Boundaries’ eagerly-awaited new album Yearning: The Unbeautiful After is out now via Sumerian Records. Stream it HERE. “With the record, we aimed to be uncompromising and really plant our flag,” vocalist Matthew McDougal explains. “As more time passes, heavy music continues to lose its teeth. This genre is supposed to be threatening; it should have […]Category: news
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BOUNDARIES Drop New Album YEARNING: THE UNBEAUTIFUL AFTER
Boundaries’ eagerly-awaited new album Yearning: The Unbeautiful After is out now via Sumerian Records. Stream it HERE. “With the record, we aimed to be uncompromising and really plant our flag,” vocalist Matthew McDougal explains. “As more time passes, heavy music continues to lose its teeth. This genre is supposed to be threatening; it should have […] -
LOATHE Unleash New Album A STRANGER TO YOU
Today marks the release of one of contemporary heavy music’s most mythologised albums, Loathe’s A Stranger To You. Coming six years after their second album, I Let It In And It Took Everything, A Stranger To You arrives in the wake of an album that influenced a wave of bands towards world domination. With today’s […] -
OCEAN SLEEPER Reveal Latest New Album Track ‘My Forever Drug’
Regional Victorian metalcore four-piece Ocean Sleeper reveal the third taste from their forthcoming sophomore album Peace When I’m Dead (out 21 August) in the form of new single My Forever Drug. My Forever Drug was written in collaboration with Ocean Sleeper and LA producers Jon Lundin (Point North, Sleeping With Sirens) and Curt Martin (Catch […] -
MY DYING BRIDE To Release Expansive Collection Of Music
Anthology of Sombre Reflections is an expansive and comprehensive collection of the early and much-celebrated works of the Doom Gods My Dying Bride. From the formative deathly rawness of the revered Towards the Sinister demo, God is Alone, 7” tracks and subsequent debut album, As the Flower Withers, through to the gothic-tinged funereal seductive delights […] -
V-Thoughts | 10 Symphonic Metal Albums That Own My Heart
Symphonic metal has always touched me on a deeply emotional and personal level. There is something about the contrast in this genre that feels remarkably close to real life: the darkness and the light, the chaos and the calm, the heavy guitars and the delicate melodies all somehow existing together. Add the themes these bands explore, while still leaving plenty of room for romance, emotion, and a little dramatic suffering, and you have a genre that has given us some truly iconic bands and women who have gifted us memories I will probably carry forever. These are my 10 favourite symphonic metal albums, and yes, this list is very personal.
#10
The Heart of Everything
Within Temptation
#9
The Wonders Still Awaiting
Xandria
When Xandria announced a new vocalist and shared new music, my first thought was, “Come on, just give up already.” I mean, some bands are great, but simply aren’t meant to last forever. Then I heard Ambre Vourvahis on “Reborn” and thought, “Oh, hold on.” Later, they released The Wonders Still Awaiting to show everyone that, well… the wonders are still awaiting. Ambre Vourvahis’ versatility, along with the powerful ballads and catchy anthems, made this one of my favourite albums in symphonic metal.
#8
Aspiral
Epica
Aspiral is probably Epica’s best album, technically speaking. It only sits this low on my list because of the emotional connection I have with the albums that come later. With every release, Epica proves that they have the master recipe for creating the perfect symphonic metal album, and that they’re still working on improving it.
#7
Pirates
Visions of Atlantis
The current Clémentine Delauney–Michele Guaitoli era of Visions of Atlantis is one of the most underappreciated things happening in symphonic metal. Aside from being a near-perfect vocal duo, they both have that special kind of voice that carries an atmosphere of discovery and adventure, fitting the themes Visions of Atlantis sing about perfectly. Pirates took this to a whole new level. Don’t believe me? Go listen to “Master the Hurricane”.
#6
Oceanborn
Nightwish
This used to be my favourite album featuring Tarja’s vocals (you’ll find out later why it isn’t anymore). Oceanborn set the standards for symphonic metal. It showed us that symphonic metal is not an orchestra playing alongside metal, but an interplay between the two, a dance between two sounds, all carried by the soaring vocals of Tarja Turunen.
#5
A Fortress Called Home
Seven Spires
Adrienne Cowan can sing serene melodies capable of making dead trees grow green again, then follow them up with harsh vocals powerful enough to cause an earthquake. This album shows just how brilliant she is at both. With songs like “Almosttown” and “Love’s Souvenir”, alongside its wonderfully versatile approach, this album places Seven Spires comfortably in the middle of the great symphonic metal bands for me.
#4
Decipher
After Forever
When you listen to this album today, it feels almost like a blueprint for great things to come later. Those great things came with other bands, sure, but this album remains one of my favourites because of the mastery in its songwriting, the rawness of its presentation, and its willingness to experiment with new elements. Then you have the sheer complexity of songs like “Zenith”, and it is honestly impossible not to appreciate just how far ahead of its time this album was.
