Miss May I have shared the details of their upcoming 8th full-length album, the follow-up to 2022’s ‘Curse Of Existence’.
Set to be called ‘No Place For Me’, it will be released on October 02 via Solid State Records.
Vocalist Levi Benton had this to say about what the record represents for him:
“No Place For Me is everything I’ve felt for a long time but never had the words for. Writing it taught me who I actually am even when that hurt to look at. It’s a full journey: Where it started, what I discovered, and where I am today.”
The artwork looks like this:
And the tracklisting like this:
1) Sanctuary 2) Portrait of Pain 3) Hand Me A Halo 4) Pray for Silence 5) Death Threat 6) Die on the Vine 7) Fire Falls 8) Bury Me Down 9) Ashes Of The Altar 10) Highbrow Thieves
As you can see it will feature the already released ‘Die On The Vine’ and ‘Pray For Silence’. You can also hear opening track ‘Sanctuary’ right now, a brilliantly atmospheric, wonderfully bludgeoning, sensationally catchy thrill ride.
Levi had this to add about the track:
“‘Sanctuary’ is a song about wanting to feel safe and realizing you’re the one making that impossible. It’s a cycle I’ve struggled with my whole life and I think a lot of people know exactly what that feels like.”
ZEIT DRIVER drop their new single “Soundtrack of Today” and announce their debut album [CTRL+Z], arriving in December 2026 via Tonzonen Records.
Formed between 2020 and 2022, the international four‑piece built their reputation through early singles, the Minds Unloaded EP, and a packed 2025 touring schedule across Germany. Their debut album captures that evolution: eleven tracks exploring digital fatigue, self‑curation, algorithmic pressure and the search for real human connection, blending crushing guitars with atmospheric moments and introspective themes.
I love the sound: in between Grunge and Stoner, dark and vibrant, with fuzzy guitars, energetic vocals (the chorus will get stuck in your head), and a super solid, heavy rhythm section. A quality song from every perspective. Give it a go by clicking on the player below and follow the Berlin heavy‑alt quartet on social media as well, if you like what you hear.
Review: The Western Front – Eureka! Artone Label Group – July 10th 2026 Reviewer – Chris O’Connor The Western Front’s ‘Eureka!‘ is one of those long-lost treasures that makes you wonder just how many other masterpieces have slipped through the cracks of music history. Recorded during the early 1980s but shelved in 1984 due to so-called […]
From upstart desert rats to globe-straddling alpha dons, for over two decades Queens Of The Stone Age’s Teutonic grooves and arsenal of riffs have set the gold standard for decadent, dangerous premier league rock. Led by Josh ‘The Ginger Elvis’ Homme and featuring a semi-recurring cast of many, they rose from the dustbowls of a cult stoner rock scene into the full-blown glare of the musical mainstream, garnering a clutch of Grammy Awards nominations, flirting with celebrity status, and kicking up a fair bit of controversy along the way.
Although QOTSA have proved to be a chameleonic beast, throughout it all their dedication to musical exploration and doing exactly what they want, how they want, has remained unwavering. When you’re as creatively prolific as Josh Homme has been however, the good stuff can sometimes be elusive. Sorting the ‘meh’ from the majestic, we rank their studio albums from worst to best…
8. Villains (2017)
Perhaps in his long-stated desire to make funky robot trance tunes Josh Homme was always destined to land somewhere like here, but this cartoonish, self-satisfied, wink of an album might have been better off released as a side project or as a bona fide solo effort. Yes, the band progressively feels like a solo vehicle in all but name anyway, but these throwaway songs simply aren’t up to the high standards QOTSA have established. That there’s only nine of them and the album has a run time of 48 minutes tells its own tale.
Notable for Mark Ronson overseeing production and a more accessible, retro-disco boogie timbre, there’s so little of the spark that makes the best Queens records such hard rock essentials. To its credit, Villains might succeed as an exercise in growing up gracefully, but for a group once so tantalisingly combustible, it’s hard to square that circle.
7. Lullabies To Paralyze (2005)
A record that sadly feels like a collective struggling to conjure the magic for the first time. Coming after Songs For The Deaf, Lullabies… admittedly had a tough act to follow, but it falls way short by unavoidable comparison. To witness a band who once felt so vicious, so edgy, and so special, suddenly appear entirely mortal felt extra stark.
Only Homme and Mark Lanegan return from the SFTD recording line-up, with bass berserker Nick Oliveri unceremoniously dumped (check out the delicious barb of Everybody Knows That You’re Insane) and Dave Grohl back at Foos HQ, and the indefinable alchemy that made those disparate parts combine so well seems MIA. By others’ standards, it’s an accomplished rock record – Little Sister and Burn The Witch are solid jams – but for QOTSA, it’s a so-so collection at best.
