After nine years, Europe returns with Come This Madness, the band’s 12th studio album, as a powerful new chapter for the Swedish rock icons. Set for release on September 25th via Silver Lining Music / Hell & Back Recordings, the album finds Europe continuing to evolve musically while retaining the hard-rock foundation that has defined the band for decades.
Europe, featuring frontman Joey Tempest on vocals and rhythm guitar, John Norum on lead guitar, John Levén on bass, Mic Michaeli on keyboards, and Ian Haugland on drums, explores themes reflecting the world around us while balancing fresh energy with elements that reach back to the band’s earliest days. Recorded at Stockholm’s RMV Studio and produced by Tom Dalgety, the album features guest appearances from Ghost’s Tobias Forge and Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt, with legendary engineer Mike Fraser handling the mix.
As Europe prepares to unveil Come This Madness, the band is also celebrating the 40th anniversary of The Final Countdown with an extensive tour beginning September 30th in Glasgow.
Come This Madness will be available on vinyl, CD, and digital formats; you can order your copy here.
In my engaging conversation with Joey, he opened up about the long creative journey behind the band’s new album, with the title song deliberately exploring the tension between disorder and control, mirroring the global mood he observed while sitting with his acoustic guitar, watching the news.
Nearly nine years have passed since Walk the Earth, and Joey explained that the gap gave the band a chance to approach this album differently than ever before. Unlike the faster recording processes behind Bag of Bones, War of Kings, and Walk the Earth, the band wanted to rework demos, experiment with arrangements, and allow the songs to develop naturally.
Joey pointed out that the band’s musical history has always included heavier and more progressive elements, even before the commercial success of The Final Countdown. The new album, he said, reconnects with the past while still carrying the weight and depth of their later work, with a strong sense of melody.
Fawning, we’re brighter, we’re cautious, Falling like fighters, we’re caustic. Cracked up like actors, we’re lying. Daydreams and nightmares.
Sharing cigarettes and leather trousers can feel like a promising start to eternity, until eternity begins to resemble an argument neither person can leave. Berlin’s Night Nail take that unhappy prospect to the dance floor on Vile Train, a gothic rock seduction in which two lovers become so absorbed in each other that escape begins to seem as impossible as happiness. The attraction is considerable; so is the damage.
The song previews Infinite Fountain, Night Nail’s fourth studio album, due November 6, 2026, through Icy Cold Records. Its accompanying video reunites the band with director and editor Jean De Oliviera, whose previous collaborations include Hollow Day, Little Armenia, and Narcoleptic Dream Catcher.
Vile Train begins with a noise suspended somewhere between a buzz and a screech, while cold guitar tones gather around it with considerable menace. The drums establish their footing before a heavier, sustained riff saws through the opening, its melody making the abrasion strangely inviting. Around the thirty-second mark, the bass enters with a deep, brooding groove, and the guitar shifts into a lower, more resonant register. That change gives the song a mournful richness, setting the scene for Brandon Robert’s dark, swaggering delivery.
Repeating synth figures tighten the tension beneath his voice, and roughly a minute in, the chorus sends the arrangement into a more urgent gothic dance beat. The construction is remarkably assured: each entrance increases the pressure, while the bass keeps enough melodic independence to make the groove feel alive. By the three-minute mark, its intricate phrasing has become a hook in its own right, moving beneath Robert’s breathy repetition of “Daydreams and nightmares” as a feminine voice echoes the words in whispers. The song’s pleasure comes from those relationships between the instruments, the way an ominous opening develops into something so physically persuasive.
Robert found the initial inspiration during a visit to Pompeii, where a fresco depicting an angel and a demon in an embrace suggested a romance with a particularly poor prognosis. In the song’s conception, two dreamers inhabit separate modern realities until their fantasies bring them together. They exchange clothes, cigarettes, and intimacies, gradually making a prison of the connection that first seemed to offer freedom. Robert describes the result as “dark and brutal truths about love sung in a twisted but beautiful way.”
