The Rolling Stones are almost certainly the most famous currently-active rock ‘n’ roll band on the face of the planet, and all the surviving members are roughly one billion years old. They don’t need to hype up a new record by doing viral-marketing stunts, but they’re doing it anyway. The Stones released their Andrew Watt-produced…
The post Hear The Rolling Stones’ Secret New 7″ Single “Rough And Twisted” appeared first on Stereogum.
Look kids, big riffs…
The post Archspire Reveal Fall 2026 European/UK Tour With Crown Magnetar, The Zenith Passage & Analepsy appeared first on Theprp.com.
Eight years is a long time to wait. Since Storm the Gates landed in 2018, Venom have been largely silent on the studio front — but the Newcastle godfathers of black metal are finally ready to re-emerge with Into Oblivion, their sixteenth full-length, due May 1 via Noise/BMG. Today, they’ve shared their second single, ‘Kicked Outta Hell’, alongside an official video directed by Andy Pilkington. And it does exactly what it says on the tin.
“It’s one of the heaviest songs on the album,” confirms guitarist Rage (Stuart Dixon). “It’s grinding and straight ahead.” That’s not marketing speak — the track hits like a freight train running downhill with no intention of stopping. What makes it interesting, though, is the angle Conrad “Cronos” Lant has taken with the lyric: rather than the band’s traditional satanic posturing, this one flips the script entirely.
“This one is me just having fun,” Cronos explains. “I’m putting myself above the Devil in the lyric, which I think is an interesting twist. The Devil’s pissed off with us!”
It’s a characteristically tongue-in-cheek move from one of metal’s most iconic frontmen — and drummer Danté (Danny Needham) sums up the track’s entire energy in four words: “You’re not staying in hell, get out!”
Pre-order the album here.
Into Oblivion has been years in the making, delayed by the pandemic, recording setbacks, and — by Cronos‘s own admission — an uncompromising pursuit of quality. “This album has really pushed the boundaries,” he says, “but if you want to make a killer album, you pay for it in blood, sweat, and tears.”
The result, according to the band, is something that sounds both classic and evolved. The thirteen-track album features the long-standing lineup of Cronos on bass and vocals, Rage on guitar, and Danté behind the kit — a combination now seventeen years strong, making it the longest-running version of Venom in the band’s history.
Rage puts it plainly: “I’m so proud of this album. It’s astounding. It feels so different, yet so familiar. The sonics are a step up, no song sounds the same, but they all work together.”
The lead single, ‘Lay Down Your Soul’, drew a direct line back to the era of ‘Black Metal’, full of rousing chorus energy. ‘Kicked Outta Hell’ goes heavier, dirtier, more primal. Together, they paint a picture of a band that hasn’t forgotten where it came from, but isn’t content to just retread it either.
Into Oblivion will be released on May 1st, 2026, and is available for preorder now and is available in these formats.
The post VENOM Shares Music Video For New Single “Kicked Outta Hell”, From Upcoming Album “Into Oblivion” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
Progressive rock and metal can thrive in a vast multiplicity of contexts, but arguably the most difficult one for it to maintain a level of accessibility is in the abstract one of purely instrumental expression. It is a setting where the generally esoteric and niche topics that the subgenre(s) lends itself to can often be lost in a sea of virtuosic twists and turns, to speak nothing of the overt showboating that can emerge when a fold of technicians get going on a series of musical ideas for more than a 5-minute duration.
Yet this delicate craft is where Chicago, Illinois-born power trio Aziola Cry has continued to sporadically challenge the preconceptions of metal music itself since their mid-2000s founding, and their 3rd studio LP, dubbed Dysphoria Ritual, takes on the peculiar subject of extreme personal unease and discomfort and turns it into a 45-minute exposition of artistic depth and intrigue.
The same lineup that put together this album’s 2021 predecessor, The Ironic Divide has been maintained, breaking a past tradition of switching out drummers on all previous studio releases and reprising the same stripped-down yet dense arrangement. The kit work of Tommy Murray hearkens a bit towards the jazzy and loose-flowing yet precise approach that typified the performances of Neil Peart during his later years with Rush, establishing a generally mid-paced yet highly intricate set of grooves.
