Pain Of Truth are back with their first new album in three years, and are looking to make even more of a statement than they already have.
The band will unleash ‘Pain of Truth’, the album, on September 25 via DAZE. It serves as the follow-up to 2023’s ‘Not Through Blood’.
The artwork looks like this, and is instantly an all-timer:
And the tracklisting is like this:
1. Obliteration 2. Done For 3. Stranded 4. This Hatred 5. Unforgiven 6. Chinatown, NY 7. Fed By Fear 8. Beyond The Damage 9. Filth In Your Head 10. Web Of Lies 11. Destroy It All
You can also get stuck into the first taste of it right now in the form of ‘Unforgiven’, a big, bold, bludgeoning piece of New York Hardcore goodness. Brimming with all of the passion and prowess that has made the band such a household name, it’s pretty much as good as it gets.
Vocalist Michael Brian Smith had this to say about it:
“I wrote this track to give a sense of hope in horrible times. Using your energy to make a move and turning it into a win.”
Since resigning as the National Symphony Orchestra’s Artistic Advisor over Donald Trump’s takeover of the Kennedy Center, Ben Folds has continued to advocate for the federal arts institution, which he says is in trouble. Yesterday, he testified before a bicameral congressional forum and argued that the president’s overhaul has undermined the Center.
Imminence have shared the details of their hotly-anticipated new album, the follow-up to their seminal 2024 release ‘The Black’.
Titled ‘Axis Mundi’, it will be released on October 02 via Century Media Records.
The artwork looks like this:
Whilst the tracklisting is more like this:
1. Twisting In The Wind 2. The Sword That Never Bends 3. Devil May Try 4. Crestfallen 5. False Light 6. If Not Now, When 7. Didn’t Think About You (Lately) 8. Leviathan 9. Shed Your Skin 10. Power Divine 11. Exodus
Alongside the previous unleashed ‘The Sword That Never Bends’, the band have also shared two more tracks set to appear on the album in the form of ‘Crestfallen’ and ‘False Light’. The former haunting and patient, the latter guttural and grand, both showcase the spectrum of the band’s sound in stunning colour.
Guitarist Harald Barrett had this to say about the record and those particular tracks, stating, “Duality has always been at the heart of IMMINENCE. Our musical expression is a conversation between darkness and light, violence and beauty, despair and hope. ‘False Light’ and ‘Crestfallen’ embody those opposing forces more clearly than anything we’ve released before. They’re radically different in sound and emotion, but together they tell a single story. That’s why it felt important to present them side by side as we unveil Axis Mundi. Our new album is not meant to be experienced from one perspective alone. It’s a journey through every extreme that defines what Imminence is, and these two songs are the perfect gateway into that world.”
The band are scheduled to head out on their biggest European tour yet at the start of 2027, with support coming from the legendary August Burns Red.
Here are all of the dates:
JANUARY
08 – GOTHENBURG Filmstudios 09 – HAMBURG Sporthalle 12 – MANCHESTER Academy 13 – LONDON Brixton Academy 15 – BRUSSELS Ancienne Belgique 16 – PARIS Zenith Paris – La Vilette 17 – DÜSSELDORF Mitsubishi Electric Halle 19 – OFFENBACH AM MAIN Stadthalle 20 – LUDWIGSBURG MHPArena 21 – MILAN Alcatraz 24 – VIENNA Gasometer 25 – BUDAPEST Barba Negra Red Stage 27 – MUNICH Zenith 29 – BERLIN Columbiahalle 30 – LEIPZIG Haus Auensee 31 – WARSAW Progresja
FEBRUARY
02 – HELSINKI Kulttuuritalo 05 – STOCKHOLM Fållan 06 – MALMÖ Slagthuset
Protomartyr are back. Last year, the Detroit post-punk band celebrated 10 years of The Agent Intellect with a live LP and anniversary shows, but their last proper album was 2023’s Formal Growth In The Desert. They’re announcing its followup, Hotel Usona, today.
Spiritbox ejected a fan from a recent show in Phoenix, Arizona for allegedly violent behaviour.
As the Canadian metalcore outfit played Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre last Wednesday (July 15), singer Courtney LaPlante paused the show before playing last year’s single Soft Spine to kick out some that she claimed was “hurting everybody”.
Footage of the encounter is now circulating online.
“Zev [Rose, drummer] is taller than us and he’s up on the kit, and he sees some fucker right now,” LaPlante says in the video (via The PRP).
“We’re not gonna play another song and this show is not gonna continue until we make sure everybody out there is safe. So I need you guys to be tattletales, who’s the fucking freak that’s hurting everybody? Point him out… Point him out. He went that way? Well guess what, fucker? We all saw you, and we know where you are. Your ass is gonna get kicked the fuck out.”
The singer then addresses one of the alleged victims of the unruly concertgoer.
