Gearing up for the release of the highly anticipated manifesto of metal ‘Teutonic Titans 1976-2026‘ (out this Friday, September 4th , 2026, via Napalm Records), heavy metal force ACCEPT unveil the final single with a new version of ‘Losers and Winners‘. Originally appearing on ‘Balls to the Wall‘ (1983), the re-rendition of the track shines […]
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A particularly bawdy sense of reverence for their forefathers has always been part of Airbourne’s DNA. Clearly, from singer Joel O’Keeffe’s lusty rasp to their overheated blues-rock stomp, to the barrage of single entendres, cartoonish women and blokey swagger of their lyrics, they are and remain the bastard sons of AC/DC, pillaging the world one festival at a time.
Their sixth album has been long in the making, recorded at Music Farm Studio outside Byron Bay using an original console once used and abused by AC/DC, Rose Tattoo and The Angels. And while the vintage equipment and tracks recorded to tape have lent a timeless quality to the record, that theme of praising those who went before continues with the subject matter.
Closing song Send Me To Rock’n’Roll Heaven doffs a grubby cowboy hat to Lemmy, John Bonham, Bon Scott, and Little Richard, among others, making it an aural Ouija board that transports the listener straight to the ultimate party from beyond the grave. It’s a celebration of past legends, nostalgic without the mawkishness, and jammed with all the energy its roll call demands.
The big names just keep arriving. Stompers Who Put The Rhythm In You and Here She Comes are co-writes with Bryan Adams and producer Mutt Lange, who add a bit of arena-ready, singalong gloss, and could have been released any time in the past 45 years or so.
There’s plenty of horny silliness at play, too, not least in the pleasingly preposterous attempt at a Christmas No.1 built for festive celebrations on an antipodean beach. Yep, while Christmas Bonus might not reach the daft-as-a-brush heights of The Darkness’s Christmas Time (Don’t Let The Bells End) – the industry standard for innuendo-stuffed, tinsel-clad glee – its sleighbell-spattered tale of a woman so skilled when she’s stuffing her stockings she ‘makes Santa come twice’, alongside the most sexually charged “ho ho ho” you’ll hear this year, is a celebration of the glorious idiocy that so often makes rock’n’roll so much damn fun.
In the middle of all this is deft, speedy, relentless musicianship served with a big, affectionate dollop of heart that screams of love for the genre. Lemmy and co. must surely be looking down with a large glass of celestial Jack Daniel’s, smiling at the chaos they paved the way for.
The UK’s Rock & Metal Festival continues to build momentum ahead of 2027. As the 2026 summer festival season draws to a close, Call Of The Wild Festival is already looking firmly towards 2027, and continues to whet the appetite with an eclectic third wave of band announcements guaranteed to please, excite and intrigue rock […]
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There’s something innately American about Chat Pile. It helps that they’re based in Oklahoma. This is the Wild West, where the corn is as high as an elephant’s eye – Uncle Sam’s territory. But Chat Pile has seldom sought comfort in their hometown. Their debut album ‘God’s Country’ features cover artwork that displays the Oklahoma County Detention Centre; a grisly visage of the cruelty often purported as the American dream. Their second, ‘Cool World’, features artwork depicting a monolithic cross, photographed just north of Oklahoma City – a stately image of conservative fundamentalism. For their third and latest, ‘Who Loves The Sun’, the artwork depicts a stark contrast between a foreground of urban abandonment and a distantly affluent world that is at once both seductive and unobtainable. All three albums incidentally are also sludgy juggernauts of metallic rage.
Cover art of this nature doesn’t inherently mean Chat Pile dislike Oklahoma. Their home state is merely indicative of the kind of societal ills that are ubiquitous. Past songs about Oklahoman homelessness (‘Why’) or the local meat industry (‘Slaughterhouse’), may sound hyper-localised, but these problems carry a borderless universality that is part of Chat Pile’s appeal.
