Megadeth have announced 2027 European live dates, including their first headlining UK tour since 2015.
The Grammy-winning US thrash metal veterans will return as part of their ongoing farewell run, which kicked off with a leg of North and Latin American shows earlier this year. Black Label Society and fellow thrashers Testament will support.
A Live Nation pre-sale for the UK starts at 9am local time on Thursday, August 6, and general sale commences at 10am on August 7. See the full list of confirmed shows below.
Formed by singer/guitarist and sole constant member Dave Mustaine in 1983, shortly after his expulsion from Metallica, Megadeth are one of the best-selling extreme metal bands in history, having sold more than 50 million albums worldwide. In 1992, their fifth album Countdown To Extinction reached number two on the US Billboard 200.
After picking up 11 nominations over the course of their career, the band finally won the Grammy Award for Best Metal Performance in 2017, with their single Dystopia. In 2023, their song We’ll Be Back was also Grammy-nominated, but lost to Degradation Rules by Ozzy Osbourne featuring Tony Iommi in the metal category.
42 years in, Megadeth announced their impending retirement last summer. Mustaine, now 64, said he wanted to go out on his own terms and urged fans: “Don’t be mad, don’t be sad, be happy for us all, come celebrate with me these next few years.”
It was later revealed that physical injuries also played a part in the band’s split. In December, Mustaine announced that he had radial neuropathy, or ‘wrist drop’: a condition where the radial nerve is damaged, leading to weakness in the wrist and fingers. Mustaine said that the condition made it painful for him to play guitar.
Megadeth released their final studio album, a self-titled effort, via BLKIIBLK in January. It received mostly positive reviews, including four stars from Metal Hammer’s Dom Lawson, and was the band’s first US chart-topper. Its bonus track was a cover of Metallica’s Ride The Lightning: a song that Mustaine co-wrote but wasn’t released until 1984, after his dismissal from the lineup.
It’s rumoured that Megadeth are set to release a greatest hits album, Fast Hits, on August 21. Reports began after fans spotted it on the Walmart website last week. The band have not yet commented on the matter.
Megadeth’s last UK headline run took place in November 2015 and was capped off by a co-headline show at London’s Wembley Arena with Lamb Of God. Children Of Bodom and Sylosis supported.
Even though the band haven’t topped the bill on a UK tour since, they’ve been a regular presence on the country’s festival circuit, including headline performances at Derbyshire’s Bloodstock Open Air in 2017 and 2023. They also supported Five Finger Death Punch in arenas last autumn.
Megadeth: 2027 European tour dates
Mar 09: Belfast The O2, UK
Mar 11: London OVO Arena Wembley, UK
Mar 12: Nottingham Motorpoint Arena, UK
Mar 13: Manchester Co-op Live, UK
Mar 15: Cardiff Utilita Arena, UK
Mar 16: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
Mar 18: Birmingham BP Pulse Live, UK
Mar 19: Leeds First Direct Bank Arena, UK
Mar 21: Paris Zenith, France
Mar 23: Brussels Forest National, Belgium
Mar 25: Dusseldorf Mitsubishi Electric Halle, Germany
Boy, it sure is hot outside, isn’t it? Here we are in the dead of summer, the dog days, if you will, and we figure maybe you could use some things to help improve your mood in the face of all this heat and humidity. So like we do every summer (this year a little later than usual), we’re doing a quick round-up of stuff we dig that we failed to cover when it came out. Turns out there are many such albums (we like to be into stuff), so we’ll be doing this all week. Hopefully we’ll shine a light on something that entertains you enough to forget for a few minutes that your AC just kicked the bucket.
OK GOODNIGHT – STOP/GO
released June 12; independent
Three years after The Fox and the Bird, OK Goodnight returned in June with stop/go, a record that on the first few listens struck me as notably “less” than its predecessor: less climactic emotion, less wild swings in musical intensity. It took an embarrassingly long time to sit down, take another listen and admit to myself – that’s the point.
Ok Goodnight have turned down the macro heaviness AND lightness to deliver a record of a more complicated middle ground. Far from the narrative of their most recent work, these tunes exist in a more human realm of a past, present and future shaded grey by life’s concurrent, contradictory lessons. The instrumentalists still brighten the mood – being prog, this is not on paper “simpler” music than their prior – but the blazes of technicality are corralled into tighter, more figure-based structures. Songs latch onto a few tight grooves and explore their innards a bit more, weaving in and out, over and under. Casey Lee Williams again reigns supreme, her elastic voice able to color every word and note with ease, grace and colossal power.
