Category: news

Hey everyone – we’ve got a new EP review for you, and I’m glad this one landed on our radar. It’s a fun listen and a strong step forward for the band.

Seattle‑based alt/garage rock band, Sun Spots, released their new EP, Dog Is Calling, on Friday, March 13th, 2026 under Den Tapes. The EP follows their 2022 release of Loosey as well as shows along the West Coast where they shared stages with Enumclaw, GUV, TV Star, and Supercrush.

A defining element of Sun Spots’ sound is the way they balance light pop melodies with the heavier weight and grit of classic grunge guitar. Dog Is Calling leans into that contrast even more. Across four tracks (most coming in at just under three minutes), the band pairs raw, emotive, but soothing vocals with distorted guitar tones that feel both nostalgic and refreshing.

Compared to their earlier material, this EP is their most polished and catchy work yet – still grungy, still dynamic, but more refined in its songwriting. They keep the tempo shifts and energy swings that make their music engaging.

Most importantly, the EP moves you. Good music should take you somewhere, and this one does just that – its warm, familiar elements give you that déjà‑vu head-bobbing feeling from the first listen.

Track‑by‑Track

“Jesus Muffler”

A clear nod to ’90s grunge in both vocals and tempo, but with a poppier sensibility than their earlier releases. A strong opener that sets the tone for the EP.

“Rocket”

Kicks off with a great little hook and guitar effects that feel new for the band. The track shifts from light to heavy and back again with ease. This one stands out – easily my favorite Sun Spots song to date.

“Could’ve Been”

Starts off faster than we’ve heard from them before, pushing into a more urgent sense in the intro while keeping their melodic core intact. It’s a great song.

“Dog Is Calling”

The title track is complete and perhaps the most bittersweet sound on the EP – you can really picture yourself hearing this track on the score of a late ’90s movie like She’s All That. It’s a fitting ending that ties the whole project together.

As mentioned, Dog Is Calling dropped Friday the 13th. Check out Den Tapes for more info!

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New German Cinema: Pain Will Polish Me (Felte Records) Released 27 March 2026 Vinyl | DL | Streaming Sinister synth-pop with more than one eye on classic 70s art-house movies: that’s the latest project from Jess Weiss, also active in Brighton-based band Fear Of Men. Her glacial Teutonic vibe evokes the frozen wasteland of the […]

The post New German Cinema: Pain Will Polish Me – Album Review appeared first on Louder Than War.

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There comes to us a release showing us that the old art is not dead. A group of friends gets together in a rehearsal room to put together intricate riffs that carry a narrative. They test the rhythms back to back, a structure emerges that sustains and modulates energy. There is articulation in its diction, as there should be in writing or in speaking. Well-made music grows as a living vine, with heaves and breathing rhythms, that even in the midst of the putrefaction and desolation they are meant to evoke, produce psychic and infectious life, the destiny of which is to lodge itself into your brain. That parasite, which can indeed grow monstrous and insidious, is what the long-time death metal listener knows as pure enjoyment of this music of death.

Temora surprises us with the high fidelity of this recording to the roots of fully formed death metal. A death metal that does not need to play at being something else. An art form that does not need to play pretend games with politics or dysfunctional expressions for the sake of appearing novel or avant-garde.

Let us be crystal clear about Temora’s 2025 demo. The first two tracks form the beginnings of a pure and potent product of death metal of the highest caliber. The third track is also deserving of praise, highly enjoyable, but belongs to an entirely different school of death metal that allows for bluesy syncretism that jars and grates against the aesthetic sensibility, not just the discerning intellect. The fourth track is thrown in to round off the mandated stability of the number four. It is a well-made, somewhat unsure track that straddles the line between a brand of Scandinavian-influenced North American death metal and the strictly Swedish influences predominant in the first two tracks of this same demo.

What is missing in the first two tracks is the ability to take the music to term, to maturation, a sacred grail and one of the paradoxes that allows this genre to remain alive. There is never a perfect or clear-cut way to conclude a death metal track in this fully developed, inherently (and perhaps the only truly) progressive genre. These first two tracks correspondingly feel too short. This feeling of shortness has to do with the momentum generated before the abrupt suspension of the music. The complete work has to be able to take this energy somewhere. In emblematic death metal releases of the past, this is simply done by elongating the tracks up to the five or six-minute mark. How to do this without ruining the track, without destroying its cohesion, is an art in itself and the challenge ahead for Temora.

It matters that the third track here belongs to a different branch because the more you try to be two things at the same time, the less you are either of them. Amalgamation is only triumphant when it succeeds in fusing two influences to the point where neither of them is recognizable in a creation that is entirely new. The more, then, one delves into that definite chosen form, the more that chosen form grows in the permutations and power of expression endemic to its own ground. From that ground comes what we would term the good.

We would be remiss not to point everyone involved in the direction of Repulsion’s Horrified for a studied foundation, At the Gates’ Gardens of Grief for a detailed look at the power of creative possibilities within the tight container of death metal proper. You cannot go wrong here, and what speaks to the listener as well as the musician comes from a cohesion of intellect, gut, and whole body excitation.

We take note of the high musical quality of what Temora does, even in these last two tracks, which lack the sought-after cohesion and pointedness of intent. There are riffs and sequences that carry the tune, that instill rhythmic life into the listener. We nevertheless exhort these young musicians to look up to their highest possible realization, now that they have come this far. To this reviewer’s ancient ears, this is the most promising release of the year, insofar as it presages the possibility of growth and refinement where the roots of the art were cut short in the past by misplaced interest in so-called musicianship by falling into the jazz and blues trap, or selling out to arena/stadium music sensibilities.

Demo by Temora

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