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BuzzOuter is a new alternative rock outfit fast becoming a fixture of Cyprus’s small but growing rock scene, has released their debut EP, Hold Me Up. The four-track collection is out now on all major streaming platforms. The young band builds its sound at the intersection of alternative rock and alternative metal, threading in punk-edged […]

EVILLE have kickstarted a brand-new era, signing to Easy Life Records and dropping a huge single with RedHook’s Emmy Mack.

The trio’s first release via their new label home is titled ‘Flip Phone’, and it’s filled with energy, attitude, and heaviness.

Speaking about the new single, EVILLE vocalist Eva Sheldrake has shared:

“When we were writing Flip Phone we wanted to make something nostalgic, fun and liberating. We also knew straight away that we wanted Emmy to sing on it and she absolutely nailed it.”

Lending her talents to the track for a guest appearance, here’s what RedHook vocalist Emmy Mack had to say about the collaboration:

“I’ve been a huge fan of Eville since we toured the UK together last year so it was a total no-brainer when they hit me up to collab! The song itself had such a fun lyrical concept, I unreservedly enjoyed the challenge of cramming as many cheeky Y2K refs as I possibly could into these bars. I hope people have as much fun listening to it as we had making it!”

EVILLE are currently on the road with Lake Malice for some shows across the UK and Europe.

Check out the full list of remaining dates below.

SEPTEMBER

28: LEIPZIG Naumanns
29: HAMBURG Betty
30: NIJMEGEN Merleyn

OCTOBER

02: BRISTOL Exchange
03: LEEDS The Key Club
04: GLASGOW G2
06: MANCHESTER Academy 3
07: NOTTINGHAM Rescue Rooms
09: LONDON The Garage

The post EVILLE Team Up With RedHook’s Emmy Mack On ‘Flip Phone’ appeared first on Rock Sound.

Posted on September 28th 2026, 12:40pm

Adeline V. Lopez, a Berklee College of Music student and rising artist in the Boston music scene, released her new pop rock single, Loving Don’t Make Money, on September 6 after a strong live debut at Bill’s Bar in Boston. Adeline‘s successful last single, The Prince was about the downtown New York nightclub scene and […]

Frost* return to the stage for six UK shows in Spring 2027 to celebrate a multitude of milestones as 2026 marks the 20th anniversary of Milliontown as well as the 10th anniversary of Falling Satellites.

The band will reunite onstage for the first time in five years to play a full two-hour set showcasing songs from all five Frost* albums, including the long-awaited live debut of the most recent award-winning and hugely acclaimed album Life In The Wires.

Tickets are on sale from Friday 2 October 2026, 10 am UK time at frost.life/frost-live.

MetalTalk covered the Frost* show at Islington Assembly Hall on 1 December 2022, where the band all wore white T-shirts with black sleeves, and they had their names, dates of birth and gender on them.

“It’s so tough to go out on the road nowadays as everything is so expensive,” Jem Godfrey said at his last MetalTalk Interview talking about that tour. “We did one show in Europe on that run, and the carnet was ridiculous. They even wanted to know the serial numbers of the cables we took.”

Robert Adams then suggested that they could kill two birds with one stone and have carnet t-shirts made up as merchandise, which list each band member’s equipment used.

“That’s a brilliant idea,” Jem smiled, furiously scribbling on a piece of paper. “Do you charge commission?” We wait with bated breath to see their tour dress.

Announcing this tour, Jem Godfrey says, “It’s going to be the longest set we’ve ever played at two hours, and we hope to cram as much in as we can from the entire back catalogue.

“That said, we also need to give Life In The Wires a bit of a spin too, don’t we? Nice problem to have, really.”

To further commemorate the anniversaries of Milliontown and Falling Satellites, the band are working on a re-recorded version of Milliontown featuring the now-considered classic lineup of Jem Godfrey, John Mitchell, Nathan King and Craig Blundell, as well as an updated recording of Falling Satellites for later release.

The post Frost* Return To The Stage In 2027 – Will The Carnet T-Shirts Finally Appear? first appeared on MetalTalk – Heavy Metal News, Reviews and Interviews.

They say if you listen to the demo tape Perry left on the studio desk, you don’t just hear the track—you end up on it. It starts with a mechanical hum that clicks into your chest, syncing your heartbeat to the motor. Then comes the smell of hot ozone and wet iron. By the time […]

Canadian cellist Raphael Weinroth-Browne probably needs no introduction at this point, which is a bit surprising, given that this is a metal blog. He first graced these halls in 2015 through The Visit, and, as a soloist, in early 2020 with the spectacular Worlds Within. By now, his “not not metal” approach to cello is a familiar comfort to this reviewer in particular. He is a frequent guest on my year-end lists, and I always look forward to his work, especially since last year’s Lifeblood, which—hang on, that was just last year? Turns out Weinroth-Browne has been busy over the last little bit, with his third full-length, Empyrean, coming less than a year after the last. That might be an indication we should be wary, or maybe the man is simply filled with good ideas. Let’s find out.

