Instrumental duo Missoula push your buttons with their new album Death Doula.
Missoula is the instrumental brainchild of drummer Brooks Wackerman (Avenged Sevenfold, Bad Religion) and guitarist John Konesky (Tenacious D). Konesky says, “Missoula is what happens when you take the reins off and let yourself run free, naked and fearless, thru an infinite universe.” Well then. That makes me think in terms of chaos, but, rather, the music has well-ordered energy and a pervasive artistic flair.
There are ten kickin’ tracks on the new record. Each is digestibly sized, the first five running under three minutes in length. Riff-driven, every nut has an internal kernel that fuels exploration. Sometimes there is syncopation coordinated with disruption, like with “Nixon Nights.” Other instances are spacey, as in “Love Bombs.” Some songs are crispy while others are lush. Not exactly something for everyone, but certainly a great deal of variation.
Stand out tracks for me include “Carnival,” which is very narrative (my mind tells me a story when it listens to the notes), and “Dracula’s Garden Party,” which wins the ribbon for best title – it is a wild ride that earns its distinction. It is also worth noting that “Folk Lores” is a little bit upsetting, but then the album closes with “Angry Plum,” a beautiful, peaceful acoustic song. I thoroughly enjoyed this album. Highly recommended.
Death Doula is available on Friday, June 26th from Org Music. Listen and get your very own at the links below.
Deftones have announced the details of the 7th edition of their one-day festival extravaganza, and the line-up is as brilliantly eclectic as expected.
Set to take place on November 07 at Petco Park, San Diego, it will be headlined by Deftones, of course. But they will also be joined by a star-studded array of alternative music greats. They are The Neighbourhood, AFI, Bktherula, Converge, Jehnny Beth, Ladrones, Lip Critic, and LustSickPuppy. A little bit of everything.
Tickets for the event will go on general sale from June 26 from right here.
Deftones are set to play a special all-dayer in the UK later this year as well. The band will be headlining All Points East x Outbreak, and will be joined by Idles, Amyl And The Sniffers, Esdeekid, JPEGMAFIA, ¥øu$Uk€ ¥uk1mat$U, Basement, Wisp, Deafheaven, Show Me The Body and more.
Parkway Drive have announced a tour of their native Australia for August, where they’ll play their first albums Killing With A Smile (2005) and Horizons (2007) in full.
The metalcore five-piece will put on two shows each in five different cities down under, with the first night dedicated to Killing… and the second to Horizons. They also promise to play some of their greatest hits at the stops.
Support acts for the Killing Horizons tour are yet to be announced, but tickets go on sale on Thursday (June 25) at 12 midday local time. A presale for the band’s fan-club, the Parkway Nation, will take place the same day at 10am. See the full list of dates below.
Parkway recently returned to the stage at the Hammersonic and Welcome To Rockville festivals in Indonesia and the USA respectively, six months after they wrapped up their 20th-anniversary tour with a leg of European shows.
“This happened before we were a band, however we bear moral responsibility for contracting him from 2003, on and off over the years,” the members wrote in a statement. “While he hasn’t toured with us since 2017, more recently he’s been part of our Australian online merch team.
“When the band heard about this, we terminated his contract immediately. He’s no longer involved with Parkway Drive in any capacity. This is heartbreaking on a very human scale.”
Parkway formed in Byron Bay in 2003 and quickly signed a joint deal with Sydney label Resist and prominent US hardcore label Epitaph. They still release their music through both companies.
Killing… and Horizons were produced by Adam Dutkiewicz, guitarist for US metalcore luminaries Killswitch Engage, and established the band’s presence in the Australian scene. Horizons was a particular commercial success, reaching number six on the country’s album chart. Both records are now recognised as Gold sellers by the Australian Recording Industry Association (ARIA).
“One of the massive things for us was the lack of clean singing; we were attached to the aggression to begin with,” he said. “Before Killing With A Smile, we were what Adam referred to as riff salad, which we referred to as risotto. We got everything and threw it together until you had enough bits and you called it a song.”
He added: “[Dutkiewicz] was like, ‘Dude, this riff is sick. Why are you only playing it for four bars? That’s the best part of the song.’”
