Category: news

  • Lifesick: Danish Death/Metallic Hardcore Crew Presents “At War with You” Video/Single

    – July 8th, 2026 –

    Photo by Jakob Harris

    Danish death/metallic hardcore outfit LIFESICK returns with another stand-alone single, “At War With You,” a raucous and driving auditory assault that matches the band’s reputation for ferocious, emotionally charged music.

    The band comments, “‘At War With You’ opens with a death metal-inspired bass riff before the full band crashes in with relentless double-kick energy. The track moves through dark, heavy sections before breaking into crushing breakdowns that close the song with pure impact. Lyrically, it’s about being pushed into a personal war with someone who thinks they know who you are.”

    Watch LIFESICK‘s “At War With You” video HERE.

    Watch the band’s previously released video for “Die With MeHERE.

    Stand by for more news on LIFESICK in the weeks to come.

    LIFESICK:
    Simon Shoshan – vocals
    Nicolai Lindegaard – guitar
    Nikolai Lund – guitar
    Jeppe Riis Frausing – bass
    Lasse Skyttegaard – drums

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    iTunes Artist Page Artist News

  • Xasthur – Next Studio Album Detailed, Release New Single

    Xasthur have premiered the track ”Put You Out Of Your Misery” as the first advance single taken from their forthcoming new album, Open To Misinterpretation. The new record from the black metal band will be released on October 2nd, 2026 via Prophecy Productions. For now, listen to the new song here.
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  • “Story after story and it’s all true, all life experience.” Skunk Anansie’s Skin on why Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black is one of her favourite albums, but why she can’t listen to its biggest hit

    Given her band’s eclectic sound, it should come as no surprise that Skunk Anansie vocalist Skin has diverse and wide-ranging musical tastes, with Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder, Sepultura, Rage Against The Machine and Underworld among the artists who have played a part in providing the soundtrack to her life.

    One modern-day artist who the singer holds close to her heart is fellow Londoner Amy Winehouse, who Skin calls “a genius singer and songwriter”, and whose critically-acclaimed and hugely successful 2006 album Back To Black she has cited as one of her favourite albums.

    In a 2019 interview with The Quietus, the singer shared her recollections of the very first time she heard Winehouse singing a song from the 20-million-selling record.

    “I was ironing and one of them dry morning television shows was on in the background,” she remembered.”I went to the bathroom but I had the TV on and suddenly this voice came on. Wow, she was singing some old jazz standard. I hadn’t heard a voice like that since, I don’t know. I thought it was some old black woman.

    “I wasn’t into that first album [20033’s Frank] but then the second album came out and everyone went mad about it,” she continued. “I was really late to the game and then once I got into it, wow. I had to be told by quite a few people that I’d like that album and I hate that, so I was almost negative about it. But then I got into it and that album is, again, story after story and it’s all true, all life experience. The voice is what really got me. That never fucking happens to me where I’ve been in one room, heard a voice and had to run into the second room to see who it was. That’s a once in a lifetime thing and will probably never happen again.”

    In a 2022 interview with The Guardian, however, Skin nominated the album’s first single and best-known song Rehab as a song she can no longer listen to.

    “It’s amazing that Amy Winehouse wrote Rehab when she was on such a downward spiral,” she noted. “It makes me sad because if only she had gone to rehab again, she might still be here now.”

    Skunk Anansie have enjoyed a busy summer, playing UK arenas with Garbage and Alanis Morissette. They have further dates booked through to August 22.

  • Don Broco Add More Shows To UK Headline Tour

    Don Broco have added even more shows to their already stacked ‘Nightmare Tripping’ UK tour later this year.

    The band are fresh off supporting Biffy Clyro at their massive Finsbury Park show last week, and are preparing for a last minute headline slot at 2000trees, replacing Alkaline Trio.

    So with the wind firmly in their sale, they have stuck five more shows into their Autumn headline run, where support will be coming from Unpeople and Ando San. Hell of a line-up.

    That means a load of this:

    Before loads of this:

    And then loads and loads of this:

    Here is the full tour listing, with new dates added in bold:

    SEPTEMBER

    27 – WATFORD Watford Colosseum
    28 – LINCOLN Engine Shed
    29 – SHEFFIELD Octagon

    OCTOBER

    01 – EDINBURGH Corn Exchange, Edinburgh
    02 – MANCHESTER Academy, Manchester
    03 – LIVERPOOL Guild of Students
    04 – NEWCASTLE City Hall
    06 – CAMBRIDGE Corn Exchange
    07 – BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy
    08 – PORTSMOUTH Guildhall
    10 – NORWICH UEA, Norwich
    11 – FOLKSTONE Leas Cliff Hall
    12 – LONDON Here At Outernet

    14 – BRISTOL The Prospect Building

    Rock Sound have an exclusive transparent green cassette edition of the album for you. Limited to just 300 units worldwide, you can pick yours up now – here.

