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Swedish hard rock queens Thundermother are releasing their studio debut on Napalm Records: Mothers of Thunder is set for release on February 5, 2027. The band’s seventh album proves that the leading ladies of the genre have everything their male counterparts do—if not even more! Rock ’n’ roll with gritty riffs and sassy lyrics, whose raw energy… Continue Reading →

The new Pearl Jam drummer is a mystery again. Two days after Abe Laboriel Jr. walked out with the band for an unannounced Friday set at the Ohana Festival in Dana Point, California — and again for Sunday’s headline slot — Eddie Vedder posted a note thanking him for ‘sitting in on drums for PJ’, thanked Paul McCartney for the loan (‘We owe you big time’), and said nothing about a permanent replacement for Matt Cameron.

Matt Cameron liked the post. So the search that began in July 2025, which Stone Gossard was calling ‘our mystery wrapped in an enigma’ as recently as May, is still open, and the drummer Pearl Jam chose months ago has still not sat down at the kit in public.

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Update: What Eddie Vedder Actually Said

Here’s the whole thing, posted to Pearl Jam’s Instagram on Monday morning, because the wording is the story:

‘Hello good humans, Just a quick note on this Monday morning to thank each and everyone who came out to Ohana Fest this year. Three days of great groups, all of whom were further energized by the pumped up vibes from a perfect crowd. You all made our tenth year so special and we are GRATEFUL. Also wanted to extend our further appreciation to Abe Laboriel Jr. sitting in on drums for PJ. It was a joy to play with him, and he’s obviously extraordinary at his craft. The man works and PLAYS hard. It is no wonder he’s been with the ultimate Maestro Paul McCartney and his mind blowing band for decades. Thank you so much for this weekend Abe. And thank YOU Paul. We owe you big time. Eddie’

Read it twice. ‘Sitting in.’ ‘This weekend.’ ‘Thank YOU Paul.’ That is the language of a band who borrowed a drummer from a friend for a festival they own, not a band introducing a new member. If Laboriel were joining, you don’t thank his other employer for the loan.

And then there’s the detail that closes it: Matt Cameron liked the post. The man who held the seat for twenty-seven years publicly gave the thumbs-up to a note calling his stand-in a stand-in.

We said on Saturday that a man playing a Pearl Jam set with Pearl Jam ‘tends to settle it’. It didn’t. That’s on us, and it’s why this piece now reads the way it does.

So Who Is The New Pearl Jam Drummer?

Nobody outside the band knows, and that is now officially the position.

What we do know hasn’t changed. In May, Stone Gossard said the band had chosen someone: ‘nobody knows who’s going to play drums with us even makes it triply exciting. So, it’s our mystery wrapped in an enigma and we’re relishing in it right now.’ He also admitted the difficulty of replacing a drummer who ‘always played with power and with energy’, and said the unknown would force the band to ‘regroup and try to still be good’.

Ohana was Pearl Jam’s tenth year running their own festival, on their own beach, in front of their own crowd. If the permanent drummer were ready to be unveiled, this was the stage to do it on. Instead they brought in the best hired gun in the business for the weekend and thanked him for his time. The most likely read is the simple one: whoever they’ve chosen wasn’t available, or wasn’t ready, and they weren’t going to skip their own festival over it.

They Still Turned Up Two Days Early

That part remains true, and it remains the best part.

Ohana ran from Friday the 25th through Sunday the 27th, and Pearl Jam’s name was on the Sunday. Everybody assumed the drummer would be revealed there. Then they came out on the Friday, unannounced, with Laboriel behind the kit, dedicated ‘Better Man’ to him from the stage, and had Billy Idol join them before the night was out. Sunday’s headline set brought Billy Strings up for an acoustic turn and a run of Neil Young covers. In between, Vedder sang ‘Wave Of Mutilation’ with Pixies, ‘American Jesus’ with Bad Religion, and ‘Hunger Strike’ with Stephen Wilson Jr.

It turns out the two-days-early stunt wasn’t a reveal. It was Pearl Jam being Pearl Jam — refusing videos at the peak of MTV, going to war with Ticketmaster, releasing every show as an official bootleg, and now crashing their own festival with a borrowed drummer because they felt like playing. Consistent, at least.

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Who Is Abe Laboriel Jr.?

Not the name anybody had on their list, which is why the weekend ran away with itself.

Laboriel has been Paul McCartney’s drummer since 2001 — twenty-five years, thousands of shows, the biggest stages there are. He’s a session and touring musician of enormous pedigree rather than a product of any particular scene, and he’s known for an expressive, physically demonstrative style that is about as far from Seattle stoicism as you can get. ‘The man works and PLAYS hard,’ as Vedder put it.

Which is the thing worth sitting with, sit-in or not. Pearl Jam’s drum stool has always been occupied by somebody from the world the band came out of — the Seattle scene we rank them fourth in. Dave Krusen and Matt Chamberlain at the beginning. Dave Abbruzzese through the Vs. and Vitalogy years. Jack Irons out of Red Hot Chili Peppers. Then Matt Cameron, a Seattle lifer who had already spent a decade in Soundgarden before he joined.

For one weekend, that lineage got a McCartney sideman. Whether the permanent choice comes from inside that world or outside it is now the whole question.

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Twenty-Seven Years, And Cameron Left On His Own Terms

The context matters, because this was never a firing.

