Category: news

On September 25th, Long Island hardcore band PAIN OF TRUTH will release their their sophomore album, PAIN OF TRUTH, through DAZE. Working

Neurosis have been confirmed for Roadburn Festival 2027 for two separate sets at the festival. Further details of what the performances will entail have yet to be revealed. Roadburn will be taking place from April 15th to April 18th 2027 in Tilburg, The Netherlands.
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Japan Underground is a British record label established by Tom Smith in 2012, and every year, they have an event in London to showcase the label’s stars of tomorrow. Spread over two days, the inaugural sister event was held this year at GRIT At Shibuya in Tokyo and featured eight bands that have already made their mark outside Japan, thanks to their releases through the label. Tom himself flew in to host the event and DJ between the acts.

Japan Underground In Tokyo

GRIT at Shibuya, Tokyo – 1/2 August 2025

Words And Photography: Glenn Williams

Then Tom flew out again. It was a disheartening message we all received 48 hours before the doors opened that a nasty fall had split Tom’s kneecap into several pieces, and before he could even start to think about what to wear, he was on a plane back home for emergency surgery.

Nevertheless, the show must go on, and so it did, with an apology video message from a hospital bed played on both days to get the proceedings underway.

As it turns out, the troops rallied, the bands gave their all, and Tom can be proud of his achievement.

Saturday 1 August 2026

Fathomless Skywalker

Today started with some Symphonic Metal, and Fathomless Skywalker gave us so much sensory overload that it took a couple of numbers to comprehend what was going on fully.

Standing stage left, Takuma, all in green with a wild green haircut, plays note-perfect guitar at lightning speed. Stage right is Nino with long blue/silver-white hair that flows down her body and blends into her blue/silver-white 5-string bass, which is not much smaller than her.

At the back, the man in orange beats the skins to a pulp and then at the front, the soprano vocalist, operatically trained Chihiro, resplendent in red, hits notes that would shatter your beer glass, were it not made of plastic.

The sonic assault is brutal, sonorous and magnificent, while the spaces between songs are a welcome break, time to get your breath back.

Bered

Bered (pronounced “b red”) are exactly the right type of band for any time slot at a festival. Good old-fashioned rock with some terrific melodies and singalong moments, this is a band that does not stop moving from beginning to end.

Vocalist Reina has one hell of a voice and engaging stage presence all of her own. The four guys with her have been together a while, and it shows.

Tight but not to the point of restricting, their parts are all worked out so that each member can be heard as an individual as well as a group. They also have that uncanny ability that many musicians do to know exactly where the others are going and follow, if need be.

Bered played the majority of their debut album, which was released this year. It was good to hear that they can replicate on stage exactly what is on the recordings. 

Bone Dawn

Kavka Shishido will be a name that is unfamiliar to the vast majority of you, but in Japan, she is something special and one of the most famous female drummers in Japan. She has helmed and participated in a variety of projects, and Bone Dawn is her latest group she has formed.

A solid backbeat then, and when bass player Ryota locks into her rhythm, the power the two emit is up there with, dare I say it, John Paul Jones and John Bonham.

For the majority of it, the music is fast-paced, guitarist Jun chugging for all he is worth as vocalist Lima changes between seductive and raw in the blink of an eye.

As good as the musicians are, there are no show-offs in the band, no solo spots, just talent that knows how to deliver a simple song in the most effective way. 

Bridear

The anticipation in the audience is palpable. Bridear are well established in Japan and whilst not on the record sales level of some of their peers, are no less a class act.

Backstage, they are five chatty and friendly Japanese girls, but once onstage, they become a force that belies their offstage manner. Their sound, a blend of Power Metal and J-rock, with some other stuff, is of their own making.

It is fuelled by Moe and Ayumi’s aggressive riffs and dynamic twin guitar parts, which, to the casual observer, look effortless. They hardly glance at their axes during their intricate dual runs.

With melodic vocals and a rhythm section that never wavers, Bridear really are a sight and sound to behold. Backstage, post-show, they were five lovely, chatty Japanese girls again. Where the hell did that gig come from?