“Hey are you OK, bud?” she asks. “I know that you didn’t mean to draw attention, I’m sorry to draw attention to you, but that’s fucked up, OK? This isn’t the damn gold medal karate match, OK? This is a rock’n’roll show. Alright, it looks like security’s got him. Let that be a lesson to anybody out there who fucks around tonight.
“Because our security, they’re very nice and they love you guys. But they have let me know that if they have to, they will baptise a motherfucker and they will tune you up. Because what’s most important, safety, right? So if anybody falls down, what are you going to do? You’re going to pick them up, OK?”
The Phoenix show was part of Spiritbox’s ongoing North American tour with Evanescence and Nova Twins. The shows continue tonight (July 22) at Cascades Amphitheater in Ridgefield, Washington. The band are also booked for a run of European shows which start in Glasgow, UK on September 12. Jinjer and Dying Wish will support.
Spiritbox released their latest album, Tsunami Sea, to positive reviews last year. Metal Hammer’s Rich Hobson gave it a near-perfect 4.5-star score and said that they’d become “a band who could contend with Bring Me The Horizon and Sleep Token as the next zeitgeist-setting metal act”.
LaPlante collaborated on a standalone single called End Of You with fellow vocalists Poppy and Evanescence’s Amy Lee last September. In a recent Hammer interview, Lee reflected on the experience and said, “Courtney and Poppy are both amazing and very different from each other.”
Canadian-Greek metal artist Katerina Nicole is steadily carving out her place in heavy music, shaping a sound where punishing metalcore collides with melodies that linger long after the final note. In the wake of the deeply personal “Ladybug,” she returns with “Black on White,” a fierce collaboration with Johnny Ciardullo that pushes that contrast even further. We spoke with the vocalist about the grief woven into her songwriting, her conscious decision to embrace the nu-metal label, and the barriers that continue to confront women making their way through the music industry.
Lucy
Hello Katerina xx
No one reads the title “Ladybug” and expects a heavy, earth-shattering beatdown! What’s the story behind this gorgeous collision of delicate imagery and absolute brutality?
Katerina Nicole
Yeah, it’s a little unexpected! I have been grieving a loss in my life for a while now and I felt like I wanted to create a track around them that gave more life and honored their existence. I felt influences from my early pop punk days and thought that kind of energy could go really well! Some days are harder than others and there’s no timeline on grief. “Ladybug” represents the short but beautiful time that we have with someone. I was truly lucky to have them around when I did.
Lucy
A lot of musicians dodge genre tags like a trap, but you’re out here wearing “Nu-Metal” and “Metalcore” loud and proud on your social media bios! What made you want to claim those labels instead of leaving your music open for interpretation?
Katerina Nicole
I am inviting those genres into my world! I do come from EDM and rock, so it’s a new moment to let everyone know where I’m at. This is a very exciting time to be in the metal community!
Lucy
Whenever I’m working on new pieces for the magazine, I have to blast music to stay in the zone. Does that trick work for you as a musician? What kind of art, or which specific artists, do you turn to when you need to fuel your own writing sessions?
Katerina Nicole
I also do the same. I sing loudly at home or in my car, I dance, I write random current feelings and thoughts, and quickly if not eventually I come up with material to use!
Lucy
Picture this: the streaming algorithm works its magic and serves “Ladybug” to someone who has never heard your name. When the track ends, what is the very first thing you hope they understand about who you are?
Katerina Nicole
I believe I was put on this earth to share feelings with others. To bring together emotions and experience them. I am a vessel of vulnerability and story telling that seems to resonate with others well. It’s also very comforting for myself to not keep it inside. When I give it to the world, it’s a way of letting go of some stuff.
Lucy
What question do you absolutely hate being asked in interviews? (Hoping I haven’t already asked it… or worse, that it’s this exact question)
Katerina Nicole
I don’t really like small talk, I would much rather get into the hard stuff and dissect them so listeners can also leave with some perspective that might be valuable.
Lucy
Women in the arts have fought incredibly hard, from having to use male pen names centuries ago to fearlessly tackling intimate topics today. But looking at our community now, what barricades do you think still need to be smashed before we can finally say gender discrimination is dead in the scene?
Katerina Nicole
Currently as I’m transitioning from a solo female act to a full band, it feels like I’m taking a sledge hammer with me wherever I go. Doors don’t just open, unless you’re relentless on the pursuit. And that’s what I’m here to do. Just maybe it can get a little easier and more enjoyable in the process for the next artist.
Lucy
The ladybug has landed, so what comes next? Are you planning to drop more crushing singles on our heads, or are you secretly cooking up something massive behind the scenes? *cough* an album *cough*
Katerina Nicole
A new track is releasing JULY 31st! One that I’m really excited to have out in the middle of summer. Filmed all over Las Vegas with Dark Frame Productions, we really brought this song to new heights for my audience! I can’t wait!!!
