Forty years since NYC synth-pop band Book of Love released its acclaimed debut album, vocalist Susan Ottaviano’s on a big creative kick.
The post Book of Love’s Susan Ottaviano on Mom Life, Creativity, and the 2026 Reunion Tour appeared first on Rockmommy.com.
Earlier this month, Rico Nasty and Kenneth Bloom, who will always be Kenny Beats in our hearts, teamed up for the brisk single “Rituals.” It’s so great, we named it one of the best tracks from that week. It feels me with great joy that, officially, Rico Nasty and Bloom have another album on the way, titled RX, out in just three weeks. Despite the name pivot, there should be no shortage of “Kennyyyyyyy!” unless Rico has amended her ad-lib, which I would still love to witness if true.
The post Rico Nasty Announces New Album <em>RX</em>: Hear “Cupcake” appeared first on Stereogum.
There was no listing in Seattle’s essential alt. culture weekly newspaper The Stranger for the gig scheduled at The Boathouse on February 19, 1995, no fliers being handed out outside the venue on Mercer Street, no mention at all of the show on any of the college radio shows dedicated to promoting left of the dial outsider art in the Emerald City. It was almost as if the four-piece band who’d booked the show didn’t want anyone to know about it. Which wasn’t too far from the truth.
“There was a lot of interest right off the bat,” their frontman told Rolling Stone 20 years on. “and that scared us because we hadn’t done anything yet.”
Except, of course, all four musicians had done things before, and that was precisely why they were deliberately choosing to manage expectations for their first public appearance. The rhythm section – bassist Nate Mendel and drummer William Goldsmith – had spent the previous three years playing together in local alt. rockers Sunny Day Real Estate, Seattle’s best-known post-hardcore band, signed to the city’s Sub Pop label. Guitarist Pat Smear was an American hardcore legend, a founding member of nihilistic Los Angeles punks Germs, and most recently, Nirvana’s touring guitarist, until Kurt Cobain’s April 1994 death by suicide brought that new opportunity to a definitive end.
The ‘face’ of the band might never have fronted a group before, but it was always going to be his presence that would ensure that the band would be under the spotlight from day one, as he was only too aware.
“I was always going to be “that guy from Kurt Cobain’s band” and I knew that,” he admitted.
‘That guy from Kurt Cobain’s band’ was Nirvana drummer turned Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl.
In the weeks and months after Cobain’s death, Grohl, by his own admission, was “about as confused as I’ve ever been”, and utterly unsure as to his future plans. But between October 17 and 23, 1994, at Robert Lang Studios not far from his Seattle home, Grohl committed 15 songs to tape, playing every note himself, except for some guitar on X-Static contributed by The Afghan Whigs frontman Greg Dulli. Within two months, word had leaked that Grohl had a new project, but at that point, he didn’t yet have a band. As Foo Fighters were assembled, for their own reasons, each man was looking to start a fresh chapter.
“We wanted to do something new and we wanted to feel new again,” Grohl told Rolling Stone in 2015. “So, the loft party seemed like the perfect place to start.”
Cheered on by supportive friends and family members, Foo Fighters’ first gig was never really going to be as “terrifying” as Grohl had feared. But it’s easy to understand why the band’s leader elected to wait until everyone in attendance was “wicked fucking drunk” before they debuted a set of songs that almost no-one had ever heard.
“I remember it being such a huge relief that we just made it to the end,” Grohl reflected 20 years on, “and then it was maybe a month later that I heard the recording of it – and I was fucking mortified.
“I thought we sounded great and I heard the recording like, Ohhh . . . that’s the Foo Fighters? We’ve got to practice.”
Twenty years on, Grohl had hoped to release a cassette of the show for Record Store Day. The only problem being that no-one seems to know if one exists, its semi-mythical status making it “some Raiders of the Lost Ark shit” as he told Rolling Stone. Don’t hold your breath.
My fellow elder millennial Charley Crockett has been a prolific force in country music over the past decade or so. Since 2015, Crockett has released 17 studio albums, including Clovis, an album re-released today, concluding a months-long saga.
The post Charley Crockett’s Pulled Album <em>Clovis</em> Just Got An Official Release appeared first on Stereogum.
I just wanna see some palm trees. I will try and shake away this disease.
When Art Alexakis of Everclear sang those words in “Santa Monica,” he tapped into one of popular music’s oldest fantasies: that somewhere beyond the cold, beyond the routine, beyond whatever is weighing us down, warm weather, the sun, hell, summer might make things better. The idea is simple: change the weather, and perhaps you’ll change yourself.
But what if the disease doesn’t shake away?