Fans of progressive metal need not be alone in enjoying stop/go. This is music light enough to satisfy listeners preferring the more artistic avenues of rock and complex enough to reward those collecting notes and time signatures like a scavenger hunt. [ISAAC HAMS]
TRICHOMONIASIS – CONTAINMENT FACILITY
released April 7; New Standard Elite
Report From The Sewer: Part 1
Last Rites Kingdom local news station LRFU received a tip from an archaeologist conducting a dig at a Kentucky home. One Dr. Grant informed us that this endeavor began after a local man, who is confined to his recliner for unknown reasons, discovered his dog had brought a dirt-caked greave in after digging in the backyard. Careful analysis at a local university determined the metal leg guard may have belonged to the original Armored Saint, and the official dig for more commenced within days. One week later, another curious discovery was made. Dr. Grant accidentally punctured a hole in what is now believed to be a natural sewer created by the Earth itself. Before the realization that a hole was made, the immensely putrid smell was waved off as likely coming from the homeowner’s unrepentant flatulence, but its overwhelming and violent persistence became a hazardous miasma leading to further examination and the discovery.
Now, the team has sent me into this earthen poop chute to learn more. The air down here is viscous, the odors noxious, and the sounds nausea-inducing. The noise, in particular, is most alarming. What’s being done to my ears is horrible. There’s a pulsing, almost ambient nature to these tunnels, but the overall aural experience is like sitting next to a canning factory as it’s being sucked into the largest commercial fan known to man. All the while, there are inhuman gurgles and grunts that make me feel like I’m being stalked by the spirit of Theseus’ minotaur. While the soundtrack to this filthscape is overwhelming, there is also a hypnotic quality that’s somehow putting my mind at ease and calls me forth like a siren.
The waste of the planet has risen above my waist. I seem to have developed some sort of vaginal infection, which is especially concerning since I didn’t have a vagina before getting in here. Despite my discomforts and the wooziness these pulsing, brutal sounds are inflicting upon me, I feel compelled to go on. I must allow myself to be subsumed by this discomforting din until I discover its source, but each step promises worse discoveries abound.
Stay tuned for part two on Wednesday. [SPENCER HOTZ]
POWER PALADIN – BEYOND THE REACH OF ENCHANTMENT
released March 27; ROAR! / Rock of Angels Records
Iceland’s Power Paladin have presumably stared into the face of restraint and subtlety and said, “No thank you.” On the power metal purists’ second album, there’s a laser focus on sturdy, boisterous riffing, piercingly clear vocals and easily hummable choruses, and just enough guitar flash to spice the stew without dazzling it to death. For the power metal-unconverted, yes, Power Paladin will still feel like everything happening all at once, but in the midst of the busy, fret-bothering pyrotechnics, there’s a much more classicist heavy metal core. The band shines especially on the storming one-two opening of “Sword Vigor” and “Glade Lords of Athen Loren,” the dramatic, Avantasia-ish “The Arcane Tower” (featuring excellent guest vocals from Majestica’s Tommy Johansson), and the tastefully epic closer “Valediction.” Truly, “Camelot Rock City” is the only bit of rough going, but even so, it’s hardly for lack of commitment. Simply put, Beyond the Reach of Enchantment is sterling Euro power metal that fully understands its assignment and delivers the goods with panache and great relish. [DAN OBSTKRIEG]
PANOPTICON – DET HJEMSØKTE HJERTET
released May 8; Nordvis Produktion
“So much of this album is about things that have passed,” – Austin Lunn
“One time, this guy handed me a picture of him. He said, ‘Here’s a picture of me when I was younger.’ Every picture is of you when you were younger,” – Mitch Hedberg
Every nano-second of our lives represents the present becoming the past. Our selves becoming our former selves. Everything is amid the never ending process of becoming a thing that “has passed.” Every picture is of you when you were younger.
Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet, the twelfth full length project from Ely, Minnesota’s Panopticon, attempts to use melodic, riff-oriented American black metal to communicate how the inexorable march of loss makes us feel. How it feels to know that 100 years ago a man might gaze over a campfire into the woods of northern Minnesota and catch a fugitive glimpse of a herd of Woodland Caribou, but now nobody will ever do such a thing ever again. Because the Woodland Caribou have passed on. How for many years maybe you sat down to family dinners of varying quality but consistent company, but then not so much, and someday never again. How now your child calls you “daddy,” and one day will you “dad,” but one day might stop calling altogether.
The passage of time and the losses we accrue as we endure it are brutally painful, but there’s also beauty in loving something so much that it pains you to feel it slip through your fingers. Det Hjemsøkte Hjertet lives at this nexus of pain and beauty. [DAVID FONSECA]
ARMORED SAINT – EMOTION FACTORY RESET
released May 22; Metal Blade Records
Eternal underdogs, Armored Saint soldiers ever onward, coming off one of the strongest records of their four-decade career in 2020’s Punching The Sky. That one delivered everything the longtime Saint faithful have come to expect: rifftastic classic-styled heavy metal, driven by Gonzo’s rock-solid drum battery and topped off with one of the finest voices to ever grace a metal record in any decade, the powerful sandpaper-throated soar of the man himself, John Bush.
So does (the admittedly awkwardly titled) Emotion Factory Reset live up to the band’s legacy? Well, of course – Armored Saint doesn’t make bad records, really. But that said, it’s not as immediate a smasher as Punching was, more of a settled-in, grower-not-shower type when it all comes down to it. Being fully honest, upon initial spins, I would’ve said that it was a slight disappointment, but over repeated re-listens across a few months, the hooks have sunk in deeper, and I’ve come around on it quite a bit.
