The band have also shared video footage of the band’s iconic performance of the single on Top of the Pops in March 1973 which you can see below. The tape of the show was recently unearthed in a collection belonging to mobile disco DJ Roger Hill, having been lost in the BBC archive.
In the above previously unseen photo by Ian Dickson, Bryan Ferry shows guitarist Phil Manzanera how to play the track on his iconic blue Hagstrom guitar. Speaking on the process of Bryan writing on guitar for the first time.
“Bryan was intent on getting to wear a guitar – at which, obviously, I thought: ‘Oh Christ.’ But I said, ‘I’ll tell you what, I’ll show you how to tune the guitar so you can play it with just one finger’,” recalls Manzanera. “And he actually came up with something! Which shows how clever he was. The whole of Pyjamarama is just sliding between four positions on open-tuned guitar. Of course, having started off like that, when we eventually went into the studio, I had to come up with some parts that would work, solos, lots of overdubs. And because I had to tune the guitar this funny way, all the strings were very loose, meaning it was a nightmare to stay in tune.”
As well as the four-disc Super Deluxe Edition of the album, For Your Pleasure will also be released as a 2LP (black vinyl and blue pearl vinyl as a D2C Exclusive), 2CD, Digital, Blu-Ray and Dolby ATMOS.
Steven Wilson recently announced his new studio album, Requiem For A Village, set for release on November 6th via Fiction Records. Today, he has shared the new single “On Chapel Slope” with a new video, directed by Mike Bennion.
“Requiem For A Village takes a very different path from The Overview. I imagined a Wicker Man landscape: Stanley Spencer’s paintings hang in the local art gallery, the stories of M. R. James and Algernon Blackwood line the shelves of the public library, and the children of the stones play in the market square. Requiem For A Village is a sepia-toned snapshot of a hidden neverland, and 54 minutes of cinema for the ears,” says Wilson.
For the new album, Wilson says he wanted to return to a more organic and distinctly human approach to making music, embracing imperfections and unpredictability rather than relying heavily on modern studio technology.
“I wanted to get back to a kind of music where you can hear the metaphorical thumbprints,” Wilson explains. “Doubling down on the human gestures and flaws in the music, stuff that can’t be created using software.”
That approach included working exclusively with analogue synthesizers and allowing instruments to remain imperfectly tuned. Wilson also challenged himself by playing instruments outside his usual comfort zone, including violin, oboe and drums.
“Playing things I don’t really know how to play but getting something out of them inspired me in ways I didn’t expect,” he says. “Approaching the music with a sense of innocence and seeing where it took me. And where it took me was to the village.”
Scottish actor David Tennant provides the narration on the new album, and is joined by former XTC man Andy Partridge, who has written the narration and some of the lyrics, multi-instrumentalist Randy McStine, drummer Russell Holzman (on the tracks Requiem For A Village, Now Departing, A Basket Of Bees and Wheel) and vocalist Katherine Priddy (Murmuration).
Tracklisting
Swirl In A Lark’s Eye
Requiem For A Village
The Same River Twice
Now Departing
Hireath
On Chapel Slope
Murmuration
Curcus Fingerprint
A Basket Of Bees
Great Green Map
Wheel
The Old God Is Buried
The album will be available on CD, Blu-ray, 140g double black vinyl and oxblood-colored double vinyl. A deluxe box set will feature two CDs and a Blu-ray packaged with a 96-page hardback book. Limited signed CDs will also be available through Amazon, while HMV will offer a CD edition with exclusive packaging.
It may already be released, but this one came to me so close to the release date that I had no chance to get my ears around it until it was already causing terror on streaming services. Such is the intensity of No One Is Coming To Save Us, the second album by London Death Metal / Hardcore monsters Burner, that it is essential listening for those who attend Damnation, Arctangent and the likes.
Following on from 2023’s It All Returns To Nothing, this is an album that simply grabs you by the throat and slams you against the wall. I swear my internal organs were shifting even though I was sat down as I listened.
Burner – No One Is Coming To Save Us – Out Now
First play through is intense. It is like sticking your head in a Rolls-Royce engine on a 747. Sonic abuse at its finest, with multiple occasions to draw breath through dark and melancholic passages that soon erupt into brutal breakdowns, savage riffage and all-out violent power.
Behind it all, blending into cinematic soundscapes, lies a band with a desire to create music that is both captivating and punishing. The opening blast comes with a gentler start. At over seven minutes, The Third Revelation contrasts with the thick, riff-heavy power of Accelerationist, which bursts eardrums and is over in under two minutes. Both contain coiled springs of frustration, anger and social commentary.
Special guests add spice. Sylosis main man Josh Middleton lends his voice on What Will You Give? Trivium’s Matthew K. Heafy puts some heft into Sunrise, Parabellum, whilst Cult Leader’s Anthony Lucero provides some massive visceral vocals on Kurtz.
