In the last few years, not a lot has been heard from Duncan Mackay – a keyboard player whose résumé includes such platters as “The Best Years Of Our Lives” by COCKNEY REBEL, “I Robot” by ALAN PARSONS PROJECT, “Nude” … Continue reading
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Tension fuels apprehension
Unanswered questions
Over and over and over again
Channel receptors to block out the pain
It’s the kind of relationship that keeps dragging its busted carcass back to the same street corner, lighting the same cigarette, coughing up the same complaint, like two people hooked on the rancid comfort of hearing their own old injuries echo off the walls. Nobody swings, nobody surrenders, nobody even has the juice left for a grand collapse. It just hangs there, sour and stale, a low electrical hum of grievance, two souls pacing circles in a room gone airless from reruns of the same sad script. They land somewhere between war and peace in a washed-out purgatory where fatigue puts on the mask of patience and calls itself love.
Peak Flow comes shambling out of Doncaster with the catchy Repetition, a song that understands one of the great rotten jokes of romance: sometimes the fight never really ends; it just changes chairs, freshens its drink, and settles back in for another evening of mutual exasperation. This song is a bruised little machine, all fuzzy guitar abrasion and cold-lit synth lines, with melody held up in the middle like a cigarette still burning between two people too tired to storm out and too stubborn to say they were wrong three Thursdays ago.
Repetition sticks in the ribs by catching that deadlocked emotional weather without turning theatrical about it. This is not a lovers’ brawl with plates flying past the cat. It is the slower, stranger misery of saying the same thing for so long that the words lose shape, until every reply sounds pre-recorded and every pause feels older than the furniture. The song moves with that same drained persistence, as if it knows the argument by heart and could perform it in its sleep, which, come to think of it, is how most bad relationships operate anyway.
There is a nice, sickly pleasure in the collision of textures here. The staticky guitars crawling through a cheap television at 2 a.m., while the synths gleam with that pale, pretty chill that made whole generations of pale people buy hairspray and stare at their shoes in provincial clubs. You can hear the family resemblance to post-punk, goth, and synth wave forebears like The Sisters of Mercy, The Jesus and Mary Chain, and Clan of Xymox, but Peak Flow avoids turning the track into a museum piece for black-coated purists and men who still alphabetize their Cure 12-inches.
Directed and edited by Human Noire, the video plays like memory after a minor electrical accident, with the band superimposed amid a rush of symbols and fractured images, all glitch and lo-fi unease, as though somebody dumped a box of old anxieties onto the editing timeline and had the good sense to leave the mess intact. It fits the song perfectly. Repetition dwells in that blurry territory where love has hardened into habit, where nobody wins, nobody leaves, and even the pain begins to sound familiar enough to sing back.
Watch below:
Listen to Repetition below and order the single here.
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VIEW HEAVY AUSTRALIAN CONTENT DIGIMAG #258 HERE VIEW HEAVY AUSTRALIAN CONTENT DIGIMAG #258 HEREScimitar’s latest single, Razors, comes with the kind of bruised glamour that made the dark side of post-punk worth chasing in the first place – back when a band could look half in love with the dance floor and half ready to crawl out from beneath it. This LA trio has been mutating at a healthy clip since forming in the aftertaste of lockdown, first pulling themselves up from deathrock soil, then stretching toward something sleeker, stranger, and more fatalistic. You can hear traces of that old hunger still clinging to their frame, but here it gets dressed up in sharper lines, cleaner hooks, and a sense of emotional damage worn with perverse elegance.
Razors, the lead single from their debut LP Errare, due April 25th via Cigarettes & Alcohol Records, turns romantic ruin into a lonely procession for all eyes to see. This is the morning after the grand self-betrayal, the stagger home after the final argument has burned itself out, after whatever fragile pact held two people together has finally snapped in the middle. The song deals in severance: shared obligations turned into dead weight, devotion reduced to debris, the sick realization that what once felt permanent has become one more mess to drag behind you in daylight. Heartbreak blends with humiliation in this song, and that’s a far richer fuel. Heartbreak can still flatter the ego. Humiliation leaves you out on the curb with your collar turned up, trying to look composed while your spirit eats dirt.