Throughout the 1990s, many alternative rock and metal bands seemed to challenge that very idea. Summer wasn’t presented as freedom but as something oppressive, surreal or even decaying. The sun didn’t heal – it distorted. Heat became suffocating. Brightness became blinding or unsettling. Rather than embracing one of popular culture’s most enduring myths, bands like Soundgarden, Deftones, Danzig, and Type O Negative headed for the shade and turned summer inside out.
“Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden is one of the clearest examples of this reversal.
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Soundgarden vocalist Chris Cornell has said the song began with a misheard phrase from a news broadcast, “black hole sun,” which immediately suggested both its title and atmosphere. From there, the song was built around that image, with structure, melody, and lyrics forming through a stream of consciousness association rather than a fixed narrative idea.
The result is a sequence of fragmented impressions rather than a literal account of anything. Images of heat, decay, disguise, moral unease, and distorted nature appear without settling into a stable meaning. Summer is present, but it is not liberating. “Boiling heat / summer stench / ’neath the black, the sky looks dead” turns the season into something oppressive and lifeless, where even the sky loses its familiarity, looking more violent and extraterrestrial than like Earth’s.
Musically, it carries a strange contrast. It is melodic and almost soothing in places, but it moves with a humid, sweltering weight. There is a sense of warmth, but it is sickly, closer to something overripe than something refreshing. In that sense, it’s like an anti-Beach Boys song. Where classic sun-drenched pop presents warmth as ease and clarity, on “Black Hole Sun,” it’s warped and unstable, as if brightness itself has turned heavy.
The music video, directed by Howard Greenhalgh, extends the same logic visually. Tim Burton-esque suburban life is rendered as exaggerated performance, with faces, gestures, and domestic scenes pushed beyond natural behaviour. Nothing is subtle or hidden beneath the surface. As the video progresses, that world is soon sucked into this oppressive sun, which has become a black hole, pulling everything into dissolution as it “washes the rain away.”
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“My Own Summer (Shove It)” by Deftones sounds, by the title, personal at first, as if it is describing an individual experience of summer. It carries a sense of optimism in isolation, but the “shove it” part quickly changes that tone once the lyrics and delivery set in. Lines like “the shade is a tool, a device, a saviour” and “I try to look up to the sky but my eyes burn” make that shift explicit. Shade is something imperative in this heatwave. The sun, causing burning retinas, is an inferno to resist.
The Dean Karr-directed music video shows the band performing on top of shark cages in the middle of the ocean. Beneath them, great white sharks circle and tear into chunks of meat thrown into the water. There is a constant tension, as if the band might fall in along with the swimming pig with goggles on, only to be torn apart. The shade cannot save you here.
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“Summer Breeze” by Type O Negative reframes the idea of summer again, but in a different way. Before October Rust, before autumn, the song sits in that uneasy space where warmth is still present, but already feels like it is fading into something else.
Originally by Seals and Crofts, “Summer Breeze” is built on comfort, lightness, and domestic calm. In Type O Negative’s version, that same material becomes slower, heavier, and more ambiguous. Summer is still there, but it feels distant, like a memory being replayed through a different emotional filter. The song was also featured during the opening credits of I Know What You Did Last Summer, setting the tone for hook-handed bloodshed during the summer season.
The lyric “Flowing like the jasmine in my mind” carries a strange softness, but it is not clean or carefree. It’s imagined, something drifting rather than settling. In this sense, summer breeze becomes another kind of shade–a retreat into something cooler, and darker.
The imagined setting shifts with it. You can picture Type O Negative in a grassy field, dressed in black, sweating under the sun, not celebrating it but enduring it. The oppressive, late August heat weighs heavy, and then the slight breeze comes in.
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“Dirty Black Summer” by Danzig arrives after Type O Negative leave the field. Danzig and his band set up a picnic. Summer is still here, but it has changed shape again.
“No summer in the winter time / will keep you warm like a funeral pyre.” The line carries a strange, familiar lyricism, almost Doors-like in its phrasing, where opposites collapse into each other and emotional heat becomes literal flame. “And our love become a funeral pyre. Come on baby, light my fire.” The echo is there, but inverted–the warmth now consumes as it burns rather than igniting romance.
On that note is the line, “And nothing like an August night / drenched in your loving.” The word “drenched” evokes sweat more than romance. It carries over the physical memory of heat from the previous section–that same late-summer heaviness, the kind of night where the air feels soaked. It connects back to the “summer breeze” that came before it, except here the breeze no longer feels light. It feels humid, saturated, stuck to writhing bodies.
Around the picnic, the idea of this dirty black summer emerges from the soot and ashes of that earlier “funeral pyre.” Summer here is now nothing but residue.
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California, the album by Mr. Bungle, feels like satire on California itself–the place, the idea of it, and the “Californication” of things. The Beach Boys version of California sits in the background here: safe-sounding melodies, sun-drenched harmony, the promise of ease and clarity. But in California, that surface never stays stable. It keeps revealing something unnerving underneath.
