. “He also comes up with simple chord progressions that are very compelling for melodies. It works, and it’s timeless.”
Earlier SMKC records often had their riffs and arrangements shaped by nightly soundchecks and long tours. Flying Blind instead came together in concentrated bursts between the members’ other commitments. Slash developed his material while touring with Guns N’ Roses, recording his blues album Orgy of the Damned and launching the S.E.R.P.E.N.T. Festival. Kennedy started on the songs during a break from Alter Bridge and while working on his third solo album.
“Our schedule is tight, and you have to abide by it or everything else starts to get affected. Now it’s just a given that you’re always creating. It’s a muscle thing. The creative part of your brain doesn’t have time to atrophy, and you just keep going,” Kennedy says.
The band returned to Baskette, who also produced World on Fire in 2014 and Living the Dream in 2018, at Studio Barbarosa. Living and working together through the sessions made the group’s musical and personal chemistry part of the recording itself.
Slash gave Baskette two instructions: keep it as live as possible and don’t overwork the performances afterward. “He really adhered to that,” Slash says. “It worked out great.” Arrangements were mostly set before tracking but loose enough to leave room for ideas that popped up in the studio. With everyone playing at once, the band kept the interplay and energy of each full take. Kennedy cut his vocals several months later and calls the finished album a high point in the band’s catalog.
“Out of all the records, the sounds and performances on Flying Blind are my favorite. It’s very present. It’s right there,” Kennedy says.
The 12 tracks cover a wide range without drifting from the band’s hard-rock base. “Good Time Girl” mixes a talk box hook with a heavy country twang inspired by guitarist Jimmy Bryant and steel guitarist Speedy West. “Sweet Kill” is brash, riff-driven rock that Slash calls “probably the most ’80s thing I’ve done in a while.”
“One of Your Kind” churns in a down-tuned groove, while sharp, punk-leaning chords power “Here in Babylon.” “Thrill Seeker” rides a dizzying descending riff that stays deep in the pocket. “Rev My Heart” is a classic rock ‘n’ roll rave-up with a memorable progression and a lyric inspired by the night Kennedy met his future wife. The instrumental “Living the Dream” keeps up an SMKC tradition and gives Slash room to improvise.
“I’ve done one of these instrumentals on every Conspirators record except Apocalyptic Love,” Slash says. “It’s fun to have something that I can open up and improvise on, where I don’t have any specific guidelines or guardrails. It’s nice to do a new one every record, so that live you don’t have to do the same one all the time.”
The biggest departure is “Looking for a Miracle,” the first song Slash has written on pedal steel and the first to include a recorded pedal steel solo from him. He worked out the idea on pedal steel, adapted it to guitar so the band could rehearse it, then went back to pedal steel in the studio and built the solo at Studio Barbarosa.
“I love pedal steel,” Slash says. “It’s one of these instruments that is so unbelievable in what you can do with it. So it’s become a thing for me. But it is a commitment. It’s a pretty complex instrument.”
Kennedy and the rest of the band have watched that relationship grow.
“For a long time, we would go and rehearse for tours or do pre-production, and then we’d leave, and Slash would stay at his studio and practice to all hours on mastering pedal steel,” Kennedy recalls.
The album closes with “Stem the Flow,” a sweeping finale about disillusionment with institutions and systems once believed unbreakable. Hard-hitting, spontaneous and varied, Flying Blind finds SMKC as loose, raw and locked in as ever.
The band’s roots go back to Slash‘s star-studded self-titled solo album in 2010, where Kennedy was one of several guest vocalists. The musical and personal bond that followed turned into a permanent band.
“I got into working with the Conspirators as a happy accident from doing that first solo album,” Slash says. “I established a relationship with these guys on a musical and personal level that I wasn’t about to give up when Gunsrestarted.”
What started with no long-term plan has become a 15-year partnership with five studio albums and plenty of world tours.
“It blows my mind that 15 years has moved this fast,” Kennedy says. “It’s been the blink of an eye. But as they say, time flies when you’re having fun, and we have a lot of fun. It’s a pinch-me kind of thing.”
Fifteen years in, SMKC keeps sharpening its sound while holding to immediate, unvarnished rock ‘n’ roll. For Slash, the driving force behind Flying Blind and the band is the simple joy of playing.
“When we started, we didn’t have anything,” Slash says. “We weren’t setting out to conquer the world. It was just for the pure pleasure of it. So now, we get together and play, we have a really good time, and then we go out and tour and do it again the next time,” Slash laughs. “As long as there’s electricity, we’ll keep plugging in.”
SMKC has also revealed the Flying Blind world tour 2027, a long international run. It starts in Latin America in April, reaches North America on April 23, then moves through the United Kingdom and Europe. The North American leg includes two nights at The Wiltern in Los Angeles, plus stops at the Beacon Theatre in New York City, the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, Tenn., Citizens House of Blues in Boston and the Fillmore Auditorium in Denver, among other well-known rooms.
Fans can sign up for early ticket access here. General sales begin Oct. 9 here.
The instrumental music trio Silk Fence brings together musicians with a long history of attention from this blog. Arian Shafiee, best known as a member of Guerilla Toss, plays electric guitar. Booker Stardrum, from SML and Play Time among other projects, handles drums and percussion. Justin Frye from PC Worship is on double bass and tapes. Together they’ve cooked up four lengthy excursions into the foggy, foreboding unknown.
In 2024, Belgian quintet Hippotraktor dropped 