Sunday 2 August 2026

Mellows

Blown away, I think, is the old term that is most appropriate to describe how we first-timers in the audience reacted to Mellows’ performance as they opened Day Two.

As it happens, we first-timers were outnumbered by a large group of followers who waved and bounced along with the band as they played Extreme Metal riffs punctuated with boppy, poppy segments that you could not help but grin at.

Fronted by an endless ball of energy named Mio on vocals and one of the happiest guitarists in Japan, Gina, they are essentially the band, but it must be said that the three musicians they had on stage with them contributed more than their fair share to the performance.

As a whole, this quintet assaulted us with cute, charming, aggressive, powerful and thunderous music, the likes of which had the audience fist pumping and light-wand waving in equal measure. 

WENDY

Due to a scheduling conflict, WENDY were in the unfortunate position of not being able to have a soundcheck. Not that you would have noticed, as they kicked into their first number. It is easy to see why the world is warming to this band with their classic rock-based songs and vintage sound that at times remind you of live performances by Free, Led Zeppelin and Aerosmith.

Sena’s Les Paul has guts and is slung low, his body following its momentum as he slings it around the stage. Skye can scream and hold notes with the best of them and has diction and mic control that is a sound engineer’s dream.

Meanwhile, Paul at the back is thumping hell out of the house kit, keeping time but keeping it loose. Having not found a suitable replacement for their recently departed bassist, they have a fill-in bass player who somehow follows them. A word to the wise, lads. Keep her. She was top drawer.

Fujita Ena Band

Fujita Ena had already been swamped at the merch stand pre-show for an hour by her fans wanting autographs and photos because, as well as being a singer-songwriter, she is also a very attractive model. Needless to say, when it was announced just before they took the stage that filming and photos were ok, the audience cameras were out in force. In Japan, gig filming and photos are still frowned upon.

As it turns out, she can rock a place as well, gently strumming or thrashing her guitar in a series of songs ranging from a soft ballad through straight pop into alternative rock. Backed up by guitarist Michiko Man, bassist Koaki Asakura and drummer Hikaru Takiishi, her set is nicely paced and ends with a belter called The Moon Ate It Up.

Exiting stage left, it is fair to say there were a few men in the audience a bit hot under the collar, but she had proved to everyone there that she is more than just a pretty face.

Kinoco Hotel

The mysterious Kinoco Hotel have been around for the best part of two decades. Founded and led by Marianne Shinonome, the only original member left, they sport military-style mini-skirts and jet-black, mushroom haircuts that complement their vintage sound, a cross between the lighter side of The Doors, ’60s pop and surf.

Cool as cucumbers, Kinoco Hotel do not smile, just stand there and play. The music soon overtakes the striking image, however, and the ’60s lighting, the walking bass lines and organ runs become hypnotic.

The dynamics, the light and shade provided by the drums and guitar as the songs build, are beautifully weighted. Introductions are brief and often completely absent, letting the music flow and build until the end of the set in a frenzy.

The audience, by now whipped up, is right there with them, and quite frankly, it was, in the best possible way, exhausting. 

WENDY / Tokyo Rockers Begin A New Chapter With Eyes On The World

Fathomless Skywalker – https://lit.link/en/fathomlessskywalker

Bered – https://www.bered.jp/

Bone Dawn – https://bonedawn.bitfan.id/

Bridear – https://bridear.jp/

Mellows – https://www.mellows-cutemetal.jp/

Wendy – https://wendy-official.com/

Fujita Ena – https://www.fujitaena.com/

Kinoco Hotel – https://www.kinocohotel.info/

The post Japan Underground Takes Tokyo: Eight Bands, Two Days first appeared on MetalTalk – Heavy Metal News, Reviews and Interviews.

Perennial is excited to share their new single “Ready! Steady! Go!” and its accompanying music video. Following the release of singles “What’s New

With Cavity joining for select dates.

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Only a few bands in the annals of modern music managed to completely alter the course of popular

You can also catch them on tour this fall

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Wormwood – Å (Black Lodge) [Mark Young]

A two track EP from the Stockholm based melodic black metal act Wormwood. There is a subtitle, Contemporary Decay Of Stockholm, in two parts which suggests that this could be on the darker side. I’ll leave others to tell me if its darker than their other material. Their bio certainly suggests a lot, so let’s dive in.