All three songs swing in different ways, highlighting the incredible ability of Burner to switch their style via a web of intricate textures and genres. It is bruising Death Metal flipping to Deathcore, Hardcore and even Black Metal at times. The appeal is wide, regardless of the niche intensity that the band spew forth.
It is an introspective piece that works. Punishing slabs of crushing intensity are mirrored with reflections on the current carnage being carved through the globe. Singer Harry Nott explains. “If It All Returns to Nothing looked outwards to the world’s chaos throughout history, No One Is Coming to Save Us instead looks inwards at its proposed cause; humanity’s violent, animalistic nature, begging us for change.
“This is an album about human behaviour: that people create endless cycles of violence by repeating the mistakes of the past, forging a brutal history that we fail to learn from.”
Underneath there is also the struggle for hope and courage to address our own problems. It may be a harrowing listen, check out the suffocation on My Hands Become Weapons and you will feel it, but this is an album that does at least provide some opportunity for a future view that offers something.
It may be aural abuse, but it is worth every minute.
Swedish Symphonic Melodic Black/Death Metal outfit Zornheym return with their third studio full-length, Descending Into Madness, which continues their band’s concept of the dark story surrounding “the asylum Zornheim, its inmates and their doctors, where it is never quite clear who is truly insane.” This time it is a prequel and one which sheds more light on why the asylum is the unnerving place that it is.
Descending Into Madness begins a new chapter in the asylum story, beginning at a time just before, but overlapping the timelines of the two previous releases, Where Hatred Dwells And Darkness Reigns and The Zornheim Sleep Experiment.
Zornheym release Descending Into Madness on 2 October 2026 via Nobel Demon.
Descending Into Madness finds us following Dr Bettelheim as he assumes the role of medical director of the asylum. Seeking a new beginning, he relocates to the institution with his pregnant wife, Anneliese, determined to build a brighter future. What begins as a time of hope and happiness quickly becomes overshadowed by something far more sinister.
While Dr Bettelheim throws himself wholeheartedly into transforming the old sanatorium for the dying into a modern mental asylum, Anneliese is left to wander its shadowed halls alone. A growing sense of unease takes hold of her, an unshakable feeling that something is deeply wrong with this place.
Drawn by an unseen force, Anneliese feels compelled toward the old lake, Sêlasee. Its presence lingers in her thoughts, calling to her from the depths. Unwilling to burden her husband with her fears, she keeps her growing dread to herself, confining her thoughts and experiences to the pages of her diary.
Descending Into Madness opens with Prologue: From The Depths Of Sêlasee. A desolate hill with a dark, still lake lies at its foot [Sêlasee]. Beneath the murky surface, something stirs, and a defiled shadow emerges, crowned in bones and wreathed in a dense, shifting mist. Within the fog, distorted reflections of tortured figures writhe in silent agony.
The track emerges as a brief suspenseful exotically symphonic and cinematic piece with coral vocals that build creating atmosphere and setting the scene for the album.
This is swiftly and seamlessly followed by Deus Rex, which “tells the origin story of the hillside where the asylum stands, and of the lake, Sêlasee, beside it, which was once a place of tranquillity and peace, until one gruesome night during the Thirty Years’ War, when a group of deserters were captured there by the Imperial Army and hanged from the old oak by the lake. Hence named the Gallows Oak.
“Then when the building later served as a sanatorium for the dying, it was plagued by abnormally high death rates, and this led the board to change direction and appoint Dr Bettelheim to oversee its transformation.”
As the piece opens, soaring repeat riffs build the atmosphere alongside symphonic bursts, with Bendler’s harsh vocal delivery adding dark undertones. These are balanced with clean vocal passages and sublime mid-point lead work, followed by an atmospheric swathe of symphonics and choral vocals.
Somewhere Far Beyond finds Dr Bettelheim and Anneliese leaving their old life behind to accept the new position he has been offered. It is a time of bliss and happiness, filled with hope for a new beginning. Yet, as they travel toward their new home, Anneliese is overcome by a growing sense of unease. A dark foreboding takes hold of her, as if something terrible awaits them.”
This is reflected in the haunting opening riffs and the mix of clean and unnerving harsh vocals. It is a very lyrically dense piece too, delivering a great deal of the storyline information rather than just a suggestion. I love how in the second half it drops away to clean acoustic guitars, rebuilding with clean vocals and expanding into a sumptuous swathe of leadwork underpinned by the symphonic element.
Onto the next piece, Deep Below and “some time has passed since their arrival, and Dr Bettelheim is consumed by his work. Anneliese, meanwhile, has long felt drawn to Sêlasee, a place avoided by both the villagers and the hospital staff. One night, she awakens to a voice calling her to the lake. In the dead of night, she follows it. At the water’s edge, she sees the figure that has been calling to her.