Parkway’s last studio album, Darker Still, came out in 2022. McCall told Pełna Kulturka in November that the band hope to dedicate 2026 to writing the follow-up.
“It’s not like we have recorded an album, but focussing on making new music is literally all of the next year for us,” he said. “We said, OK, we’re not going to be touring much next year at all. It’s all going to be about creating new music.”
Hellfest 2026. Clisson, France. Three Days Grace. Hellfire is cooler. France has issued a nationwide ban on alcohol at state music festivals. However, the bars remain full at Hellfest, no doubt with people sensibly hydrating. Three Days Grace enter the arena cauldron to unleash their totemic anthems on the fired-up, water-hosed mass. “Here we fucking go,” announces the band.
Head-bouncing beats, and devil’s fingers are thrown forward like a soccer crowd egging on their heroes. Their drummer, Neil Sanderson, is heavy.
Three Days Grace – Hellfest 2026. Photo: Luke Vaughan/MetalTalk
Dual singers, Adam Gontier and Matt Walst, criss-cross the stage, connecting with fevered front rows. Opening with Dominate from their 2025 album disproves the adage that the old ones are the best, sending the moshers into action.
Being a relative noob to Three Days Grace, I wondered if their albums would translate to live. The answer is oh yes. This is no snoozefest. It is scampering fun with everyone either pitting, surfing or dancing and all of them are singing.
Matt Walst and Adam Gontier are the focus, supported by the lead guitar of Barry Stock and Brad Walst (the lead singer’s brother), on bass. Classic after classic rock the masses. Animal I have Become, Never Too Late, Painkiller, this is a set that keeps the devotees and less familiar jumping.
Three Days Grace – Hellfest 2026. Photo: Luke Vaughan/MetalTalk
The circle pits are a whirlpool, while the crowd surfers stream over the top. When the two meet, it gets tricky, but the pit soldiers, like ants in a nest, quickly redirect the excited, smiling surfers to their destination.
Security never stop. A conveyor catch line of the brave, the wasted and the crazy.
When talking to the crowd, they say the first ever song they released, I Hate Everything About You, has helped people through divorces, breakups and jail sentences.
Those fans who have lived these songs are taken into their emotional core. Straight after they drop the song Riot as a finale.
The reaction is frenetic and crazy, this has been a catharsis and a stinkingly hot, wildly fun rollercoaster of a set.
Three Days Grace – Hellfest 2026. Photo: Luke Vaughan/MetalTalk
HELLFEST 2026
Prepare to be consumed by the relentless energy of the most influential bands in Heavy Metal as they ignite the Hellfest stages with blistering performances. The immersive atmosphere of Clisson will immerse you in a dark, captivating experience like no other.
With its unparalleled lineup and unwavering commitment to the spirit of metal, Hellfest 2026 promises an unforgettable journey into the depths of sonic mayhem. Read all the Heavy Metal News at MetalTalk.
Ash Costello’s unmistakable vocals and New Years Day’s dark theatrical style helped the band carve out a distinctive place in modern hard rock and alternative metal. This complete list of New Years Day songs from A to Z explores the band’s entire recording career, featuring every officially released song, fan favorites, breakthrough singles, and deep cuts from one of the most recognizable hard rock bands to emerge from the 2000s. Formed in Anaheim, California, in 2005, New Years Day first gained attention through MySpace before building a dedicated fan base with relentless touring and a steady stream of new music.
Long ago on this very website, I briefly mentioned my relationship with Watching from a Distance and its “origin story” (See Paragraph Two) within the as-yet wildly silly narrative arc of my life, but I suppose it warrants elaboration given the unexpected nature of this release. Warning came to me at or very near the most impactful time, a time when I was the most ready, willing and able to be embalmed with someone else’s misery as if it could be an internal salve. This was a wee number of years after its official release, at the precipice of the 40 Watt Sun era, and somewhere between obsessing over Dimensional Bleedthrough and playing beer pong on the door to our laundry room that I discovered Watching and melted into its sepia-warm melancholy. The aches and pains felt lived-in and true. The guitar tone was an amalgamation of massively present yet wounded and remote. It cut when it lashed out but mostly stood guard, stoic and brittle. If Warning caught me at the wrong time of night or the bottom of my pendulum, I wept.