The lyrics give that deterioration a nasty intimacy. Caution sits beside fawning, attraction beside aggression, and the lovers seem increasingly aware of the roles they have been playing. “Some days I wish I was her” carries the confusion further, towards the point where wanting another person begins to erase the distinction between their identity and your own. Against the recurring admission of lies, the fantasy of America offers another possible elsewhere. Every imagined exit seems to lead back to the same two people.
Vile Train was mixed and post-produced by William Faith at 13 Studio in Chicago, with co-production by Night Nail in Berlin and additional vocals and guitar from VV & the Void. That combination serves a song whose writing and arrangement make its gothic excess feel earned, with a chorus capable of turning private misery into a crowded dance floor.
Directed and edited by Jean De Oliviera, the video gives Vile Train a stark black-and-white treatment, cutting between Robert and bassist Ilija Gavrilenko performing among amplifiers and outdoor shots framed by stone arches and fountain basins. Black leather, dark glasses, and severe makeup give the pair a suitably funereal glamour, while tight shots of fingers on strings bring the song’s instrumental interplay into focus. Robert’s face repeatedly fills the frame, his dark lipstick and pale features isolated against the black background.
Grain, scratches, and superimposed silhouettes of reaching hands disturb that severe simplicity, spreading across faces and instruments until the musicians seem caught behind the image itself. Robert’s own gestures towards the lens make the camera feel uncomfortably close, turning performance into something between an invitation and an accusation. The recurring close-ups and grasping hands give the song’s obsession a physical form, suggesting an intimacy that has become impossible to escape. It is an effective visual rendering of what the band calls the “afterlife of relationship hell,” where the desire to hold someone close has acquired a distinctly claustrophobic meaning.
Watch the video for Vile Train below:
Formed in Los Angeles in 2013, Night Nail relocated to Berlin in 2018, the year their debut album LA Demons appeared on Cleopatra Records. March To Autumn followed through Cold Transmission in 2020, with Fates Explained arriving on Metropolis Records in 2023. The archival release Early Demons and Demos and remix album Fates Remade followed in 2024. Their earlier work with producer Pete Burns of Kill Shelter helped establish a catalogue that connects darkwave electronics with gothic rock’s appetite for emotional extremes.
Infinite Fountain also includes mixing and post-production work by Sven Wolff of Patenbrigade: Wolff. Night Nail plans to support the album with shows across the US, UK, and Europe during 2026–2027. In the meantime, explore their back catalog on Bandcamp.
Sleeping With Sirens have shared a reprised version of the first song they ever wrote for the band, ‘I’m Coming Home (Big Gulps)’.
Photo credit: Travis Shinn
Following the release of their latest album ‘An Ending In Itself’ earlier this year, the band are taking a little trip down memory lane.
The first song they ever wrote and the first video ever posted to the band’s YouTube channel back in 2009, this version of ‘I’m Coming Home (Big Gulps)’ is the first time the track has ever been recorded in a professional studio.
With the original recording filmed in one take on a laptop, the song found new life this year when dedicated fans pushed the song to spontaneous virality on TikTok, 17 years on from its initial release.
Speaking on the fresh recording, Kellin Quinn has shared:
“Big Gulps was the very first Sleeping With Sirens song ever written, so it’s pretty amazing to see our fans digging through our old content on YouTube and watching it take off on TikTok. That said, the original recording was literally recorded on a MacBook back in 2009. So, I wanted to get back into the studio and properly rerecord a new acoustic version of the song. Thank you for being such incredible fans for so long and we hope you enjoy this new version of Big Gulps.”
Take a listen below.
And for a sweet blast of nostalgia, you can check out the original video below.
Sleeping With Sirens will be back over in the UK and Europe in early 2027, bringing along Arm’s Length and Like Roses for the ride.
Check out the full list of dates below.
