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With Bloodstock 2026 still underway and tracking toward another record year, festival organizers have already pulled back the curtain on the first names booked for 2027, breaking the news from the Ronnie James Dio stage right after Municipal Waste wrapped its set. Mark the calendar for Aug. 5-8, 2027, at Catton Park in Derbyshire, United Kingdom.

Friday’s Ronnie James Dio main stage closes out with Mercyful Fate, the Danish outfit credited with helping invent heavy metal’s theatrical side, with King Diamond‘s falsetto still fully intact. Corpse paint, inverted crosses and an occult-drenched stage show remain the calling card, and a lot of extreme metal’s roots trace directly back here. King Diamond shared the news himself, saying, “Mercyful Fate is honored and looking extremely forward to playing Bloodstock again, last time was awesome, and this time with a brand new album out, FINALLY!!!”

Saturday night flips the script entirely as Electric Callboy takes its first-ever Bloodstock headline slot. The German group’s blend of metalcore, EDM and outright comedy makes for one of modern metal’s most unpredictable live shows, and Catton Park should look more like a rave that stumbled into a mosh pit. The band says, “Our first-ever Bloodstock. Heavy music, questionable outfits, and thousands of metalheads? Sounds like a perfect fit to us. We’re in. See you there!”

Sunday brings another first-time headliner in gothic-industrial metalcore act Motionless In White, now two decades deep and still delivering full theatrical spectacle. Frontman Chris Motionless leads the charge, turning every track into something you could mosh to and watch like a horror film at once. Having just come off a strong tour run, the band shows no signs of slowing, and this headline slot promises to raise the bar further. Motionless put it this way: “Bloodstock! We were told that we are one of the most requested bands to perform at your legendary festival, so it is with great honor to announce that we are answering the call and will be seeing you next year for our first ever European festival headlining show, and only U.K. show of 2027! Thank you so much! Let the countdown begin.”

Over on the Sophie Lancaster stage, Thursday’s headline slot belongs to Madball, bringing more than 35 years of straight-up New York hardcore to open the festival. Freddy Cricien and company still hit exactly as hard as they did back in ’89. Friday’s closing set on that stage goes to the enigmatic Gaerea, whose black metal has only grown more cinematic and punishing with each release. Kanonenfieber takes Saturday’s top spot, turning WWI diaries into blackened death metal that plays like trench warfare set to sound. Closing the entire festival is Dethklok, the band born out of the animated series Metalocalypse that’s since become a legitimately heavy live act, cartoon origins aside.

A few more names round out the Ronnie James Dio stage bill. Friday special guests Acid Bath bring Louisiana sludge metal steeped in doom, blues, and southern gothic dread. Saturday special guests Green Lung deliver folk-horror occult rock soaked in Hammer-film atmosphere and fuzzed-out riffage. Sunday special guests Children Of Bodom return to honor the melodic death metal legacy built by the late Alexi Laiho.

Elsewhere on the bill, DevilDriver finally makes its way back with Dez Fafara‘s groove-heavy California metal built for big circle pits. Corrosion Of Conformity, more than 40 years into blending hardcore punk with Black Sabbath-indebted southern metal, also joins the lineup. Imminence brings Swedish alternative metalcore built around soaring choruses and crushing breakdowns, while Wind Rose offers up Italian folk-power metal tailor-made for beer-hall singalongs. Sylosis brings U.K. thrash sharpened with melodic death metal precision courtesy of Josh Middleton‘s riffing, and Decapitated delivers Polish technical death metal built to impress even the genre’s harshest critics.

Witch Club Satan, an all-female Norwegian black metal act with roots in theater training, could be a breakout discovery for many attendees. HammerFall brings anthemic Swedish power metal, while fellow Swedes Hypocrisy continue delivering after three decades in the death metal game. The Halo Effect, made up of former In Flames members, revisits the classic Gothenburg melodic death metal sound. Tortured Demon returns for another round of pedigree thrash after previously breaking out on a Bloodstock stage. Czech goregrind act Gutalax brings its signature blend of toilet humor and blast beats, Humanity’s Last Breath delivers Swedish deathcore built around a crushing, low-tuned sound, and Liverpool’s self-described “caveman battle doom” act Conan rounds things out with riffs heavy enough to have their own gravitational pull.