Opener “Close To The Bone” is a full-on Saint ripper, and “Hit A Moonshot” manages to both rock and rhyme the titular lucky hit with “jack squat” and come out for the better. (Bush’s propensity for atypical phrases and idiosyncratic lyrical twists remains fully intact, fear not. Emotion Factory Reset features what is likely the first-ever appearance of the phrase “dollars to doughnuts” on a metal record.) Not every song is a total knockout – the latter half feels a bit lesser, overall – but with each repeated revisit, I find more to like about even those that I discounted at first, and at the end of it, that’s clearly enough to keep me coming back.
May the Saint march on for many more to come. [ANDREW EDMUNDS]
BURIED – IMAGINED DEFORMATION
released February 6; independent
What more do you idiots want? Bask in the glory of these three crucial attributes. Riffs: The mid-paced death metal churn of “Psychogenic Excoriation” is like Nightmares Made Flesh-era Bloodbath with a brutaler build and ignoranter skill tree. Pedigree: Greetings, Joel Sta (vocals) and Mark Wormmeester (bass) of Pyaemia, one of the Dutch scene’s greatest BDM exports that combined catchiness with gut-spilling shred. Co-sign from very important people: I like Imagined Deformation, Buried’s second album, a lot. Ultimately, I think what people might get hung up on is that Buried isn’t a great first-blush band. Compared to what is probably banging around your Bandcamp feed if you follow the right degenerates, it’s not flashy; it’s not weird. Like, Trichomoniasis or Effluence make Imagined Deformation sound downright Top 40 radio-ready, or a yacht ride away from a Grover Washington Jr. feature. But Buried’s solidness really, uh, solidifies with multiple listens, letting the hefty hookiness come through. It reminds me of Baest in that regard, another solid death metaller that ain’t a stranger to memorability, but gets short shrift because it’s not bonkers blogger bait. The difference between the two is that Baest is Swedeath while Buried fits right in with a long lineage of Dutch depravity. To that end, sleeving Imagined Deformation in a CD booklet alongside two of its immediate relations, Arsebreed and Disavowed, makes sense, even if Buried is the brother who simplified their life by cleaning themselves up. There’s just that grooviness and attention to shred present, prime old dog traits, and something you could trace back to the pestilential progenitors of the regional style, as much as that style can be a recognizable thing in the post-globalized blergh world. Anyway, Buried is good, idiots. [SETH BUTTNAM]
FAKE DUST – DECREPITIZING DIN OF THE CEREBRAL PSYOPTICON
released May 15; Iron Lung Records
I understand this statement will likely make me sound as old as I actually am, but if you’re a technical grindcore act with a clean and overly precise approach to the blueprint, I’ll probably drag my feet and just about any other feets in my vicinity when it comes time to check out your wares. Granted, I have softened on that stance over the years, but I still fall the quickest and hardest for those acts that remember how impactful grindcore can be when they underscore the more raw and feral side of the off-shoot’s hardcore / crust punk roots. Grindcore is an explosion of intense outrage, sending splinters in indiscriminate directions as listeners are sent hurtling through brick walls and plate-glass windows like a scene out of an old Charles Bronson movie. This, I am very pleased to report, is the realm of Fake Dust, one of the best things to come out of PDX since Big League Chew (it’s true, look it up), or at least since… Rigorous Institution?
You want it fast? Decrepitizing Din of Cerebral Psyopticon is faster than the Roadrunner with a bee up its ass. You want bulldozing? This record will tenderize a 25-pound brisket before the last song crosses the finish line. You want scootable grooves? You will pick one of these songs to dance with your dear abuela on her 90th birthday, and she’ll only have to put up with it for 52 seconds. You want guitar solos? Well, you’re pretty much fucked in that department.
Basically, this is 2026’s answer to Anal Cunt, but replace the crack-addicted songs about tree shredder foreplay and EMF covers with topics such as “self-medication, anxiety, paranoia, data collection, disillusion, deception, etc.” [CAPTAIN]
JAKABOL – LEORNIAN
released March 26; independent
The UK’s Jakabol are chimerical. They build with familiar pieces from disparate places – folk, metal, prog, psych, a little noise – and then fill the space with strange shapes, eerie light and shadow.
Their second album, Leornian, is a laudanum embrace. Comfort to be whatever it wants to be, even when it’s uncomfortable. Especially. Just when you’ve steadied yourself against the tilt, familiar sounds make you question the need to; you’ve been here before, done this. But not really. And so you brace for a new descent, only to find yourself surrendering. It’s warm. Enveloping. Safe?
You’ll hear other albums this year with violin (and viola) and heavy distorted guitars, static and noisy effects and odd instrumentation (not many with harmonium, though, I bet!), and thoughtfully experimental songwriting, and none of them will sound like Leornian. One of the year’s true hidden gems. [LONE WATIE]
They’ll be throwing up the bunting in the streets of Gillingham as news breaks that local heroes The Zac Schulze Gang have triumphed in our latest Tracks Of The Week contest, ferried there by their Robert Johnson-inspired single Hellhounds On My Trail. So congratulations to them on what might be the most historic event the town has seen since the Dutch navy sailed up the Medway in 1667.
