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Joyous Wolf draws from artists and music spanning different genres and decades, but the album doesn’t come across like a history lesson.

The post Joyous Wolf, ‘In Between’ Album Review — A Debut Worth Turning Up appeared first on Audio Ink Radio.

Throughout the summer we’ve been posting new songs from gash, the Eau Claire indie deconstructionists who’ve won over local legend Justin Vernon (they played his relaunched Eaux Claires festival) and signed to the great Fire Talk imprint Angel Tapes. So far their forthcoming album at least you know what you’re laughing at has yielded “good and bad” and “risking heaven.” Today they serve up one more advance track, “data master.” It’s a woozy experimental electronic number with rock foundations, in that post-Spirit Of The Beehive sense, and by the end a tapestry of guitars has come to the fore. Watch the video below.

The post gash – “data master” appeared first on Stereogum.

Support will vary by leg.

The post Sleep Tap Zombi, Pink Mountaintops, Mac Sabbath & More For Fall North American Touring appeared first on Theprp.com.

In the liner notes of The Acoustic Verses, the final album of Green Carnation’s first iteration, guitarist/ bandleader Tchort teased the second part of a trilogy that promised to be a continuation of their absolutely essential second album, Light of Day, Day of Darkness. The Chronicles of Doom never came to be, as the band disintegrated roughly a year after The Acoustic Verses dropped. I, as a rabid fan, was crushed by this dissolution and was more than just a little hyped when the band reunited a little under a decade later.

As promised, Tchort and his reassembled co-Tchorts ceased the experimentation that defined much of their previous output and focused on creating epic, progressive, and fucking excellent doom when they began releasing new music again. And though that trilogy didn’t pan out the way as originally intended, it has now been completed. And it’s damn good.

A Dark Poem, Part III: The Messiah Complex concludes a triad of explorations not unlike Natalie Merchant’s in the late 1990s: to examine Ophelia, the partner of the titular character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but through the lens of 19th-century French poet Arthur Ribaud. A fittingly tragic character who embodies all that is good and just but is driven mad by her lover’s feigned madness, it’s little wonder that Ophelia has inspired centuries’ worth of artistic endeavor across multiple genres and disciplines. We won’t go into any literary analysis here (my days as a student of literature are decades in the past anyway), so we’ll stick to the music itself.

Briefly, The Messiah Complex fucking owns. “Unconditional Artificial Chemistry” opens with a distant and appropriately moody piano, with an equally distant melody that feels part keyboard, part theremin, and part disembodied spirit floating nervously over it. A deep and pummeling doom riff with a variation on that same harrowing motif almost sliding overhead preps us for the unmistakable voice of Kjetil Nordhus, a man whose understated power has perfectly paired with Green Carnation’s bleak nature for over a quarter century. Tchort has absolutely held to his conviction that Light of Day, Day of Darkness is the quintessential Green Carnation sound, and his compatriots have done a remarkable job of staying true to that identity during his leave of absence. With Tchorty back in action and the sound largely unaltered, we’re reassured that Nordhus and bassist Stein Roger Sordal have faithfully held to Tchort’s mission: to expand the Light of Day journey without merely recycling it.

The title track follows with due diligence: it is a lengthy, somber, and largely unpredictable voyage that hits us with multiple callbacks from the rest of the Dark Poem trilogy without ever feeling like a rehash, always keeping us guessing, and taking multiple cues from 70s prog and psychedelia without ever sounding forced or stale. This has been key to Green Carnation’s many faces over the decades: even when they went goth rock with Blessing in Disguise, straight-ahead metal/rock with The Quiet Offspring, and fully mellow on The Acoustic Verses, they never once sacrificed the cohesion that made them instantly recognizable as only Green Carnation. I can think of few other outfits who can don as many masks as Green Carnation has without sacrificing an ounce of their identity. Are these guys a metal band, or are they formally trained thespians?

