Set Your Goals have made their long-awaited return to recorded music, with the release of their first song since 2012. And it is ace.
The tune is titled ‘Accelerate’ and is as quintessential as it gets for the band. Fast and frantic one minute, melodic and impassioned the next, it is everything that has made them such a household name in pop-punk for the last two decades.
The thing that stands out the most is how the emotional tendencies that sit at its heart feel all the more powerful. As time goes by, so many things change in our lives.
But being able to keep positivity burning in the same way now as you did when you were so much younger is something to be celebrated.
Peter Gill is the guitarist in Friendship, but his own songs are quite a bit peppier than Dan Wriggins’ material. Gill leads 2nd Grade, a band that has spent this decade cranking out consistently delightful power-pop albums. The last two, 2022’s Easy Listening and 2024’s Scheduled Explosions, came out on Double Double Whammy. Today Gill and bandmates Catherine Dwyer, Lucas Knapp, and Michael Cormier-O’Leary are back to reveal their new label affiliation.
Cleopatra Records continues its careful reissue campaign of Glenn Danzig’s catalog with a new edition of Danzig’s 2010 album Deth Red Sabaoth, scheduled for release on August 21.
The band’s ninth studio album and its first since Circle Of Snakes in 2004, Deth Red Sabaoth became Danzig’s biggest commercial success since Danzig 4, released 16 years earlier. The independently produced record also introduced a different sonic approach, with Glenn Danzig relying on newly acquired 1970s Kustom tuck’n’toll bass amplifiers to shape its organic guitar tone.
Joined by Type O Negative drummer Johnny Kelly and Prong guitarist Tommy Victor, Glenn Danzig explained the recording philosophy at the time: “You’ll hear real reverb, real tremolo on this album.” Reviews highlighted the return to the band’s earlier sound. As metal-archives.com wrote, “a glorious return to the bluesy doom-n-gloom that made metal’s man in black the most evil name to enter thy holy household,” while teethofthedivine.com noted, “If you missed that slightly bluesy and heavily doomy sound of ‘Lucifuge’, you’ll be pleased to hear it return in full force on this record.”
The album reached No. 3 on both the U.S. Independent Albums and Hard Rock Albums charts, while climbing to No. 35 on the Billboard 200. Its original release was available in several editions, including a CD box set and a limited picture disc, making it an immediate target for collectors.
That demand has only grown over the years. Original CD editions now sell for as much as $50, the picture disc can reach around $150, and the Deth Red Sabaoth fan box has climbed to roughly $250 on the collector’s market. Even Glenn Danzig’s own 2022 vinyl reissue regularly changes hands for more than $100.
The new reissue expands those options even further. This edition of Deth Red Sabaoth will be available in seven different physical formats, each packaged to reflect the dark aesthetic of one of Danzig’s heaviest releases.
Danzig’s most recent studio album, Black Laden Crown, arrived in May 2017 through EviliveRecords and Nuclear Blast Entertainment.
In 2020, Glenn Danzig released Danzig Sings Elvis, a collection of Elvis Presley covers, while also devoting more time to filmmaking. His projects have included Death Rider In The House Of Vampires and his feature directorial debut, Verotika.
When Verotika premiered at Chicago’s Cinepocalypse festival in 2019, some critics compared it to Tommy Wiseau’s The Room, the cult film widely regarded as one of the worst movies ever made because of its unconventional execution.
The roots of Danzig trace back to the evolution of Misfits and Samhain. Between 1977 and 1987, Misfits transformed their horror-punk style into the darker, occult-driven sound of Samhain. When producer Rick Rubin expressed interest in signing Samhain to Def Jam and producing the band’s next record, the project evolved once again, leading to the formation of Danzig in 1987.
Danzig Deth Red Sabaoth pre-order is available here.
Interview: Twitch of the Death Nerve at Offal Fest
Interviewed by Patrick O’Reilly
Brutal death metallers Twitch of the Death Nerve chat to us at Offal Fest.
We discuss their set – earlier in the day , talk about the festivals success, line up changes, heading to the studio to record their next album, the themes of that album, fantasy festival booking and a whole lot more.
You can listen to the interview below, or jump over to any of the usual streaming services!