6. Era Vulgaris (2007)
On Era Vulgaris Queens threaten to recapture the sounds and soul of their turn of the century classics. They just don’t get there enough. The pulsing Sick, Sick, Sick, for instance, or the sleazeball lounge grooves of Make It Wit Chu, find Homme going back to the well with great success, but elsewhere there’s much perspiration but little inspiration.
There’s too much fat, too many frills, and not enough of the uncompromising maverick spirit and mischief that made the band’s name. It’s still a lesson in powerhouse performance and musicianship, but it leaves you wondering what happened to the gang who felt primed to take over the world just a few short years before.
5. In Times New Roman… (2023)
Retreating from the Mark Ronson-produced reinvention heard on Villains six years prior, In Times New Roman… is a cathartic exercise in back-to-basics QOTSA. There aren’t any famous faces here. Josh Homme oversees production himself. And by revisiting the familiar territory of sun-kissed desert blues, the Queens head honcho works through his demons from a place of strength and safety.
Meaty guitars and airtight rhythms are back on the menu, alongside eastern strings, syrupy melodies, and fever dream segments. There’s the sharp loss of close friends (including chef Anthony Bourdain, actor Rio Hackford, Mark Lanegan, and Taylor Hawkins) in the ether. Homme’s recent cancer treatment and the messy fallout from his divorce too. He’s had an unquestionably testing couple of years, all told.
The resulting record is more akin to electro-shock treatment than healthy therapeutic experience though. The unsubtle alpha-barbs on the otherwise brilliant riff storm of Paper Machete sit a little uncomfortably. The endless stream of puns in lyrics and titles eventually grow weary too, while one or two songs contribute to a mid-record sag. It’s a mostly roaring return nonetheless, but not one without its issues.
4. …Like Clockwork (2013)
…Like Clockwork is the kind of album that often gets labelled a ‘return to form’, but in truth, Queens have rarely ventured into this kind of broody, introspective territory, spurred by a series of professional setbacks, and a near-death experience for Josh Homme. Guest turns from Trent Reznor and Elton John might suggest something altogether more Hollywood, but these songs are more personal and vulnerable than Homme ever dared show previously.
Given the solemnity and gravitas of the title track, I Appear Missing and Fairweather Friends (a Mark Lanegan co-write), …Like Clockwork might not be the record that you’d play to impress upon someone what QOTSA do best, but it’s the weightiest and most ‘grown up’ record in their catalogue.
3. Queens Of The Stone Age (1998)
Raw and rough-hewn as it is by comparison with the rest of the band’s catalogue, there’s a roguish charm about this debut that pushes it towards the top end of the collective ranking. Sure, Queens would write better songs. They’d be more of a band on subsequent outings, and they’d certainly enjoy more success for their efforts. But at the core of this self-titled set there’s a purity of purpose that feels muted on later releases.
Feeling his way out of the implosion of Kyuss and stepping into the spotlight, Josh Homme stamps his mark on every nuance, playing everything but drums. There’s a dusty vintage to proceedings, right down to its throwback pinup artwork, and tracks such as If Only, Regular John, Mexicola and You Would Know forge templates that the band would adopt, rip up, and (at least try to) return to for years to come. A bold, brilliant debut.
2. Songs For The Deaf (2002)
Distilling the spirit of abandon that characterised their breakout success with Rated R into something still swaggering but sexier and sleeker, Songs For The Deaf is a towering statement that rightly made Queens superstars. That alluring devilment is still correct and present, but a firmer grasp of musical cohesion takes centre stage, with a loose threaded concept evoking a dark trip through the desert rubber-stamping the band’s bold ambition.
On-loan Foo Fighters boss Dave Grohl batters the drums here, while Mark Lanegan slithers in an out with that insouciant cool that only he could muster. Josh Homme, meanwhile, wrestles some of the band’s reckless frenzy into slightly more muzzled shapes, flexing into fresh artistic realms. Truthfully, there’s a rolling paper’s distance between this album and its predecessor for top ranking: this one boasts the big hits – No One Knows, Go With The Flow – but gets edged out of pole position due to the first hints of bloat that would blight later records.
1. Rated R (2000)
Rated R is the lightning-in-a-bottle moment where it felt like Queens Of The Stone Age might become the most important band in the world. Their second album is the sound of the sparks first ignited on their self-titled debut exploding into flames. And on tracks like Feel Good Hit Of The Summer, Leg Of Lamb, The Lost Art Of Keeping A Secret and Tension Head, Queens simply scorched.