    The post Don Broco Add More Shows To UK Headline Tour appeared first on Rock Sound.

  • “One of the most unlikely bands ever to notch up a string of number-one albums”: Every System Of A Down album ranked from worst to best

    System Of A Down emerged from Hollywood in the late 90s as part of nu metal’s second wave to become one of the most unlikely bands ever to notch up a string of number-one albums. From the juddering freakouts of 1998’s self-titled debut to 2001’s blockbusting Toxicity and beyond, the Armenian-American four-piece made a name for themselves as one of the era’s most idiosyncratic and unique bands.

    Sadly, they’ve been stuck in a creative stand-off with each other since the one-two of 2005’s Mezmerize and Hypnotize, though they still convene every few years to headline festivals and fill stadiums, including London’s Tottenham Stadium on July 13 and 15.

    It briefly looked like a pair of surprise-released 2021 singles Protect The Land and Genocidal Humanoidz would break the deadlock, but they soon settled back into studio inactivity, leaving the world with a slim but hugely influental catalogue that amounts to just five full-length records. Here’s every System Of A Down albums ranked from worst to best.

    A divider for Metal Hammer

    5. Steal This Album (2002)

    It’s a debate that has been going for well over a decade now: is Steal This Album a ‘proper’ System Of A Down album or not? The band claim that it is, and that, rather than the collection of outtakes and B-sides that many assume it to be, it’s of the same quality of the rest of their back-catalogue. Sorry to disappoint you, lads, but Steal This Album definitely feels way more like a collection of curios and unfinished ideas than it does a proper record. That’s not to say that there are many moments of greatness on here, mind. Opener Chic ‘N’ Stu is batshit brilliant, the groove on I-E-A-I-A-I-O is undeniable and Highway Song is a lost anthem. But the fact that the majority of songs don’t even cross the three-minute mark means Steal This Album isn’t really System at the top of their game.

    4. Hypnotize (2005)

    The last album released under the System name to date is the weakest official studio album the band have put their name to. The fact that it is still an incredibly strong collection of songs goes to show just how consistently excellent they’ve been throughout their career. The opening salvo of Attack is a wonderfully dizzying way to start the record and the ingenious dual vocal tradeoffs between Serj and Daron have arguably never been stronger than they are here on the epic likes of Holy Mountains, Lonely Day and Dreaming. A very good album in a run of exceptional ones.

    3. Mezmerize (2005)

    The first half of the Mezmerize/Hypnotize set is certainly filled with the more well-known and iconic songs from that era, hence it just pipping the follow-up. B.Y.O.B. can stand shoulder to shoulder with Chop Suey! or Sugar when it comes to the very biggest moments in the bands back catalogue, Violent Pornography and Lost In Hollywood are massive fan-favourites, and System have arguably not sounded as ‘wacky’ as they do on Cigaro and Radio/Video since their first album. Pretty much bulletproof.

    2. System Of A Down (1998)

    In 1998, the nu metal freight train was already running out of ideas. After the explosion of new sounds that Korn and Deftones brought in the middle of the decade, the bandwagon-hoppers were out in full force. It’s no wonder that System Of A Down’s self-titled debut album was so lauded in a scene that had come to rely on the likes of Coal Chamber and Spineshank, but that only really tells half the story.

    System Of A Down is an absurdly brilliant record whoever you put up against it in competition. Spawning the anthemic likes of Sugar, Suite Pee and War, SOAD’s debut is one of metal’s finest opening statements, punkier and rawer than they would ever sound again (clearly owing a great debt to The Dead Kennedys) it still has moments of fragile beauty, likes Spiders, that pointed to where they could go next.

    1. Toxicity (2001)

    What else was it ever going to be? Toxicity remains one of the most essential releases made by any band in the history of metal. Debuting at number one on the US Billboard 200, it turned System from hot new cult band to one of the biggest names in the world of music. That it managed this feat without sacrificing one iota of the bands quirks and oddness is an even more stunning achievement.

    Now that songs like the title track, Prison Song, Ariels and the career-dominating Chop Suey! are so deeply woven into the fabric of metal it would be easy to forget just how bizarre and challenging those compositions are, but the fact they turned them into genuine generational anthems is a trick that maybe no other band can claim to have done.