Last year, the world learned that Finn Wolfhard is making a Replacements biopic, which caused me and many aging music dorks to wonder: How is that going to work? Does the Replacements’ legendarily squalid run, a fascinating but frustrating tale of failure and self-sabotage, really lend itself to a medium as inherently glitzy as the cinema? Would fans even want to see the band’s story hammered into all the familiar plot beats? Could this young man possibly wolf hard enough to pull it off? He certainly says the right things.
I wasn’t really looking for death I was just looking for myself
Six months after the release of Christine Plays Viola’s 2026 album F.I.V.E. (Fear Increases Violent Emotions), the Italian darkwave and post-punk band returns to complete its story. Their latest single “At Last, I Found You” was recorded during the album sessions but deliberately held back, allowing the record’s emotional course to reach listeners before its final companion piece appeared.
“At Last, I Found You” begins with synthesizers sighing like brakes slowing a car on a wet road. A low drone hangs behind them until the bass establishes forward momentum, the drums lock into place, and an insistent guitar hook cuts through the gathering pressure. The song soon settles into the kind of danceable gothic rock Christine Plays Viola handle so well: immediate enough for the club, yet weighted with genuine psychic anguish.
During the verses, the instruments pull back around the dark, smoldering vocal while bass and drums continue to propel the song beneath faint synthesizers. When the refrain of “break me up, break me up” takes hold, the arrangement surges upward. The guitars broaden, the rhythm bears down, and the vocal rises from exhausted confession into a passionate cry. Direct, memorable, and emotionally severe, it stands among the band’s finest songs to date.
The song describes the urge to drive away as an act of self-erasure. After burying the keys to a box containing his dreams, vocalist Massimo Ciampani sings of driving into the night, although he is already convinced that some part of him has died. Cigarette ash, blood, chains, a ditch, and the void surround a man who can no longer recognize himself. Yet the apparent second person referred to in the title gradually assumes another identity. The “you” he has been seeking is his childhood self: the innocence and possibility he abandoned somewhere along the way.
The final admission—“I wasn’t really looking for death, I was just looking for myself”—recasts the song’s death drive as a desperate attempt at psychological recovery. By restoring the album’s full title in parentheses, “At Last, I Found You” brings the F.I.V.E. cycle back to its central concern: the point at which fear turns inward, distorts emotion, and threatens to destroy the person carrying it.
Guitarist and bandleader Fabrizio Giampietro explains:
“At Last, I Found You was always the most immediate and instinctive song we wrote during the F.I.V.E. sessions. We deliberately left it off the album because we wanted listeners to experience that record’s emotional arc without this song becoming its centre of gravity. Six months later, it felt like the right moment to finally share it.”
The accompanying video transfers that crisis to a rain-swept nocturnal drive. A leather-jacketed man grips the steering wheel as vacant commercial streets pass beneath violet, red, and electric-blue light. Rain crowds the windows, cigarette smoke fills the cabin, and the camera repeatedly glances toward the empty back seat, leaving a conspicuous space for the person invoked by the song’s title.
As the drive continues, the city begins losing its physical certainty. Light bends across the windshield, the road appears to warp, and black mist gathers around the car as the driver’s composure gives way to panic. His gestures become increasingly frantic while flashes of red and blue appear through the rain, suggesting either an approaching police confrontation or another fragment of his unraveling mind.
After stopping the car, he steps into the downpour and finds a boy in a blue raincoat waiting across the road. The child stands motionless, staring back at him with an expression that offers neither recognition nor judgment. It is the video’s clearest answer to the lyrics, yet the encounter never establishes whether the boy is a memory, a hallucination, a chance at salvation, or an image seen at the instant of death.
The street empties once again, and an overhead view shows the black mist closing around the abandoned car. The video then returns to the back seat, where a small toy car rests beneath the closing credits—the only physical trace of the childhood the driver has spent the night pursuing. He may have found the boy, but finding him and saving him remain two different acts.
Watch the video for “At Last, I Found You” below:
“At Last, I Found You (Fear Increases Violent Emotions)” is out now through Bandcamp, Spotify, and all major digital platforms. Christine Plays Viola will continue supporting F.I.V.E. with European appearances running from August through October, including dates in Poland, Spain, England, and Germany. Further performances are currently being confirmed.
Upcoming European tour dates
August 15 – Rogoźnica, Poland — Batbeque / Chlewik Party at Haunted House, Woodraf’s Farm
September 11 – Barcelona, Spain — Freedonia, with Dräven
September 12 – Madrid, Spain — Cadavra, with Last Dusk
September 13 – Valencia, Spain — Black Note Club, with After Mankind
September 17 – London, England — Hope and Anchor, with Long Night and Last Dusk
September 18 – Whitchurch, Shropshire, England — Percy’s Café Bar
September 19 – Morecambe, England — Bats in the Attic Festival at Alhambra Live
September 20 – Gateshead, England — The Black Bull, with The Exceptional Mr. Hyde
October 3 – Hamburg, Germany — Logo, supporting Sweet Ermengarde