The guitar work of Mike Milaniak also makes frequent stylistic allusions to Rush when exploring lead territory, regularly channeling the crunchy and roaming quality of Alex Lifeson, yet also opting for a heavier metallic riffing approach that reminisces upon the darker side of the progressive coin in the late 90s. But the lynchpin that turns the arrangement from a standard power trio into something far more vast and dense is the dual bottom end and counterpart melodic content put forth by Jason Blake on the warr guitar.
True to their commitment to drawing outside the lines, this avant-garde fold proves highly apt in effectively communicating the message of this opus without the need for words, as anyone flying blind while first experiencing these songs can easily surmise that they are pointing to a state of elaborate and personal disquiet.
From the dissonant beginning of the opening entry “Denial Patterns”, throughout the highly nuanced 8-minute crescendo of varying themes and transition points that it culminates in, a sense of pure unease is established despite every moving part working together in perfect synchronicity. In fact, one might be tempted to assume that this trio let the cat out of the bag completely on the first song given how many varying elements are thrown into the mix, but when the spacey introduction of “Pervasive Sameness” hits that first punchy groove and vacillates seamlessly between a metallic stomp and a soft jazzy ballad-based contrast, it becomes clear that this entire album is equally proportioned.
Though it’s a fool’s errand to select a single composition from this 6-part cycle that stands out the most, each song stands apart in its own unique way and can easily stand alone from the pack. The heavy and forbidding “Ephemeral Joy” definitely lands the hardest and comes with the most technically charged individual performances between Milaniak’s agitated lead guitar bursts and Blake’s polyphonic and rhythmically complex riffing.
“The Delusion Complex” plays the most with dynamic contrast, with a seesaw approach to loud and soft, to speak nothing of the sharp tempo shifts and extreme busyness of Murray’s drum work. On the shorter side of the coin, “Withdrawn And Alone” takes the cake in terms of dissonant timbres and takes the overall anxiety factor up to a 10, mixing noodling clean jazz guitar work with intermittent bursts of punchy distorted segments. Yet for a song that could easily sum up the entirety of this album’s highly abstract and complex character, the closer and title track “Dysphoria Ritual” covers every base hit earlier in the album and functions like a more elaborate mirror to the opener “Denial Patterns”.
Arguably, the only thing that really works against this album is the same thing that could be said about Aziola Cry’s approach since their inception, namely that it’s so unconventional that it could easily fly over the head of 95% of the general public, even if preceded by a synopsis of each individual song. It’s definitely a work that understands its target audience and speaks directly to them consistently from start to finish, almost like a veteran translator adapting the lingo of King Crimson and Tool for a crowd that prefers to communicate outside the medium of the spoken word.
Those with a penchant for the unconventional, a love for those that aren’t afraid to explore the many possibilities of their respective instruments, and aren’t allergic to songs that clock in well beyond the confines of typical terrestrial radio fodder, will definitely be drawn to what this has to offer, as they were to this outfit’s spiritual ancestors, Gordian Knot, 2 decades prior.
Release Date: April 17th, 2026
Record Label: 7D Media
Genre: Progressive Metal
Order the album here.
The post AZIOLA CRY – Dysphoria Ritual (Album Review) appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
Rizky business.
The post 200 Stab Wounds Have Wrapped Up Their Third Studio Album appeared first on Theprp.com.
For more than a quarter century, Will Sheff has been the frontman of the ultra-literate indie rock band Okkervil River. But Okkervil River haven’t been active for years. In 2022, Sheff released is first-ever solo album Nothing Special, and we ran a whole feature about it. Right now, Sheff is out on tour as the…
The post Okkervil River’s Will Sheff Announces New Album <em>Extra Mile</em>: Hear “Funny Feeling” appeared first on Stereogum.
His dramatic change in appearance has racked up millions of views.
The post Good Tiger’s Elliot Coleman Went Viral On TikTok & Got Coverage From People For His Recent Makeover appeared first on Theprp.com.