Category: news

Metallica's M72 tour continues next year after the band finishes their 24-date run at the Las Vegas Sphere. Continue reading…

The Georgia singer-songwriter Robert Lester Folsom released his private press album Music And Dreams into obscurity in 1976, but it eventually developed a cult following, especially once the Mexican Summer imprint Anthology Recordings reissued it in 2010, back when excavating unheard pop oddities was becoming all the rage within the indie sphere. Now Anthology is releasing a 50th anniversary edition of Music And Dreams, which accents a remaster of the original album with a wealth of demos and newly recorded Folsom covers by Beach House and Hannah Cohen. Folsom will tour in support of the reissue; tickets are available here.

The post Beach House Share Robert Lester Folsom Cover From New <em>Music And Dreams: 50th Anniversary Edition</em> appeared first on Stereogum.

Anxious have given us another taste of their latest era in the form of a new single packed with riffs and raw rock energy.

Following the band’s return with the explosive ‘Don’t Move’ earlier in the year, their latest single is titled ‘Secret Weapon’.

Speaking on the track, guitarist/co-vocalist Dante Melucci has shared:

“The ‘Secret Weapon’ is the business of music, the weaponization of the stats and current fads to decide who you are as an artist, and who you should strive to be. I’m seeing artists with this objectivity in their style, their songs, that to me just comes across as desperate; I don’t believe that something beautiful can be created in a lab.”

Take a listen below.

Anxious are currently out on the road across North America, playing shows alongside label mates Citizen.

Check out the full list of remaining dates below.

SEPTEMBER

17: LOS ANGELES, CA Hollywood Palladium
18: SAN FRANCISCO, CA The Regency Ballroom
19: SACRAMENTO, CA Wonder Ballroom
21: PORTLAND, OR Crystal Ballroom
22: SEATTLE, WA Showbox SoDo
24: SALT LAKE CITY, UT Grand at The Complex
26: DENVER, CO Ogden Theatre
27: TULSA, OK Mass Movement
28: ST. LOUIS, MO The Hawthorn
30: MINNEAPOLIS, MN Varsity Theater

OCTOBER

1: MILWAUKEE, WI The Rave
2: DETROIT, MI The Majestic Theatre
3: BLOOMINGTON, IN Best Day Ever

The post Anxious Unleash Delightfully Riffy Single ‘Secret Weapon’ appeared first on Rock Sound.

Posted on September 16th 2026, 3:00pm

(We present Daniel Barkasi’s enthusiastic review of a new album by the French black metal band Novae Militiae, which is set for release by Serpent Sun Records on September 18th.) When it comes to conversations about the top-tier creators of black metal, there are certainly plenty of names that get thrown out. You’ll hear Misþryming […]

The post NOVAE MILITIAE: “APOCRYPHON OF THE UNBORN LIGHT” appeared first on NO CLEAN SINGING.

Holy Holy – A Celebration Of Bowie, O2 Academy, Bristol, 11.09.26



Tonight was certainly a night of celebration, as the masses gathered to hear some of the finest songs from one of the finest artists, performed by those who helped craft them.

The lighting dimmed, and musicians entered the stage; tonight was a celebration of the late, great David Bowie. Featuring a Spider From Mars on drums in the form of Woody Woodmansey, esteemed producer Tony Visconti (Man Who Sold The World & More) and Heaven 17 vocalist Glenn Gregory, there was a lot of pedigree on stage, forming a supergroup who all ahd links to the great man, touring together for the last time as Holy Holy.

Opening with the anthemic Five Years, Gregory’s vocals felt perfectly suited; the audience absorbed the performance, and we were all hooked. The set list drifted through fan favourites such as the iconic Ziggy Stardust, Ashes To Ashes, Starman and Space Oddity?, all of which were performed with real emotion by Gregory and co, but there were other real gems here; getting to hear Moonage Daydream and Rock And Roll Suicide performed with such passion and dedication to the originals was a real treat.

