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Dreams do come true. I am the living proof of this. Because if we go back to 2010 when I became a Nightwish fan, there was just one thing that I wanted to do, and that was to meet Anette Olzon, and tell her that she changed and saved my life. I had to wait only 16 years to do that, but it was worth the whole thing. I also got the honor of interviewing her for FemMetal, and you can read here what we talked about.

Benedetta

Hi Anette, how are you doing?

Anette Olzon

I’m fine, thank you. I’m really happy to be touring again.

Benedetta

Awesome. And exactly, you have been touring again after a long time. How did it feel to be back on stage in South America?

Anette Olzon

Well, that was the thing. I haven’t wanted to go on stage because, like I said, I have stage fright. And the last couple of years when I entered menopause, because I’m that old, I got more anxiety and more panic. So actually I cancelled the show with The Dark Element due to that. But yeah, you know, with some medicines and things and stuff like that. And then the opportunity from Eliel came. He asked me already a couple of years ago, “Do you want to come?” And I was like, “No, no, no, no, no.” But then he again asked me and he was like, “I will have the band and I will fix this“. Then I asked my husband, “Should I go?” He was like, “Go. And if you like it, fine”. I loved it. So when I came home, I was kind of depressed because I didn’t want to go to my job as a nurse. It was so boring, you know, after all this love. So I asked my family if I could go, so now I’m going to sing for a while. Yes.

Benedetta

That’s the best news ever. I don’t know if you know this, but your voice and yourself, you have inspired so many new generation of artists. And I know people like personally that they said that Anette was such a big inspiration for me to start singing. And so many bands are created because of your influence and your art.

Anette Olzon

Thank you. I never hear that. I only hear the negative. So thank you. I’m going to take that and put it in my heart. But really, I’m very good at just hearing the bad ones or reading the bad ones. That’s my person, you know, because I was bullied in school. I think that’s why I’ve always, you know, felt very insecure if people like me. So if you say that, I’m going to take it to my heart, and that will help me.

Benedetta

Also your resilience has inspired lots of people not to give up on their dreams. Because, I mean, sometimes it takes a very bad or negative comment to give up. You are the living proof that anything is possible.

Anette Olzon

Yeah. But believe me, I have given up many times during my life from music. There have been times when I have said “I’m not going to sing anymore. I hate this. I’m not going to sing.” And then I quit like for a year or something. But then there’s something when you love music. It’s the only thing if I have a bad day, I put on some music and I get happy. And when I sing, I am happy, whether it’s in my living room. So every time I think if you’re a true musician and you love what you do, you will come back. But of course, there will be times when you want to give up because it’s a very hard business and it’s not a normal job in many ways.

Benedetta

I’m so thankful that you didn’t give up at all.

Anette Olzon

No, I’m still going 55 and going also.

Benedetta

Can you share with us how your passion for knitting and making your own clothes started?

Anette Olzon

You know, the fun thing is that my mom has always knitted, since she was five years old. And she’s always said “You should knit” because I’ve been a very restless person. Like I said, with anxiety, she said “It would be good for you to sit and do something”. I was like, “No, no, no, no, no, no. Hate it”. But then I don’t know why, but I just thought it was like sewing was the first thing. And it was like, “I’m going to try and make dresses“. I couldn’t make anything. But, you know, I just cut and did it, it was so much fun. Then I just started knitting. I don’t know. But now I’m crazy. I have like my whole living room, there’s like this corner with so much yarn that I could have a yarn store. So my plan after touring when I’m tired of singing is to have my own yarn cafe and showroom. Because it takes so much of my home. My kids are like “Mom!!!!“, I have a whole yarn store and I need to knit. I didn’t bring any knitting on the tour because I was thinking maybe it’s good if I take a break for four weeks. Maybe I will go and buy some. We’ll see. No, but I think it’s really good for me. I bite my nails, that’s why I have these fake ones. And when I knit, I don’t do that because I need to have something to do all the time. So if I’m knitting while I’m watching TV, I’m relaxed and it’s nice. It’s also I’m thinking about when you do music and singing is creative and you’re a creative person. So everything you do with your hands or it’s like music. Nemo asks every day, kind of, “Should it look like this, mom?” And I’m like, “I have got some more yarn“. The cats are climbing in the yarn and there are more shells. I need to get some other storage for it. When I do something, I do it a thousand percent. Like I don’t need one knit. Then I do 100 knits. My father was the same. If he started planting bonsai trees, he didn’t get one. He got like 200.

Benedetta

How are your cats, by the way?

Anette Olzon

Oh, it was really hard to leave them. It was harder to leave them in a way than my kids. Because last tour, when I came home from South America, I had two cats and the female cat was actually very, very ill and I had to put her down. So that was like the first thing after coming from a super tour, going to the vets and having her in the hospital. And then she had to die. Then I got two others, so we have three cats and the little boy, he’s the orange cat. My first orange tiger, Simba. He’s on me all the time. I don’t know how he’s going to survive now. It was very hard to pack yesterday. No, but the cats are good. I love my cats and I love my kids, but Simba is very special. He will be depressed for sure. Or he will love my husband more than me when I get home. And then I will cry even more. I don’t want that to happen. No, but they’re fine.

