Category: news
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Fans Open Their Homes for the Harry Styles Residency
Ahead of Harry Styles’s Madison Square Garden residency, fans are preparing to sublet their couches and spare rooms to concertgoers. -
“He was, like me, wanting to focus more on creative work, as opposed to touring, touring, touring”: Steven Wilson and Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt are going to make another album together
The celebrated prog musicians previously collaborated on 2012 album Storm Corrosion, and many fans are hankering for a follow-up -
THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS And SQUEAKY BONES: Two New Albums In Anti-Corp Musicâs Beloved The Magnolia Sessions Series Are Out Now And Streaming Everywhere
SQUEAKY BONES by Zachariah Orbin THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS by Ericka Poore Anti-Corp Musicâs beloved The Magnolia Sessions delivers new albums from THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS and SQUEAKY BONES, both out now […]The post THE BANDIT QUEEN OF SORROWS And SQUEAKY BONES: Two New Albums In Anti-Corp Musicâs Beloved The Magnolia Sessions Series Are Out Now And Streaming Everywhere appeared first on INFRARED MAGAZINE.
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The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus Share Cover Of Twenty One Pilots’ ‘Not Today’
The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus have shared their cover of Twenty One Pilots’ ‘Not Today’, which originally appeared on Rock Sound’s exclusive tribute album ‘Blurryface Reborn’.
The band were joined on the album by the likes of AWOLNATION, Bambie Thug, As It Is, YONAKA and many more, in celebrating a record that has served as inspiration and influence for alternative music throughout the last decade.
And in taking on the challenge of covering the album’s penultimate song, the band make light work of turning it into a post-hardcore epic. Enthralling guitars, guttural screams and soaring vocals, it pays respect to the original whilst giving it a whole new lease of life.
And now, it is available for the whole world to listen to whenever it wants.
The band have even shared a lyric video to accompany it, which you can check out below.
The track appears on the band’s deluxe edition of their album ‘X’s For Eyes’, which features an additional three tracks. One of those includes a feature from none other than Mayday Parade’s Derek Sanders. That is a new version of ‘Perfection’.
Vocalist Ronnie Winter had this to say about the release, stating, “The surprise guest vocalist and alternate versions really make this the most exciting deluxe edition in the history of our career.”
It sounds like this.
‘Blurryface Reborn’ is available as a physical release right now in the Rock Sound store, which you can check out right here.
The post The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus Share Cover Of Twenty One Pilots’ ‘Not Today’ appeared first on Rock Sound.
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Sermon to the Lambs – Sermon to the Lambs Review
What’s your favorite slam album and why? Do you value catchiness in your big bruutz? Clear production? Melodic presence? My favorite slam alternates with my mood between Devourment’s Obscene Majesty and Analepsy’s Quiescence; the former for the excellent execution of such a narrow sound, and the latter for the colors and beauty imbued into the otherwise bone-shattering grooves. Though given a bad rap for its easy-to-emulate smoothbrain caveman stereotypes, slam has shown much evolution in recent years as bands continue to push and redefine the limits of extremity. Hailing from Chile, new outfit Sermon to the Lambs have arrived with their self-titled debut, coming with the usual aggrandizing promises of maximum aural violence and assurances of a downright traumatizing listen for anyone who has ears to hear; will this sermon find the hearts of true believers or leave the congregation cold and unmoved?Well, at least they know their way around a riff. Periodic snapshots show Sermon to the Lambs at their proselytizing best, with the occasional moment raising itself to headbangable proportions (“Crowned King of the Worms”, “God Spat and the Man was Done”) with a high octane assault. Slam styles range from the chunkier chromatic walks of Maggot Colony or Condemned, to moodier setpieces near the end of “Clergy’s Malevolence” for tonal shift and a sense of climax to round out the release. Melodies are almost completely excised in favor of a full steam ahead barrage, which rarely tinkers with tempo changes or distinguishing features, placing Sermon to the Lambs as students of the class of professors Disgorge and Gorgasm with regard to their commitment to bludgeoning the listener to death.
