Taylor Swift is back. The singer just announced a new song called “I Knew It, I Knew You” for the upcoming Toy Story 5 movie. The track is written and produced by Swift and Jack Antonoff, and it comes out this Friday (June 5).
The post Taylor Swift Announces <em>Toy Story 5</em> Song “I Knew It, I Knew You” appeared first on Stereogum.
There is a particular kind of fan fatigue that accumulates not from dislike but from overexposure — the slow erosion of goodwill through anniversary editions and Christmas records and b-side EPs that arrive with the regularity of utility bills. August Burns Red have, in the years since Phantom Anthem, tested that goodwill with a thoroughness that bordered on contempt. Guardians and Death Below each arrived trailing the same tonal fingerprints, the same producers, the same instinct toward technical convolution for its own sake. By the time Season of Surrender was announced, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, veterans had given their most devoted critics every reason to stop paying attention.
Which makes what they’ve actually delivered here — ABR’s tenth full-length and their return to Fearless Records — more interesting than it has any right to be.
Season of Surrender doesn’t represent a categorical reinvention. JB Brubaker, Brent Rambler, Matt Greiner, Dustin Davidson, and Jake Luhrs are still, unambiguously, August Burns Red. Carson Slovak and Grant McFarland are still in the production chair, and the album carries their characteristic clean-and-separated tonal signature — every instrument sitting in a familiar place, the mix landing somewhere between concussive and controlled. What’s shifted is intent. The songwriting is tighter, the riffs are doing actual work, and the band sounds, for the first time in years, like they’re writing the songs they want to hear rather than the songs they think the algorithmic moment requires.
Lead single “Behemoth” makes the recalibration legible in roughly two minutes. Built around a groove-first stomp section that owes more to Unearth’s no-frills directness than to ABR’s recent noodling, it is blunt in a way the band hasn’t allowed themselves to be in a long time. Luhrs’ own characterization of the track as a reckoning with old ways — “I had to suffocate to stop the suffering” — cuts closer to the bone than anything on either of its predecessor albums, and the repeated line lands harder for the space around it.
“Den of Thieves” maintains the album’s more aggressive posture while introducing the Killswitch Engage-adjacent melodicism that has always been somewhere in ABR’s toolkit but rarely deployed this effectively. The guitar lead sets a pace that would reliably open a circle pit; the rhythm section underneath cycles through thrash and death metal in a way that feels purposeful rather than promiscuous. “The Nameless” finds the band in Meshuggah territory — a djenty central figure and a Fredrik Thordendal-style scatter solo that functions as the album’s most technically provocative moment without feeling like a résumé entry.
The guest features are deployed strategically and land with variable impact. Mike Hranica of The Devil Wears Prada amplifies the deathcore-adjacent aggression on “Legions” to genuinely punishing effect; the closing riff on that track is the most direct thing August Burns Red have written since “Quake,” and that it exists at all is a kind of evidence. “Sonic Salvation” features Jamie Hails of Polaris, whose range and dynamic control are striking against Luhrs’ comparatively static delivery — an unintentional but revealing contrast. “Cerebral Malfunction,” with Make Them Suffer’s Sean Haramis and Alex Reade, is the album’s most structurally ambitious track: a melodic opening, an extended clean refrain that dissolves into genuine tension, and a conclusion that earns its emotional weight. That three tracks require outside voices to reach their peaks is worth noting without overstating. It says something about where the band’s ceiling currently sits.
The weakest element remains Luhrs, not as a vocalist in absolute terms, but relative to the ambition the album occasionally reaches for. The choruses are competent and serviceable; none approach the memorability of “Truth of a Liar,” or “Thirty and Seven,” or “The Frost.” The “S.O.S.” breakdown comes close to delivering a hook of that caliber and stops just short. Whether this is a symptom of songwriting or performance instinct is hard to determine from the outside, but it’s the gap that keeps Season of Surrender from being a genuine statement and makes it a promising one.