Benedetta

You said that you wanted to be an author. Can you recommend some books that you, or what you are reading now, if you’re reading something?

Anette Olzon

I actually read, it’s a Swedish author, his name is Pascal Engman. And this book is called “The Clan”. It’s about gangs. You know, in Sweden, we have lots of problems with gangs and kids, 12-year-olds that kill people. And this is actually about that. So it’s a very horrible book, but it’s really, really good. So I like to read those kinds of books, serial killers or crimes. That’s my thing. It needs to be something really hard. And I watch all the serial killer documentaries. I don’t know why it’s some kind of thing. I think many women do that actually.

Benedetta

Do you think that we will ever reach some sort of equality between men and women in the metal world?

Anette Olzon

Well, I think it’s better now. It was already when I started in Alyson [Avenue] on this female fronted when we were playing, many people like “Pff, a girl singing”, and you still have that in some way. And I also feel that I didn’t want to be that kind of singer that was having very little clothes on, like Beyonce in metal world. Some female singers do that, and of course, that’s a way to get the attention. But I think also with the growling from Arch Enemy and, you know, those kind of female voices that are showing that you can sound so brutal and being a little girl. So I think it’s better. I mean, the world is what it is, and we are male and female. There is not the perfect equality, and music is like that. It’s better than when I started singing. There will always be those that don’t listen to you if you’re a female singing. But it’s better. It’s better. But I think it will be always hard. But we have those Alissa White-Gluz and those that are showing that women are just as good or even better at many things.

Benedetta

Thank you so much for taking the time to do this interview. It’s been an honor and a pleasure to meet you. Is there anything else that you want to add to our readers?

Anette Olzon

Just come. Come see us. Come see the boys because my musicians are amazing. And they have traveled all over from Brazil just to be with me on this tour. And they are amazing. Really good. So come. Come listen to them. If you don’t listen to me, listen to them.

The post “If you’re a true musician and you love what you do, you will come back to music” – Interview with Anette Olzon first appeared on FemMetal – Goddesses of Metal.

“Yorkshire! Yorkshire! Yorkshire!” There’s something perfect about seeing Opeth in God’s Own Country on Yorkshire Day, the band’s early sound undeniably influenced by the Peaceville Three. Speaking of whom, Paradise Lost are actually pulling main support duty for the day (and we hear tell that former My Dying Bride vocalist Aaron Stainthorpe has been spotted in the crowd too).

Not to be entirely outgunned, Opeth have enlisted fellow Swedes Katatonia to kick the event off. Set within the gorgeous confines of Halifax’s Piece Hall, an 18th Century market hall that hosted both Korn and Limp Bizkit ahead of their jump to Download headliner status – though we won’t hold our breath for Opeth doing the same – Katatonia look and sound magnificent, their majestic, melancholic prog metal stirring and epic to behold.

Paradise Lost might steal the day. Apparently the doom metal masters have never played their hometown, but when frontman Nick Holmes mentions the fact it’s nice to be at home it prompts an effusive chant like someone’s set up a third faction in the English civil war.

Pulling from across their career, the set is proof positive that Paradise Lost have only gotten better with age: 90s classics One Second, The Last Time and their killer cover of Smalltown Boy are undeniable anthems, but the likes of The Enemy, Faith Divides Us – Death Unites Us and Ghosts (featuring a guest appearance from former drummer Waltteri Väyrynen, who now plays in Opeth) show PL are still producing some of their best material well into the 21st Century.

The difficulty with any Opeth setlist is, there’s only so much they can squeeze into any headline set. Even so, they do a spectacular job of spanning their careers; from 1999 on, at least. There’s no denying 2024’s The Last Will And Testament felt like their finest moment in over a decade, so hearing just how well §1 and §7 work live adds more fuel to the desire for the band to perform the whole record in full. Frontman Mikael Akerfeldt does point out the difficulty in having guest contributions, however.

“If you’ve heard this record, you’ll know we got Ian Anderson to do some spoken word,” he starts, to a massive cheer. “He’s not here. Now, we don’t have any clicktracks or any of that shit, but we do have Ian’s part on a tape. So we’re going to play this song a little fast or a little slow, and we’ll just see where his part ends up happening.”

It turns out, Anderson comes in at exactly the right time… only for the video to run out of sync. Can’t win ’em all. It’s something the band take with good humour however. As the set winds back to their ‘classic’ era – Windowpane, The Grand Conjuration, The Drapery Falls – we’re treated to some sublime visuals as lights shimmer amidst thick plumes of smoke that make it look like the band has opened a portal to another dimension, Akerfeldt undercutting the otherworldliness with a self-deprecating humour that feels as Northern as white roses and dark satanic mills. They’ll make a Yorkshireman of him yet.