Scimitar sets that feeling in motion. The track carries itself with a lean, disciplined chill that recalls Interpol’s metropolitan tension, while some of the abrasive physicality of A Place To Bury Strangers hangs around the edges like static on a bad line. There is also a body-moving undertow that brings Pelada to mind, that sense that despair ought to come with a beat severe enough to march to. The arrangement keeps tightening the screws without overplaying its hand. Synths drift in layered sheets, then the rhythm comes down with club-born purpose, turning private ruin into something communal enough to move inside.
Nestor Valenzuela’s video gives the song a handsome split screen of alienation. One thread places the band in the desert, staging a sword dance against a landscape that looks old enough to have seen entire civilizations rise and fail. Those scenes feel ceremonial, almost punitive. Then come the city sequences, all solitary movement and hollow distance, a figure walking through urban space with the posture of someone trying to survive being seen. Between those poles sits the performance setup, beautifully lit and suspended like some glowing borderland between exile and afterlife.
That in-between space is where Razors really lands. It lives in the cracked zone between regret and release, between posing and pain, between wanting one more chance and knowing better. Scimitar play it with style, but also with enough poison in the bloodstream to make the style matter.
Watch below:
Their upcoming album Errare has a central theme of moral judgment. “Errare,” literally “to err” in Latin, is inspired by the phrase “Errare Humanum Este” which translates to “to err is human.” The album asks, “Who among us is without sin? Who will cast the first stone?” Certainly stones are cast. The song’s themes throw blame at would-be lifelong lovers, shame the political elite, and guilt-trip consumerism while also making sure to melt into familiar comfort despite its wrongs. Only perfection can judge us but we’re still obligated to practice discernment.
Listen to Razors below:
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“I don’t know where that breaking point is in this crashing wave. I’m hoping it’s soon, but I don’t know, man. It’s gonna get darker before it gets better.”
The post Tool’s Maynard James Keenan: “Historically, When You Have People That Are Choosing Violent Oppressions, It Doesn’t Last.” appeared first on Theprp.com.
One of which features Jacob Mathes from Orphan.
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Silversun Pickups – Ventura Music Hall – March 11, 2026
Silversun Pickups played a sold-out show Wednesday night at the Ventura Music Hall in Ventura California. The venue is a modern 1500 capacity general admission room that used to be a bowling alley until 2022, when it was converted to accommodate music. As unappealing as a bowling alley turned rock venue sounds, the Ventura Music Hall has an excellent sound system, a hip vibe, and despite it being an open, standing-room-only floor, it is small enough that an excellent view of the elevated stage can be had from everywhere.
The current Silversun Pickups tour is to promote the new Butch Vig (Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins, Foo Fighters) produced album Tenterhooks. The name is a metaphor for nervous anticipation, which is appropriate given the lyrical content of this record. Sometimes, when a group with more than 25 years in the game puts out a new record and attempts to play those songs live, the audience reacts by heading for the restroom or grabbing a beer. That common convention was put to the test on Wednesday, with eight of the ten songs from the new record making it to the setlist, alongside more familiar songs from all six of their previous full-length albums and the Pikul EP. The resounding conclusion from the middle of the throng was positive – the fans loved the new songs, as well as the tried-and-true tracks they knew by heart, resulting in zero en masse visits to the bar or bathroom.
I’ve heard Silversun Pickups’ music described as shoegaze, and/or alternative. I don’t like putting bands in a genre box, but for a band labeled as shoegaze, they certainly made good use of the stage. While Joe Lester on keyboards was obviously constrained behind his instruments, vocalist and guitarist Brian Aubert hung out by the center mic, until he didn’t, and abruptly took off with his guitar, racing towards and stopping just short of the front lip of the stage to get close to the audience, who were separated from the stage by the narrowest security pit I’ve ever seen – probably only two feet deep. While Nikki Monninger on bass and vocals was slightly more restrained on stage left, she smiled, sang, jumped, interacted with fans, and played like crazy. The other member of the rhythm section, Christopher Guanlao on drums, was worth taking note for two reasons 1) he played the holy hell out of his kit, and 2) his main crash cymbal was on a stand twice as tall as anyone that’s ever played the drums, and watching him attempt to reach it to punctuate the music was something to behold.