Congratulations also to King Kraken, who finished well back in second place, and to Halestorm, even further adrift in third. Let’s agree to meet back here in a week to see who triumphs in this week’s rock’n’roll rumble.
Airbourne – Here She Comes
The latest riffer-rolla’ from the Aussies’ long-awaited self-titled new album (the follow-up to 2019’s Boneshaker) is a jubilant affair, packing the lovable, slightly mad energy of a galloping pack of labradors crashing a beach party. It’s only rock’n’roll, but sometimes that’s precisely what you need. After over two decades in the game, few really get that – and don’t fight it – quite like Airbourne.
Hannah Wicklund – Red Gorilla
Written ten years ago – in the shadow of the controversial death of Harumbe the gorilla at Cincinnati Zoo – Red Gorilla is a deliciously juicy, funky hit of bluesy rock with an environmentally conscious heart. All raw soul and swagger, no flab or faking it. “Human beings are but a small piece of a far greater ecosystem, and we must radically choose to care for our environment,” South Carolinian singer/guitarist Hannah says, “or we will be even more lost as a species than we are right now.”
Brothers Osborne – R.I.P
Few bands nail that sweet spot between currntry and plain old rock’n’roll as happily as these six-foot-something Maryland-turned-Nashville siblings. On R.I.P that feels as true as ever, its rollicking, Stetson-topped heartbeat teamed with a bang-on-the-money groove. At under two minutes it’s on the ‘punk’ side for the Bros, but if the idea was to whet our appetites for what’s coming next they’ve succeeded. “R.I.P. is us getting back to our musical roots,” lead guitarist/older brother John says. “This new music is a rear-view glimpse into where we came from while still driving forward into the new and the unknown.”
Bleeker – Outside
Soaring, punchy alt rock/power-pop anthemic sensibilities – with a mahoosive chorus – are the order of the week with this Ontario five-piece’s latest. The sort of track that makes them sound like a much bigger band, Outside has hints of Sugar and The Struts in its biting combination of sweetness and shadows, and feels like something a festival crowd would hungrily lap up over a few beverages and group hugs on a hot summer evening. Find more on their next album, Elephant, which comes out in September.
Greta Van Fleet – Saw You Stand
Teamed up with genre-hopping producer Mike Elizondo (Tedeschi Trucks Band, Turnstile, Eminem…) for their next album, Palace Of The People, Greta Van Fleet deliver arguably the ballad of their career with Saw You Stand. Hard-hitting, bright-eyed but tender, it finds them prizing incisive songwriting above noodly nostalgia theatrics. And anyone who normally finds Josh Kiszka’s vocals a bit too Jon Anderson-shrill for comfort may warm more readily to his stellar performance here – still high, still mighty, but married to a tight, on-the-money melody and weighted with real depth, reflective of an eventful few years.
Bywater Call – Way To Go
Building upward from sweet, stripped-back Delta-fried opening notes, Way To Go finds the rising Canadian ensemble at their heartwarming, boot-stomping best. A stirring, thoughtfully written melody around which gospel-fresh harmonies, guitars and horns swirl, natural as sunlight on water, with a touch of bittersweetness in the background. If you’re a fan of Tedeschi Trucks Band, Blackberry Smoke and others in their rousing, soulful southern rock camp, and you haven’t heard Bywater Call yet, for god’s sake check them out now.
The Band Feel – Stay Around
St Louis rockers The Band Feel still sound like a band who could have parachuted into the set of Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous without anyone noticing they were from the future, but Stay Around does at least tinker with the formula a little. The Free-style riff is augmented by a chorus that leans into power pop, with perfectly pitched harmonies and a wibbly-wobbly keyboard that may or may not have been beamed in from deep space. Excellent stuff, as usual.
Cam Cole – Get Up Ya Honky Tonk
Cam Cole’s Fourth album, Lost In Creation, is out in October, and Get Up Ya Honky Tonk is a taster from what promises to be an uncompromising blast of twisted sonic savagery from the one-man London-based grunge-blues explosion. Cam’s vocals sound like Butthole Surfers’ frontman Gibby Haynes might were he guesting on a Jon Spencer single, and there’s also a bit in the middle where everything slows down and gets kinda spooky before business is rowdily resumed. What a lovely racket.
Bryant Keith brings an intimate, emotionally driven approach to MAN, blending soulful songwriting with contemporary singer-songwriter sensibilities. The track unfolds through expressive vocals, warm harmonies, and a thoughtful chord progression that gives the chorus an added emotional lift. Lyrically, MAN explores vulnerability, identity, and the pressures surrounding personal growth, creating a reflective atmosphere without losing its melodic appeal. KEITH’s background as both a songwriter and producer comes through in the carefully shaped arrangement, while the performance remains personal and direct. Thoughtful, heartfelt, and quietly powerful, MAN highlights an artist focused on turning emotional experience into meaningful music.
