Category: news

  • Eivør – Tungl: Haunting Beauty And The Power Of Emotion | Album Review

    Eivør - Electric Brixton, London - 23 September 2025. Photo: Ash Nash/MetalTalk

    Faroese artist Eivør proves that music does not need crushing guitars or blast beats to deliver an emotional punch. On her new album, Tungl, haunting vocals, hypnotic rhythms and atmospheric soundscapes create something both delicate and immensely powerful. Daryl Soar discovers an album that takes its time but leaves a lasting impression.

    Eivør – Tungl

    Release Date: Out Now

    Words: Daryl Soar

    Tungl opens with synthesised drums from the ’90s, ethereal chords, and a folk vocal writing a cheque the average Metal listener had better be able to cash. It is a bold start.

    By track two, Drekafljóð (Dragon Maiden), the crushing still has not begun. Good job the music is good. The tension drifts away, and the music flows. I am used to having my angst smashed out of me by blast beats and vocal fry. Eivør takes another route.

    Trip-hop beats and hypnotic vocals over soft keyboard pads, with carefully crafted songs that develop naturally. Death Metal it is not.

    Eivør released Tungl LP on 16 October 2026 via Nuclear Blast Records.
    Eivør released Tungl LP on 16 October 2026 via Nuclear Blast Records.

    There is something in the way the songs are put together that makes them Metal-adjacent without the need for massive guitars, emotive screams and breakneck speed. It is in the tonal makeup, the tension and release as the vocals move.

    The words? Well, the words are not English, so all that is left is the emotion, unless you are lucky enough to speak Faroese. Unless you are listening to Healer, and then it is.

    The album is a journey to be savoured. It never runs, but it will move you with the force of a glacier. In the words of Eivør, “Tungl explores the ever-changing cycles of life. Its songs move between moments of tenderness and heartache, love and loss, and the emotional tides that shape us. Like the moon that inspired its title, Tungl serves as a gentle guide through life’s darker passages, illuminating the beauty, resilience, and transformation found along the way.”

    Healer stands out for me. It reaches a zenith of powerful emotion that drew me in more than the other tracks. When listening to slower-paced music, it is hard to find a cathartic outlet, but Healer hits the mark. Maybe it is the language, but I got this feeling from the song before I realised it was in English.

    Tann tú saknar / The One You Long For ups the tempo and adds new depth to the composition. As the eighth song on the album, you might say it’s about time. I would say it is the perfect time.

    Ending with Everyone But Me, Eivør’s vocals really shine. It is a slower, more melodic track, luckily in English, that sticks the landing. Then it’s time to start again.

    Listen to Healer and get your chill back with the Nordic phenomenon Eivør. This album is a pleasant change of pace and worth your time. Add a little depth to your music collection with Tungl.

    Eivør released Tungl LP on 16 October 2026 via Nuclear Blast Records. For more details, visit eivor.bfan.link/tungl. Eivør will be undertaking an extensive headline tour across North America later this year, and across Europe and the UK into 2027. Tour details and tickets are on eivor.com/shows.

    07mar7:00 pm11:00 pmEivør – LondonO2 Forum Kentish Town Event Organized ByEivør

    Eivør - 2027 European Tour poster
    Eivør – 2027 European Tour poster
    The post Eivør – Tungl: Haunting Beauty And The Power Of Emotion | Album Review first appeared on MetalTalk – Heavy Metal News, Reviews and Interviews.
  • Judas Priest: Sad Wings of Destiny 50th Anniversary Review

    Judas Priest’s masterpiece album from 1976 – Sad Wings of Destiny – has a half century reissue which is restored from the original master tapes and has the tracklisting in the order the band originally wanted. I’m probably not too far wrong if I say that you may well be familiar with this album. It […]

    The post Judas Priest: Sad Wings of Destiny 50th Anniversary Review first appeared on New Wave of British Heavy Metal.
  • Gnod: Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol 2) – Album Review

    More weird and wonderful psychedelia from the UK’s premier offbeat label. Gnod, Salford’s greatest export since Ewan MacColl, continue to cut a path of noise-based poetry through an increasingly standardised musical landscape. MK Bennett settles in. Despite its clumsy name, the principle of urban folk horror/urban wyrd, where the ancient druidic dread of rural isolation […]

    The post Gnod: Chronicles of Gnowt (Vol 2) – Album Review appeared first on Louder Than War.