Time and life have blunted the initial tip of Watching from a Distance but it remains in the pantheon of albums that have written themselves into my permanent record. All that considered – what am I to do with Rituals of Shame? Comparison is the thief of joy, yes yes, but if you came into a new Warning record expecting an existent joy to be thieved, well, sounds like you’re a tad misguided.
Release date: June 19, 2026. Label: Relapse Records.
I don’t believe it’s wise to analyze Rituals of Shame divorced from its broader context. Watching from a Distance was 20 years ago, and that is indeed a crucial element at play for more than one reason, but Patrick Walker has also written, recorded and released four 40 Watt Sun albums. At the risk of being chronologically imprecise, you can reframe this as “Patrick Walker has been playing in a different band for 20 years”. 40 Watt Sun’s writing hit a heaviness nadir with Perfect Light in 2022, rebounding only slightly with Little Weight in 2024. Rituals of Shame continues this parabolic trajectory, and if indeed the ideas for these songs were initially conceived for 40 Watt Sun before the Warning rebrand, it tracks, because while these songs DO move with the weight and gait of Warning, their movement is across a stage most recently outfitted for 40 Watt Sun. If the band walked up and played “Landing Lights” in front of a 40 Watt Sun backdrop, I would anticipate widespread brow furrowing from the audience.
This all may sound obvious. “Artist Evolves, Retains Certain Tendencies” ain’t headline news, nor should it be. The POINT here is that when thinking of Rituals of Shame more as a stepping-stone toward a renewed era of Warning, I’m more forgiving of its faults (as few as there may be). This is not so much a new Warning album as it is a 40 Warn- Sun-ning album.
“Rituals of Shame”, the opening title track, does its damnedest to convince you otherwise. The entire first half of the song is the most convincingly Warning material on the album. If the rest of the album had followed suit, this review would be a great deal more effusively positive, but I digress. Patrick’s vocals in the verse are tinged with the same haunted grit of 20 years back, and it’s been almost as long since he has belted with such force. The guitar work is especially good. It’s difficult to tell how much of a difference the addition of Wayne Taylor on second guitar is making – Patrick’s riffs have always sounded like “Patrick riffs” – but the interplay between the two is delicately nuanced, that familiar mix of intertwining harmonies and monolithic chords. I can’t emphasize enough, really, how fulfilling a large portion of “Rituals of Shame” is. It hearkens back to everything that makes Watching from a Distance so special and coats it in a rich, analog warmth. It’s when the back half of the song takes over that the 40 Watt Sun-isms start meandering in, and this time I’m not convinced they are serving the material as effectively as they do in, say, “Carry Me Home” from The Inside Room. Two pervasive compositional tactics are presented and once I noticed them, they were difficult to ignore.
40 Watt Sun in recent years have been touring as a solo act, featuring Patrick Walker performing selections from their discography as well as, on occasion, Warning tracks. Hearing the songs stripped to just guitar and voice it’s easy to see back through the recorded tracks to their genesis. At their core, these are singer-songwriter tunes – sad creative plays a guitar, finds his chords and shapes his vocals from scribbles on a notepad. It doesn’t change when you blow it out to a full band and drape it in reverb and light distortion. Chord goes here, guitar ornaments to next chord, the singer keeps the story going. This is the modus operandi of Rituals ofShame, presented continually. What I recognized as a riff on first listen was just the transition to a new chord. The latter half of “Rituals of Shame” is Patrick emptying his lyrics as best he can via a meandering melody over a heavy, but rudimentary, chordal passage. Is it Warning, then? Were the riffs and song structures of past Warning the growing pains in getting to this final form? I can’t help but turn this idea over and over while spinning this album.
“Night Comes Down” is the most exciting track for the potential future of Warning, and NOT coincidentally it’s the only track on Rituals of Shame that assuages my fear of Patrick Walker being riff-avoidant. The opening section features a deliciously dour lead reminiscent of classic doom mixed with a stately aloofness more akin to Shape of Despair. The verse riff is even a riff, by golly, just a straight-ahead dissonant shitkicker! It isn’t long before the songwriting drifts back into familiar territory, but there’s enough fresh material within this one track that bucks the established trend. To these ears, a successful marriage of Patrick’s natural inclinations as a songwriter with an embrace of established, some might even say well-worn, doom tropes would strengthen the material immensely. “Night Comes Down” is the closest Rituals of Shame gets and it’s a forlorn sigh of fresh air.
