Category: news

A year-by-year breakdown of the best metal albums and songs of the 2000s. Continue reading…

Bangalore Choir have released their new album ‘Rapid Fire Succession: On Target Part II‘ on BraveWords Records. MetalTalk describes the new album, “Revives the spirit on ‘92, grunge be damned.” The single ‘Prisoner‘ was originally recorded by David Reece for the Accept album ‘Eat The Heat‘. Accept are celebrating their 50th Anniversary in 2026. This […]

The post Bangalore Choir Release New Single ‘Prisoner’ appeared first on ROCKPOSER DOT COM.

Foo Fighters have announced that they have been recruited to support AC/DC for one night only on their ongoing ‘Power Up’ tour.

The band have been brought in as a replacement for AC/DC’s longtime touring partners The Pretty Reckless for the show in St. Louis on September 08 at The Dome at America’s Center.

As you can imagine, this has proven to be a dream come true for vocalist Dave Grohl, who has written an incredible, emotional and heartfelt passage on the band’s socials:

“I remember it like it was yesterday….

It was AC/DC’s 1980 concert film “ Let There Be Rock” that truly introduced me to the raw, primal power of rock and roll performance for the first time. Sure, I had Beatles records, I had Kiss posters, I had an old, broken acoustic guitar with a few strings that I would pretend to play in front of the hallway closet mirror when no one was home, but it wasn’t until that fateful night at the tender age of eleven years old that my best friend, Larry Hinkle and I went downtown to the Uptown theater in Washington D.C. and actually witnessed it on full display.

Watching from the edge of my seat the entire time, it was like nothing I had ever experienced before. How could five human beings conjure and possess such intensity onstage with just their instruments, and do so with such swagger, such groove….and such danger? My mind was blown. Melted. Changed forever. And my heart felt like it might explode with passion and inspiration.
From that night on, the bar was set exceptionally high. If you were a drummer and you didn’t have to change your snare drum between songs from pummeling it to splinters, you weren’t hitting it hard enough. If you were a guitarist and you didn’t need oxygen on the side of the stage between solos, you weren’t playing hard enough. If you were a frontman in a band and you weren’t drenched in sweat by the end of the show, you weren’t giving the audience what they deserve (All of these moments can be witnessed in this legendary film)

It’s safe to say that If it weren’t for this movie, this band, and their decades of timeless anthems, I surely would have approached my life in music from a different perspective. So, if you have ever seen me beat the living shit out of a drum set, or run from side to side of a stage drenched in sweat after hours of hammering my guitar to pieces, you’ll now understand why. All I have ever wanted was to someday live up to the awe-inspiring fury of AC/DC, live onstage (an impossible task, by the way)

And now, for the first time since that fateful night in 1980, my band Foo Fighters will share a stage with the gentlemen who are single-handedly responsible for my determination to give every audience everything I have, every night. This is literally a dream come true. So…..if you want blood….you’ve got it.

Let there be fucking rock, St Louis. See you September 8th.

Dave”

At the end of the day, even your heroes are still just fans.

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The Pretty Reckless will be joining the band for the other remaining shows of the tour, which look a little something like this:

SEPTEMBER

12 – MONTREAL Parc Jean-Drapeau, QC
16 – TORONTO Rogers Stadium, ON
25 – EAST RUTHERFORD MetLife Stadium, NJ
29 – PHILADELPHIA Philadelphia Lincoln Financial Field, PA

The post Foo Fighters To Support AC/DC For One Night Only appeared first on Rock Sound.

Hey, remember when the two main members of Operation Ivy started a new band together? What’s going on with that? Berkeley ska-punk heroes Operation Ivy famously started in ’87 and ended in ’89, and their raw, scrappy, hectic sound inspired countless imitators. People have been wanting an Operation Ivy reunion for many years, and we got something a bit like that in 2023, when Tim Armstrong, the Op Ivy singer/guitarist who went on to form Rancid, got together with singer Jesse Michaels to form a group called Bad Optix, who released exactly one single. That project seems to be lost in the mysterious ether, but now Armstrong and Michaels are working on something else together.