One structural criticism worth raising directly: “Legions” is a miscalculation as an opener. It arrives without enough setup to earn its weight, and the album’s internal logic would be considerably improved by placing “Forged by Failure” — the nearly seven-minute closer — first. The track’s “I can’t breathe / It’s all my own doing” admission, and its eventual pivot toward resilience and survival, gives the record a thematic arc it currently lacks. As sequenced, Season of Surrender is a good album. Reordered, it would be a better one.
The production across the album, once again in the hands of Slovak and McFarland, feels marginally fuller than their last two records — a quality more attributable to the leaner songwriting than to any significant change in approach. The tools haven’t changed. The material being shaped by them has.
Season of Surrender is not the return to form of Messengers or Constellations, and it doesn’t try to be. What it is — lean, purposeful, and more honest than anything the band has released since Phantom Anthem — is evidence that August Burns Red still have a version of themselves worth finding. Whether they trust that version enough to follow it further is the open question.
Season of Surrender is the sound of a band remembering what they’re capable of — and the frustrating awareness that they haven’t fully acted on it yet.”
The post AUGUST BURNS RED Strip It Down and Find Themselves Again on `Season of Surrender` – Album Review appeared first on Antihero Magazine.
Roger Daltrey has added an extra date to his A Great Night Out! tour. He announced today that he will be appearing on Friday 2 October 2026 at Tilles Center For The Performing Arts in Brookville, NY.
Artist pre-sale is 1 June 2026 at 11.00am ET with password GREATNIGHT
General on-sale 5 June 2026 at 10.00am ET
And here’s your TICKET LINK
ROGER DALTREY: A GREAT NIGHT OUT!
THE 2026 NORTH AMERICAN TOUR
Aug 23 Mesa Arts Center Mesa, AZ* Ticket Link
Aug 24 Yaamava’ Theater Highland, CA Ticket Link
Aug 26 Encore Theater at the Wynn Casino Las Vegas, NV Ticket Link
Aug 28 Encore Theater at the Wynn Casino Las Vegas, NV Ticket Link
Aug 29 Encore Theater at the Wynn Casino Las Vegas, NV Ticket Link
Sept 1 Lobero Theatre Santa Barbara, CA Ticket Link
Sept 2 The Mountain Winery Saratoga, CA Ticket Link
Sept 4 Luther Burbank Center for the Arts Santa Rosa, CA ^ Ticket Link
Sept 5 Grand Theatre at The Grand Sierra Resort Reno, NV Ticket Link
Sept 9 Ryman Auditorium Nashville, TN Ticket Link
Sept 11 Four Winds Casino New Buffalo, MI Ticket Link
Sept 12 New Lenox Performing Arts Pavilion New Lenox, IL Ticket Link
Sept 15 The Riverside Theater Milwaukee, WI Ticket Link
Sept 17 Artpark Lewiston, NY Ticket Link
Sept 20 The Big E (outdoor) Springfield, MA Ticket Link
Sept 22 The Capitol Theatre Port Chester, NY Ticket Link
Sept 24 The Theater at MGM National Harbor Washington, DC Ticket Link
Sept 25 Parx Xcite Center Bensalem, PA Ticket Link
Sept 27 The Town Hall New York, NY Ticket Link
Sept 29 Chevalier Theatre Medford, MA Ticket Link
Oct 2 Tilles Center For The Performing Arts Brookville, NY Ticket Link
The post Roger Daltrey adds an extra tour date appeared first on The Who.
Australia is about to get nailed.
The post To The Grave, No Cure, Algor Mortis & Bloodmouth Set For September Australian Tour appeared first on Theprp.com.
The brewing tension behind one of post-grunge’s most notoriously unstable lineups has officially boiled over. Two long-term former touring members of the multi-platinum rock outfit Puddle of Mudd have broken away to launch a savage, highly pointed new tribute act dubbed X-Mudds.