YRA|Extas starts in a way that expected; no messing or wasted moments but without the traditional speed fest of blasting drums or manic vocals. Instead, it coasts along until they decide its time to show their teeth. 

And that is all she wrote. Two songs, 16 minutes of frankly spellbinding music. 9/10

Negative Frame – Break The Ice (Blood Blast Distribution) [Matt Bladen]

The UK has become a center for bludgeoning metallic hardcore in recent years, with bands like Malevolence, Guilt Trip and Pest Control all bringing the disgusting breakdowns, mechanized precision, some epic soundscapes, hardcore punk aggression and melodic elements that steal from early metalcore and melodeath.

Maybe it’s the weather or the insane times we live in politically but bands have a lot to be angry about so there’s and influx of bands coming from the underground grabbing on to the cultural zeitgeist that the whole metallic hardcore sound brings with it. A rage against oppression, injustice and a general feeling of emptiness that many may have with this world.

The extremity of the daily grind has informed this debut album from Negative Frame, a band born from the London skate scene who throw together their love of hardcore punk, thrash and groove metal on Break The Ice, their first studio record where these influences are very strong especially on tracks such as the lead guitar filled Cut Throat and the thrashing Cold Nights.

It’s visceral and volatile as any bands who’ve emerged from the UKHC scene always are, songs with an intense communal spirit that are designed to get you moving, be that circle pits, stage dives or throwing high kicks, it’s music for stages and you can feel the livewire energy bristling though every single note of this record.

However there’s also maturity shown, more complexity coming through with a dedicated lead guitarist offering plenty of solos as a accoutrement to the stomping riffs on tracks such as the incensed Pay To Play, the steamrolling, fret sliding monster that is Rat Trap or the Pantera-like Heavens Blue which shows Negative Frame in whole new light.

Negative Frame are a band born from UKHC scene but Break The Ice, is a different beast with the lead guitar parts and the shift in tone towards more melodies in the latter part of the record, there’s evidence that Negative Frame could ascend to the lofty heights of Malevolence and even beyond. 9/10

Sinsid – All That Remains (Pitch Black Records) [Matt Bladen]

Like traditional heavy metal with vocals that sound like prime Blackie Lawless? Then I’d suggest picking up a copy of All That Remains from Norwegian metal act Sinsid.

A band that is built on the foundation of Terje Singh Sidhu’s raw, gritty vocal, they’ve been playing classic heavy metal for 14 years and they’re a band who do thing traditionally. Those vocals, the twin axe riffs, melodic elements and choruses that are built to be shouted back by loyal warriors.

All That Remains is their fourth album and I’d love to tell you it’s a revolutionary piece but it isn’t, this is Sinsid doing what they do with a record of heavy metal that’s got grit and guts, elements of Grim Reaper, Helstar, Accept, Running Wild or any of the NWOBHM/Teutonic crew who play down tuned and tough heavy metal.

There’s galloping work outs like Breaking All The Rules and Sarcophagus, anthemic moments such as the Title Track some strutting street metal on the very W.A.S.P-like Running and the spooky The Horror (I Know), all delivered by a band who live for heavy metal and mixed/mastered to give it an authentic throwback sound of the bands I’ve mentioned.

If you like traditional heavy metal but a bit gnarlier then Sinsid’s new record will get you pumping that fist. 7/10

For plenty of players, a first encounter with classic rock did not happen through a parent’s record collection or a classic-rock radio station. It happened while driving through San Andreas, skating a warehouse, wandering a nuclear wasteland, or fighting through a virtual Vietnam.

Video games have become remarkably effective at giving old songs another life. Sometimes the effect is measurable: Tom Petty’s “Love Is a Long Road” experienced a five-figure percentage jump in Spotify streams after appearing in a Grand Theft Auto VI trailer.

In other cases, the evidence is cultural. Songs become inseparable from a particular mission, radio station, character, or gaming memory.