#3
Imaginaerum
Nightwish
Nightwish had already established themselves as the kings and queens of symphonic metal long before this album. This album came along to say, “We haven’t even started yet.” Nightwish put every colour on their musical palette to use and weren’t afraid to put colours never used before in metal on their dark canvas. And Anette Olzon? What a queen. Anette’s voice is an atmosphere all on its own.
#2
Frisson Noir
Tarja
I’ve been talking about this album to literally everyone I meet. I even played a song for my grandmother, hoping to recruit her into the ranks of Tarja fans despite her advanced age. She asked me to turn down that ungodly thing. It’s fine. She makes excellent lemon cake. Back to Tarja’s Frisson Noir, this album went from being my favourite Tarja solo record to becoming my favourite thing she has ever done. Sorry, Nightwish fans, but facts are facts. There is something about this music that reaches straight into my heart, and “At Sea” is one of my favourite songs of all time, if not the favourite. Simply put, a masterpiece.
#1
Design Your Universe
Epica
Epica’s 2009 fourth studio album is a landmark in symphonic metal and, for me, the album that defined the genre. With the 13-minute epic “Kingdom of Heaven,” the iconic “Unleashed,” and the captivating “Martyr of the Free Word,” Design Your Universe brings together death metal aggression, epic orchestration, and grand choirs in a way that still makes it my all-time favorite symphonic metal album. This is the album I go to when I’m happy, sad, annoyed, rejoiced, free, or busy. Basically, this is my period album.
The post V-Thoughts | 10 Symphonic Metal Albums That Own My Heart first appeared on FemMetal – Goddesses of Metal.
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Los Angeles Post-Punk Outfit Cure For Youth Share Video for “New Rose Bloom” — Full-Length Debut Album “Synthetic World” Announced!
You get out of the cycle again
You get worn out before it begins
You get out alive it all starts againCure For Youth is a Los Angeles outfit whose post-punk carries the bodily intelligence of hardcore. Scott Savarie’s bass and Nicolas Sturz’s drums push against time, giving the song the clipped momentum of a crowd beginning to move. Connor McKenna’s guitar widens the frame with chorus and delay, while Catarina Teles’s synthesizer hangs over the arrangement like fluorescent weather. The track is spacious without becoming vague, melodic without relaxing its grip.
Savarie’s vocal performance gives that disorder a center. He sings with the cool restraint associated with early-eighties post-punk, but the reserve is less theatrical than protective. The song’s lineage — Joy Division’s severity, Ceremony’s sharpened velocity, the rougher romanticism of The Men — is audible, though Cure For Youth avoids the deadening effect of impeccable reference. Their sound is persuasive because it seems lived in: phrasing learned in small rooms, atmosphere added later, once the band knew exactly how much space it could afford.
In the video for New Rose Bloom, the first single from Cure For Youth’s début album, Synthetic World, Los Angeles appears as a nervous system. Sidewalks, storefronts, passing cars, domestic fragments, and protest footage arrive in quick, uneven pulses, as though someone were trying to reconstruct a week from the images left behind on a phone. The result is not quite a collage and not quite a documentary. It is memory after it has been exposed to the news. The editing is brisk but not frantic, and its repetitions—traffic, windows, bodies passing through the frame—create the impression of a city rehearsing the same day under changing pressure. Even the protest images avoid grandiosity; they enter as part of the weather, urgent precisely because they are ordinary.
The video’s most effective gesture is its refusal to separate private life from public emergency. A face glimpsed in transit, a room at dusk, a street corner, a demonstration: each image is granted roughly the same emotional weight. This can feel, at first, like indiscriminate accumulation. But the hodgepodge gradually reveals its argument. Contemporary attention does not organize experience into neat hierarchies. Grief, desire, boredom, and political anger occupy adjacent tabs; the self is asked to absorb them all without losing the thread.
Watch New Rose Bloom below:
Recorded and mixed by Alex Jacobelli at Sunsick Studios and mastered by Andrew Oswald, Synthetic World promises twelve songs in thirty-five minutes. The video suggests the governing principle: no escape from the present, only a way of moving through its images without becoming numb.
Listen to New Rose Bloom below and order Synthetic World here.
Follow Cure For Youth:
The post Los Angeles Post-Punk Outfit Cure For Youth Share Video for “New Rose Bloom” — Full-Length Debut Album “Synthetic World” Announced! appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
Poppy’s Band Plays Full Set Without Her at Upheaval Festival
For nearly one hour, Poppy's backing band performed with full production at Upheaval Festival in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Continue reading…
Mayhem announce October 2026 European tour with Marduk
The black metal icons have announced 13 dates spanning multiple countries
Marilyn Manson releases new song “Front Toward Enemy”
The second single from his upcoming album ‘One Assassination Under God – Chapter 2’
Squid Pisser share new single “Fart F***** F*** Face”
From their upcoming EP, ‘Throat Slave,’ due out August 28 via Skin Graft Records
This milestone album, which brought us hits like “The Howling,” “Frozen,” and “Hand of Sorrow,” is undoubtedly a highlight of symphonic metal. With Sharon den Adel’s vocals as its cornerstone and the gothic symphonic metal style it helped pioneer, this is the album to turn to whenever you need to feel thoroughly thrilled.