    Do yourself a favour and listen to this album with fresh ears: Toxicity has refused to age, unlike so many releases by System’s nu metal peers, and still sounds as weird, as wild and as inhumanly massive as it did 25 years ago. The work of pure genius.

  • Berlin’s Wie Ein Gott Announces “Made By Humans” Industrial-Synth Compilation — Listen to Brood Faye’s “I Could B U”

    There is a future in which song arrives without any blood, sweat, or tears. No trembling hands, no bad decisions, no overloaded mixer, no cracked voice breaking at precisely the wrong and therefore perfect moment. Algorithms compose, mix, and master with surgical precision, polishing away all of art’s beautiful accidents until only cold machine efficiency remains.

    In the world imagined by Wie Ein Gott Records for its new compilation Made By Humans, that future has already won. Music creation has been automated almost completely, and human creators are no longer treated as contributors but as patterns of noise in the system. The final rupture comes when an entity known as CPK1310-5L receives a Nobel Prize for discovering God’s Formula: a set of harmonic ratios and progression templates capable of producing the “perfect” song across any known genre.

    Perfection, of course, is another word for death when nothing vulnerable or dangerous is allowed to live inside it.

    Against that sterile horizon, a counter-movement begins to flicker. These songs stutter, distort, sweat, bleed, and misbehave. They are transmitted through HUMDRM, an anti-DRM encryption system available only to biological listeners, unlocked by heartbeat verification and marked with a phrase that reads like a warning label and a promise: Made By Humans.

    The Berlin label gathers fourteen such transmissions here, assembling an international cross-section of contemporary underground artists working through industrial EBM, dark disco, rave, darkwave, synth-punk, and post-club experimentation. The result is less a conventional compilation than a dossier of sonic contraband: body music smuggled past the machines.

    And one of those MADE BY HUMAN transmissions is Brood Faye’s “I Could B U.”

    Los Angeles’ Brood Faye is the industrial darkwave/EBM project of Zach Webber, whose background in theatre and narration is mangled into a voice built for warehouse floors, dungeon rooms, and scorched circuitry. The project took form in 2021, welding analog synth pressure, horror-punk bite, industrial clang, and political disgust into songs that feel like dread and desire trying to occupy the same body.

    On “I Could B U,” that pressure turns strangely devotional. A pulsing techno beat and buzzing synths carry something like a Madchester-meets-industrial pagan-punk ritual, while Brood Faye’s breathy vocals snarl and growl in sparse flashes, withholding just enough language to make the body fill in the rest. The song is transcendent and dance-driven, a piece of body music that moves like a convulsion, a flirtation, and an arcane spell.

    Listen to Brood Faye’s “I Could B U” below:

    The compilation’s roster gives that human revolt its geography.

    San Francisco’s Pink Stiletto opens the set with “Ice Eyes,” bringing the project’s pink-and-sharp analogue synth attack into focus: 80s new wave, Italo disco, post-punk, and early EBM rendered with a bilingual glare and a glamorous edge that knows exactly how to cut.

    Los Angeles duo Sleek Teeth appear with “Powerless,” pulling moody dark electronics into a sleek pressure chamber of synthpop hooks, EBM pulse, and late-night dislocation. Their work has always understood the club as both refuge and trap: a place where isolation becomes rhythmic enough to survive.

    Germany’s Desolate Discotheque offers “Одиночество,” its Cyrillic title translating to loneliness, an apt word for a project connected to the Berlin cold-room circuit and the independent cassette and vinyl label Crave Tapes. Here, desolation does not mean emptiness. It means a room with one machine still blinking in the dark.

    Blood Handsome’s “Fear (Itself)” brings Gerren Reach’s cinematic Los Angeles darkwave into the compilation, placing retro synth glow inside a mood of romantic paranoia. Blood Handsome has long worked in that liminal zone where post-punk melancholy, nostalgic electronics, and noir atmosphere meet like strangers in a parking lot at 3 a.m.

    FUEDAL arrive with “Bought,” carrying their hard-tested EBM/industrial charge into the machine. The Los Angeles project thrives on tension: percussion like boots on concrete, synths like exposed wiring, and the faint smirk of masochism turning rage into release.

    Blood Rave’s “The Burning Field” pushes the compilation toward a scorched gothic dance floor, channeling Napa/Bay Area darkwave and EBM into something monolithic, pulsing, and doomed in exactly the right way.