The examples below cover open-world games, shooters, skateboarding games, action adventures, and rhythm games. Some tracks were already enormous hits. Gaming introduced them to an audience that had not been around for their first run.

1. “Love Is a Long Road” by Tom Petty

Few examples provide cleaner numbers than Tom Petty’s “Love Is a Long Road.”

Rockstar Games used the 1989 song in the first Grand Theft Auto VI trailer in December 2023. The choice immediately connected Petty’s Florida roots with Rockstar’s fictional version of the state.

Then the listening numbers exploded.

According to Universal Music Publishing Group, Spotify reported a 36,979% increase in streams compared with the previous week. The trailer itself accumulated 85 million YouTube views during its first 24 hours.

“Love Is a Long Road” had never been among Petty’s most obvious casual-listener staples. One game trailer suddenly placed it in front of an enormous global audience.

Gaming promotion had effectively created a second release campaign 34 years after the song appeared.

2. “Bark at the Moon” by Ozzy Osbourne

Grand Theft Auto: Vice City arrived in 2002 but spent most of its musical life in 1986.

Rockstar filled its fictional stations with songs that made Vice City feel like an exaggerated version of 1980s Miami. V-Rock handled the heavier material, putting Ozzy Osbourne beside Iron Maiden, Judas Priest, Twisted Sister, Mötley Crüe, and Slayer.

“Bark at the Moon” became one of the tracks strongly associated with the original game’s radio experience. Its absence was noticeable enough that coverage of Grand Theft Auto: The Trilogy specifically mentioned the Ozzy song among the missing original tracks.

The importance of Vice City goes beyond any individual song. Retrospectives continue to rank its soundtrack among gaming’s great licensed collections because the radio stations functioned like curated mixtapes.

For younger players in 2002, V-Rock could easily become an introduction to an entire decade of hard rock and metal.

3. “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd

“Free Bird” already had decades of mythology behind it when Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas arrived in 2004. The game found another place for the song to live.

K-DST, the game’s classic-rock station, included Lynyrd Skynyrd alongside Heart, Toto, Boston, The Who, Kiss, Foghat, and Tom Petty. Axl Rose voiced the station’s fictional DJ, Tommy “The Nightmare” Smith.

The musical influence of GTA radio has lasted remarkably well. A PC Gamer retrospective described the series as formative for the writer’s own musical taste, with K-DST singled out for classic rock.

“Free Bird” later gained another gaming identity through Guitar Hero II, where its marathon solo became a notorious challenge.

Its video-game afterlife therefore came through two very different experiences: cruising across a fictional California and desperately trying to survive a plastic-guitar finale.

4. “Ace of Spades” by Motörhead

Ask players of a certain age about Tony Hawk games and the conversation usually turns to music almost immediately.

“Ace of Spades” appeared in Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3, placing Motörhead’s 1980 anthem among punk, hip-hop, ska, and alternative tracks heard repeatedly while players attempted tricks.

Repeatedly is important. Missing a goal rarely meant turning the game off. It meant restarting the level and hearing the soundtrack again.

The musical impact of the franchise became unusually powerful. In an oral history of the soundtrack, developers and musicians recalled young listeners discovering artists directly through the games. Tony Hawk compared the soundtracks to the curated playlists people use for discovery today.

Curation has become an even bigger part of digital gaming since then, whether players are browsing a soundtrack, a storefront, or a provider-specific collection such as Jiliso.

“Ace of Spades” returned for Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 3 + 4 in 2025. Activision described earlier Tony Hawk soundtracks as records that had helped define skate culture.

A song released 45 years earlier was back on the playlist for another generation of virtual skaters.

5. “The Wanderer” by Dion

Fallout has developed one of gaming’s strangest musical signatures. Players explore irradiated ruins while cheerful mid-century records emerge from a Pip-Boy radio.

Dion’s 1961 rock-and-roll hit “The Wanderer” became closely tied to Fallout 4. Bethesda used it prominently in advertising and included it on Diamond City Radio.

Bethesda’s audio team deliberately looked beyond instantly recognizable standards when building the soundtrack.