The post Operation Ivy’s Tim Armstrong & Jesse Michaels Join The Family Business LTD For Debut Album appeared first on Stereogum.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
OLA ENGLUND Lands on the Cover of Sweden Rock Magazine Alongside Rock and Metal Legends
Acclaimed guitarist, songwriter, and Solar Guitars founder Ola Englund has reached another major milestone in his career, appearing on the cover of Sweden Rock Magazine alongside legendary musicians from Accept, Europe, The Haunted, and Opeth.
The special feature appears as Accept celebrates 50 years , bringing together four accomplished guitarists from some of the most influential names in European hard rock and metal: Wolf Hoffmann of Accept, John Norum of Europe, Fredrik “Kulle” Åkesson of Opeth, and Ola Englund of The Haunted .
The result is a special gathering of guitar players from different generations and musical backgrounds, discussing their instruments, influences, gear, playing styles, creativity, and the continuing evolution of heavy music.
For Englund, the feature represents another significant achievement in a career that has seen him establish himself as one of modern metal’s most recognizable guitarists through his work with The Haunted and Feared , his solo music, and the worldwide success of Solar Guitars .
Within the Sweden Rock Magazine feature, Englund discusses his approach to guitar, tone, creativity, and the challenges of developing a distinctive voice as a modern guitarist. He also talks about his love of Flying V guitars and the importance of keeping guitar playing musical and expressive rather than focusing solely on technical ability.
The feature also captures the special atmosphere surrounding Accept’s 50th anniversary celebration at Cirkus in Stockholm , where these guitarists came together to celebrate one of metal’s foundational bands.
Grab a copy of the issue here: https://swedenrockmagazine.com/

Check out this video of Ola Englund with Accept:

While appearing alongside one of metal’s most influential bands is certainly a milestone worth celebrating, Englund is far from looking backward.
He is currently building toward the release of his highly anticipated new solo album, The Neverending Story , arriving October 14, 2026 .
The album campaign has already delivered multiple singles, including “The Ember Saga,” “The Guillotine,” and the recently released “Dogma Progma,” with the latter showcasing Englund’s continued focus on crushing riffs, soaring melodies, cinematic atmosphere, and his unmistakable guitar voice.
The official music video for “Dogma Progma” is available now:
WATCH “DOGMA PROGMA”:

STREAM / PRE-ORDER THE NEVERENDING STORY :
https://olaenglundshop.com/pages/the-neverending-story
Featuring ten original tracks, The Neverending Story represents what Englund describes as some of his most ambitious solo work to date, blending technical precision, memorable hooks, heavy riffs, and cinematic storytelling into an instrumental metal journey.
The album tracklist includes:
The Ember Saga
Game Over
The Astral Gate
Dogma Progma
The Guillotine
Means to an End
World Rift
The First of its Kind
Artax Reborn
Sun & The Moon Part 2
With his latest Sweden Rock Magazine cover appearance adding another major achievement to an already impressive career, and a new solo album on the horizon, Ola Englund continues to prove that his place in the modern metal guitar world extends far beyond his work onstage.
From The Haunted and Feared to Solar Guitars , his massively successful YouTube channel, and now his increasingly ambitious solo work, Englund has built a career centered around one thing: the guitar.
And the story is far from finished.

  Connect with Ola:
https://olaenglundshop.com/
https://www.facebook.com/olaenglund
https://www.instagram.com/olaenglund

It was all so slippery. The way it went down; the way it sounded, too. Just when you thought you had a grip on Frank Ocean, he slid through your fingers and vanished, leaving behind nothing but a cloud of smoke and streaks of light. Elusiveness is his nature, his essence, and yet so is profound emotional resonance. It’s what made Blonde so alluring back then, and why an album defined by impermanence has so powerfully endured.

The post <em>Blonde</em> Turns 10 appeared first on Stereogum.