  • Triggerfinger are huge in Europe, and some people say they sound like sex

    Triggerfinger are massive in mainland Europe, once replacing Foo Fighters at Pinkpop without a squeak of protest. While their UK footprint doesn’t quite measure up, Ruben Block (vocals/guitar) and Mario Goossens (drums) could yet cross over, with sixth album Tarmac evoking a continental Queens Of The Stone Age.

    Lightning bolt page divider

    Some musicians compare releasing an album to giving birth. Is that your experience?

    Mario Goossens: Actually, it is, because you live with it for such a long time. We started writing Tarmac in 2023. You become so attached to it. It’s addictive. Then suddenly it’s not yours any more. It’s out there in the world, and everyone has an opinion about it.

    What’s the significance of the title?

    Ruben Block: This album is not a one-trick pony. We write about life, the joyous and tragic events. Taking care of your parents and them passing away. Having kids of your own who start finding their way in life. That’s why we thought Tarmac was a good title. It’s both a landing place and a place to depart from.

    What’s the number-one rule on the Triggerfinger tour bus?

    MG: Don’t have a shit. But that’s the rule on every tour bus.

    Ever broken it?

    MG: We didn’t, but we had a band member before who probably did.

    RB: Breaking rules was his number-one goal when he got up in the morning.

    That was your late bassist Paul Van Bruystegem. Can we ask what happened to him?

    RB: Paul was someone who lived very intensely. He was a big guy, so he could take more of everything than a regular person. He could take six or seven instead of one. He lived at two hundred miles an hour, and it was pretty exciting to be in his slipstream. But he basically used everything up, starting with his own body.

    His death last year must have hit you hard.

    MG: Of course. But he chose it. Even when he quit the band – before he got really ill – he told us: “I’m gonna go for it, even if it costs me two years of my life.” So what could we say?

    You don’t like to name Triggerfinger’s influences. Why is that?

    RB: Because I usually don’t know where it comes from. And I don’t want to know. You listen to music, watch movies, read books or articles, you put all of it in your backpack. It’s also a bit dangerous to start by saying let’s make a song like Bowie, or Howlin’ Wolf. It would demotivate me right away, because that music is so great.

    A number of people say your music sounds like sex.

    RB: Well there are worse things that music can do to you.

    What did you learn from opening for the Rolling Stones?

    RB: I was amazed at how light they played. They started the show and Charlie’s playing was so light and bouncy, and Mick’s shoulders are moving… It was amazing to hear how groovy it all is. Even the loudest bands we like, they also have the roll, y’know? Even if you listen to the early Slayer records, it’s frickin’ groovy stuff, man. So that’s what we go for.

    Tarmac is released on September 18 via Sony Music/Hufter.

  • Kim Kay: Animal – Single Review

    There is a particular kind of pop song that only makes sense once you know what it cost to make. Kim Kay has spent the past year releasing a run of them, culminating in her latest release, pulsating dance track Animal. Eileen Shapiro tells the remarkable story of a woman who struggled with health setbacks […]

    The post Kim Kay: Animal – Single Review appeared first on Louder Than War.

  • Alice Cooper – The Man Behind The Monster | Devil On My Shoulder, London

    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder - The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk

    “I love playing him because I don’t have to be him”. If one sentence sums up the relationship between Vincent Furnier and Alice Cooper, this is it, the legendary rockstar having spent the past fifty-eight years switching between the two personalities.

    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder Book Tour

    The Palladium, London

    Words: Paul Monkhouse

    Photography: Manuela Langotsch

    With his brand new book on the shelves, this was Alice/Vincent at his most confessional and true, the tour to promote the tome reaching the stage of one of the most famous theatres in the capital, Arthur ‘Fire’ Brown hosting the evening in his own unique style that thankfully kept the flaming headpiece away from the red velvet curtains that adorn the place.

    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder - The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk
    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder – The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk

    Whilst Brown may have been a little hesitant at times, the same cannot be said of Cooper, and the master of the macabre is on fine form, stories coming thick and fast. At his own admission, some of his tales are embroidered and refined so much as to totally remove them from reality, but nonetheless, they are hugely entertaining, and the book purports to be a more honest and factual run-through of his life.

    Part of the fact of the previous flights of fancy when regaling adventures of the past comes down to the simple fact of recall, Cooper rightly saying, “Who remembers what they said forty years ago?”

    It is a good point, but given the life he has led, there is plenty of fascinating material from which to draw. 

    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder - The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk
    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder – The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk

    Born out of a love for theatrics, Alice Cooper the band has a fascinating genesis, and the growth of the character himself saw them go from opening act to The Yardbirds, the guitar playing of Jeff Beck jaw-dropping, to headlining arenas all over the globe.