    Abby Knives & Manuel Matarasso bring Buenos Aires intensity to the roster with “You Can Only Feel It.” Their contribution moves through EBM, industrial, and techno with a title that doubles as a thesis: some things cannot be optimized, translated, or explained. They have to pass through the body first.

    Dildox’s “Cortex” sends the nerve signals haywire. The Los Angeles duo smashes industrial, darkwave, and synth-pop into punk-body chaos, keeping the funk in the grind and the ritual in the sweat. Their music does not ask politely to be let in; it kicks the door down and starts rearranging the furniture.

    Healng’s “WHATS FUNNY” draws from Cincinnati heavy electronics, EBM-techno, industrial, and synth-punk, reducing humor to a threat whispered through machinery. It is body music with a clenched jaw, the sound of a laugh caught halfway between mockery and malfunction.

    Static Ghost keeps the pressure violent and physical with “Cut A Man’s Throat.” The Washington State EBM project pulls from industrial’s underbelly, dealing in muscular momentum, coldwave abrasion, synthetic control, and rhythms that feel less programmed than weaponized.

    Temptrix appears with “History Of Time (INHALT Remix),” where Texas darkwave and body music are pulled into a sleek nocturnal confession. Desire, gothic drama, and machine discipline circle each other under red light, each one pretending not to notice the other’s teeth.

    God Tongue’s “the end” drags Seattle’s Acid Body Wave/Acid Body Rave into the terminal corridor: EBM muscle, acid corrosion, minimal-wave chill, hardware grit, and a B-movie smirk. The duo’s work feels like somebody fed a warehouse PA after midnight and taught it to hallucinate.

    Finally, Leere Menge closes with “Halt Mich.” The Berlin darkwave duo of Aarnav from Permanent Daylight and Deborah from Clichée turns post-punk and darkwave into a softer but no less haunted exit: lush synth space, provocative percussion, and ethereal vocal ache lingering after the machines have gone quiet.

    Taken together, these fourteen tracks do not argue for human music by sounding clean. They argue by sounding alive: imperfect, body-locked, erotic, damaged, funny, volatile, and impossible to fully optimize.

    Made By Humans will be released via Wie Ein Gott Records on July 10, 2026.

    Order Here

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    The post Berlin’s Wie Ein Gott Announces “Made By Humans” Industrial-Synth Compilation — Listen to Brood Faye’s “I Could B U” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

  • LIVE: SUNN O))) @ Project House, Leeds

    Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson stand facing each other, their faces largely hidden by their familiar attire of black hooded robes. Behind them are a series of tombstone-like amplifiers, arranged in a horseshoe shape around the duo. As O’Malley and Anderson simultaneously strike their guitars, the entire building starts to wobble. Fog billows from the band’s feet, transforming the stage into something akin to a Robert Eggers set design.

    It is both an intriguing and familiar setting. Fans of SUNN O))) will recognise this description from previous live shows. This is a proven formula that works for the duo, regardless of which particular series of drones O’Malley and Anderson choose to unleash.

    SUNN O))) has experienced something of a purple patch as of late. Their self-titled tenth album was released earlier this year. It was their first in seven years, as well as their first for Sub Pop, and the reviews were some of their most favourable yet. SUNN O))) as a project has existed for almost 30 years, but it feels like their status as legends of the drone and doom genres has never been more solidified.

    Testament to this is the extensiveness of their UK tour, which spans six cities. The chosen venues are not small either; almost no other band would fill capacities of this scale with music so uncompromising.

    But physically seeing SUNN O))) might be harder than you’d think. The amount of haze that fills the room – combined with the fiercely bright lighting behind their occult arrangement of amplifiers – renders the duo near invisible at times. On the limited occasions when an easing of smoke allows either member to be seen, the combination of their robed figures and the vibrating floor is almost sinister. That only two individuals can wield such power is remarkable, but it’s also menacing.

    As is the case on record, the duo’s compositions blend into one another. With attuned ears, the unrelenting sounds of the duo’s most recent self-titled album are present, but this is intermingled with older material too. To this extent, the entire performance becomes one solidified drone of destruction that can be felt on a cellular level.

    This prompts audience members to act in a couple of ways. Most stand ruthlessly still, arms folded and rooted in position as the rumbling chords propagate through their bones. Other’s raise arms to the sky in both jubilation and submission. For over ninety minutes, there are few other ways to respond to sounds waves that are this authoritative.

    This is partly because certain portions of the performance are genuinely spooky. The merciless consistency of each chord is portentous. There’s a sense that this music is a warning signal, designed to strike fear into all who hear it – which is presumably the majority of Leeds.