“As she moves to embrace him, he suddenly lunges, attempting to drag her beneath the surface. She manages to break free and flees back to the safety of her husband.” This is a reflective piece as it opens, building rapidly with orchestrated layers and choral elements. Musically, it is beautifully haunting and darkly unnerving in equal measure, especially in the passages with harsh vocals.
Even more unnerving is the quiet, clean segment midway, asking her to “Hear my call”, accompanied by a harsh “I will drag you below”, followed by a superb swathe of extensive mid-point and beyond lead work that exudes an air of frantic unnerve.
On Anneliese, Dr Bettelheim is certain there is a logical explanation for his wife’s sleepwalking. He attributes it to the strain of her condition and the recent move. After a night spent in tears beside her sleeping husband, Anneliese once again feels compelled to return to the lake. This time, she reaches the oak. Something terrible happens.
Initially, it is an up-tempo, choral-rich piece balanced with a harsh lead delivery that heavily suggests something disconcerting is about to happen. The midpoint drop manifests that dread. Rebuilding in symphonic and guitar-rich bursts, the harsh vocal delivery reveals the full horror the evil presence has claimed: “two for the price of one.”
Next, the brief symphonic interlude Alone In The Dark, where Dr Bettelheim twists and turns in bed, still asleep. He reaches for Anneliese beside him, and with a jolt, he wakes and sits upright, realising she is gone.
This piece flows seamlessly into Gallows Oak. When he cannot find her in their quarters, panic takes hold, and he races toward the lake. Upon reaching it, he searches frantically. It does not take long before he sees her. She hangs by her neck from the Gallows Oak, lifeless.
His world comes apart. As the sun begins to rise, he breaks the silence with a heart-wrenching scream. The symphonics of the previous interlude now turn more sinister, bolstered by harsh vocals alongside cleaner swathes with multiple swathes of soaring leadwork, dark riffs and pummelling drum rhythms. Taking a cleaner, more haunting turn towards the close, this is a hugely powerful and cinematic piece.
The Funeral March skilfully incorporates probably the most well-known classical funereal tune ever and runs with it brilliantly. Adapted from the third movement of Frédéric Chopin’s Piano Sonata No.2, Marche Funèbre, the storyline continues.
A few days have passed, and Dr Bettelheim is eager to lay Anneliese to rest in hallowed ground. They march down from the hillside, through the village, toward the church. The gates swing open as they approach, and Pastor Ernst Hartwig steps out, bringing the procession to a halt. He refuses to permit one who has taken her own life to be buried in the Lord’s consecrated ground.
Dr Bettelheim pleads, but Hartwig stands his ground. In panic, they bury her beneath the Gallows Oak, but Dr Bettelheim cannot bear to be apart from Anneliese, so a few nights later, he returns. He digs up her casket and drags it down into the depths below Zornheim.
I love the Chopin influence, and compositionally this piece is also rich with pomp and ceremony, with orchestrated segments, rock-style guitar leads, haunting, soaring choral passages and superbly contrasting harsh elements.
Descending finds Dr Bettelheim locked away in a mausoleum where he keeps Anneliese and her casket. He pores over her diary again and again. He begins to believe that something supernatural befell her. Soon, he too hears whispers in the dark. He sees the same black figure, crowned in bones. He is slowly breaking.
This is a piece that is intensely frantic in delivery, with choral vocals melding with harsh vocals and cleans coming together as a spiralling maelstrom of music reflecting Dr Bettelheim’s plunge into madness.
The finale arrives with Come Sweet Death Heavily, where Dr Bettelheim is burdened by guilt and agony and can bear it no longer. One night, he panics and runs down to the lake. There, a black mist rises from the water. Within it, thousands of tormented figures writhe in agony.
He sees her, and as the figures part, Anneliese stands before him, softly cradling their child. Without hesitation, he throws himself into the lake. The mist consumes him, and the night falls still and quiet once more.
This song has a haunting meld of frantic, driving riffs, with harsh vocals and soaring leads alongside cleaner swathes. Throughout, you hear an occasional tolling bell, then fading out on choral vocals as the pace drops, bringing the album to a reflective close.
I do love a good concept album, and Descending Into Madness is up there with the very best. The continued storyline is utterly compelling and, from a music and compositional perspective, this is undeniably Zornheym’s most ambitious release to date.
Zornheym release Descending Into Madness on 2 October 2026 via Nobel Demon. It will be available in a variety of exclusive formats, including coloured marbled vinyl, a limited Collector’s Edition CD, a Digipak, and an A5 book. For more details, visit music.nobledemon.com/madness.