FEBRUARY
16 – PARIS Le Bataclan 17 – STRASBOURG La Laiterie (Great Hall) 18 – VILLEURBANNE CCO La Rayonne 20 – ZURICH Xtra 21 – MILAN Alcatraz 22 – MUNICH Tonhalle 23 – BERLIN Astra Kulturhaus 25 – HAMBURG Docks 26 – STUTTGART LKA- Longhorn 27 – COLOGNE Carlswerk Victoria 28 – TILBURG 013 Poppodium
MARCH
02 – BRISTOL The Prospect Building 03 – GLASGOW O2 Academy Glasgow 05 – MANCHESTER Manchester Academy 06 – BIRMINGHAM O2 Academy 07 – LONDON O2 Academy Brixton
Heavy metal ensemble Ram have premiered an official music video for “Abattoir”, the third single from their forthcoming long player Against. Read more…
Rising from the ashes of the death metal bands Ripping Corpse and Dim Mak, New Jersey-based Temple Of Bones are ready to unleash debut full-length dubbed Walk The Winds. Set to land in stores on November 13th, 2026 via Relapse Records, it was recorded by Joe DeMaio at Shorefire Recording Studios. Mixed by Bob Pantella at Freakshop Studios and mastered by John McBain at JPM Mastering Studios. For a preview, give a listen to the first single and opening track “Black Horizon”. Read more…
Mastodon, Deafheaven & Alcest, Hard Rock Live, Orlando, FL 16.09.26
The opening night of the Mastodon tour! If you don’t count the secret Atlanta warm up show that is, which got everyone even more excited for the tour given that Baroness’s main man John Baizley would be joining Mastodon during the tail end of their set to play some of the older, classic material. How was it? In a word, amazing. Mastodon blew me away. I know everyone misses Brent, and I do too, but this band, in this form, is on an entirely other plain.
Let’s start with the French black/shoegaze band, Alcest (8), who went on first. I was super excited to see them for the first time and they did not disappoint. You get blasted by a wall of sound of guitars for 40 minutes, except for the minimal, very polite, interaction. The music filled up the whole room, heavy and beautiful, even if I don’t speak a lick of French. I think they gained some new fans on this day and I would love to see a headlining Alcest set.
Deafheaven (7) was up next. I had seen them before at Welcome To Rockville but they got more time in the second slot on this night. I am stealing this from someone, but I love the “Warped Tour Black Metal” description of the band. The lead singer has a ton of passion, almost too much and a bit too “how you doin’ Orlando???” for my taste, but they were fun, energetic, heavy as hell, and the crowd was down for it, given the pits and the crowdsurfing. I preferred their Joy Division clone era, but that is me. I am never going to sit and listen to a Deafheaven record, but I would watch them on any bill they were on.
Now, Mastodon (10). I got to see them playing a short festival set, but this was the first time in a long time as headliner. This was easily in the top 5 shows I have seen this decade. The energy, the crowd, the imagery on the screen, the stacked setlist, all of this. The band seemed like they were genuinely having a great time, and the crowd ate it up. Nick Johnston is not Brent, but he is a super talented, next level player who fits in perfectly with the other guys in the band. He is a super nice dude too, as I got to chat with him for a couple of minutes. He did everything he should, stepping into a tough role, and he nailed it. Troy sounded great, and the band was super tight.
They played a nice mix of their discography, including a few from the new record, Marrow Deep (it rules). and the fans not only enjoyed it but sang along. Not gonna lie, I fanboyed out when Baizley mosied onto the stage mid song during the live debut of Snakes For Dinner. He got a proper intro from Troy and promptly broke into the classic Curl Of The Burl. The last half of the show was epic, with Baizley adding his guitar and vocals to some of the band’s biggest songs, like Oblivion and The Czar, closing the set with a gigantic pit-generating Blood And Thunder.
Go see Mastodon. They are in their prime, the new material is great, they are playing an amazing, wide ranging set, the guys are having fun, and John Baizley. A great night with possibly the world’s best metal band.
