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  • Doug Gillard: Parallel Stride – Album Review

    Doug Gillard: Parallel Stride (Dromedary Records) DL available here April 24 2026 A fabulously catchy album of songs from the old GBV and Nada Surf guitarist, Doug Gillard. Ah, songs, what would we do without them? Songs – good ones, which stick around in your head – are what you get in spades with Doug […]

    The post Doug Gillard: Parallel Stride – Album Review appeared first on Louder Than War.

  • Zakk Wylde to Continue Double Duty in Second Leg of Black Label Society’s ‘American Crusade’

    Black-Label-Society-Promo-2025

    For a while now, Zakk Wylde’s been a busy, busy boy. Not only had he been touring with Pantera for a loooong time, but his band Black Label Society released their latest album Engines of Destruction and has been on tour with Zakk Sabbath (Wylde’s Black Sabbath cover band) for its ‘American Crusade’ tour. That’s all well and good, but that tour isn’t quite over just yet, as it was announced that a second leg of the tour will take place this summer.

    Set to take place from August 25 in Albany, New York until the final show takes place on October 2 in Bend, Oregon, the second leg of the ‘American Crusade’ tour will once again see BLS and Zakk Sabbath share the stage, meaning Zakk Wylde’s gonna be pulling double duty for another 20 shows. They’ll also have Dark Chapel on the bill, so there should be some downtime for Wylde between sets.

    Tickets go on sale this Friday, April 24 at 10 a.m. local time. That’s for both general admission tickets, as well as the VIP upgrades on offer. A pre-sale is currently ongoing at the band’s website. All you need to enter that is to use the code BLS2026.

    You can find all of the tour’s dates below. Be sure to find the nearest venue to you and get your tickets when they go live this Friday.

    Black Label Society ‘American Crusade’ Dates:
    w/Zakk Sabbath and Dark Chapel

    Aug-25 | Albany, NY | The Palace Theatre
    Aug-26 | Buffalo, NY | Buffalo Riverworks
    Aug-31 | Asheville, NC | Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
    Sep-02 | Houston, TX | Bayou Music Center
    Sep-04 | San Antonio, TX | Boeing Center at Tech Port
    Sep-05 | Dallas, TX | The Bomb Factory
    Sep-09 | N Kansas City, MO | VooDoo at Harrah’s Kansas City
    Sep-11 | Chesterfield, MO | The Factory at the District
    Sep-12 | Chicago, IL | Aragon Ballroom
    Sep-13 | Cleveland, OH | Jacobs Pavilion
    Sep-15 | Raleigh, NC | The Ritz
    Sep-18 | Pittsburgh, PA | Stage AE Outside
    Sep-19 | Grand Rapids, MI | GLC Live at 20 Monroe
    Sep-22 | Green Bay, WI | Epic Event Center
    Sep-24 | East Moline, IL | The Rust Belt
    Sep-25 | Waite Park, MN | The Ledge – Waite Park Amphitheater
    Sep-26 | Council Bluffs, IA | Harrah’s Stir Cove
    Sep-29 | Garden City, ID | Revolution Concert House and Event Center
    Sep-30 | Airway Heights, WA | Northern Quest Amphitheater
    Oct-02 | Bend, OR | Hayden Homes Amphitheater

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    The post Zakk Wylde to Continue Double Duty in Second Leg of Black Label Society’s ‘American Crusade’ appeared first on MetalSucks.

  • Dave Mason Passed Away

    Dave Mason Passed Away

    The great Dave Mason died on April 19th, one month short of hitting 80, and hitting various marks and hurdles has always been his thing. Back in 2015, the veteran this scribe, when asked about his career arc, “Hopefully, I … Continue reading

    The post Dave Mason Passed Away appeared first on DMME.net.

  • “Veering between sweet and sour, violent metal, disturbing imagery and cutesy melodies.” A guide to every Poppy album so far

    From debut Poppy.Computer to this year’s Empty Hands, here’s what you need to know about the discography of one of modern metal’s most unique creatives
  • The All-American Rejects Share New Single ‘King Kong’

    The iconic pop-rock band The All-American Rejects unleash their explosive new single ‘King Kong’ – listen HERE. The track is the
  • Split Premiere: Nixil / Drouth – Toward Dead Temples

    Some splits feel like a handshake. Toward Dead Temples, the new release from Baltimore black metallers Nixil and Portland black/death quartet Drouth, feels like two fronts advancing on the same battlefield—separately aligned, equally intent on leveling what stands in front of them.