Boundaries – Yearning: The Unbeautiful After (Sumerian Records) [Matt Bladen]
Get that running man ready as Boundaries love a breakdown, on the opening track I count four separate ones after the publishing of the main body of the track where the phrase “I Just Want To See You Suffer” is screamed right in your face. They’re deathcore that takes no prisoners but there’s more to it as this record carries with it a “state of perpetual mourning” as due to it being inspired by and in tribute to friends whose lives had been taken by an accident.
The brutality of existence fuels this record so the band locked down in the studio with producer Drew Fulk (Knocked Loose, Fit For A King), to make their most focussed and ferocious album yet. A record without compromise then, not looking for radio play but to define themselves as one of the hardest hitting bands in their genre.
There are moments of clarity where clean vocals are used however it’s mostly absolutely crushing start stop riffs, industrial dissonance, flashes of metallic hardcore (Unequal Whole), inhuman blastbeats, ultra aggressive vocal shouts from vocalist Matthew McDougal who’s joined by Landon Tewers of The Plot In You and Make Them Suffer on two tracks.
Yearning: The Unbeautiful After, preaches catharsis through brutality, suffocating heaviness throughout Boundaries are monstrous on album four. 7/10 Haken – In A Fever Dream (InsideOutMusic) [Alex Swift]
Haken have been through a lot of changes of late. A few years ago, the bands keyboardist Diego Tejeida parted ways with the band, citing creative differences. Then, last year, for reasons that remain elusive, bassist Conner Green and guitarist Charles Griffiths left, pairing the prog-outfit back to a four piece, and forcing them to cancel every one of their tour dates. It’s been three years since the enormously ambitious Fauna. Even longer since the brilliant companion albums of Vector and Virus. The question now is, how does the act adapt to the changes that they’ve endured, on their new EP?
Let’s begin with the positives – this project see’s the band experimenting further with the electronic elements that have been a core part of their sound since Affinity. There is a distinct effort to ‘test the waters’, as they meld their distinctive soaring melodies with forceful instrumental backdrops.
While some fans will be saddened by the absence of an album at this time, a shorter transitional piece was definitely the most logical move the quartet could make at this stage in their careers. This is Haken in a state of Flux. “I am shedding skin. I let go and I learn to breathe. I am at the end of my fever dream” Ross Jennings sings during the emotional climax of the album. Reinvention always entails a transitionary process. And yet, for Haken, the challenges of this are on stark display.
The most striking element from the opening title track is that Haken have undoubtedly lost elements in their sound. That’s to be expected following the loss of members. However, the empty space that’s left is not filled with anything satisfying.
Whereas once you could rarely predict the direction that the bands compositions would take, this one feels hollow, and stagnant. The contrast between the mellow and aggressive sections are uninspired, following the playbook of a million alt-metal bands that have come before them. There is little space for subtlety or experimentation, in what proves a pale imitation of the band’s sound.
Then there’s the issue of how the electronic elements are incorporated. Eclipsed By You and Bleeding Sky are significantly more thought provoking then the opener, with the later bearing a fascinating progression that feels straight from the Affinity-era playbook. The issue, however, lies in the incredibly out-of-focus production.
The problem with so much of this EP is not that it represents a band finding their feet after a turbulent period. Rather, its creators seem afraid to commit to any of the interesting ideas that are present. Intriguing musical concepts are either half-committed to before being abandoned, or else buried beneath an avalanche of noise. Its incredibly frustrating coming from a band who have never previously been afraid to challenge themselves or the listener.
As far as prog metal is concerned, Haken have earned the right to be held in high regard by myself, and by their fans. I’ve alluded to the possibility that this isn’t the end for the outfit, and that this is merely a deeply a reflection of growing pains. These musicians have already committed themselves to future projects. If that is indeed the case, then they must set a direction that sees them harnessing their unique songwriting and performance skills, and committing to their chosen creative direction with zeal.
It’s certainly possible that I will reflect on A Fever Dream as a odd yet crucial juncture. Until Haken can prove that to me, however, this will remain a disappointing nadir in an otherwise impressive discography. 4/10
Cinder Well – A Blooming Body (Hen House Studios) [Mark Young]
Sometimes the boss likes to throw me a curve ball, I’m sure he does it just to see if I can appreciate the other side of the musical coin. He does this by sending me something that is (by my own admission) so far removed from the standard stuff I listen to; I don’t know how to approach it. In any event, I want to give A Blooming Body a fair crack, and I will.
So, just in case you don’t know who or what Cinder Well is: Step forward Amelia Baker, an American multi-instrumentalist who can write and perform songs of a haunting beauty in much the same way as you or I can breathe the air around us. As in, naturally. Amelia handles nearly all of the instruments present on this, and it’s a collection of songs that stay with you after the final notes are played out.