Opeth setlist @ Piece Hall, Halifax August 1 2026

1. §1
2. Hjärtat vet vad handen gör
3. Godhead’s Lament
4. §7
5. The Devil’s Orchard
6. Windowpane
7. The Grand Conjuration
8. The Drapery Falls
9. Hex Omega
10. Deliverance

Swedish doom metal unit Void Moon are premiering “Orphans Of The Sky”, the first single and opening track off their soon-to-be-released EP The Runes That Bind. Produced, mixed and mastered by the band’s bassist Peter Svensson.
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“Cold fear making you feel inside” is an odd line to dance to, which is precisely why it suits Scary Nights, the new single from Dream Council, the Berlin-based project of Sean Michael Pheanis. The song belongs to that useful strain of synth-pop in which pleasure and unease share the same room, each sharpening the other. Its hook is immediate, its beat clipped and insistent, and its synths carry the lacquered cool of an 80s television performance viewed at midnight with the volume turned higher than wisdom recommends.

Pheanis has been moving toward this music for years. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, he began in DIY punk, putting out friends’ recordings through a homemade label before a MicroKORG and the records of Adult., The Faint, and Fischerspooner redirected his attention. Bachelor Party Weekend followed, mixing dance-punk with an eccentric new-wave bounce, after which New York and the early Bushwick witch-house scene supplied another vocabulary. Later came Los Angeles, where the city’s darkwave community helped Dream Council settle into a clearer identity, and then Berlin, where Pheanis completed the project’s self-titled debut LP.

That history can be heard in Scary Nights, though the song carries its references lightly. There is something of The Human League, LCD Soundsystem, and even a little Thompson Twins in its vocals and catchy melodics, while the sterner club architecture recalls modern contemporaries Buzz Kull, Kontravoid, and Blone Noble. Synth-pop works best when the machinery serves a memorable tune. The chorus has the tidy inevitability of a phrase one seems to know before hearing it, and the arrangement keeps finding small ways to increase the pressure around it. This song is catchy as hell.

The accompanying video extends that sense of private unease. Pheanis appears alone in a club after closing time, moving in slow motion through a space built for crowds, flirtation, and communal release. With nobody left to watch, the dance becomes stranger and more personal. Empty floors and dormant lights turn the nightclub into a temporary kingdom for one, a place where fear can be indulged, stylized, and perhaps exhausted before morning. The conceit also gives the song a sly visual joke: dance music has finally secured the dance floor it always wanted, only to discover that absolute freedom can look suspiciously close to isolation.

Watch the video for Scary Nights below:

There is an appealing continuity between the song and Pheanis’s long sequence of relocations. Chicago, New York, Los Angeles, and Berlin each contributed something to Dream Council, and “Scary Nights” gathers those years into a remarkably assured piece of pop writing. Mixed by California engineer Frank Royal and due on the forthcoming self-titled album through Lollipop Records, it suggests an artist who has finally found the right room for all the music he has been carrying around.

Listen to Scary Nights below and order the single here.

Follow Dream Council:

• Instagram
• YouTube

The post Berlin-based Synthpop Project Dream Council Dances Without Fear in Video for “Scary Nights” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Swedish death metal veterans Sorcery have disclosed details and first single (“Shadowborn”) in what will be their fifth studio record. Due out on October 1st 2026 through Xtreem Music, it’s going to be entitled The Immaculate Sin.
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The scorching summer is the perfect backdrop for a desert landscape, and Submasq is back with the second single, “Sanctified”, from their upcoming long player Spirit Animal.
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Plain Drifter returns with another fine piece of sonic artistry that will immediately resonate with anyone seeking catchy,

USA good time rockers Big Engine are thrilled to return with the bluesy slide guitar laden and sparkling keys infused ‘Hot Summer Night’ out now on all good digital platforms. On the theme of the song, their first in over a year, front man and lead guitarist Tony Mikus muses “It’s a reflection of people […]

The post Big Engine Release New Single & Video ‘Hot Summer Night’ appeared first on ROCKPOSER DOT COM.

Hardcore veterans from California, Ignite, have announced a 20-date touring plan across the European lands together with special guests Cancer Bats. The trek begins on November 1st, 2026 in Maastricht, The Netherlands and concludes in Chemnitz, Germany on November 21st.
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Black Water Redemption have released their heartfelt new single, ‘Walk Beside You‘, taken from their forthcoming self-titled debut album, Black Water Redemption, due for release on 2nd October 2026. Following the release of recent single ‘Ride Or Die‘, the band continue to showcase the depth and diversity of the record. For guitarist Tyler Hains, ‘Walk Beside You‘ is a deeply personal […]

The post Black Water Redemption Release New Single ‘Walk Beside You’ appeared first on ROCKPOSER DOT COM.