“Broken Souls, Common Enemies” is the last conventional song of the trilogy, a beast of a tune that greets us in 5/4, briefly breaks into some amorphous meters, and then alternates between its previous groove and other odd times. Time sigs aside, “Broken Souls, Common Enemies” is a journey to the end of night unto itself, replete with flute-laden acoustic breaks, twangy guitar solos befitting an Americana record, and waltzable blast beats supporting Grutle Kjellson’s returning roars, all neatly packaged into a brief-feeling epic that never sounds forced or disjointed. Blink, and nearly ten minutes have gone by behind you.

The true conclusion of the Dark Poem trilogy is one I’m frankly under-qualified to properly critique: it is an actual orchestral suite that revisits the many themes and motifs we’ve heard throughout this spellbinding trilogy. All the hallmarks of formal composition are present: harmonic inversions, meticulous arrangement, sparse use of parallels, yada yada yada. Properly employed compositional theory is all yay and bravo and stuff, but what ultimately matters is how it hits the listener. And lemme tell you, “A Dark Poem: Orchestral Suite” hits hard; it is a beautifully and sensually woven piece that, especially at its apex, masterfully illustrates with sound Ophelia’s descent into madness after her father’s death and her rejection by her supposed beloved. You can literally feel her drowning while listening to this suite, and it doesn’t take much imagination to visualize her flower-adorned corpse as this composition concludes. Dayum.

I’ve often remarked that Load and Reload would have been much better if the fluff had been scrapped and the highlights of those albums had been released as a single record. With A Dark Poem, Green Carnation has done the opposite, but with much greater effect. Like that pair of Metallica albums, this trilogy feels like a cohesive whole, but with each installment deliberately kept brief and impactful, Green Carnation have delivered a trio of albums that feel like a thoughtfully scripted miniseries. Each chapter stands on its own, but the whole towers when unified. Given its premeditation, execution, and bravery, I daresay it might even stand alongside Light of Day, Day of Darkness.

Release Date: September 4th, 2026
Record Label: Season Of Mist
Genre: Progressive Metal

Musicians:

• Kjetil Nordhus / Vocals
• Alejandro Perez / Drums
• Stein Roger Sordal / Bass
• Terje Vikk “Tchort” Schei / Guitars
• Bjørn Harstad / Guitars
• Endre Kirkesola / Keys

A Dark Poem, Part III: The Messiah Complex Tracklist:

1. Unconditional Artificial Chemistry
2. The Messiah Complex
3. Broken Souls, Common Enemies
4. A Dark Poem: Orchestral Suite

Order the album here.

The post GREEN CARNATION – A Dark Poem, Part III: The Messiah Complex (Album Review) appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

The band previously had a song featured in the Disney+ ‘Marvel Zombies’ animated series.

The post BABYMETAL Land Exclusive Variant Cover For The 1st Issue Of ‘Marvel Zombies: War Zone’ appeared first on Theprp.com.

Reading Rising Festival has announced its return for 2026, taking over The Facebar on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th November for what promises to be its biggest and most ambitious weekend to date. Dedicated to welcoming established touring acts to Reading while providing a vital platform for grassroots and local talent, this year’s lineup is … Continue reading Reading Rising Festival returns to The Facebar with InMe and Lastelle headlining

Sean Ragon, founder and frontman for the goth- and punk-rooted psych-folk band Cult Of Youth, has died. “It is with a heavy heart that I say, Sean Ragon has left this mortal coil,” reads an announcement from the band’s Facebook page. “Thank you to all of you for the support over the years. Love will prevail.” No cause of death has been listed. He was 45.

The post Cult Of Youth’s Sean Ragon Dead At 45 appeared first on Stereogum.

The multi-platinum rap-rockers are a surprise addition to the fest.

The post 311 Added To 2026 Orlando, FL ‘Vans Warped Tour’ Stop appeared first on Theprp.com.

Members of LANDMRVKS, Eternal Enemy and more will guest on the record.

The post Nasty’s New Album “Trauma” Due In October, Title Track Now Streaming appeared first on Theprp.com.