Over the course of 15 years and seven albums, Norway’s Beaten to Death have been rewriting the rules of grindcore. Whether it’s through an almost clean and mostly distortionless guitar tone, their shattering of scene tropes or a career-long refusal to put limits on their inveterate sense of humour, the band have never failed to ruffle the feathers of those willing to listen as they continually add melody, absurdity and iconoclastic sarcasm to killer riffs, intense blasting and off-kilter storytelling. We may still be a couple months away from the release of the band’s seventh full-length, Vntrve, but Mas-Kina, the band’s label, has kicked the promotional machine into early gear with the advance release of singles and teasers, one of which we’re previewing here today. A much better plan than previous records when, upon completing an album, the band would issue their music with little attention paid to scheduling and less paid to planning.

Says the band about “The Tolerator”: “When coming up with stories for our lyrics we often end up telling them through a protagonist or antagonist [lens] which is very often an anti-hero or a sad and pathetic figure that comes uncomfortably close to our own miserable selves at times. Yes, we are an emo band that put our lives on display for YOUR entertainment.  For ‘The Tolerator’ we investigate how being a tolerant human being can go too far. So much so that our hero just keeps on tolerating and tolerating absolutely everything. He even justifies being so good at never protesting and accepting whatever comes his way that he sees it as a superpower. This is also a song where we acknowledge the important position of the saxophone in grindcore history, from Siege, through Naked City to Brutal Truth and Napalm Death. Although our boy Bendik Brænne chose a slightly less free jazzy approach than what is normally accepted as grindcore sax. This suits us well.”

What they also fail to mention is that at 2:54, it’s the longest song to appear on Vntrve, which you can pre-order and further check out at the links below.

Bandcamp

Facebook

Instagram

Tidal

YouTube

The post Track Premiere: Grindcore Nutbars Beaten to Death Test Tolerance with “The Tolerator” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

In August 1981, little more than two years after the all-female south London metal band Girlschool launched itself onto the U.K. club scene, the group headlined the first night of the annual Reading Festival — the first female rock band ever to do so, and, all these years later, still the only one. The performance is being commemorated with Nothin’ To Lose In Reading 1981, an archival live album due Sept. 25 on CD and red-and-white spatter vinyl via Silver Lining Music. The release is previewed today by a single of the title track, “Nothin’ To Lose (Live In Reading 1981).”

The day itself was not without its pre-show disasters: the band’s hired car — a pink Cadillac said to have belonged to actress Jayne Mansfield — arrived at the venue “broken and rattling” after a fender bender; one roadie restrung lead guitarist Kelly Johnson’s guitar with two D strings; and the band’s flashing neon backdrop was sabotaged by another act on the bill. Johnson, however, was unfazed.

“The thing with Kelly is, she was such a genius and natural player, you could put anything in front of her and she could play it,” says rhythm guitarist and vocalist Kim McAuliffe. “She had an instinct. I used to watch her onstage sometimes, and I was quite amazed by her. She was such an incredible presence on stage. [The roadie] could probably have handed her a guitar with four strings and she’d still have been brilliant. I don’t think having two strings the same would have bothered her at all.”

For McAuliffe, the moment carried extra personal resonance: “I’d been there a couple of years before, standing on the other side in the mud, with this big plastic bag thing over me and knee deep in mud,” she recalls. “So happy to be there, grinning away, having the time of my life. Little did I know I’d actually be headlining a couple of years later. It was absolutely nuts.”

“We had the biggest pyrotechnic flashpots ever. Huge things. And apparently they could be heard seven miles away, so we were pleased about that. People wondering what the hell was going on with these massive bangs,” McAuliffe adds. The track “Future Flash” — fired off alongside the pyrotechnics — did not make it onto tape, the explosions likely having overloaded the recording equipment.

The set, dominated by the band’s then-current album Hit And Run (1981), also dips back to their debut, 1980’s Demolition, and closes with the signature Gun cover “Race With The Devil.”

Nothin’ To Lose In Reading 1981 is the first of five archive live albums scheduled from Girlschool over the coming months. The band is also planning a new studio album for 2028 to celebrate its 50th anniversary, the follow-up to WTFortyfive? (July 2023, Silver Lining Music).