The Sophie Lancaster stage tent has plenty more in store, too. Dool brings a candlelit haze of dark rock and post-rock out of Rotterdam, with a new album already finished. Pig Destroyer delivers Virginia grindcore built on blast beats and JR Hayes‘s nightmarish lyrics, and Fulci rounds things out with old-school death metal soaked in zombie-movie gore, paying tribute to horror director Lucio Fulci with every release.

Roughly 100 more bands are still to be announced.

Early bird standard weekend tickets are available at the festival’s main entrance box office for £210, no booking fee attached, while supplies last. Once they sell out on-site, prices jump to £235 plus booking fee, with general on-sale starting Monday, Aug. 10, at 9 a.m., meaning early birds could save roughly £34 per ticket.

Wednesday early access returns for select campsites in 2027, alongside child tickets, and kids under four get in free. The installment payment plan for select ticket types also returns, going live Wednesday, Aug. 12. Coach packages open Monday, Aug. 10, while VIP and campervan tickets go on sale Wednesday, Aug. 12, at 9 a.m.

New for 2027, Bloodstock is adding a second luxury VIP option. Fans can pitch a tent (or book a pre-erected one) in the Serpent’s Lair VIP campsite, or opt for one of the deluxe pod pads in the newly added Serpent’s Lair VIP Sanctuary. Tucked into a series of glades just a five-minute walk from both the VIP campsite and the main arena, the Sanctuary offers a quieter retreat without straying far from the action.

Full ticket packages and additional details are available at the official Bloodstock website.

The post MERCYFUL FATE, ELECTRIC CALLBOY & MOTIONLESS IN WHITE To Headline Bloodstock 2027 appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

william orbit RIP

The post William Orbit RIP : an appreciation appeared first on Louder Than War.

Beyond the Top Records has welcomed extreme progressive metal group DREAMER to its roster.

The band, featuring members of BLIGHTED EYE and THE ZENITH PASSAGE, will release its debut album, Autogenesis, later this year. Following the band’s 2021 instrumental demo, Autogenesis sees DREAMER‘s vision come to life with 9 epic tracks of melodic and boundary-pushing metallic wizardry.

Fans were given a preview of what’s to come with the 2025 single, “Hollow,” which is slated to appear on the album. Stream the song now on Spotify.

Beyond the Top is set to release Autogenesis this fall on digital, CD and two vinyl variant editions. Release date and pre-order information coming soon.

Stream more from DREAMER here.

DREAMER:

Kyle Chapan – Vocals
Josef Hossain-Kay – Drums
Christopher Beattie – Guitars, Keyboards
Ricky Alvarado-Cabrera – Bass
Zachary Rivizzigno – Guitars

facebook.com/DreamerMetalOfficial

instagram.com/dreamermetal

youtube.com/@DreamerMetal

dreamermetal.bandcamp.com

linktr.ee/beyondthetoprecords

Source: ClawHammer PR

Feel it now and don’t resist
This time the anger’s better than the kiss
I must admit when so inclined
I tend to lose it than confront my mind

Some songs that become so closely associated with their original performers that covering them feels a little like borrowing somebody else’s leather jacket. You might fit into it, you might even look terrific, but everybody remembers who wore it first. The Afghan Whigs’ Debonair is one of those numbers, loaded with Greg Dulli’s particular combination of seduction, self-disgust, and barely concealed bad intentions. Seattle’s Ghosts in the Graveyard approach it with enough confidence to make the jacket theirs.

There is also something pleasantly strange about hearing an Afghan Whigs song pulled toward deathrock. The original already had danger baked into its bones, so the transformation feels less like genre tourism than discovering that two people from different neighborhoods have been drinking at the same questionable bar for years.

The band gives Debonair a harder goth-rock frame, pushing the guitars forward while electronic accents gather around the edges. Byron C. Miller sings with the dramatic authority the material requires, leaning into the song’s appetite for trouble without treating Dulli’s original performance as sacred text. Paul Morgan’s guitar work supplies much of the momentum, moving between muscular chords and sharper details while the arrangement maintains the nightclub immediacy that has become central to Ghosts in the Graveyard.