‘PEN I S MALL’ – one of this new album’s already-released singles – continues this trend. Yes, it is lyrically inspired by vocalist Ray B.’s time working as a local maintenance man, but themes about capitalism’s repressive nature turning life into “a series of acts of subordination,” are applicable worldwide. The song’s emotional palette is twofold; despair and rage. The former is lyrical and the latter instrumental, which largely summarises Chat Pile’s third and most brutal album to date. It’s not hard to imagine Ray B.’s fury manifesting in a vocal performance achieved only by smashing up the recording studio in the process.
Chat Pile fans will be used to this. But ‘Who Loves The Sun’ is an especially feral album. The aptly named ‘Creature’ bashes around like one, its brooding riffs a perfect accompaniment to lyrics about self-imposed extinction – “Please don’t say we couldn’t stop this,” Ray B. bemoans morbidly.
It’s all rather bleak, what with most of the album being dedicated to themes of global turpitude and suffering. It is also agreeable in its criticisms, so much so that at times it teeters on the edge of sounding glib. But Chat Pile back their stances by being no more street smart than they are book smart. Take ‘Deep Blue’, its title sharing a name with the computer that famously defeated chess world champion Garry Kasparov in the ‘90s, forming a lofty allusion that encapsulates technocratic anxiety. There’s likewise a pleasing Kafka reference, with Ray B. stating that he “might be a bug now but I still gotta get to work.” This is a band whose anger is not only sincere, it is accompanied by a reading list.
They’re also somewhat of an old-fashioned prospect when it comes to the use of the riff which, like all good descendants of Sabbath, is central to their songwriting. There are occasions when Chat Pile rely perhaps too heavily on this, with songs like ‘Christabel ‘26’ and ‘Influence’ gleaning all potential from the weight of these riffs alone, but Chat Pile are nonetheless creative songwriters, using jagged riffs to cast a spiky mysteriousness across ‘Intruder’. In one of the band’s more sinister moments of storytelling, Ray. B. talks of an imposter “dreaming about a life that’s fair and true,” who finds themselves “living under your bed now, knife inside your sleeping mouth.” It’s the stuff of nightmares, all from a band with no qualms about using the vividness of their imagery to create something evil.
It might all sound a little too gruesome for some. Fortunately though, ‘Who Loves The Sun’ does include vocals that are so overwrought, some of this macabre storytelling is rendered near inaudible as Ray B.’s vocals sear their way through the Oklahoman heat of these ten songs, his growls and roars becoming their own instrument, offering a visceral enjoyment all of its own.
So, when on ‘Family Funeral’ he reverts to a clearer, almost conversational tone, it’s arresting. “I never wanted to be in love,” Ray B. sings. “Awful thing, dreadful thing.” The unravelling and titular funeral that follows is hideous when taken at face value. When considered as a metaphor – for human suffering, the breakdown of community and the dissolving of relationships more broadly – it sees Chat Pile at their most disconsolate.
Let that be a reminder then that, while Chat Pile deserve praise for the knockabout brashness of their chunky riffs and Ray B.’s savage vocals, ‘Who Loves The Sun’ should be approached with caution. It is an album that faces difficult subjects with striking earnestness, however painful that may be.
BEN WILLIAMS
When Spooky Tooth agreed to collaborate with composer Pierre Henry, the resulting album – 1969’s Ceremony – turned out to be a brave but misguided disaster that, as far as one band member was concerned, ruined their career. In 2013 Prog argued that, with the passage of time, Ceremony deserves a second look.
In the spring of 1969, Spooky Tooth could have been forgiven for thinking they had the world at their feet. Their second album, Spooky Two, had been canonised in the music press – and with just cause.
Shortly afterwards, the band were approached by avant-garde French composer Pierre Henry, who was seeking a rock band to collaborate on his next project.