The venue was packed, and Visconti occasionally regaled us all with anecdotes from working with Bowie or knowledge of certain songs, a real treat to add to a thoroughly enjoyable ride through these wonderful songs. There was also a really touching statement from Gregory prior to singing Life On Mars?, recalling Bowie’s last birthday and learning of his death, detailing how it impacted all of us, the band included. There was a real sincerity to the whole performance; this very much was the spirit of the evening, a real celebration of not only songs of brilliance, but of the brilliant mind and talent behind them.

The audience was engaged from first song til last, and with a brilliantly received encore featuring Where Are We Now? and the thrilling Rebel Rebel, those on stage were enjoying every second just as much as those in attendance.

If you are a fan of David Bowie’s music, from any era, Holy Holy were an absolute must see, and while this was the final tour, surely they can be lured out of hiding for special events!

It has been almost nine years since we lost Tom Petty, and it has been almost 50 since Petty and his Heartbreakers released their self-titled debut album. Tom Petty And The Heartbreakers will have its half-century birthday this November, and Petty’s estate will celebrate the occasion with the release of Origins 1971-1978, a new box set that’ll include previously unreleased tracks from Petty’s earliest days.

The post Tom Petty Estate Announces 50th Anniversary Box Set With Previously Unheard Tracks, Heartbreakers Will Reunite At Americana Awards Tonight appeared first on Stereogum.

Guadalajara death metal bruisers Medical Negligence have spent the better part of a decade finding particularly unpleasant places to draw inspiration from. On latest single “Rey Chivo,” that trail leads to one of Mexico’s more horrifying true-crime stories.

Formed in 2016, the five-piece have independently released two full-lengths—2017’s Odium In Venas and 2020’s Evil—alongside a pair of EPs and a steady stream of singles, combining death metal, hardcore and goregrind into something appropriately blunt and violent. They’ve also logged hundreds of shows across Mexico, South America and the United States, sharing stages with Cannibal Corpse, Suffocation, Origin, Exhumed, Nile, Aborted and Brujeria along the way.

“Rey Chivo,” released July 3 through Arson Theory, takes its inspiration from a notorious 2012 case in Nezahualcóyotl, State of Mexico, in which a five-year-old boy was blinded by family members during a religious ritual. Contemporary reports described participants praying in anticipation of an impending apocalypse.

“‘Rey Chivo’ is a song inspired by a real case that took place in Nezahualcóyotl, where a child had his eyes removed with a spoon by his own mother during a religious ritual,” vocalist Agustín Preciado explains. “The song captures and aims to convey the dark atmosphere surrounding the case, the child’s fear and desperation as well as the overwhelming power of the entity that manifested that night which we named ‘Rey Chivo’ (Goat King).”

The accompanying video, directed, produced and edited by Perla Vigueras, pushes Medical Negligence’s interpretation of the story further into horror territory. Vigueras also handled cinematography alongside Daniel Garcia, with Preciado writing the script. Santiago Rentería stars as the child, while René of Tepmter portrays the Devil.

Though “Rey Chivo” won’t appear on the band’s next release, guitarist Oscar Bitzer says it offers a hint of where Medical Negligence are headed.

“This single is not part of an upcoming release, but it sets the tone and offers a glimpse into the music we are currently recording in the studio which will be released in the near future.”

Medical Negligence are Agustín Preciado on vocals, Oscar Bitzer and Diego Cortes on guitars, David “Brujo” Martínez on bass and Fernando Rentería on drums.

Watch “Rey Chivo” below.

The post Video Premiere: Medical Negligence – “Rey Chivo” appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

Along with Ca7riel and Paco Amoroso, and Jorge Drexler, the artists each scored seven nominations for ambitious, genre-spanning projects.

Tuomas Holopainen has ruled out a Nightwish reunion with Tarja Turunen, and in doing so revealed what he’s turning down. Speaking to Metal Hammer, the keyboardist said somebody had put it to him that if he brought Tarja and former bassist Marko Hietala back, the band could tour South America alone for a year straight. His answer: that’s not gonna happen. He also did something he’s never really done before — accepted that Nightwish deserved the blame for how the 2005 split was handled.

