Category: news

Continuing their whirlwind week of new music, announcing their new album, hitting the radio and going on Graham Norton, Foo Fighters have announced a trio of intimate gigs in Dublin, London and Manchester. 

They’ll hit Dublin Academy tomorrow (Monday), followed by London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire on Wednesday and Manchester O2 Ritz on Thursday. Tickets will be available in person at each venue from noon today on a first come, first served basis, with a limit of two per fan. 

Foos have already popped the cork on their new album, Your Favourite Toy, by dropping the title-track, and announcing it’ll be out on April 24. 

In an interview with Zane Lowe on Apple Music 1, Dave Grohl spoke about continuing to make music without late drummer Taylor Hawkins, saying, ​“We had Taylor Hawkins as our drummer for 25 years and, beyond being an amazing drummer, he was this incredible spirit. He was this incredible human being and he was our brother. He was our best friend.

“So, continuing after Taylor was really complicated, not just for us, but for any drummer that was going to come in to like, you know, fill his shoes… you know, we’re having this conversation on Taylor’s birthday [the interview was done on February 17]. It’s Taylor’s birthday today. And so, we wake up in the morning and everybody just texts about how much we miss him and how the world’s not the same without him, but we still feel him very much. We always talk about him every fucking day.

“In everything we do we want to have that energy – we want to have that energy for Taylor.”

On making the album, Dave continued: ​“I got to this place where I was like, ​‘Okay, so what’s the intention? What’s the ambition? Like, what are we?’ It’s our 12^th record. We’ve been a band for 30 years and as people, we’re evolving and we’re growing. Where do we go from here? What do we do?’

“And that’s when all the boundaries just sort of fall away and that’s where you realise the intention and the ambition is all within yourself. So, whatever’s going to make us jump around and smile and scream… and that’s the purest intention. And we found it in this song [yesterday’s newly-released title-track]. And this particular song was the springboard for the rest of the record. When we hit this, it was like we hit this little vein of gold and were like, ​‘That’s the feeling, that’s the vibe, that’s the energy.’ And then we just blasted everything out in like three or four weeks.”

If you’re not lucky enough to get in, don’t worry, the band hit Europe this summer:

Foo Fighters UK and Europe tour 2026

June

10 Oslo Unity Arena
12 Stockholm Strawberry Arena
15 Warsaw PGE Narodowy
17 Munich Allianz Arena
19 Paris Paris La Défense Arena
25 Liverpool Anfield Stadium
27 Liverpool Anfield Stadium

July

1 Berlin Olympiastadion
3 Vienna Ernst-Happel-Stadium
5 Milan I‑Days
8 Madrid Mad Cool Festival
10 Oeiras NOS Alive Festival

Read this next:

• “It’s about passion and courage and fighting for things you believe in”: The story of Foo Fighters’ In Your Honour
• The story of Foo Fighters’ Concrete And Gold: ​“All of the music we’ve made has left us a pretty open playing field”
• “I don’t consider it to be our proudest moment”: The story of Foo Fighters’ One By One

MØL only came on to my radar a few weeks ago – I have always characterised myself as someone who adores melodic black metal when it’s performed well! Without intending to start an argument over genre specifics, acts in the vein of Saor and Defheaven have crafted some of my favourite richly melodious and detailed black metal albums. However, I’ve never felt truly immersed in the scene. My tastes tend to skew towards alternative and progressive metal styles, only occasionally wandering into the more sonorous aspects. As such, I always appreciate acts who introduce me to new dimensions within the genre.

Opening tonight’s proceedings is Cold Night For Alligators (7) Their combination of complex instrumentation and soaring clean vocals allows them to speak to the side of our headliners fanbase who appreciate intricate melodies, and theatrical scale. Frontman Johan Jack Pedersen confesses to feeling unwell, and yet there are no signs of that in his performance, which is animated and impassioned. Admittedly, the songs and melodies have the tendency to blur into one, and there’s an argument that the attempts at dynamic contrast feel generic and lacking in any distinct identity. On its own terms however, this is an impressive opening set.

TAYNE (6) are intriguing, if not to my tastes. It would be cruel and describe them as “a worse Nine Inch Nails”, even if they are proudly influenced by industrial metal. Sharp electronic textures are contrasted against down tuned guitars. There’s a seething quality to these songs which sets them apart from the vivid creations of our opening and headline acts. The experimentation, and ability to combine divergent soundscapes is fascinating, even if I struggled to latch on to their style emotionally.

Translated from Danish, MØL (9) means ‘moth’. Performing a form of metal know as blackgaze, throughout their set, the band gracefully flit between the ambient, vibrant textures of shoegaze and the visceral extremes of black metal. It’s a combination which is immersive and leaves the audience in awe of the technical skill, and the multifaceted compositions. I mean that literally as well as figuratively – this is an audience who are there to observe and appreciate, perhaps setting them apart from a typical metal crowd.

That however does not prevent frontman Kim Song Sternkopf from selling the hell out of these songs through his performances. I’d be tempted to use the word cliché to describe his raised hands clutched into claws, and his wielding of the mic stand like a weapon, if not for how entertaining his stage presence proves! He even spends the penultimate song Jord in the crowd, further endearing him to the audience and allowing us to feel a closer emotional connection to the show as a whole!

MØL’s tight eleven song setlist spans songs from across their three albums, from the distinct black-metal stylings of their debut to the more expansive experimentations of Diorama, to the deeply melodic swerves of new album DREAMCRUSH. Each member performs with absolute precision, proving that the set has been rehearsed to within an inch of its existence. And yet, the set never feels sterile or self-indulgent, showing that these performers have learnt how to keep an audience enthralled and are committed to that art, in spite of their ever-evolving skill as musicians.