    Nixil’s side moves with a suffocating sense of spiritual decay, rooted in confrontation—both ideological and internal. The band frames their contribution as an excavation of “the spiritual depth of death and isolation,” targeting what they describe as the “crumbling edifice of Christo-fascism” with a clear endgame: total eradication of the oppressor. That intent isn’t abstract. It’s embedded in the language, the pacing, the atmosphere.

    “Never Rise Again” sets the tone with imagery that feels ritualistic in its destruction—“every shard a poisonous seed sown under the nailbeds of god”—until divinity itself is reduced to something brittle and failing. There’s a sense of design behind it, a slow and deliberate tearing down rather than blind fury. That approach carries through “Bloody Footprints on the Path of Bones,” which reads like a trial by ordeal—self-annihilation as transformation, pushing forward through fire, isolation, and will.

    By the time “I Am Not Here” arrives, the collapse has turned inward. The self dissolves into absence—“a wandering ghost in living death,” untethered from both form and meaning. It’s here that the band’s stated shift toward “stranger, more unsettling discordance” becomes fully apparent—less about impact, more about something that seeps in and stays there.

    Drouth approaches from a different axis—less concerned with dismantling belief from within than with erasing its structures entirely. Their two tracks, originally recorded during The Teeth of Time sessions, serve as a bridge between past and future iterations of the band, carrying forward their dense, blackened death metal weight while pushing into more expansive, disorienting territory.

    “Cathartes Aura” operates on scale, its language sweeping and elemental. Fire dominates—purging, illuminating, consuming. “Burn the library of antiquity… set fire our ships in glory,” they declare, cutting ties with history in favor of something harsher and undefined. There’s grandeur here, but it’s scorched—triumph reframed as something already decaying.

    That sense of instability deepens in “The Outer Church,” which abandons scale for confinement. The track unfolds like a maze with no center—corridors looping, space collapsing in on itself, orientation slipping with every step. The plea—“Will you not lower me the rope?”—lands with real desperation before the final image seals it: a curtain drawn back by something vast and unknowable.

    Together, Toward Dead Temples settles into a shared language of collapse—of systems, of belief, of self. Nixil strips the structure down to its foundations; Drouth burns what remains and leaves the void exposed. Both arrive at the same endpoint, just from different directions.

    For fans of the dissonant, forward-pushing edges of Blut Aus Nord, Altar of Plagues, and The Ruins of Beverast—with flashes of Ulcerate’s density and Spectral Wound’s sharpened aggression—Toward Dead Temples doesn’t offer catharsis. It removes the illusion that you were ever meant to find it.

    Pre-order the release here through either Nixil or Drouth before it drops on Friday, and—until then—stream the full package below.

    The post Split Premiere: Nixil / Drouth – <i>Toward Dead Temples</i> appeared first on Decibel Magazine.

  • Judas Priest Announces New Compilation Album, “The Best Of Judas Priest”

    Heavy metal icons Judas Priest has announced that they will release a new compilation on June 19th, aptly titled, "The Best Of Judas Priest." The album will feature sixteen tracks taken from the beginning of their career up to their latest album, "Invincible Shield." "The Best Of Judas Priest" will be available on CD, colour vinyl and picture disc … Read More/Discuss on Metal Underground.com
  • Traffic’s Dave Mason Dead At 79

    Dave Mason, the UK musician best known for his time with the classic rock institution Traffic, has passed away. According to the social media announcement, Mason died peacefully in his sleep at home in Gardnerville, Nevada on Sunday. No cause of death has been reported. Mason was 79.

    The post Traffic’s Dave Mason Dead At 79 appeared first on Stereogum.

  • The Story Behind Every Song On April + VISTA’s Masterful New Album Traditional Noise

    Traditional Noise will go down as one of the most staggeringly beautiful collections of music this year. The album, out today, is billed as April + VISTA’s full-length debut. But because the DC duo has been releasing music for close to a decade, it also works as a culmination of everything they’ve been building toward. These 11 tracks will reward the patience of those who’ve been keeping their ears to the ground. And for newcomers, it all adds up to a startling introduction.

    The post The Story Behind Every Song On April + VISTA’s Masterful New Album <em>Traditional Noise</em> appeared first on Stereogum.