In trying to give you an idea of what they sound like, none of them sound like the others, apart from the voice and the way its deployed on here. Its described as Americana, cinematic folk, doom but played in a way that feels unique to the artist themselves. It certainly doesn’t sound like the folk that springs to my mind, which is a good thing in all honesty. A Blooming Body is like a season of your favourite programme. There is the start, where it establishes itself and either makes you want to see what happens next or switch off. Each of the songs takes you on a journey, telling a story, sometimes dark in tone other times in bright textures. The constant in each case is Amelia’s voice. It has this quality to it, a rich fabric which doesn’t rely on vocal gymnastics to make the material sing.
Is it something that I could drive to work on? No, definitely not but then Its not built for that, at least from my perspective. It’s also something that I can appreciate the beauty of, and why as an artist Amelia is held in such high regard. Taking the closing moments of Ashes for example, the song has been a soft and gentle exercise until it decides that discord is the way forward. Elsewhere there is some fabulous guitar playing, passages that would be amazing to play and would surely ease your mind.
So, now for a score. Generally accompanying press overegg an artists release, but that is not the case here. It is as good as its made out to be, and as long as this sits within your wheelhouse of musical interest then it’s a straight up must have. If cinematic arrangements are your thing, then you should sidle on over to this and check it out. 8/10
PS – Check out the theme to Small Prophets that was broadcast earlier this year on the BBC. Cinder Well did the score for that too.
Sometimes you don’t want a pristine, perfectly engineered record. You want something that sounds like it was recorded in a damp cellar with the amplifiers turned up until the walls start sweating. London’s Droner deliver exactly that on their second album, Nuclear Waster. It’s a massive, 17-track trek through sludge, doom, and grunge that demands you sit back and let it grind its way through.
I missed their debut, but after spending time with this record, I’m definitely going back to check it out. What I like right off the bat is that they don’t take themselves too seriously. The opener, Weed, starts with a laugh before dropping into a heavy, rumbling riff. It sets a great tone. They’re having fun with the noise, even when the sound itself is heavy enough to crush a car.
The album builds a huge, filthy atmosphere across its long runtime. Songs like All It Took, Medicine, and Tell Me Something have a real grunge-laden drag to them. The vocals are haunting and raw, sitting right in the middle of the distortion rather than floating polished over the top. It’s unvarnished, a bit rough around the edges, and honestly, it works so much better because of that lack of high-end gloss.
What’s interesting here is how they show you their building blocks. Towards the end of the 17 tracks, you get an acoustic version of Hear What You Want. Stripping away the massive fuzz pedals feels like the band showing their workings, proving that underneath all that weight, there are solid, memorable songs.
Then they throw in a couple of unexpected covers to close things out—The Specials AKA’s What I Like Most About You and Dawn Penn’s No No No. It shouldn’t work on a sludge doom record, but somehow it completely fits their laid-back, DIY ethos.
Nuclear Waster isn’t a quick or easy background listen. It’s a long, heavy grind that rewards you for putting the time in. If you like your doom raw, noisy, and full of character, this is well worth taking for a spin. 8/10
Miss May I are getting atmospherically brash with their new track, taken from their upcoming album ‘No Place For Me’.
Titled ‘Hand Me A Halo’, it finds them dealing out plenty of meticulous melody without skimping on any of the destruction that has defined their journey up until now. It’s a mature, excellently constructed and thoughtful piece that gets more and more intense with every second that passes.
There are always surprises hiding up these sleeves.
Vocalist Levi Benton had this to say about the song:
“‘Hand Me A Halo’ tells the self-narrative of losing one’s sense of self and dealing with the intrusive thoughts that come with it. This song came from our own confusion and loss of identity through the changing seasons of life. The fear can be constant, leaving you to question if you just want someone to hand you a halo.”
‘No Place For Me’ is set for release on October 02 via Solid State Records.
Benton had this to add about what he feels as though the record represents:
“We stopped and asked ourselves, ‘What are we actually trying to say as artists. The goal is for the music to be therapeutic. It’s okay to have a breakdown. You aren’t alone. You don’t have to hold it all in. I hope our latest album can meet you where you are.”
When it came to nu metal, the UK never really stood a chance. The few nu-flavoured bands the country managed to birth always felt like pale, inauthentic imitations of what was happening on the other side of the Atlantic. Mostly, anyway. In February 2002, a new single emerged bearing all the hallmarks of a nu metal banger: chunky downtuned riffs, chest-beating choruses and a hint of record scratching.
And it managed to break the Top 10 on the UK singles charts. Finally, a UK nu metal hit! Only, Suffolk rockers A had absolutely nothing to do with the subgenre.
“That’s a disservice to nu metal,” A vocalist Jason Perry says with a chuckle, when we put it to him that his band wrote the only major UK nu metal hit.
Winding the clocks (way) back, A started life in 1988 as a prog rock band called Grand Designs (“We were terrible, but we also loved Rush,” Jason explains). By the early 90s, it was obvious that their prog career wasn’t about to take off, so the band decided to follow in the footsteps of countless other hopefuls and move to London. Moving into the flat of future The Darkness guitarist Dan Hawkins, they began looking for new ways to express themselves.