The vibe inside the Ventura Music Hall was enthusiastically mellow, with people just stoked to be there. This music doesn’t really suit moshing, and people hung in their chosen spot bopping their head with the beat. Brian acknowledged how cool it was to be back playing in California near their home base of LA, before making a statement about the current climate of things in the US, as well as what should be expected for the rest of the night, “Fuck ICE, piss on the walls, dance, do whatever you want, and have a good time.”
Silversun Pickups played nineteen songs, including their four-song encore. The last song of the night was their biggest – 2006’s two-times platinum and number 5 on the alternative charts hit “Lazy Eye”. That and “Panic Switch” were featured in Guitar Hero, which helped add to their popularity, and the audience went crazy when the distinctive guitar intro began. Four minutes later, the incredible night was over.
Prior to Silversun Pickups, Pure Hex took the stage. The doors opened at 6:30 pm, and Pure Hex went on promptly at 7:30. People didn’t really start filing in until they were striking their first note, but the main floor quickly filled up to check them out. By the time my three songs in the photo/security pit were done, and I made my way out onto the main floor to take in the rest of the set, it was well on its way to being full, and moving around quickly became difficult.
Pure Hex was an excellent pairing to Silversun Pickups. Their brand of music is also described as shoegaze, and it was trippy and cool, and very easy to get into, despite not having heard it before. Singer Marta Alvarez was mesmerizing in her movements and vocals, and it was hard to look away from her riveting performance. The rest of the Bay Area band was comprised of Zach Dighans on guitar, Hussain Khan on guitar, Luke Clingerman on bass, and Jon Annunziato on drums.
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Today, acclaimed singer-songwriter Michael Sweet, best known as the frontman for the multi-platinum rock band Stryper, is proud to release his new single “Again”, the third single from his upcoming solo album, The Master Plan. His most personal and spiritually resonant solo album yet is set for release on April 3, 2026, via Frontiers Music Srl.
“We’ve all lost someone,” says Sweet about the new single. “We all feel pain from that loss. I wrote this song to help people to heal.”
With its heartfelt lyrics and spiritual sincerity, The Master Plan is designed to inspire peace, faith, and encouragement — music that comforts the weary, uplifts the spirit, and celebrates the profound love at the center of Sweet‘s faith journey.
Co-produced by Sweet and Jeff Savage (TobyMac, Jars of Clay, Natalie Imbruglia), this deeply worship‑inspired record marks a bold departure from his previous solo work — blending heartfelt devotion with fresh musical textures and melodic depth unlike anything he has done before. Sweet‘s unmistakable voice leads a tapestry of heartfelt worship, inviting listeners to reflect, celebrate and draw closer to the timeless truths at the heart of his message. With sweeping arrangements and a sincere spiritual core, the album offers both comfort and inspiration for moments of prayer, praise and quiet contemplation.
For four decades, Sweet has fronted iconic rock band Stryper, renowned for its distinctive brand of “heavenly metal” and extraordinary crossover success. With over 10 million albums sold worldwide, the group ascended to prominence in the 1980s with Billboard Top 40 hits like “Calling on You,” “Honestly,” and “Always There for You,” and has maintained a global fanbase ever since. Stryper is the first band to ever have two songs in MTV’s Top 10 simultaneously with their hits “Free” and “Honestly.” Sweet also has a successful solo career, is a founding member of rock outfit Sweet & Lynch, and he served as the vocalist & guitarist for the legendary classic rock band Boston from 2007 to 2011.
The Master Plan is available for pre-order here.
The post STRYPER Frontman MICHAEL SWEET Releases New Single “Again” From Upcoming Solo Album “The Master Plan” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.