The album moves through a sweltering, artificial, concrete summer, overheated and theatrical. Songs like “Retrovertigo” and “Sweet Charity” lead through this space, where nostalgia and romance are warped, with odd but memorable lyrics like “Even the bombs and scarecrows will sing.”
“The Air-Conditioned Nightmare” comes from author Henry Miller’s The Air-Conditioned Nightmare, where American comfort and modern life are described as a kind of spiritual suffocation. Here, even relief from heat feels artificial. “Get me out of this air-conditioned nightmare. Rots your brain just like a catchy tune” turns pleasure itself into contamination, where happiness feels engineered.
Like “Black Hole Sun,” the album shares that anti-Beach Boys sensibility, but takes it further into artificiality. Instead of sun-drenched clarity or even distorted heat, California presents something manufactured. Still, Patton asks in earnest or maybe naivety, or maybe while suffering heatstroke, “Where’s my rainbow?” This ties back to the innocuous fantasy Everclear brought up earlier about just wanting to see some palm trees. Even the visage of something summery is all the hope the hapless human needs. But that same impulse keeps mutating across the decade: into distortion, into residue, into something artificial.
Across the horizon of these bands, summer stops being a destination and instead becomes distorted, suffocating, ritualized, or synthetic. Each version unpacks another piece of luggage from the original promise of palm trees. By the end, “Santa Monica” doesn’t feel like something that can shake away this disease anymore. It could very well be the pathogen.
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Purchase Ryan Dyer’s book, The Underground in China: Metal, Punk, Hardcore and Noise 2013-2021, here.
(Kyle Doerksen is a very good photographer of varied scenes and subjects, as you can see here. He also has a taste for metal, and that led him to The Regent Theater in Los Angeles last weekend to witness performances by Monolord, Acid King, and Mizmor. We are greateful that he sent us the following […]
The post SHOW REVIEW: MONOLORD, ACID KING, MIZMOR – LIVE IN LOS ANGELES, JUNE 27, 2026 appeared first on NO CLEAN SINGING.
Internationally acclaimed guitarist, composer, and FIREWIND mastermind Gus G. released his fifth solo album ‘Steel Burner’ on April 24, 2026. Marking his first solo offering […]
The post GUS G. RELEASES “CONFESSION”, THE FIFTH VIDEO SINGLE OFF NEW ALBUM ‘STEEL BURNER’ appeared first on Metal-Rules.com.
Our monthly release round-up is usually a grab bag of headlining acts and whatever crawls out from Bandcamp’s underbelly. I wish we could say we had the most obscure picks every month, if only for bragging points, but unfortunately, people value sharing musical experiences and building a community through it (what some call bondmaxxing), so we listen to and enjoy “the big releases.” June gave us a few tasty ones that we can’t leave unmentioned, and we covered them through lengthy interviews. These include the long-awaited returns of both Stormkeep and Khemmis. On the more mysterious side of things was Fief’s VII. Expectedly, they did not grant us an interview. Further expectedly, it sounds like Fief’s seventh album, meaning that tavern regulars and dungeon masters need no further convincing to check it out. Anyone who has ever sniffed a dungeon synth apparatus or is aware of Vermis has already heard VII, so including it felt like planting a tree in a rainforest then posting about environmental activism. Still, if you aren’t caught up with Fief, begin with VII. The minstrel will guide you through your vision quest.
That aside, were there any other big returns this month?
Nope! Definitely not.
Keep reading for some of our favorite releases from this past month.
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Black Glow – Waves and Mirrors – Mirrors and Waves | Independent (June 3)
Monterrey duo Black Glow harmoniously blend doom metal and shoegaze on their independently released debut full-length, Waves and Mirrors – Mirrors and Waves. Spanning eight tracks across 44 minutes, the album’s title was inspired by the idea that we are all “mirrors and waves” endlessly reflecting one another through life’s finite existence, a concept that lends an introspective dimension to the record’s dreamlike mood. It is built around colossal walls of guitar, bass, drums, synthesizers, mellotron, and organ, moving at an unhurried pace with a lingering undercurrent of melancholy.
Throughout the record, Gina Ríos, Octavio Diliegros, and special guest Christian Peters display a sharp instinct for texture. Gina’s ethereal vocals float above the heavy distortion and deep ambiance, adding an otherworldly dimension to the band’s immersive landscapes.