With the addition of trousers-allergic bass beast, and fellow Kyuss alumni, Nick Oliveri, Josh Homme’s band were now a fully formed outlaw gang. And here they produced an authentic soundtrack to the kind of wild Saturday nights that creak and blur into hazy Sunday mornings. You can argue that QOTSA scaled loftier artistic heights later, but this is the band at their all-round strutting, fighting, snorting, screwing, and no-fucks-given best. Two decades and change later, Rated R can still make you feel like you could use a hot bath and a good night’s sleep.
[Release date 29.05.26] The first thing I thought when I first heard this album by the Fortunate Few is Joe Cocker Sheffield Steel era, which is good for the drummer and bass player as Sly and Robbie were the rhythm … Continue reading →
Peaceville [Release date 19.06.26] mork is an acclaimed Black Metal project formed by Norwegian multi instrumentalist Thomas Eriksen in 2004, this is their 8th album. The title translates as Monolith; inspired by the film 2001: A Space Odyssey, it explores … Continue reading →
1969 was a monumental year for Creedence Clearwater Revival. The band had already scored two platinum-selling albums and a trio of massive hits – Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising and Green River – by the time Fortunate Son was released in September. However, unlike most of their repertoire, which tended to fetishise the rural American South, Fortunate Son was a burning commentary on class and elitism, delivered against the sulphurous backdrop of the Vietnam War.
“I was mad at the spectre of the ordinary kid who had to serve in an army in a war that he was very much against,” explained CCR songwriter and frontman John Fogerty. “Yet the sons of the well-to-do and powerful didn’t have to worry about those things.”
The frontman barks out the verses with a vigour born of contempt: ‘Some folks inherit stars-pangled eyes/They send you down to war, Lord/And when you ask them, ‘How much should we give?’/They only answer, ‘More! More! More!’’
Fogerty had a specific person in mind when he wrote the song: David Eisenhower, grandson of former US President Dwight D Eisenhower. In late 1968, the younger Eisenhower had married Julie Nixon, daughter of President-elect Richard Nixon, in a lavish ceremony in New York. Fogerty saw their union as a metaphor for the social and political divisions of the countercultural era.
“You’d hear about the son of this senator or that congressman who was given a deferment from the military or a choice position in the military,” he wrote in his 2015 memoir, Fortunate Son. “They seemed privileged, and whether they liked it or not, these people were symbolic in the sense that they weren’t being touched by what their parents were doing. They weren’t being affected like the rest of us.”
“I went into the bedroom, sat on the edge of my bed with a yellow legal tablet and my felt-tipped pen. Out came the song. ‘It ain’t me, it ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son.’ I was screaming inside, very intense, but not saying a word. Out it came, onto three sheets of legal paper.”
The song is all the more powerful for its sheer simplicity. Lasting less than two-and-a-half minutes, Fortunate Son opens with a two-note guitar twang and hurtles along with only a short pause for air.
The wracked intensity of Fogerty’s voice, already shot from recording Down On The Corner earlier that day, perfectly captures the rage and frustration at the heart of his subject matter. The chorus is an unbridled howl of protest: “It ain’t me, it ain’t me/I ain’t no military son/It ain’t me, it ain’t me/I ain’t no fortunate one.”
Peaking at No.3 in the US in December 1969, a month after Nixon had appeared on television calling for national unity over the conflict in Southeast Asia, Fortunate Son only served to highlight the widening schisms in America.
It still does, more than half a century later, with the current presidential incumbent playing Fortunate Son at his rallies, most likely oblivious to the song’s meaning. In 2020, Fogerty issued a cease-and-desist notice, happily drawing attention to the President’s five draft deferments.
“Years and years ago, I remember saying something about, ‘Richard Nixon, man, he is a source of endless inspiration'”, Fogerty told Classic Rock. “I could probably say the same about Mr Trump. I wonder, where are all the other creative writers? I mean, come on, you guys and gals, get out there! There’s a whole lot to write about here.”
In 2025, in an interview with Vulture, Fogerty went further and singled out Fortunate Son as his ‘most misunderstood song’.
“That’s misunderstood by a small percentage of people – people who seem to be conservative, right-wing, and probably Republican or some other ‘ism’ in that category,” said Fogerty. “And most notably by Mr Trump. It’s happened before where people thought it was a patriotic ditty to wave the flag and all that, not really understanding the cynicism and absolute defiance I had in the song.
“I mean, even if you don’t hear the rest of it, you should at least hear, ‘It ain’t me, I ain’t no fortunate son‘. But if you don’t, then I guess you’re able to see the song in a different way.”