Girlschool originated in the U.K. during the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal scene in 1978, formed from a school band called Painted Lady by McAuliffe and bassist Enid Williams. Closely associated with contemporaries and friends Mötorhead, the band is the longest-running all-female rock band in history. Original members McAuliffe and drummer Denise Dufort remain in the lineup today; lead guitarist Johnson died of cancer in 2007 and was replaced by Jackie Chambers in 1999. Current bassist Olivia Airey is the niece of renowned Deep Purple and Rainbow keyboardist Don Airey.

Girlschool 2026 is:

Kim McAuliffe / Rhythm guitar, Lead and Backing Vocals
Denise Dufort / Drums
Olivia Airey / Bass guitar
Jackie Chambers / Lead Guitar and Backing Vocals

The post GIRLSCHOOL To Release Archival Live Album “Nothin’ To Lose In Reading 1981” & Share Title-Track Single appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

King King played a one-off show for the third straight year in Omaha, Nebraska at Playing With Fire. The set included a performance of “Waking Up.”

Watch the performance below.

The post Watch King King perform “Waking Up” at Playing With Fire 2026 appeared first on Blues Rock Review.

A Metal Hammer reader put the question to Alex Terrible directly, in a People Vs feature recorded before Slaughter To Prevail’s Bloodstock headline set: will you ever beat the Nazi allegations? His answer was no — and not because he thinks the accusations are true. He then spent the rest of the interview doing something he’s mostly avoided until now: explaining the tattoos, the crowd he ran with in Russia as a teenager, and where he draws the line on what he actually did.

STREAM THE METAL BREAKDOWN DAILY NOW:

Scott Penfold gets into the Alex Terrible interview on today’s Metal Breakdown Daily — what he owned, what he disputed, and the story from his own family that reframes one of the accusations entirely. Download the free Loaded Radio App on Apple iOS and Google Play and get it every weekday morning.

His answer to the question

No. He doesn’t think it ever goes away.

His reasoning isn’t that the accusations are unfair in substance — it’s that the internet doesn’t work that way. People who want a reason to hate him will find one regardless of what he says or how he says it. He’s used to it.

Then the detail that’s worth sitting with: he says he never gets hate in real life. Only online. At festivals like Bloodstock he says he gets nothing but respect from other bands and from people generally, and that they tell him the internet isn’t real life.

His conclusion — people read something, build an image of him that isn’t real, and it sticks. Probably forever.

You can accept that or reject it. But it’s the first time he’s framed it as something he’s stopped fighting rather than something he’s arguing about.

On the tattoos, which he doesn’t dodge

This is the part that’s different from every previous interview.

Asked about the tattoos — the Black Sun and the Othala rune, both symbols appropriated by the Nazis and used since by white supremacist groups — he doesn’t deflect and he doesn’t minimise. He says he’s paying the price for a stupid decision.

His account: he got them while hanging around right-wing guys in Russia when he was young. He describes them as right-wing rather than Nazis, and says they used those symbols to look tough — that it was the culture he was in. He says he understands the hate.

Would he do it again? No. He says his mindset has changed significantly and he doesn’t understand why he got the tattoo in the first place. He’s had the Black Sun covered.

But he also argues the whole of it — good and bad — built who he is, and that he’s a human being who makes mistakes.

Then the line the headline came from: he says he made stupid mistakes, but he didn’t kill anyone, didn’t stab anyone, didn’t bully anyone, and he isn’t a Nazi and never was a racist.

He adds something else, unprompted — that the horrible things he did, he did to himself. He talks about drug use and nearly dying from addiction. And he says whatever else is true, he never went after anybody for their colour or where they came from.

The story about his family

The accusations of homophobia trace back to a since-deleted 2023 Instagram post about rules for real men, and a follow-up comment about brainwashing children that several outlets connected to anti-trans rhetoric.

His explanation is that the brainwashing comment was never about anyone’s identity. He says he was talking about religious education and military propaganda being pushed at Russian schoolchildren — that eight and nine-year-olds are being fed material about the glory of the military, that he thinks the war in Ukraine is bad, and that he wants to handle his own child’s moral education rather than have the state do it.