Unfortunately, those highlights are few and far between and only serve to exacerbate how unbelievably bland this album is. Vocalist Richard Aguayo falls prey to the maddening trend of not knowing how to let his vocals support the music, choosing instead to slather almost the entire album with belches and brees which possess little sense of diction or phrasing. His gutturals are excellent, but the frustrating insistence on double-tracking them with his more shrill screams is not, and the mix has him pushed so far forward that he frequently drowns out whatever interesting musicality might be hiding underneath. Songs stop and go on a dime, and frequently I’d be surprised to see I was several tracks deeper into a listen than I thought I was, thanks to song conclusions and kick-offs blurring together in composition. Any random 30 seconds chosen to play would certainly unleash an attack filled with energy and enthusiasm, but Sermon to the Lambs is utterly devoid of truly head-spinning moments or anything to warrant repeat listens.
What is the biggest culprit for this? The mix is no help, with all the knobs on the board shoved all the way up to 11, leaving instrument and vocals fighting for attention while the bass’s body is buried in the backyard and forgotten. For the most part, the riffs are no help, a hodgepodge of expected staccato presentations and a beige haze of blasts. The drumming is no help; while skillfully delivered, there are certainly no fills to catch the listener’s attention. Other than the aforementioned moments of semi-memorability in the bookending tracks, there’s definitely no run of riffs to raise horns and toss beer at innocent passerby. Sermon to the Lambs lacks any dose of menace or cinema, though the band definitely tries, taking a page from the book of Brodequin and injecting some Gregorian chant into an intro (“Maximum Apostasy”) before that too devolves into paint-drying and bird watching. The closing track makes a valiant effort to get some real atmosphere with its tempo shifts, and Sermon to the Lambs wisely err on the side of brevity with the releases 30 minute runtime. But ultimately, this is an opaque, textureless, flavorless album, so focused on the brutalizing that it never manages to get out of first gear and approach anything with replayability.
I’ve wrestled for a while on why this is. Objectively, there’s nothing executed that’s “poor” in the literal sense. Instruments are played well, throats are wildly abused, and snares blow out the treble in your speakers with savage glee. One might argue that this was the very vision, and if such monotonous brutality is your jam, you’ll probably find lots more to like here. But slam is capable of its own artistic merit and is more than malleable to compositional adventures, and Sermon to the Lambs is lacking heavily in both artistic vision (beyond “kill”) and compositional adventures. If straightforward jackhammer thrashings are your parish, you’ll find plenty of good word here, but this
lionlamb will be attending services elsewhere.
Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: 41 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Comatose Music
Website: Album Bandcamp
Releases Worldwide: March 6th, 2025The post Sermon to the Lambs – Sermon to the Lambs Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.
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Reviews: Distorted Reflection, Triumpher, Phasma, Oath (Matt Bladen)
Distorted Reflection – Doom Zone (Iron Shield Records)Kostas Salomidis is a renowned in Greek doom scene. He is a founding member of Sorrows Path but in 2022, after a few shenanigans Kostas found himself in the position of starting again. Working under a mystique away from the public eye, he launched Distorted Reflection with Doom Rules Eternally, the album coming through German label Iron Shield Records. It was a record that heralded the return of this Greek doom icon and was highly rated by much of the music press including ourselves.
In 2026 Kostas once again fires up the doom engine for another Distorted Reflection album. It’s with this sophomore album we return to the Doom Zone, beginning with 3000 AD which features a guitar solo by Jack Starr (Jack Starr’s Burning Star/Virgin Steele). He’s a great special guest but these songs hail to the riff with Salomidis on guitar cranking them out across eleven tracks, with the influence of Sabbath and Candlemass looming like a spectre, especially in his vocals. Behind him is the grooving bass and occult synths of Vangelis Yalamas (Fragile Vastness), and the percussive thump of drummer Thomas Zen.
Distorted Reflection then is a heavy rocking doom trio, the production skill of Vangelis at Fragile Studio giving it an analogue sound that bristles with warmth and that crackle of a vinyl LP. Doom Zone is an epic doom metal record that continues the musical legacy of Salomidis, tracks such as the gothic Gates Of Paranoia, the crushing Love On Earth and Diminished go back to his early works while Asphyxiating and Certain Death bring thrash and sludge.