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What he turned down

Start with the number, because it’s the most concrete thing in the interview and it tells you the scale of what’s being refused.

Holopainen says someone put it to him directly: get Tarja and Marko Hietala back in, and you could tour South America for a year straight.

Not a leg. Not a run of festivals. Twelve months, one continent.

Anyone who’s followed this band knows that isn’t a fantasy. Nightwish in South America is a phenomenon — Tarja herself moved to Buenos Aires after the split and built a second life there, and symphonic metal has an audience in that part of the world that European bands genuinely cannot explain. A reunited classic-era Nightwish playing Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Mexico for a year would be one of the largest touring propositions in metal.

His response to all of it was five words. That’s not gonna happen.

His reasoning: it was a divorce, and an ugly one at that, so he thinks they have their own lives now.

And then he admitted it

Here’s the part that’s genuinely new, and it’s the reason this interview matters beyond the reunion question.

For twenty-one years the Nightwish camp’s position on the 2005 split has been broadly defensive. This time Holopainen said something different.

Nightwish get blamed for what happened, he said — for good reason.

Read that again. The man who wrote the letter is conceding the criticism was earned.

He still holds the underlying position — that there was no future for the band with Tarja in it. His description of where they were: just operating in survival mode, and plagued by dark thoughts.

But he doesn’t defend the method. And the method is the whole story.

What actually happened in 2005

For anyone who came to this band through Floor Jansen, the thing to understand is that Tarja Turunen wasn’t quietly let go at the end of a cycle.

She was handed an open letter at the end of the 2005 tour — and the same letter was published on the Nightwish website at the same moment.

She found out she was fired and the entire world found out simultaneously. There was no window, no statement agreed between lawyers, no chance to get ahead of it.

And the letter wasn’t neutral. The band wrote that to her, unfortunately, business, money and things that have nothing to do with emotions had become much more important.

That’s an accusation about someone’s character, published to their own fanbase, before they’d had an hour to absorb being sacked.

Holopainen’s account of the fallout is that the remaining members got completely butchered in the media — that it was as though they were evil neanderthals who’d hurt their wonderful ex-singer. He added, drily, that he received some really interesting letters.

He’s also previously called the decision to part with Tarja the most difficult thing he’s ever had to do.

Her version, from the same magazine, a month earlier

And this is the part nobody else is going to put together.

Tarja gave her account of the same events to Metal Hammer last month. Holopainen gave his this month. Same publication, consecutive issues, and the second reads as a direct reply to the first — two people conducting a conversation through a magazine twenty-one years after they stopped having it in person.

Her version is considerably harder.

What followed the letter, she says, was really great planning — how they wanted to destroy her publicly. She says it was something she never expected, and that it was nasty.

Then the cost of it. An insane period. In a small country like Finland, her face covering the tabloids for around three weeks. She left her home country. She says she had to. She went to Buenos Aires.

And the part that’s easy to skim past: it affected far more than her. Her family, her friends — everybody was destroyed. It took her a long time to trust people again.

But the sharpest thing she said isn’t about what they did. It’s about what she didn’t do.

She had all her rights. There were contracts. In her words, they would have been in deep shit for a long time if she’d used them — and she didn’t. She decided to move on and leave.

Twenty-one years later, asked what she’d change, her answer was that she probably should have put them through hell.

That’s a woman saying out loud that she regrets the mercy. It’s the most revealing line either of them has given, and it explains why this doesn’t heal.

Has she ever left the door open?

Barely, and less over time.

In 2019 she told Kerrang! she didn’t see anything happening with her and them, to be perfectly honest — while noting that Marko Hietala came into the band later and was always someone she was close to. On Holopainen specifically: they hadn’t seen each other in a long time, but they had been in touch, and it wasn’t bad. The past is what it is and can’t be changed; only the future can.