“Soma” is a slow-burning piece that builds a mysterious, hypnotic atmosphere through soulful vocals and heavy, repetitive rhythms before peaking with a soaring guitar solo. Meanwhile, “Obsidian” is a shadowy track that blends heavy rock rhythms with expressive vocals and cosmic textures. The heart-stirring “Child in the Mirror” serves as a testament to perseverance. Musically, it captures the band’s heavygaze sound by balancing haunting, drifting vocals with commanding layers of distorted guitar. Through poignant lyrics like, “Gathering all the broken pieces, you were born in survival mode,” and, “No wood, no warm shelter… but you still made it,” the song offers a raw emotional look at an enduring survivor. Ultimately, Black Glow delivers a masterful performance that immerses you in a vividly crafted world.
–Lily O’Delia
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Kilter – Ten Billion Years | Excursus Production/ Alter-Native Publishing (June 19)
Back in the ’90s, bands like Atheist and Cynic asked, “What if you added some jazz to metal?” Kilter, like Italy’s Zu, have since reversed that question: “What if you added some metal to jazz?” The Brooklyn-based trio—saxophonist Ed Rosenberg III, bassist Laurent David, and drummer Kenny Grohowski (of Imperial Triumphant)—offer their best answer yet to that hypothetical with their stunning new album, Ten Billion Years, which they describe as, “A water molecule’s entire existence, reimagined through Kilter’s dense jazz-metal textures.” Indeed, Kilter make, well, off-kilter music, and I’d go with “doom-y sludge-jazz” as my best attempt at a description. The standout here is Grohowski’s incredible playing—a fascinating combination of Brann Dailor and Neil Peart—which is some of the best drumming of 2026. As such, Ten Billion Years should end up on multiple year-end lists. It’s that good.
–Steve Lampiris
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BIG|BRAVE – in grief or in hope | Thrill Jockey Records (June 12)
Having cemented themselves in modern drone metal circles, Montréal’s BIG|BRAVE decides percussion is no longer necessary for their walls of sound. On in grief or in hope, their guitars stand like giants under layers of reverb and distortion, a physical force that knocks you down. The fortress is overpacked, however, causing its dense and dark tones to demolish. Crackling, scraping, cutting in and out–these textured guitars break with humanity under the weight of all they carry.
A weight is found in Robin Wattie’s singing as it varies from dark and monotone to tender and wearied. Encouraged to challenge everything known about the band, her vocals are manipulated by autotune, wavering in the force of brutish sound waves. All is rendered unrecognizable, as is the state one finds themself when dealing with the burden of living and losing, of asking oneself, as Wattie does, “What may be the kindest way to leave?” The question is answered within the sonic magnitude: there is no kind or easy way. It will always be harrowing.
–Aidan Sibley
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Saidan – Fangdriller: Scars Beneath Memory’s Wrist | Avantgarde Music (June 19)
The closest Nashville ever came to black-metal-derived-visual-kei was in ominous, lingering moments between sets when David Sylvian’s Japan opened for Blue Öyster Cult in 1978. Then, Saidan came around in 2020.
Now, Splatterpvnk and Hundosai’s Saidan is neither Japan nor a Cult, but that description smiles (in that painted Cheshire Cat way) with the melodic and structural excellence Saidan provides on Fangdriller: Scars Beneath Memory’s Wrist. The conceptual psychosis (to me) is lost in the expansive soundscape, but it involves a woman named Junko, a cult called Ethereal Blood, and terrible beauty. The details feel richer left unwritten. Fangdriller is a fantastic album that consumes the last fifty years of radical metal history from both sides of the Pacific. The strongest song is the melodic empyrean of “Womb of Hatred,” but the most technically impressive is the ornately titled “Stained Glass Sin – Fang Driller.” The invocation is prominent. Fangdriller ends on an uncomfortable note. Uncomfortable not in the sense of content (though there is some of that), but of raw exposure. Raw as the blood under skin. Bone under masked faces.
–William Pauper
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Warning – Rituals of Shame | Relapse Records (June 19)
Twenty years after the release of what has become a cult classic doom metal album, Warning follows Watching from a Distance as if time hadn’t passed. Vocalist Patrick Walker started the slowcore project 40 Watt Sun in the years in between as a more soothing way to convey his emotions. As the years crept on and 40 Watt Sun softened, the darkness of doom metal presented a wick for Walker to ignite again. There is little distinction from Walker’s vocal performance between bands–he remains emotionally strained, slightly nasal, and entirely powerful–but the orchestrations surrounding him are darker and more hopeless.
The further Rituals of Shame pulls you into the swamp, the harder it is to release yourself. With five songs across 45 minutes, energy is replaced with a brooding sense of surrender to depression. Thick drums shake the Earth with each hit. Guitars and bass feed on the lowest tones available. Walker wails of terrifying isolation, stating, “There’s nothing that can reach me in the world outside.” These murky tracks don’t dawdle; they immerse themselves in enduring sadness until you’re broken. Burdened by this much intensity, it may reasonably take the band another 20 years to confront it again.
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