He states plainly that he doesn’t mind if someone is gay or trans, that it’s their business, and that he supports it.

Then he tells a story that nobody covering this today is going to lead with.

He says that at sixteen or seventeen, sitting with family at breakfast, he listened to relatives talking about having a problem with gay people at a club — calling them disgusting. So he asked what they’d say if he turned around and told them he was gay.

He says he was told he wouldn’t be part of the family anymore. He describes being angry and ashamed that they’d said it.

His point: he grew up around genuine homophobia and pushed back on it as a teenager, and now the same accusation gets levelled at him.

It’s his account, unverified, and people will weigh it how they weigh it. But it’s the most human thing he’s said in four years of this.

Also Recommended – Deathcore Bands Ranked: The Top 13 That Still Define Heavy Music Right Now

What the record actually shows

Context matters here, and this article isn’t going to pretend the accusations came from nowhere.

The documented flashpoints are specific. The Black Sun tattoo. The Othala rune. A photograph of him in an SS helmet. The 2023 post. Years of social media comments critics have called homophobic and transphobic. And the fact that the band’s 2025 European tour announcement triggered enormous backlash aimed squarely at him rather than at any of the supporting acts.

He addressed a lot of it on the Downbeat podcast last year, where he denied being racist, homophobic or transphobic, said the Black Sun wasn’t political and confirmed he’d had it covered for the sake of his career, and expressed regret over the SS helmet photo. He did not apologise for promoting a band he himself described in stark terms, or for wearing a brand owned by a neo-Nazi activist.

Guitarist Jack Simmons gave his own explanation for a separate tattoo last October, while conceding the controversy is the band’s own fault.

So the list exists. What’s new is that he’s now engaging with it item by item instead of dismissing it wholesale.

Check Out – The 13 Best Deathcore Albums of All Time: The Definitive Ranking

Why this interview lands differently

Two weeks ago, this same man posted a sarcastic apology to the trans community after his Bloodstock set, spent a day firing back at critics in his replies, then deleted the whole thing when one person told him his posts were getting other people piled on.

That was reactive. This is considered.

And whatever you make of him, that’s a meaningful difference in a genre where the standard response to this kind of pressure is either silence or escalation. He’s headlining Bloodstock. Slaughter To Prevail are one of the biggest bands in modern deathcore at exactly the moment the genre is breaking into the mainstream. He didn’t need to answer any of it.

Nothing here settles the argument. Plenty of people will read his explanations and conclude they’re insufficient, and they’ll have the documented record to point at. Others will read a guy who did something stupid at nineteen and has been paying for it ever since.

Both readings are available. That’s the honest state of it.

The full interview is at Metal Hammer, and it’s worth reading in his own words rather than through a screenshot.

TL;DR

• What happened: Alex Terrible answered reader and Metal Hammer questions about the Nazi allegations in a People Vs feature published August 19, recorded before Slaughter To Prevail’s Bloodstock headline set.
• His answer: no, he doesn’t think he’ll ever escape them — because people looking for a reason to hate him will find one regardless.
• On the tattoos: he owns them. Says he got the Black Sun and Othala rune hanging around right-wing guys in Russia as a teenager, that the symbols were used to look tough, and that he’s paying the price. He wouldn’t do it again and has had the Black Sun covered.
• Where he draws the line: he says he made stupid mistakes but never hurt anyone, and that he isn’t a Nazi and never was a racist.
• On the homophobia accusations: he says the brainwashing comment was about religious and military propaganda aimed at Russian children, not identity, and recounts confronting his own family over homophobic remarks at sixteen.
• What’s unchanged: the documented record — the tattoos, the SS helmet photo, the 2023 post — remains on the record, and he has not apologised for all of it.

FAQ

The most direct he’s been in four years — but the record hasn’t changed. Does this move the needle for you, or is it too little? Have it out in the comments. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.

The post Alex Terrible Was Asked If He’ll Ever Beat The Controversial Allegations Against Him appeared first on Loaded Radio.