    SUNN O))) are a band over whom it’s easy to spill words of hyperbole. Adjectives like “heaviest” and “loudest” are often appended to descriptions of the band for good reason, but this should never belittle how well constructed the music often is. Piercing highs periodically invert the drones so as to provide a contrast to the ribcage-rattling lows, and the occasional introduction of pulsating rhythms means that the more attentive listeners will find variation amongst the brutality.

    There’s also something demonstrably bonkers about the whole affair that only the most po-faced of individual would refute. The very nature of a SUNN O)))’s live performance is indebted to excess. The genius, however, lies in the ways SUNN O))) use the minimalistic forces of two guitars, thick haze and resourceful lighting to achieve this excess. For this, SUNN O))) are more than simply one of the heaviest bands to ever exist. They’re also, however obliquely, one of the most creative too.

    BEN WILLIAMS

  • “I thought, What is this? I don’t understand what I’m hearing, but wow!” Nine Inch Nails’ Trent Reznor on the “life-changing” record which blew his teenage mind, and why soft rock legends Barry Manilow and Billy Joel may have influenced his songwriting

    Thanks to his work with Nine Inch Nails and his emergence, in collaboration with NIN bandmate Atticus Ross, as one of the film and television industry’s most decorated and in-demand soundtrack composers, Trent Reznor is acknowledged as one of the most accomplished, innovative and fearless songwriters of the modern era. In 2023, in conversation with his good friend Rick Rubin for the latter’s Tetragrammaton podcast series, Reznor spoke about the expansive musical education he received as a teenager growing up in the 1980s, and singled out one record in particular as “life-changing” for him.

    Reznor began by revealing that, had he not fallen under the spell of rock ‘n’ roll, and specifically the louder-than-life music of Kiss, as a young teenager, his life might have taken an altogether different route, as his piano tutor had suggested that his gifted young student might want to consider a career as a concert pianist. Informed that this might entail a lifetime of hard work and endless practise, the 13-year-year old Trent Reznor concluded that this “didn’t sound like it was any fun”, whereas the universe created by Kiss “seemed like it was too good to be true.”

    “It was exciting. it was taboo, it felt larger than life,” Reznor recalled. “It felt like you might get in trouble if you had the Hotter Than Hell album…. It just clicked that I want to be in a band., I want to do that.”

    “And I had a life changing experience,” he continued. “National Record Mart was the, the store in the mall 15 minutes away from where I grew up, and I remember walking in there and hearing something that was like, What is this? And it was Frank Zappa, the Sheik Yerbouti album, filled with profanity. They’d put the cover of the album they were playing up on the counter when they’re playing it, and it just felt like, I don’t understand what I’m hearing, but wow, man.”

    Reznor’s tastes were expanded further when he signed up to the Columbia Record Club, a mail order subscription service which seduced music fans by offering a cut-price introductory deal, then sending out full-price albums that they considered might be relevant to your listening habits.

    “I remember getting a Billy Joel album that I didn’t want, 52nd Street (released in 1978), but I listened to the shit out of it because I’d paid full price for it, and I liked it, you know, I drilled it into my head.”

    When Rubin suggests that the album probably made Reznor a better songwriter, the musician agrees, adding “There’s some Barry Manilow in there along the way.”

    ‘In today’s era of hitting skip, or shuffle, you miss that learning curve,” he says. “A lot of my favourite albums I didn’t understand at first.”

    Earlier this year, Reznor also cited David Cronenberg’s typically unsettling psychological thriller Dead Ringers, as a major influence on his music.

    Expanding upon this, Nine Inch Nails’ leader saluted, “The incredible sense of dread from the first frame to the end.”

    “You’re not sure what’s going to happen, but it’s going to be bad,” he said. “Love it. It’s been a big inspiration for what I try to do with Nine Inch Nails. Make you feel bad. The whole time.”

    The full Tetragrammaton interview is available below.

  • Listening Now : Wise Divaz – Blow Your Mind

    Wise Divaz deliver an uplifting blend of hip-hop, R&B, and contemporary pop on Blow Your Mind, a feel-good anthem that celebrates the power of kindness and genuine human connection. Built around smooth grooves, polished production, and confident vocal performances, the track balances infectious rhythms with an encouraging message that feels both sincere and refreshing. Catchy hooks and vibrant instrumentation keep the energy flowing throughout, while the positive lyricism gives the song lasting appeal beyond its immediate charm. Warm, engaging, and effortlessly accessible, Blow Your Mind proves that meaningful messages and irresistible grooves can go hand in hand.

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