Asked a few years ago whether she’d tour with them if all her former bandmates apologised and invited her back, she was careful rather than warm. She said she couldn’t really close any doors any more, that she isn’t that kind of person now, and that it would be very hypothetically possible.

Then: it would be unlikely to happen.

And her position before that had been blunter. Maybe one day she’ll forgive, she said, but she will never forget.

We Recommend – EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Tarja Turunen Breaks Silence on Final Nightwish Days — “The Band Was Already Broken”

The book, and the lawsuit that failed

One more piece of this that gets left out, and it matters because it’s the only part that ever went before a judge.

Nightwish’s authorised biography, Once Upon a Nightwish: The Official Biography 1996-2006, came out in Finnish in 2006 and in English three years later. It blamed Tarja’s husband, Marcelo Cabuli, for the events leading to her expulsion.

Cabuli and his Brazilian business partners sued the publisher, Like Kustannus Oy, and the author, Marko “Mape” Ollila, for defamation — arguing the book contained false accusations and insinuations that had caused suffering and financial damage.

In 2011 the Helsinki District Court dismissed the case. The court found that the book criticised Cabuli on only a few of its 380 pages, that it hadn’t detrimentally affected his work or reputation in South America, and that Ollila had not maliciously portrayed him in a negative light.

Worth stating the outcome plainly, because the existence of a lawsuit gets cited far more often than its result.

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Where everyone is now

Nightwish have had Floor Jansen since 2012 — she made her live debut on October 1 that year at Showbox Sodo in Seattle after the abrupt departure of Anette Olzon, joined officially in 2013, and recorded her first album with them on 2015’s Endless Forms Most Beautiful. Fourteen years in, she isn’t a replacement any more; she’s simply the singer.

Marko Hietala left in 2020.

Tarja released Frisson Noir in June via earMUSIC, described by her label as the heaviest record of her career and a statement of identity, strength and belonging. Twenty-one years after being handed that letter, she’s still making metal records and still selling out rooms in the city she fled to.

Three separate careers, all of them working. Which is roughly what Holopainen meant by saying they have their own lives now — and it’s the only genuinely uncomplicated thing about this story.

It’s also the second time this month that one of the bands that built a genre has publicly closed the door on a reunion everybody wanted — Tony Iommi revealed a fortnight ago that he’d turned down a final Black Sabbath album with the original lineup. The difference is that Sabbath’s door shut because somebody died. This one is shut because of a letter.

TL;DR

• Tuomas Holopainen has ruled out a Nightwish reunion with Tarja Turunen, telling Metal Hammer: “That’s not gonna happen.”
• What he turned down: he says someone put it to him that with Tarja and former bassist Marko Hietala back in the band, they could tour South America alone for a year straight.
• His reasoning: “It was a divorce, and an ugly one at that, so I think we have our own lives now.”
• The admission: Holopainen said Nightwish “get blamed for what happened, for good reason,” while maintaining there was no future for the band with Turunen. He described the period as operating in survival mode.
• How the 2005 split happened: Turunen was handed an open letter at the end of the tour, published on the band’s website at the same moment, which accused her of prioritising business and money over emotion.
• Her account, given to the same magazine a month earlier: that the band planned to destroy her publicly, that her face covered the Finnish tabloids for three weeks, and that she left the country for Buenos Aires.
• What she says she’d change: she had contracts and rights and could have taken them to court, and chose not to. She now says she probably should have put them through hell.
• The lawsuit: her husband Marcelo Cabuli sued over the band’s authorised biography. The Helsinki District Court dismissed the case in 2011.
• Floor Jansen has fronted Nightwish since 2012. Tarja released Frisson Noir in June.

FAQ

Twenty-one years, one open letter, and a year of sold-out South American shows left on the table. Should they find a way, or is some damage permanent? Tell me below. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.

The post Nightwish Just Killed The Tarja Turunen Reunion For Good appeared first on Loaded Radio.