Look, I’m about to give you some further information, but it’s really not that important. Your main takeaway here is that Judiciary are back and that their new song is called motherfucking “Wall Of Skulls.” This is obviously great news. If you aren’t already banging your head to that song, you’re fucking up. Fix it.
(written by Islander) As we sometimes do, we’re going to jump right into the Critical Defiance song we’re about to premiere and then come back and fill you in on the details. The name of the song is “Rivers of Blood“, and it’s the title track to this Chilean band’s fourth album, which is forthcoming […]
In 1972 Yes’ record label released their 8:29 song Roundabout as a 3:27 single without telling the band. At first they were horrified. Then it reached Number 13 in the US chart and went on to win a BMI songwriting award. Reflecting on his career to date after being named as Prog God 2016 at the Prog Awards, singer Jon Anderson said the Roundabout release was the best thing to happen to a band whose future was unclear at the time.
“I was in a dream world for 10 years – it was truly magical. I was learning about structure. I’d work out a thematic piece, then a new section, then how to come back to the first themes. Like classical music, but based on a new energy. Not just verse-chorus-verse-chorus, which was what I grew up with – and don’t get me wrong, I loved that – but something new and powerful in a different way.
Of course, it helped that I was working with Steve Howe, Rick Wakeman and Chris Squire – people who understood all this and made it possible. I was there in the middle of it all, throwing out ideas all the time – and I mean all the time. And I still tend to do that every single day! For me, the idea of progressive music is always there. It’s never stopped. It’s my life.
It’s your challenge to make music that’s an adventure, a musical journey. It’s not so much about the business any more. The last thing I think now is whether that’ll sound good on the radio. I mean, Roundabout was eight minutes long as we envisaged it, with its midsection. And that was like a template to all the Yes music that was coming.
Atlantic took out the scissors and cut it into a hit record… thankfully! We were shocked at first, but now I think it was a gift. I remember we were driving through Pennsylvania and it came on the radio, and none of us knew it had been edited. We all sat up and said: ‘Wait a minute! What’s going on?’ But of course it became a big breakthrough record for us, so thank you! Without that hit, Yes might not have stayed around very much longer.
Fragile had all these extended tracks – Heart Of The Sunrise, South Side Of The Sky – and the idea was to extend the music for live performance onstage. Our audiences then were willing to sit through 10 minutes of our music without a sound; you could hear a pin drop. We wanted to please and inspire them. They came to our shows to listen then, not to dance. It was a unique period for music.
So we were able to do even longer-form music like Close To The Edge and Tales From Topographic Oceans. Thirty years later we went on and those audiences were still there at the beginning of the 21st century. Yes survived!
The 80s was such a successful time – the 90125 album went Top 10 all around the known world. No matter where we went, there were 10,000 or 20,000 people going bananas! It was very exciting. Being up there onstage and the audience getting so energised meant we got more excited, and so it fed into each other.
But I’d say to the guys back then: ‘We mustn’t lose our momentum. Musically, we’ve got to be very, very good.’ I was quite the taskmaster, wanting us to be healthy and everything! Being on the road a long time can drain you; you can finish up being a wreck. But you’re always a musician, and my ongoing dream is to be always evolving as one. And that carried me forward into new pastures.
All the music you ever do, it’s like a stepping stone to a bigger, better, brighter state of consciousness. Everything is perception; it’s all about how you perceive things. Life is like the ocean – it goes up, it goes down.”
The DevilDriver frontman reveals that a non-cancerous tumor has impacted his last two years, but the power of positive thought has him in a good place. Continue reading…
Linnea Siggelkow, the Artist To Watch alum known as Ellis, released her album No Place That Feels Like two years ago, and last year she dropped the one-off single “Little Kid.” But she’s been arguably even busier with her gig as a touring guitarist for Ethel Cain, whose Preacher’s Daughter also features Siggelkow’s playing. Today, she’s back in Ellis mode.
When Winter’s not busy being our VJ and interviewing Billy Corgan for us, she’s making beautiful shoegaze music. Her latest album was last year’s Adult Romantix, and earlier this month she unveiled a “mixtape version” of the closing track “hollow.” Now, the NYC artist is announcing the Romantix Mixtape EP and sharing a new version of the single “Without You” featuring Soccer Mommy.