“A mate of mine in the band Jesus Jones went out to America and came back, like, ‘You need to hear these guys, they’re called Green Day,’” Jason recalls.
“I loved the energy. It made me realise we had been so caught up in being something that we’re not, really – an arty prog band – without feeling that. We were in London, skint, but having the time of our lives, and that’s what we wanted to sound like. We stopped trying to get a record deal and within six months we’d got 10 offers.”
We’d been signed as ‘a punkier Supergrass’, and if we’d made a record like that we’d have stood a better chance.
Jason Perry
Rebranding as A, the group signed to Warner Bros Records and began making scuzzy punk rock. So far, so not metal. The only problem was, they’d come just a little too late. A few years prior, the Britrock movement had made waves as bands like The Wildhearts, Terrorvision, Skunk Anansie and Therapy? tore their way up the charts. But by the time A’s debut album, How Ace Are Buildings, arrived in 1997, the movement was already on the wane.
“We always felt like we’d just missed the mark,” Jason agrees. “We’d been signed as ‘a punkier Supergrass’, and if we’d made a record like that we’d have stood a better chance.”
1999’s A Vs Monkey Kong fared marginally better than their debut – it hit No.62 in the UK album charts at least – but it was still seen as a big disappointment by Warner. A could see the writing on the wall: if they didn’t do something big with their next record, they’d be out. So, they took a gamble.
“We said, ‘We know you’re going to drop us – we would drop us too. So why don’t we rip the record deal up? We won’t ask you to put out our third record as is, but keep us on the label,’” Jason reveals. “They were taken aback by that, but we just wanted to make an album. So it was like, ‘If we could get the money just to get in the studio – no advance, no wages – we’ll give you some songs.’”
The gamble paid off. Warner stumped up just enough cash to get the band to I.C.P. Studios in Brussels. While there, conventional wisdom – and knowledge of their sonic shift – suggests they stumbled onto a shabby, dreadlocked shaman wearing a tracksuit who enlightened them on the commercial magic of this newfangled nu metal music. As ever, British reality squashes that: Nothing actually came from a riff that guitarist Mark Chapman had been tinkering with in his shed.
“I was always really conscious of the fact people might look at Nothing and go, ‘Oh, the record company have made them write a big hit,’” Jason acknowledges. “It was never like that at all. We were just messing around with ideas, as you do, and Mark started playing that riff.”
There’s no denying the magnetic power of Nothing’s riff. A mid-paced stomp, it was exactly the kind of tune that could blast out in a metal club and gets heads banging. What makes Nothing really stand out, though, is that it doesn’t really sound like any other A song. That was by design – kind of.
“The chorus was originally the bridge – ‘Fly away’ – which I always think is more of a classic A bit, really,” Jason says. “I was obsessed with bands like EMF with Unbelievable and Van Halen with Jump, this one-word chorus. The song basically got written around that word because ‘Nothing’ sounded great on top of that riff!”
Nothing came out as a single in February 2002, and by the time the Hi-Fi Serious album was released on March 4, the song had peaked at No.9 on the UK singles charts. In turn, the single’s success helped Hi-Fi Serious earn a career-best placement at No.18 on the UK albums charts. Thanks to their newfound success, A began to get exciting opportunities. In summer 2002, they went to Japan to play the massive Summer Sonic Festival with The Offspring.
“We’d toured for five years, so it wasn’t like we had overnight success, but it opened a lot of doors for us,” Jason acknowledges. “Gigs-wise, the highlight was going to Japan for the first time and hearing the whole crowd sing Nothing. This little song we’d written in a shed in Suffolk now being sung by 90,000 people.”
“One of the record label guys in Germany read one of us had been shot.”
Some of their gigs were memorable for other reasons. Playing at Coventry’s Colosseum on the Hi-Fi Serious tour, A made national headlines when police were called to the venue after reports that someone had shot at the band from a nearby building. It turned out to be a local with an air rifle who’d harassed them and their support band earlier that day, the BBC reporting that the suspect had pelted their bus with bricks as it pulled in, and “a pair of youths pulled a knife on their driver when he caught them trying to break into the vehicle”.
“Yes! One of the record label guys in Germany actually read a report that one of us had been shot,” Jason says, laughing it off now. “There was a guy literally shooting at us from his balcony in this block of flats. It turned out he’d been sniffing glue or something.”
Although Nothing helped A into the charts, the band weren’t interested in mindlessly replicating its success. The rest of Hi-Fi Serious was very much in keeping with the punk sound they had cultivated on their past two albums. 2005’s Teenage Dance Ordinance followed the same vein. Unfortunately, by that point the winds of change had kicked in for rock again. Nu metal was dead and A were too sunny for emo and too gritty for pop punk. So the record faltered at No.95 in the album charts, leading to the band getting dropped from Warner.
“We always felt like a square peg in a round hole,” Jason says. “The only time the stars actually aligned was when Nothing came out. Normality resumed when we went to do the fourth album. We’d gone to make a big rock record with Terry Date and the big thing at the time was the Kaiser Chiefs. It was just like, ‘We don’t stand a chance.’”