Nothing hangs around, this Doom Zone distils epic doom metal into four minute blasts of riffage, Doom Still Rules Eternally for Distorted Reflection. 9/10
Triumpher – Piercing The Heart Of The World (No Remorse Records)
You can call Triumpher a lot of things but lazy isn’t one of them, debuting with an album in 2023, they quickly followed up with another in 2024 and now only a year and but later they are on their third. Another word you could use is consistent, as the mighty metal blade of Triumpher swings again with another record of epic steel forged from heavy metal traditions.
Taking as much influence from Manowar and Cirith Ungol as they do Celtic Frost and Mercyful Fate. Since their second record they’ve found themselves on some high profile stages and this has massively affected the scope of Piercing The Heart Of The World, from the tolling bell and orchestrations of Black Blood, it sounds bigger, that Manowar influence large and on charge in Mars Triumph’s massive vocal range and the high-in-the-mix bass of Stelios Zoumis.
Classic metal fans will get tingles down their spine from the first track as this is a Sign Of The Hammer, Hail To England level record, with even the production/mix/master of Achilleas Kalantzis emulating those classic records. The Mountain Throne gallops along on Agis Tzoukopoulos and some traditional instruments, weaving a story through it’s progressive changes of pace, where the black metal sound comes in with blast beats underscoring a bass solo!
Of course epic metal is nothing without riffs and guitarists Christopher Tsakiropoulos and Mario Ñ Peters have a bag full of them, from the melodic balladry of Ithaca (Return Of The Eternal King) and Vaults Of Immortals through the chunky The Flaming Sword and the thrashy Erinyes. There’s a reduction of the black metal style on this third album but Triumpher continue to provide substance with their muscular consistency. 9/10
Phasma – Purgatory (Transcending Obscurity Records)
Time to get gnarly now with Purgatory the new album from Phasma, their third overall but their debut for Transcending Obscurity Records. In the for fans of section bands such as Dying Fetus and Psycroptic are named and you can definitely hear why as soon as you press play the first track I (each track is just the Roman Numeral for that number) that this is a rather complex but punishing sound.
Sitting smack bang in the middle of black and death metal, both sides of the extreme spectrum collide in a volatile explosion of mechanised brutality, industrial moments, groove metal breakdowns, blast beats and vocals that put screams with growls create a disharmony, that lends itself to the layered style of Phasma.
Purgatory is not a an easy listen it, there’s a lot happening and none of it ever shies away from trying to be more extreme than the last track. It’s a collection of improvisations where one track flows into another, drawing in these different styles for maximum impact. You have to love extreme music to get the most out of Purgatory, however you won’t hear much this volatile this year. 7/10
Oath – Unteach (Self Released)
Some unashamed Iommi worship from Athens now as Oath crank up the fuzz for their debut full length Unteach. This Greek power trio play doom, heavy, fuzzy Sabbath worshipping, doom, recorded entirely live in their studio, this is a paean to the occult, lyrically driven by B-movie horror, witchcraft and the dogma of religion, the songs cut through with
Terrorcraft launches the record with echoed vocals, hallucinogenic riffs and lots of groove ala The Sword, Uncle Acid And The Deadbeats and Vol 4 Sabbath. It’s got pace while My Second Life brings the tormented dissonance of Electric Wizard. They dedicate Evergreen Fields to Ozzy, while the bluesy Dies Capri features some guest vocals from Olia Fileri.