Audio director Mark Lampert explained that the developers wanted more early rock-and-roll alongside the jazz, pop, and atomic-themed novelty records that define Fallout’s musical identity. The studio’s soundtrack discussion shows how carefully that radio experience was constructed.

The association lasted. When “The Wanderer” disappeared from Fallout 4 years later following a licensing dispute, players immediately noticed.

The dispute itself had earlier attracted attention because Dion objected to how the song appeared in violent promotional material, according to Pitchfork’s report.

Gaming had attached a new image to an old hit: a smiling survivor walking through the apocalypse.

6. “Fortunate Son” by Creedence Clearwater Revival

Few guitar riffs communicate “Vietnam” as quickly as the opening of “Fortunate Son.”

Movies created much of that association, but video games carried it into another generation.

Creedence Clearwater Revival’s 1969 song appeared in games connected with the war, including Battlefield: Bad Company 2: Vietnam. Call of Duty: Black Ops went further by using the recording during its Khe Sanh sequence.

An academic examination of music in Black Ops describes how the mission introduces the song through an in-game radio broadcast before combat erupts.

Interactive use changes the relationship. A film viewer watches someone else arrive in Vietnam while CCR plays. A player moves through the base, hears helicopters around the music, and then participates in the battle.

Pitchfork’s history of the song’s Vietnam association also notes its appearance in Battlefield.

By the 2010s, “Fortunate Son” belonged to gaming’s vocabulary of the Vietnam War as securely as it belonged to cinema’s.

7. “Children of the Grave” by Black Sabbath

https://www.instagram.com/reel/Db3hRxKhK2E/

Brütal Legend approached old rock from a completely different direction. Heavy metal was the landscape, mythology, joke book, and soundtrack all at once.

Released in 2009 and starring Jack Black, the game featured more than 100 tracks from 75 bands. Black Sabbath, Judas Priest, Motörhead, Megadeth, Ozzy Osbourne, Scorpions, UFO, and numerous cult metal acts filled the soundtrack.

Black Sabbath’s “Children of the Grave” was among them.

Developer Tim Schafer made the musical goal explicit. EA’s official soundtrack announcement quoted him saying the collection had taken years to assemble and joked that people who were not metal fans would either be converted or have their heads explode.

The joke captured the game’s purpose surprisingly well.

A player could arrive because Jack Black was on the cover and leave knowing Sabbath deep cuts, Judas Priest albums, and bands that rarely appeared on mainstream radio.

8. “Juke Box Hero” by Foreigner

Rhythm games still deserve a place in the story. They simply should not occupy the whole story.

Foreigner’s “Juke Box Hero” offers a useful example because players actively paid to add the 1981 track to Rock Band.

Only eight weeks after the game’s 2007 launch, players had purchased more than 2.5 million downloadable song levels. “Juke Box Hero” was reported as the best-performing individual single, ahead of other popular catalogue downloads including “Fortunate Son” and “My Sharona,” according to GameIndustry.com.

The business model turned old recordings into new gaming content. Spending money on a Foreigner song meant practicing its guitar, bass, drums, or vocals with friends.

Later research based on Nielsen SoundScan data found substantial download-sales increases for several older tracks connected with the wider rhythm-game boom. PCWorld reported gains ranging from 15% to 843% among the songs studied.

Here, renewed popularity could be seen directly at the checkout.

Video Games Became a New Kind of Classic-Rock Radio

GTA offered fictional radio stations. Fallout built old records into its world. Tony Hawk games behaved like skate-shop mixtapes. Brütal Legend created an interactive metal museum. War games attached familiar songs to memorable missions. Rhythm games asked players to perform the records themselves.

Each format encouraged discovery differently.

The common ingredient was repetition paired with experience. A song heard while driving across San Andreas or restarting the same skateboarding level for an hour can become attached to memory far more strongly than a track heard once in a playlist.

For millions of players, classic rock never disappeared and then suddenly returned. It entered through a different door.

A record might have been released in 1961, 1971, or 1989. The first time someone heard it could still have been while holding a controller.

Members of the rock and metal world are about to be all over streaming and movie theaters with new films. Continue reading…