A entered hiatus in 2005, and the members explored other jobs in the music industry. Bassist Daniel P. Carter became a rock DJ for the BBC and drummer Adam Perry joined the Bloodhound Gang, while Jason became a producer, subsequently working with bands such as McFly, Don Broco and The Blackout.
The band came back for brief reunions and the occasional tour from 2008 onwards, returning to full ‘active’ duty in 2018. Then, in June 2021, they were booked for Download Pilot – a smaller version of the festival, initiated by the British government to research the spread of Covid-19 in crowds. Playing to people who hadn’t been to gigs for more than a year, Jason recalls the sheer rapture when the band started Nothing as their finale.
“Even people who don’t know our name know that song,” he says proudly. “I was once with Ellie Goulding and she began humming the riff because she’d heard it in catering – she had no idea it was my song!”
As for why Nothing has stood the test of time, Jason puts it down to its simple theme. “The idea behind the song was that everybody’s always concerned about money, jobs… all this stuff. But when you are left with nothing, all that matters is love,” Jason says. “It’s about how you live your life. Without love, it’s pretty hopeless. I really liked that we had this message of love in something that doesn’t sound like a love song at all.”
A’s new album Prang is out now. The band support The Darkness on tour in the UK in December.
HAKEN – making ‘in a fever dream’ documentary out now
Photo credit: Oli Kember
UK progressive, alternative metal band HAKEN recently released the ‘in a fever dream’ EP, out right now digitally, and physically as CD and vinyl on the 18th September. Now they are pleased to reveal a making-of documentary for the release. Filmed & edited by Oliver Kember, you can watch it in full here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=usHTkn_6L-A
Co-produced and mixed by George Lever (Loathe, Sleep Token), and featuring bass contributions from Bryan Beller (Joe Satriani, The Aristocrats) & Adam ‘Nolly’ Getgood (Periphery), the EP sees the band crafting some of the most emotionally direct material of their career so far.
“ ‘in a fever dream’ is both a brave step away from the expected and a strident consolidation of everything that the band have achieved to date. Ingenious and classy, as ever.” – Blabbermouth.net
“The EP is packed with moments of classic Haken style, and the songs should be accessible to curious new listeners too.” – The Prog Report
The band comments: “This EP was born from a period of reflection and rediscovery. Over the last few years, we’ve faced challenges that forced us to look inward, both as musicians and as people, and the songs on this record are the result of that journey.
We allowed ourselves to be completely honest in the writing process, digging into real experiences, doubts, and emotions rather than hiding behind them. That vulnerability gave these songs a weight and purpose unlike anything we’ve created before.
Musically, we pushed ourselves into new territory, embracing fresh influences while holding onto the intensity and identity that define this band. Working with producer George Lever helped us sharpen that vision, and Vada Studios provided the perfect environment to collaborate and bring it to life.
This EP captures a moment in time of us finding our feet again – moving forward, taking risks, and creating from a place that feels as genuine as we have ever been.”
The band are set to embark on a European headline tour in September & October 2026, with support from IHLO on all dates, as well as Benthos, AVKRVST, IONS & Ancient Fragments on select dates. Find the full list of dates below, tickets on sale now.
23rd September – Razzmatazz 2, Barcelona, Spain
25th September – Kiff, Aarau, Switzerland
26th September – Trabendo, Paris, France
27th September – Euroblast Festival, Cologne, Germany
28th September – Backstage Halle, Munich, Germany
29th September – Dürer Kert Man Hall, Budapest, Hungary
30th September – Roxy, Prague, Czech Republic
1st October – Simm City, Vienna, Austria
3rd October – Magazzini Generali, Milan, Italy
4th October – Largo, Rome, Italy
6th October – Frannz Club, Berlin, Germany
7th October – Oczki, Warsaw, Poland
9th October – Olympia-Kortteli, Tampere, Finland
10th October – Logomo Teatro, Turku, Finland
11th October – Tavastia, Helsinki, Finland
12th October – Debaser Strand, Stockholm, Sweden
13th October – Rockefeller, Oslo, Norway
15th October – Vega, Copenhagen, Denmark
‘in a fever dream’ will be available as CD, Deep Blood Red LP (in Europe), Lotus White LP (in the US) and as a very limited clear LP edition available only from the bands store. Pre-order now here: https://haken.lnk.to/inafeverdream-EP
Bryant Keith brings an intimate, emotionally driven approach to MAN, blending soulful songwriting with contemporary singer-songwriter sensibilities. The track unfolds through expressive vocals, warm harmonies, and a thoughtful chord progression that gives the chorus an added emotional lift. Lyrically, MAN explores vulnerability, identity, and the pressures surrounding personal growth, creating a reflective atmosphere without losing its melodic appeal. KEITH’s background as both a songwriter and producer comes through in the carefully shaped arrangement, while the performance remains personal and direct. Thoughtful, heartfelt, and quietly powerful, MAN highlights an artist focused on turning emotional experience into meaningful music.