Rituals of Shame closes wisely. If there were a song to exemplify the shallow, lonely chasm between Warning and 40 Watt Sun, it’s “Teacher”. Patrick’s vocal lines this time stretch and breathe naturally; the verbiage never overtakes the melody in importance, and while the last paragraph may have spent a fair amount of time lauding the presence of riffs, “Teacher” doesn’t really need any outright bruisers to make its point. I can liken it to “Carry Me Home” (it’s just too good a reference point) in the sense that the Warning-ness, the massive, brooding darkness of it all, does not play second fiddle to the competing lighter elements.
This has been a rather wishy-washy affair, hasn’t it, both the nature of the music and the direction of this author’s opinion? Were you waiting for some definitive, laudatory statement? A pithy condemnation? I have neither, for I simply cannot excise my thoughts on Rituals of Shame from the shackles of my nostalgic attachment to Warning’s previous output, nor can I ignore its unenviable position as somewhat of a bastard in the recent lineage. The magic is there, though. With each new listen I found more of it. When the ending notes of “Teacher” die and the opening crash of “Rituals of Shame” rolls back in, I remember why I fell in love with Warning in the first place. Emotive doom of this
I’m glad Rituals of Shame exists. If Warning ceased recording new material, it’s a worthy closing chapter to their modest story. If it’s the spark that reignites the flame, the follow-up might be something extraordinary. Here’s to hoping the team takes the new material for a spin on the road to stoke that fire some more.
Rock royalty Deep Purple have officially released their latest single, “Guilt Trippin’”, today on earMUSIC. The single drops just a few days ahead of the global release of their highly anticipated twelfth studio album, SPLAT!, which lands on July 3rd 2026. The track kicks off with a deceptively gentle piano introduction before bursting into one … Continue reading Deep Purple unleash brand-new single “Guilt Trippin’” ahead of new album
Brazil heavy metal/hard rock collective Dogma have launched an official music video for their newly streaming new single titled “My Matricidal”. Read more…
Loathe have shared another piece of their hotly-anticipated new album ‘A Stranger To You’, showcasing just how sensational their songwriting skills continue to be.
Titled ‘Fangs’, it sits on the more groove and tension-led side of the band’s sound rather than with their all-out chaotic tendancies. An instrumental that fizzes with as much jazz-tinged experimentation as smooth RnB intensity, it is matched with a vocal that demonstrates the incredible control and variety that Kadeem France has at his disposal.
The result is absolutely sterling. A beautifully patients, effortlessly catchy, wonderfully off-kilter piece of modern progression that further cements why Loathe are at the very top of the pile, no matter which side of the coin they are sitting on.
‘A Stranger To You’ will be released on July 17 via SharpTone Records.
You can check out the previously released ‘Revenant’ right now as well, which sounds a lot like this:
The band are due to hit the road across the US later this year in support of the album’s release. Here are all the dates:
SEPTEMBER
19 – ROYAL OAK Royal Oak Music Theatre 20 – TORONTO HISTORY 22 – BOSTON Citizens House of Blues 23 – PHILADELPHIA The Fillmore Philadelphia 24 – SILVER SPRING The Fillmore Silver Spring 25 – BROOKLYN Brooklyn Paramount 27 – CHARLOTTE The Fillmore Charlotte 28 – ATLANTA Tabernacle 29 – ORLANDO House of Blues 30 – ST. PETERSBURG Jannus Live
OCTOBER
02 – HOUSTON Bayou Music Center 03 – DALLAS South Side Ballroom 04 – AUSTIN Stubb’s Waller Creek Amphitheater 06 – DENVER Fillmore Auditorium 07 – SALT LAKE CITY The Union Event Center 09 – LAS VEGAS House of Blues 10 – TUCSON Rialto Theatre 11 – LOS ANGELES Hollywood Palladium 13 – SAN FRANCISCO The Masonic
On October 16th 2026, Italian doom metal formation Shores Of Null will put out heir fifth studio record dubbed Homesick. The 10-piece music output was recorded, mixed and mastered by Marco Mastrobuono at Bloom Recording Studios. Read more…