There are shows you attend, and there are shows you survive. Tonight was the latter before it was ever the former.

Wolverhampton had spent weeks cooking under a heatwave that finally broke the only way British weather knows how to break – catastrophically. Frederick Street turned into a river, and KK’s Steel Mill found itself standing in water. Doors that were supposed to open at 7 pm didn’t open until 8:45, and by the time the crowd shuffled inside, they were walking through two inches of standing water while the venue’s crew fought a losing battle against the flood with towels pulled from boxes at the door. Nobody left. That’s worth noting before a single note of music gets played tonight – the loyalty required to stand soaked to the skin in a queue for the better part of two hours, for a band celebrating fifty years of existing, says as much about Accept’s audience as anything that happened on stage.

Tailgunner opened, two songs shorter than planned thanks to the delay, keeping the energy up for a crowd still wringing out their socks. It’s a direct-support slot doing exactly what a direct-support slot needs to do – nothing more, nothing less, with the room’s attention clearly saving itself for what came next.

Accept took the stage at 10:10, still riding a curfew restriction that cleared pyro through the third song only, and the anniversary framing mattered from the first note. Wolf Hoffmann and his band tore into “Metal Heart” through a smoke-choked stage, that instantly recognizable lead tone cutting through the PA before Mark Tornillo had said a word. When he finally did, dry-humored and gracious – “This is the first time we’ve delayed an indoor show because of the rain” – the room, still damp, laughed with him rather than at the circumstances. A confetti cannon closed the opener; flames flanked the stage for “Teutonic Terror,” warming faces that had spent two hours getting rained on.

From there the band didn’t let up. “Restless and Wild” brought the photographers into the pit at last, Tornillo working the crowd’s hands into the air over beefy, chugging riffs, and the production held up its end throughout – this was, by a wide margin, some of the best lighting KK’s has thrown behind a band in recent memory, sharp and purposeful rather than decorative. “London Leatherboys” and “Midnight Mover” leaned on twin-guitar harmonies from Hoffmann and Philip Shouse, with bassist Martin Motnik – who inherited the low end from Peter Baltes back in 2019 – locking in alongside drummer Christopher Williams, whose résumé running through Ace Frehley, Gene Simmons, and Blackfoot showed in the pocket he held down all night.

The catalog on display was deep rather than nostalgic. “Run If You Can” bled into a “Monster Man” / “Aiming High” / “Wrong Is Right” medley, and the back half – “Love Child,” “Fight It Back,” “Up to the Limit,” “Breaker” – was delivered with the tightness of a band that’s been playing these songs for decades without ever letting them go slack. “Princess of the Dawn” gave the set its one real change of pace, its slower build drawing some of the loudest crowd participation of the night, before Motnik and Shouse joined Williams on the drum riser for a run through “Demon’s Night,” “Starlight,” “Losers and Winners,” and “Flash Rockin’ Man” that closed with fire bursts on both sides of the stage.

The closing stretch never eased off. “Pandemic” came with another pyro hit, “Fast as a Shark” tore through at full speed, and “Son of a Bitch” pulled one of the biggest reactions of the night before the inevitable arrived – “Balls to the Wall,” the entire room taking the vocal from Tornillo the moment the riff landed. “I’m a Rebel” closed things out with one last confetti cannon, the band thanking a crowd that had more than earned the gratitude.

Accept didn’t play a victory lap tonight – they played a set that made fifty years sound like momentum rather than history. A flood couldn’t stop them, a curfew couldn’t slow them down, and a soaked, exhausted crowd sang every word anyway. That’s not nostalgia. That’s a band that still means it.

“A flood tried to drown Wolverhampton’s night with Accept. It didn’t stand a chance.”

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Photos by John Inglis.

The post Wolverhampton Drowns, Then Roars: Accept Bring 50 Years to KK’s Steel Mill – Concert Review & Photos appeared first on Antihero Magazine.