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St. Louis, Missouri’s Iron Linings formed in 2020 and quickly recorded a debut EP which attempted to meld

One of the biggest hits of Sundance was The Invite, an anxious so-called comedy about a dinner party gone awry directed by Olivia Wilde, with a cast led by Wilde, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Penélope Cruz and a script by Will McCormack and Rashida Jones. That film was acquired by A24, and it’s coming out next month. Sooner than that, we’ll get to hear its original score, composed by the great Devonté Hynes.

The post Dev Hynes Announces <em>The Invite</em> Soundtrack: Hear “Contentious Environment” appeared first on Stereogum.

– June 16th, 2026 –

New Video/Single Now Playing + Pre-Orders Available

Watch/stream NORTH SEA ECHOES’ “Enjoy The View” HERE

NORTH SEA ECHOES – featuring progressive metal pioneers singer Ray Alder and guitarist Jim Matheos of Fates Warning – are back with a new studio album, How To Cast A Shadow, set for release on July 24th on Metal Blade Records!

On NORTH SEA ECHOES‘ critically acclaimed 2024 debut, Really Good Terrible Things, Alder and Matheos garnered rave reviews for songs that possessed, “liberating sonic space and emotional vulnerability… from somnambulant electro-fog to gritty, overdriven disquiet, to the quietly devastating (Blabbermouth).“

Photo by Jeremy Saffer

With this year’s How To Cast A Shadow, the band’s identity is further explored and expanded. Matheos explains, “this record is a bit heavier, with several more songs featuring real drums, played by Dennis Leeflang. It wasn’t necessarily intentional or planned, just the way things shaped up and how they emerged this time.”

Alder concurs. “[A track like] ‘I’ll Leave A Light On’ is much heavier than anything on Really Good Terrible Things. It has a darker, melancholic feel that fits well on this album. I loosely based the lyrics on a character from my favorite sci-fi series. I won’t say which, but they do use the quote ‘out there in the black.’“

From the radio-ready rock of “All That Comes After” and the intimate, escalating “A Time Of Innocence And Purpose” to the powerful, timeless ballad “Villains Or Saints,” How To Cast A Shadow cohesively crosses genres and challenges aural preconceptions.

The duo’s shared and separate histories help to forge a fresh creative opus. Alder has been the vocalist and main co-writer for prog metal heroes Fates Warning for 37 years, recording ten albums between 1988 (No Exit) and 2020 (Long Day Good Night). Rounding out his discography are seven albums with Redemption, two solo records, and the band A-Z, which debuted in 2022.

Revered guitarist and producer Matheos is a cofounder of Fates Warning, the lineup debuting with 1984′s Night On Bröcken on Metal Blade. In addition to thirteen albums with Fates Warning, Matheos launched several solo albums, four LPs alongside former Dream Theater keyboardist Kevin Moore under the name OSI, and Kings Of Mercia, which launched in 2022.

Of NORTH SEA ECHOES‘ sophomore album, the team says, “You could say that there are elements of everything we do or have done on this album, yet Fates and our various other projects are totally different types of music.” How To Cast A Shadow ups the promise of its predecessor with provocative words of hope, sorrow and consciousness, paired with Matheos’ equally emotive, varied and deeply moving guitar work.

In advance of the release, today the band unveils the lead single, “Enjoy the View.” Comments Alder, “The guitars and drums have this great drive that builds throughout the song. The combination of quiet verses and heavy choruses made me think (lyrically) of a darker side to some people. Those who would choose numbness over pain.”

Watch NORTH SEA ECHOES‘ “Enjoy The View” video HERE.

How To Cast A Shadow will be released on CD and digital formats. Find pre-orders at: metalblade.com/northseaechoes

How To Cast A Shadow Track Listing:
01. A Time of Innocence and Purpose
02. Enjoy the View
03. Good Enough
04. I’ll Leave a Light On
05. All Fall Away
06. Revenge
07. Villains or Saints
08. What Is and What Was
09. All That Comes After
10. How to Cast a Shadow

https://northseaechoes.com

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'The Roaring Waves' has been some eight years in the making for Steve Hackett and Steve Rothery. Continue reading…

Influential post-hardcore pioneers Texas Is The Reason have announced Do You Know Who You Are?: TX30 Special Edition, the second of

Creeper will be heading back out on the road across the UK later this year for their ‘Off With Their Heads!’ headline tour.