Empyrean is different than most everything Raphael Weinroth-Browne has done recently. Generally, I think of his work as being neo-classical, but there’s a clear metal influence in what he does that acts as a sort of anchor to his work—certainly Lifeblood had a heavy spine that guided much of its direction. But Empyrean began its days as a commission from a contemporary dance company, an invitation for Weinroth-Browne to build a score for a show called BACH Reimagined. The metal influence is there, of course, but this time intertwined with baroque sensibilities. As a result, it is less tangible, more open, and really highlights the “classical.” Tracks flow in and out of each other without clear breaks—I often check my player around track four (the dream-like “Murmuration”), surprised to realize I’m not on the first song anymore. Nowhere near it, in fact—Empyrean is stealing my sense of time.

That is the album’s main strength: it flows. Not quite like Worlds Within, where everything was re-dedicated around core ideas, but in a natural, airy way that just sort of glides from one idea to the next without looking back. The brief-yet-dramatic romp of “Remnant” becomes the journeying “Evocation” before you know it, and it’s not until “Integration” (track five!) that I notice we’ve moved well past the opener. Speaking of “Evocation,” it’s a gorgeous song and an album highlight. It swells softly, capturing an adventurous feeling with impressively quiet grace. Later, “Reflection” brings in more of that metal influence Raphael Weinroth-Browne knows and loves, with percussion and backing riffs that support a searching, soaring melody. It maintains the quiet dignity Empyrean is built on while still feeling like the kind of thing you might read about on a metal blog—”classic” Raphael Weinroth-Browne. Of course, we get there without really realizing we’ve gotten there; it doesn’t flow seamlessly from the earlier “Sanctum,” but the groundwork is laid so well that it doesn’t feel out of place on an album much more classical than I’d expected.

I could argue that the flow of Empyrean is perhaps its greatest drawback too. There are many great ideas on Empyrean that appear once only and are quickly discarded as the unyielding cello moves to its next idea. On Lifeblood, the longer track lengths often meant we stayed with one central idea for an extended length of time, building around it and creating something impactful. While Empyrean is ten full minutes shorter (around 48 minutes over nine tracks), it feels somehow longer as the songs blend and occasionally lose ground transitioning from one ephemeral idea to the next. We end the journey with the title track, which sets down a gorgeous melody that builds and swells and fades, but never really goes anywhere or does anything. It’s beautiful, but it’s restrained. That may just be the metalhead in me talking—Empyrean takes us further from our “comfort zone” (in that this is a metal blog) than previous Raphael Weinroth-Browne albums—but it does feel like Empyrean is not as focused as it could be.

In fact, Empyrean feels almost like an improvisation, like Raphael Weinroth-Browne is speaking through his instrument, freehand, and inviting us to just listen. It’s a great way to spend the better part of an hour, and it sounds beautiful as ever—he is a master of his instrument. Empyrean feels a touch unfocused compared to previous releases, but if you want to just close your eyes and follow the threads of this journey, it is still as rewarding and enriching an experience as I’ve come to hope for.

---

Rating: 3.0/5.0
DR: 7 | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Self release
Websites: raphaelweinroth-browne.bandcamp.com | raphaelweinrothbrowne.com | facebook.com/raphcello
Releases Worldwide: September 11th, 2026

The post Raphael Weinroth-Browne – Empyrean Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.

M & J had this to say about the track God Bless, Our Soldiers. “Hi legends, this is a deeply personal song as it began as a tribute to my grandfather that fought in ww2 for the Australia alongside our allies (British & American amongst others) and it turned into a letter of gratitude for […]

Posted on September 28th 2026, 12:14pm

During the spring, up at the lake, the birds make nests. If you head up there early morning, you can watch the hatchlings take to the water. They’re yellow, fluffy and cute. Within a few weeks that picture begins to change. They start to grow. They become scrawny. They’re no longer hatchlings, but they’re not a proper birds either. Not yet. They’re these strange, feathered, malformed things. Similar, in fact, to where Butcher Babies found themselves. They’ve become something but what?