Formally trained at the Paris Conservatoire, Henry had developed an interest in studying the art of noise, which led to him becoming an exponent of musique concrète. He exhibited the results in Symphonie Pour Un Homme Seul (“Symphony for One Man Alone”) – a work based entirely upon sounds made by the human body.
He’d also scored the ballet Messe Pour Le Temps Present (“Mass For The Present Time”) in 1967, including a piece called Psyché Rock, which was later remade to become the Futurama theme tune.
Henry proposed the concept of a holy ritual, and Spooky Tooth keyboardist Gary Wright warmed to the idea, composing six numbers laden with Gothic overtones and laced with enough Wagnerian chords to give the Hellfire monks of Medmenham the heebie-jeebies.
While other band members may not have shared the same level of enthusiasm, they nevertheless entered wholeheartedly into the concept; and mad vicar Mike Harrison’s gutsy, gospel-tinged vocals conferred much authority upon proceedings.
Henry had no contact with the band during his recording process; upon receiving the two-track tapes, he overdubbed his own contributions.
The result was a work which possessed a kinship with Terry Riley’s A Rainbow In Curved Air, and An Electric Storm by White Noise; and held a direct lineage to Louis and Bebe Barron’s soundtrack for sci-fi classic Forbidden Planet.
Ceremony (An Electronic Mass) was released by Island Records in the December of 1969 – without the consensus of the band. “That wasn’t our album,” Wright said in a later interview. “It was with this French electronic music composer named Pierre Henry. We told the label, ‘You know, this is his album, not our album. We’ll play on it just like musicians.’”
The release drew scathing reviews and divided fans – as did John Holmes’ provocative cover art. After recently gained notoriety for the jacket of Germaine Greer’s book The Female Eunuch) Holmes depicted a man with a hand nailed to his head – an image that some believed irreligiously aped the crucifixion of Christ.
Although a commercial success in France, the album failed to chart elsewhere. It fractured the original Spooky Tooth line-up as a disillusioned Wright (who died in 2023) quit the band, declaring the work “an utter failure.”
“When it was finished they said, ‘It’s great – we’re gonna release this as your next album,’” Wright recalled. “We said, ‘You can’t do that. It doesn’t have anything to do with the direction of Spooky Two and it will ruin our career.’ And that’s exactly what happened.”
But he was wrong, even if it felt like that at the time. Ceremony may have been flawed – but fusing electronic music and rock became the cornerstone of an entire progressive movement, with proponents directly related to Ceremony including Robert Fripp and Brian Eno. The artists who made the 1969 proto-prog experiment should be proud of it.
German hard rock titans MAD MAX celebrate the record release of ‘Stories Of Destiny‘ with a brand-new music video for ‘Dulces Falsos‘. The song marks a special first in the band’s history: it is the first MAD MAX track ever recorded with Spanish lyrics and presents their classic ‘Piece Of Candy‘ in a powerful new […]
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The Liquid Arcade is a powerhouse Aussie rock outfit delivering raw, guitar-driven energy with a sharp modern edge. Their debut EP, Eleven 11, brings together an absolute dream team of Australian rock royalty, featuring Peter Oxley (Sunnyboys), Paul Larsen (Celibate Rifles), Alister Spence (Asteroid Ekosystem), and Shane Purnell on trumpet. To cap it all off, legendary Celibate Rifles guitarist Kent Steedman makes a guest appearance to close out the EP’s final track, “Outro.”
Recorded at Sydney’s Oceanic Studios with engineer Brent Clark and mastered by Steve Smart at Studios 301, Eleven 11 captures the spirit and grit of classic Oz rock while keeping things fiercely modern.
I love the mood and the attitude of their new single “Dirty Rock’n’Roll”, I find it classic but very inspired, love the guitars, the dynamic rhythm section and the energetic and catchy vocals. A very cool song, amazingly performed by the band and with a top notch production as well.
Give it a go by clicking on the Spotify player below and follow The Liquid Arcade if you like what you hear.