    Wielding a sword belonging to Errol Flynn and basing his make-up on Bette Davis in Whatever Happened To Baby Jane?, Cooper was always going to make an impression, and ironically a peace festival was something of a turning point, the singer remarking of the line-up that “there were plenty of Peter Pans but no Captain Hooks.”

    Given the incendiary atmosphere and look around the band, the unfortunate death of a chicken during their set at the event, Alice Cooper soon became the notorious bad boys of rock ‘n’ roll, a chance meeting with THE Colonel Saunders a little later causing Cooper to ask, “This guy kills six billion chickens, and I kill one, and I’m the villain?”

    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder - The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk
    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder – The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk

    The whole show is littered with such wit and incidence, stories of Keith Moon, including a hilariously salacious one where The Who drummer was part of the cast of a Mae West film with Cooper, a telling and heartbreaking story about meeting Elvis Presley “his life was a prison” and his falling in and recovery from the drink and drug pitfalls of ’70s rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle.

    As well as the wild tales of excess, there were plenty of deeper and personal details of his life, his relationship with his parents, his strong Christian faith and his determination to make music his career from his very first nascent days, going from being a track star at high school to forming Beatles pastiche The Earwigs and beyond.

    Whilst Alice Cooper is a character, the man himself states, “I designed Alice to be my favourite rock star” and “Alice is a separate character and a tool,” the two have become so intertwined for almost six decades that the public perception blurs the lines, whilst Furnier himself gleefully reports that he can happily be organising a golf game with guitarist Tommy Henrickson before and after a show, but the second the lights drop and he walks onstage, he becomes that figure.

    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder - The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk
    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder – The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk

    Touchingly, at one point he brings both his wife and daughter onstage to share the spotlight, and the separation between legendary rock villain and loving family man becomes crystal clear.

    The book is a fascinating read and the show an illuminating one, the man behind the mask revealed in wonderful and vibrant life. When he states, “I never lost the love of rock ‘n’ roll”, you know he means it.

    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder - The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk
    Alice Cooper – Devil On My Shoulder – The Palladium, London. Photo: Manuela Langotsch/MetalTalk

    One of the biggest and best characters in music, we can but bow in his presence and, like Wayne and Garth, declare “We are not worthy”.

    Brain surgery’s loss is our gain.

    Devil On My Shoulder, the definitive autobiography of Alice Cooper, is out now via Ebury Spotlight. For more details, visit lnk.to/AliceCooper.

    Devil On My Shoulder, the definitive autobiography of Alice Cooper, is out now via Ebury Spotlight.
    Devil On My Shoulder, the definitive autobiography of Alice Cooper, is out now via Ebury Spotlight.
    The post Alice Cooper – The Man Behind The Monster | Devil On My Shoulder, London first appeared on MetalTalk – Heavy Metal News, Reviews and Interviews.
  • DORO Releases ‘You R Not Alone’ From ‘Wild At Heart’

    Just in time for the start of her ‘Winter Magic Tour‘ on December 11, 2026, metal queen Doro Pesch brings the rock world a red-hot work full of new killer tracks with her special release ‘Wild At Heart‘. The first perfect foretaste was provided by ‘Rock You 2 Death‘, the first new single (out: 18.09.). […]

    The post DORO Releases ‘You R Not Alone’ From ‘Wild At Heart’ appeared first on ROCKPOSER DOT COM.

  • Miguel Montalban and The Southern Vultures Release New Single & Announce 2027 UK Tour

    Chilean-born and London-based guitarist, vocalist and songwriter Miguel Montalban & The Southern Vultures is very pleased to announce the band’s new single ‘Redline’, the second single from the upcoming new album released in 2027 following the release of the track ‘Stoneburn’. The as-yet-untitled new album will be available on Vinyl, CD, Cassette and Digital formats […]

    The post Miguel Montalban and The Southern Vultures Release New Single & Announce 2027 UK Tour appeared first on ROCKPOSER DOT COM.

  • Gig Photos: These Wicked Rivers – Octagon Hall, October 10th

    Gig Photos: These Wicked Rivers Octagon Hall, Buxton –  October 10th Photographer – Christine Morgadinho Setlist: The Healing Horse to Water Ain’t No Smoke Love to Love Sing Another Song Rise Brother oh Brother Better Man Woodland Queen Stories The Family When the War is Won Black Gold Don’t Pray for Me ©All photographs are […]

    The post Gig Photos: These Wicked Rivers – Octagon Hall, October 10th appeared first on ROCKPOSER DOT COM.