Fortunate Son‘s place in history is secure. In 2014, it was added to the Library Of Congress’s National Recording Registry for being “culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.”
Like any significant song, it’s been covered. By U2, Bob Seger, Clutch, Corrosion Of Conformity, Foo Fighters (with Fogerty), Santana, D.O.A., Minutemen, Bruce Springsteen, Circle Jerks, Joe Lynn Turner and dozens more.
And in 2025, Fogerty rerecorded Fortunate Son for his Legacy: The Creedence Clearwater Revival Years collection, the album he made to celebrate regaining his publishing rights after half a century of legal battles. It was the final track on the album, still an emphatic, ever-visceral smackdown to those who abuse privilege.
It’s more than two decades since Tarja Turunen was dramatically kicked out of Finnish metal giants Nightwish. Undeterred, she forged an impressive – and diverse – solo career incorporating her love for classical music, Christmas songs, folk and even electronic experimentation across 10 albums. Her latest, Frisson Noir, sees her return to the symphonic metal sound she helped turn into a global movement.
The first music I remember hearing
My parents had beautiful singing voices, and my brother is seven years older and used to play drums and some guitar at home, so there was always music around. But the first thing I really remember was Bonnie Tyler. I really paid attention to her because she was so different from everything else. I was about six years old and had just started playing piano, but hearing Bonnie Tyler’s voice on Total Eclipse Of The Heart had me singing along.
The first song I performed live
As a kid I’d perform at every little party there was in my village. I performed as a piano player and did Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata. I remember being terrified going up to play that.
The music that terrified me
I’m not a dark person, but I’m aware there is a darkness within me that I create from. As a kid I was the youngest singer in the opera. When the men were singing Wagner’s Tannhauser, there’s a scene for the male choir only and it’s super-dark and bombastic. Metal came to my life later on and brought me a beautiful darkness that reminds me of that.
The best song ever
The best song ever written is Queen’s Bohemian Rhapsody, from A Night At The Opera. There are other songs – great songs – on that album, but that one takes your attention. That song is amazing because it takes you in.
The guitar hero
I’ve been very lucky to work with amazing guitar players. Joe Satriani’s sound is very particular and he’s amazing. I’ve seen him live a few times. I remember being in LA many years ago working on my third album [What Lies Beneath], and I was looking for a solo. Doug [Wimbish], my bassist, suggested getting Joe, and I was like: “Come on, he’s not going to want to play on my record.” But he called him up, and he did Falling Awake in a matter of two days.
The singer
Whitney Houston is, for me, the voice. After Bonnie, I discovered Whitney, and my teacher at school insisted I do things like Greatest Love Of All. I could never do it! Her voice was insanely gorgeous and powerful. I’ve got all her albums, live recordings, everything. The album Whitney is incredible. What an emotional voice.
The songwriter
I’d probably pick a composer. Hans Zimmer has written songs too, but he’s more of a film composer. His music has been a huge inspiration for me for many years. I even ended up working in his studio on my first album because I loved the score to Gladiator. That’s still one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. I couldn’t move because I was crying so much in the theatre, all because of the music!
The best record I made
The new one. No, really! I’ve never said that out loud. To be honest with you, I can say that Frisson Noir is my best record. My last album was seven years ago, but I’ve kept myself very busy with live shows, and covid all between. With this album, it represents who I am and where I am at this moment. It’s very personal to me and I’m proud of it.
The worst record I’ve made
Nightwish’s ‘first record’, Angels Fall First, was actually just our second demo. It takes a lot of courage to listen to it; I sound like I had a potato in my mouth! At that time I was studying in the music university and had started taking professional opera training. So I go into the studio for this, and it all took different takes and a completely different voice. I just couldn’t do it at the time. It wasn’t until the last couple of years in Nightwish I actually felt comfortable with my singing. There was nobody out there to teach me. But it did go gold, I suppose.
The most underrated band ever
I lived in Argentina for almost ten years. I discovered a lot of great local artists who were huge in their country, but totally unknown abroad. I love Alejandro Lerner. His melodies were just beautiful.
The song that makes me cry
My daughter is thirteen years old, and she showed me this band Falling In Reverse, who I knew existed but had never heard. They did an acoustic version of the [Papa Roach] song Last Resort, and I was driving when I heard it for the first time, and I just started crying. The singer’s interpretation of this in-your-face message about how everybody is afraid of something had a huge impact. It really affected me.
The song I want played at my funeral
If there’s going to be a funeral, I want it to be ABBA. Seriously, that’s my guilty pleasure, ABBA. On the tour bus, after a couple of glasses of wine, I’ll be blasting it out with my dudes. I went to see the ABBA Voyage twice in London, crying and singing along.