Sat under the tree of Sabbath, Oath fill their debut record with distorted riffs and haunted vocals, Unteach delivers on its promise of being a homage to Osbourne, Iommi, Butler and Ward, pledge an Oath to Sabbath. 8/10 -
Live report SMITH/KOTZEN & SWEET ELECTRIC Gruenspan, Hamburg – March 5th, 2026
Some iconic guitarists are on tour right now. A few days ago, Michael Schenker brought back the great UFO days to Große Freiheit 36, and today, a few meters down the road, Adrian Smith and Richie Kotzen are playing a show. With Smith being one of the legendary Iron Maiden guitarists and Kotzen being a… Continue Reading → -
The Who announce the release of ‘Live at Eden Project’ album
THE WHO ANNOUNCE LIVE AT EDEN PROJECT: A HISTORIC PERFORMANCE WITH THE HEART OF ENGLAND PHILHARMONIC ORCHESTRA – IN STORE 29th MAY 2026
Few bands have shaped the landscape of rock music with the force and longevity of The Who. For nearly six decades, their sound, spirit, and unmistakable energy have echoed across generations, influencing artists and audiences around the world. In 2026, the band adds a remarkable new chapter to their legacy with Live at Eden Project – a landmark live recording that captures the raw power, emotional depth, and artistic ambition of their unforgettable July 2023 performance at Cornwall’s iconic Eden Project.
Set within one of the UK’s most sustainable and visually striking venues – a breathtaking network of biomes nestled in the Cornish countryside – the concert stands as a testament not only to The Who’s musical evolution but also to their enduring cultural relevance. Backed by the Heart of England Philharmonic Orchestra, founding members Pete Townshend and Roger Daltrey delivered a performance that fused classic rock intensity with orchestral grandeur. The Eden Project’s natural acoustics and enclosed structures created a warm, detailed sonic environment that offered a clarity and intimacy unmatched by traditional stadium settings.
The recording reflects this unique atmosphere. Fans have long cherished The Who’s “special location” shows, and Eden stands among the most memorable – a once-in-a-lifetime convergence of music, environment, and artistic vision. The smaller capacity fostered a deeper connection between the band and audience, allowing for heightened interaction, greater emotional resonance, and a sense of being inside the performance rather than observing it from afar. This intimacy, combined with the band’s refined orchestral approach, captures The Who at a defining moment in their modern era.
Live at Eden Project also presents one of the strongest and most focused setlists of The Who’s orchestral period. Alongside beloved anthems such as ‘Baba O’Riley’ and ‘Pinball Wizard’, the album includes rarely performed gems like ‘Cry If You Want’, ‘Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere,’ and ‘The Rock’, creating a career-spanning journey that balances hits, deep cuts, and orchestral showpieces with remarkable fluidity.
Today’s announcement coincides with the launch of the first single, ‘Pinball Wizard’, which is available for streaming and download immediately. The track offers a powerful first glimpse into the atmosphere and artistry of the Eden performance, capturing the heightened clarity, emotional nuance, and orchestral depth that define the full release.
Scheduled for release on 29 May 2026, Live at Eden Project will be available as a 2CD Digipak, a limited 3LP Gatefold edition pressed on recycled vinyl with no plastic shrink wrap and packed in a separate paper wallet, a standard 3LP Gatefold, and across all major digital platforms. Every format showcases the full emotional and sonic range of a night that stands among the most compelling in The Who’s recent history.
Vibrant, immersive, and uniquely alive, Live at Eden Project is the definitive document of The Who’s orchestral era – a recording that captures not only a legendary band in peak form but also the spirit of a venue whose environmental ethos and natural beauty mirror the band’s own commitment to evolution and innovation.
Pre-Order Live at Eden Project HERE
Formats:
Black 3LP Gatefold, Limited edition 3LP Gatefold, 2CD Digipak, Streaming & Digital DownloadTracklisting:
1. Overture
2. 1921
3. Amazing Journey
4. Sparks
5. The Acid Queen
6. Pinball Wizard
7. We’re Not Gonna Take It
8. Who Are You
9. Eminence Front
10. The Kids Are Alright
11. You Better You Bet
12. Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere
13. Substitute
14. I Can’t Explain
15. My Generation
16. Cry If You Want
17. Won’t Get Fooled Again
18. Behind Blue Eyes
19. The Real Me
20. I’m One
21. 5:15
22. The Rock
23. Love Reign O’er Me
24. Baba O’RileyThe post The Who announce the release of ‘Live at Eden Project’ album appeared first on The Who.