Matt Cameron announced he was leaving Pearl Jam in July 2025, after twenty-seven years. He went out on a high — 2024’s Dark Matter is the best-reviewed record they’d made in twenty years, he drummed the whole of it, and he played the world tour that came with it before walking away. The single ‘Wreckage’ is him too.

Pearl Jam’s response described him as ‘a singular and true powerhouse of a musician and drummer’ who ‘has propelled the last 27 years of Pearl Jam live shows and studio recordings’, calling it ‘a deeply important chapter for our group’ and saying he ‘will be deeply missed and is forever our friend in art and music’.

Gossard, speaking in May, was equally warm: ‘Matt Cameron has always come at things with an openness to all the people in the room and with grace and love for this process.’ Cameron, he said, ‘was ready for a shift and ready for a change’.

That’s about as clean an exit as this business produces, and the like on Vedder’s post is the receipt.

What Cameron Is Actually Doing Now

And here’s the part most of this week’s coverage will still skip.

Cameron didn’t leave Pearl Jam to retire. He left and went straight back to the other band he’s been in since 1986 — and Soundgarden have been considerably more active than anyone expected. He was behind the kit at Lumen Field earlier this month for their Seahawks halftime set with Taylor Momsen, and he’s one of the three surviving members building a new Soundgarden album out of unreleased recordings Chris Cornell made before his death.

For twenty-seven years Cameron was doing two jobs. He has now stopped doing one of them, at exactly the moment the other one started needing him full time. Read the timing however you want, but it does not look like coincidence.

The Mystery Is Still The Point

Gossard’s phrase in May was ‘we’re relishing in it right now’, and after this weekend you have to take him at his word. They had the perfect reveal moment, a hometown festival and a captive crowd, and they used it to borrow Paul McCartney’s drummer and thank him publicly. That’s not a band who’ve lost control of a story. That’s a band enjoying one.

Cameron hit hard and he hit accurately, and ‘Rearviewmirror’ does not work if the drummer is thinking about it. Whoever eventually sits down at that kit for good still has to make a room believe it. This weekend proved a world-class sit-in can. It didn’t tell us who’s next.

Now we wait, again, for someone to actually say it out loud.

TL;DR

• Eddie Vedder says Abe Laboriel Jr. was ‘sitting in on drums for PJ’ at the Ohana Festival, in an Instagram post on Monday 28 September. He thanked Paul McCartney for the loan: ‘We owe you big time.’
• Matt Cameron liked the post.
• Pearl Jam’s permanent new drummer has still not been named. Stone Gossard said in May the band had chosen someone — ‘our mystery wrapped in an enigma’.
• Laboriel played both Pearl Jam sets: the unannounced Friday set (with Billy Idol guesting) and Sunday’s headline slot (with Billy Strings).
• Laboriel has been Paul McCartney’s drummer since 2001.
• Matt Cameron left Pearl Jam in July 2025 after 27 years, on good terms and by his own choice.
• Cameron is now focused on Soundgarden, who played the Seahawks halftime show this month and are building an album from unreleased Chris Cornell recordings.
• Pearl Jam’s previous drummers: Dave Krusen, Matt Chamberlain, Dave Abbruzzese, Jack Irons and Matt Cameron.

FAQ

A weekend with Paul McCartney’s drummer, a public thank-you, and no answer. Tell us in the comments who you think Pearl Jam are hiding — and whether borrowing Abe Laboriel Jr. for Ohana was the right call. Follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.

The post New Pearl Jam Drummer Mystery Reopens: Vedder Says Ohana Was A Sit-In appeared first on Loaded Radio.

Booked for mid-October.

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(written by Islander) As you can see, I had time to beef up this roundup. Though why we talk about enlarging things as beefing them up, I don’t know. Photos of gigantic pumpkins are circulating this time of year, and to get sea-borne we could also suggest that you’ll have a whale of a time, […]

The post SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: SERPENT SKIES, DREAM UNENDING, SHEVILS, FIMIR, APOTHECARY, HAGEL, SQUAMATA, MAGEC appeared first on NO CLEAN SINGING.

A couple weeks back, Gaslight Anthem frontman Brian Fallon put out his latest solo record, Not Bad For New Jersey, easily his best release in a decade. Accompanied by his newest backing band, The Painkillers (Nick Salisbury on bass, Kurt Leon on drums, Chicago Music Exchange’s Nathaniel Murphy on guitar), Fallon has been out on a US/Canada tour that included not one but two shows at Arts At The Armory, a concert venue just north of Boston that makes its home inside the repurposed light infantry drill shed in a 130-year-old armory. It’s a unique spot to see a show in 2026, an independent multipurpose stop that harkens back to the church basement/VFW hall shows that generations of old punks cut their collective teeth in. Because the evening show at the 395-capacity venue sold out so quickly, a matinee show that subsequently also sold out was added earlier in the afternoon. Due to a prior commitment, DS was only in the building at the evening installment. Two shows is a lot in a day once you reach a certain age; like the old punks that they are, Fallon & Co were more than up to the task.

Check out a bunch more shots from Brian Fallon and the Painkillers and the brothers Hause below!

The ‘Gira Revolucion’ tour launches in March.

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He will remain active with the band in other aspects however.

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Rorcal are a Swiss post-black/doom metal band and this is their seventh album. Rorcal are a shapeshifting band that are more than worthy of your attention, (here, here, here, here, here). In other words, when they release something, it always rewards investigation. So what grim shape does Mahre take? Mahre blights us with a horrifying vision … Continue reading “Rorcal – Mahre (Review)”

From their upcoming first new album in sixteen years.

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