Let’s take a step back. Once upon a time there was an alt-metal band called Butcher Babies. They built their name with an intense live show. It was all about attitude, an absolutely terrifying assault based on Heidi Shepherd and Carla Harvey screaming at each other over grinding guitar riffs. Years passed, their music evolved and then in 2024 Harvey left. Everything had to change.

Having Shepherd as the sole vocalist redefines the band, and ‘NIGHTBLOOM’ is a different kind of record. The established “Butcher Baby” attitude is channeled into more traditional song structures, featuring less screaming, more clean singing and fewer chugging guitars. It’s the direction 2023’s ‘Eye For An Eye…’ pointed towards but this pushes those features further, and there is an obvious reason for this; the record was produced by Howard Benson. The difference this makes is so stark you’d be shocked if he didn’t have a songwriting credit on every track. Basically, he lends the record the high level of craft and construction that the band have often struggled to maintain. Every song feels like a quality piece of work. Each feels distinctive. Each is simply great.

Wisely, the album opens with ‘Lost In Your Touch’, the most Butcher Babies song here. It’s basically built around a thick guitar riff and aggressive screaming but it is also built around a big, clean chorus, designed to establish what their sound means now. Between this and the similarly styled closing track ‘Black Dove’, the band explore different aspects of their new sound, pushing themselves in different ways but retaining the same sense of propulsive energy.

The music is modern metal, comparable to recent Architects records. This is heard most clearly on ‘Broken & Beautiful’ where the verses are electronic pulses but guitar riffs underscore the choruses. Each song is a variation on this idea and some are heavier than others. At one end of the scale ‘Fever In My Neck’ is filled with vicious metal riffs while ‘Black Clouds Over Georgia’ borders on soft rock. Stripping out the repetitive thrash-style grind that defined 2015’s ‘Take It Like A Man’ makes the sound much more accessible and results in a tonality that might be less distinctive but is far more consistent.

This isn’t the first time the band has worked with outside songwriters (you can easily tell which songs on 2017’s ‘Lilith’ were written by Atreyu’s Brandon Saller) but here the whole album feels like a collaboration. Again, this isn’t a bad thing; it’s all about quality. Each song is carefully constructed and the spaces are filled in different ways to add flavour. There are thoughtful keyboard melodies on ‘Leaving California’, ripping guitar licks on ‘Black Clouds Over Georgia’ and whirling synths on ‘Are You Waiting Up?’ But none of them feel cluttered in a way that detracts from the song’s emotional arc. The overall effect is a record with subtle character despite being made up of straightforward songs that all feel like singles.

Without a secondary vocalist, and with a much heavier emphasis on singing, the band’s whole dynamic has changed. Luckily, Shepherd is a great singer. Her style leans on phrases in unusual or varied ways which is strong enough to match her biting screams. For comparison, it’s a similar style to In This Moment’s Maria Brink. In fact, the record’s biggest strength is Shepherd’s strong approach to melodies. They’re delightfully weird on ‘Sincerity’ where she sings the title in a counterintuitive way yet packs hooks around it so the song doesn’t lose its momentum. Or on a ‘Fever In My Neck’ where she over-pronounces the words and leans on each syllable making it feel thrillingly nasty. For someone so skilled at death growls she also makes great use of higher registers. The best example is the single ‘Blame It On The Wind’ where the massive chorus switches between a forceful statement and a high denouement. It’s catchy, straightforward and genuinely great. Indeed, every song could be described like this, making for a record that feels easy when obviously it’s not. It’s the kind of record that’s ideal for a gym session; consistent and energetic.

Shepherd has an intriguing approach to lyrics. Change is on her mind. The choices she makes here contrast and intertwine with her previous work in unusual ways. Although there are the references to destruction and ‘gasoline’ found on previous records, here the theme of change is explored using different bird metaphors. You can hear this most directly on ‘Black Dove’ and ‘Songbird’ but the idea of growth and leaving permeates the album. In effect, it’s about regret. Although sorrow defines ‘Black Clouds Over Georgia’ and ‘Lost In Your Touch’, it contrasts with the ideas of change found on the more aggressive songs to create a sense of depth. However, it is the penultimate track ‘Leaving California’ that proves to be the highlight. The chorus has a mournful edge and the sadness in the way Shepherd sings ‘Shudda known better’ provides a strong emotional hook. Positioned towards the end, it feels like the record is building toward it, creating a gentle arc.

With a new lineup, change was inevitable. The dynamic is completely different but the trade-off proves worthwhile. Butcher Babies have shed their feathers, grown into something graceful and become a fully-fledged member of the flock. By surrendering some of their uniqueness they’ve made their strongest and most consistent record.

IAN KENWORTHY