Promoted explicitly as “the musicians who powered Puddle of Mudd for 10 years,” the project serves as a clear, definitive statement against frontman Wes Scantlin’s decades of erratic behavioral cycles, massive onstage meltdowns, and an astronomical band member turnover rate that has left the official group in complete structural chaos.
The foundation of X-Mudds is spearheaded by guitarist/vocalist Matt Fuller and veteran drummer Dave Moreno. Both musicians did multiple grueling stints handling the core instrumentation for Puddle of Mudd, most notably anchoring the touring lineup together through a turbulent decade from 2013 to 2023.
To handle the highly distinctive vocal parts originally recorded by Scantlin, the duo has recruited Gabe Maska—a performer who built a massive underground reputation fronting the widely acclaimed Nirvana tribute band Come As Nirvana.
The promotional rollout for X-Mudds pulls absolutely no punches, framing the new project as a direct rescue mission for the classic radio hits that defined the early 2000s post-grunge boom:
“THE TOURING MEMBERS. THE MUSIC. THE REAL DEAL. The musicians who powered Puddle of Mudd for 10 years are back!!”
By aggressively marketing themselves as the legitimate “Real Deal” anchor of the group’s classic live sound, Fuller and Moreno are presenting rock fans with an unprecedented alternative: the multi-platinum hits they love, delivered with total professional stability and zero percent chance of a sudden onstage collapse.
While the formation of a spin-off tribute group is rare in the active rock community, industry insiders view the emergence of X-Mudds as an inevitable breaking point. Puddle of Mudd’s historical ledger reads less like a standard band roster and more like an chaotic revolving door, with frontman Wes Scantlin operating as the sole surviving original constant.
At the moment, public records and historical band archives index a staggering 18 former members who have cycled through the group’s rhythm and lead sections. This exceptionally high turnover rate is directly tied to Scantlin’s highly publicized personal battles and erratic live behavior over the last two decades.
Notable incidents include a notorious disaster in Doncaster, UK, where Fuller, Moreno, and their bassist completely abandoned Scantlin mid-concert, walking off the stage after the frontman suffered an absolute psychological breakdown. Scantlin was left sitting alone on a stool in front of a cursing, hostile crowd before the venue cut his microphone and canceled the gig entirely. While temporary reconciliations kept the lineup afloat for a time, the formal launch of X-Mudds marks a permanent, un-crossable line in the sand.
Who exactly is in the new band X-Mudds? X-Mudds is a high-octane trio consisting of former long-time Puddle of Mudd lead guitarist Matt Fuller, veteran drummer Dave Moreno, and fronted by Gabe Maska from the Nirvana tribute circuit.
Are they allowed to legally tour playing Puddle of Mudd music? Yes. In the United States, venues pay performing rights organizations (such as ASCAP and BMI) broad licensing fees that allow any cover band or independent artist to perform registered catalog material live without needing direct permission from the original songwriter.
Where can fans see X-Mudds perform live this summer? The tribute act has locked in an initial trio of launch dates across the United States:
STAY LOUD: Catch the full, unfiltered analysis of the post-grunge spin-off wars on the Loaded Radio Daily Podcast. Visit LoadedRadio.com or download our free app now to stream heavy tracks 24/7.
Former Puddle of Mudd touring veterans Matt Fuller and Dave Moreno have launched “X-Mudds,” a spin-off tribute group fronted by a Nirvana cover vocalist. The project serves as a stable alternative to original frontman Wes Scantlin, whose erratic behavior over the years led to 18 former members leaving the main band. Initial US tour dates drop this July and August.
Is launching an official spin-off tribute group the ultimate way for disgruntled musicians to reclaim their hard work, or should these former members move on to entirely original musical projects? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
The post “The Real Deal”: Former Puddle of Mudd Members Launch Savage Revenge Band After Decades of Frontman Drama appeared first on Loaded Radio.