That relationship becomes clearer in the accompanying video, directed and edited by Miller and shot by cinematographer Ryan Purcell. The band performs inside a small club surrounded by an enthusiastic audience, with the camera catching bodies pressed toward the stage and musicians feeding off the room. Rather than turning the performance into an elaborate visual concept, the clip concentrates on physical proximity and the chemistry between band and crowd. It gives Debonair the slightly dangerous communal charge that rock music tends to acquire when there are fewer than six feet between the singer and somebody holding a beer.

Watch the video for Debonair below:

The cover will close Ghosts in the Graveyard’s forthcoming Monsters for the Masses: Resurrected, due this October through Re:Mission Entertainment. The record revisits the band’s 2016 album for its tenth anniversary, rebuilding the material from the ground up following the expanded reach of 2025’s Absolute Death. With Miller joined by Morgan, keyboardist Kaylie Cortez, and vocalist Shelly Smith, the current lineup has developed into a formidable live unit, something the Debonair video makes immediately apparent.

Choosing this song as the album’s final word makes sense. Debonair has always sounded like somebody smiling while making several decisions they will regret tomorrow morning. Ghosts in the Graveyard preserve the song’s wicked little grin, then surround it with bigger guitars, gothic drama, and the welcome possibility that someone in the front row may lose a shoe.

Listen to Debonair below and order the single here.

Follow Ghosts In The Graveyard:

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The post Seattle’s Ghosts In The Graveyard Shares Video for Goth Rock Cover of The Afghan Whigs’ “Debonair” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Somewhere along the line, coldwave became frighteningly good at keeping its shirt tucked in. The drum machines behave, the bass sits precisely where expected, everyone owns an appropriate black coat, and occasionally you begin wondering whether an entire subculture has been sentenced to spend eternity posing beside the same concrete wall. Then along comes Mercury Girl with Low Altitude, sounding sufficiently nervous to remind you that this music once existed because somebody had something eating at them.

Mercury Girl is the project of Filipino American San Diego musician Aaron Pena, whose debut album, A NuTone, arrives October 10. Low Altitude is its first single, and anxiety is practically another instrument in the arrangement. The drum machine keeps clipping forward at odd little angles while synth lines twitch overhead, creating the sensation of machinery functioning perfectly while its operator quietly considers pulling the emergency brake.

Then there is that bassline, lofty and strangely buoyant beneath Pena’s dissonant vocal, which seems emotionally several rooms removed from the comparatively hopeful chords surrounding it. A guitar eventually climbs through the arrangement with considerably more grandeur, briefly opening the ceiling before everything settles again into the song’s peculiar state of suspended agitation.

Black Marble, Harsh Symmetry, Molchat Doma, and Oppenheimer Analysis provide obvious relational coordinates, yet Pena understands the essential reason those records work: electronics can be emotionally merciless precisely because machines have no obligation to console anybody. Put a vulnerable voice beside a rigid drum pattern and suddenly every beat sounds like another second you have survived.

“This song reflects on a breakthrough I had when coming to terms with my depression,” says Pena. “I wanted to write a song capturing the internal isolation I’ve felt within me for a long time while echoing the catharsis I had after fully acknowledging it.”

Which could have produced a painfully earnest five-minute therapy session set to synthesizers, an occupational hazard of anybody writing openly about their own head. Pena has enough musical sense to leave the feelings inside the machinery, where they become stranger and more useful. Low Altitude carries its emotional trouble through repetition, distance, and those unexpectedly optimistic chords, suggesting the peculiar moment when understanding yourself provides relief without magically solving anything.

Listen to Low Altitude below and order the single here.

Recorded at home in San Diego, A NuTone will expand upon Pena’s experiences with depression, isolation, love, and the difficult business of accepting affection when your own brain occasionally argues against the proposition. Low Altitude makes an excellent introduction because beneath all those cold machines sits an old rock-and-roll problem with a very human soul, trying to figure out how to live inside himself.

Follow Mercury Girl:

• Instagram
• Spotify
• Bandcamp

The post San Diego Coldwave Act Mercury Girl Dives Deep in Cathartic Single “Low Altitude” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Epic heavy metal bangers Fer De Lance have shared a new special release in honor of Bandcamp Friday. The two-song package includes a cover of Savatage‘s classic “Hall Of The Mountain King”, from their 1987 album of the same name. This cover and the first track, “The Throne Room Of The Dovre-King”, are both taken from the sessions for last year’s Fires On The Mountainside. Proceeds from the release will fund the band’s upcoming “Ravens at Midnight” tour, which will take them and Midnight Force across Germany for six shows in September.
Read more…

Chasing patterns
Warnings and the like
Recognizing signs
You can see them too 

Some records are best understood by the room they create around you. Hermaphrodite, the new album from Phoenix industrial artist YZBL, turns that room into a place where the walls feel close, the floor seems unstable, and every beat lands with the private force of a thought you would rather keep buried. YZBL, pronounced “Jezebel,” has carried some of this physicality since her time in industrial goth trio Tassel, yet the music here feels newly concentrated, as though every spare element has been pulled toward one central question: who gets to decide what a body means?

The album’s third single, “Patterns,” brings dub and trip-hop deeper into YZBL’s industrial vocabulary. The beat moves with a narcotic drag, leaving enough empty space for the low end to feel enormous, while the heavier passages suggest Godflesh filtered through the nocturnal unease of Tricky. There is also a funereal beauty in the surrounding textures that brings This Mortal Coil to mind, especially in the way density and delicacy can occupy the same few seconds without smoothing each other out.

Where others might find only pain in dysphoria, YZBL finds a kind of power. Androgyny and hermaphroditism are words the artist reclaims deliberately. Her interest is not in a body that is read by others, but about a life built apart from those readings entirely

Across Hermaphrodite, dysphoria runs alongside a hard-won sense of power. YZBL treats androgyny and hermaphroditism as reclaimed language, terms used to clear space away from the gaze of people eager to classify the body. Her writing approaches identity with the bodily directness of Kathy Acker: intimate, confrontational, occasionally ugly by design, and alert to the violence hidden inside ordinary categories. The record’s minimal rhythms give those ideas room to breathe, while drones and thick guitar weight make the questions feel physical rather than academic.

The album’s core ultimately challenges the binary, not only externally imposed but also internalized by the artist. “I am most transphobic towards myself,” they controversially say, describing a lifelong war fought against the idea that “difference” is wrong.

That physical unease reaches its sharpest visual form in the black-and-white video for Patterns,” made by YZBL and Ash Barrett. The camera finds her in a dark, abandoned, dungeon-like space, lit by a single bulb as she scratches marks into the surface around her. The imagery carries the raw panic of The Blair Witch Project, but its performance-art severity belongs to YZBL’s own world: part confinement, part self-documentation, part evidence left behind.

Watch the video for Patterns below:

Hermaphrodite‘s force comes from the solidarity underneath all that weight. YZBL writes from a place where no assigned category, chosen identity, or outside reading can fully contain a person. By turning that uncertainty into rhythm, pressure, and language, she makes ambiguity feel less like a void than a territory worth defending. Existing on your own terms becomes a form of possession: of the body, of the room, and finally of the name you choose to answer to.

Out now through Lana Del Rabies’ Feral Crone Recordings, the album makes its title part of the argument. The word is intentionally loaded, reclaimed, and held up as a declaration of life beyond somebody else’s categories.

Listen to Patterns below, and order Hermaphrodite here

Follow YZBL:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• Bandcamp
• Spotify
• Apple Music

Follow Feral Crone Recordings:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• Bandcamp
• Substack
• Website

The post “Recognizing Signs” — YZBL Descends Into the Dungeon for Video “Patterns” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

To celebrate the return of founding guitarist Alicia Cordisco, US power metal battalion Judicator will release a new three-song EP, The Elector. The EP will be released on 4 September 2026 and will be the first Judicator release to feature Cordisco since 2020’s Let There Be Nothing. In addition to the new song “The Elector”, the EP features a re-recording of “Gloria” from Let There Be Nothing and a cover of ABBA‘s “Dancing Queen”. The artwork can be viewed below.
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You picked GA-20 with Charlie Musselwhite – BLUES NOW as your favorite new release for the week of July 31, 2026.

VIEW HEAVY AUSTRALIAN CONTENT DIGIMAG #277 HERE VIEW HEAVY AUSTRALIAN CONTENT DIGIMAG #277 HERE