Southampton’s finest will bring their bloodthirsty live show to rooms across the UK this October, with a run including a huge show at London’s O2 Forum Kentish Town.

The announcement comes after the band delivered two extraordinary sets at Download Festival over the weekend, and it seems there are plenty more surprises in store for these upcoming shows.

On the announcement, William Von Ghould has shared:

“This Halloween season, join us for four special shows set in the world of ‘Sanguivore’. The performances will feature a new stage production following the vampire rock band on tour as they are pursued by The Mistress of Death. Blending live music with theatrical storytelling, the show will bring the characters and themes of the current era to life on stage. Come immerse yourself in the flesh and the fantasy with us this October, just watch out for your head!”

With support on all dates coming from Calva Louise and Starbenders, take a look at the full list of dates below:

OCTOBER

8: CARDIFF Tramshed
9: LONDON O2 Forum Kentish Town
10: MANCHESTER Academy
11: GLASGOW SWG3 Galvanisers

Tickets will be on sale from June 17 at 10am BST.

The post Creeper Announce ‘Off With Their Heads!’ UK Headline Tour appeared first on Rock Sound.

Have you ever wondered how artists created particular pieces of work? Where do they get all those ideas

It was a big year for Muse, Disturbed and Godsmack among others as we flash back on 40 songs that helped define rock radio in 2006. Continue reading…

Two more legendary classic-rock acts return with new music, just weeks after fellow stalwarts Paul McCartney, Yes, and Peter Frampton. Continue reading…

You wait until tonight
Diversion of the trace
Get ready for the vamp
The stage, the other face 

Some things are monuments: raised in stone, fixed in place, built to instruct the future on what must be remembered. A trace is different. It is smaller, stranger, more unstable: a smear of light on glass, a footprint in dust, a pulse still moving beneath the surface. A trace does not announce itself from above. It survives at the edge of disappearance, carrying proof that something passed through, resisted, or remained. On their third full-length album, Trace, Athens dark synth duo Incirrina follow those marks through the maze of the “seeming real,” where what is imposed, cruel, and inhumane presents itself as inevitable truth.

Here, the night is not merely a setting. It is a stage, a shelter, a ritual chamber, and a corridor of escape. Cold analogue electronics flicker like neon over wet stone; basslines gallop and coil; drum machines strike with martial insistence; voices rise from the fog like warnings, spells, accusations, and prayers. Trace is a record of movement, but also of refusal: a dance through dread, memory, alienation, and defiance.

With Trace, George Katsanos and Irini Tiniakou expand the distinctive sonic universe they established with Lip Led Scream in 2022 and 8.15 in 2019, experimenting with instrumentation, rhythm, and vocal approach. The album gathers 11 songs written between 2023 and 2025 and shaped through the discipline of a 24-channel console, exploring the boundaries of dark electronic, synthwave, coldwave, minimal synth, and darkwave without reducing itself to the tropes of any of these genres.

Thematically, the songs explore the uniqueness of human experience and the struggle to preserve inner freedom and individuality in dystopian times. Celebrating diversity and self-expression while continuing to connect, create, and work with others becomes a way out of the false order. The album itself is the result of such a process: its creators consider themselves, against the odds, artisans and friends who make music, share it, and reinvent themselves. As its title indicates, Trace is the imprint of searching for wondrous, meaningful diversions, novel transformations, and transitory acts of care and defiance.

Katsanos brings analogue synthesizers, octapad, drum programming, electric bass guitar, kantele, alto melodica, samples, waterphone, and vocals into Incirrina’s sonic architecture, while Tiniakou’s synthesizers and unmistakable voice give the duo much of its spectral charge. Her delivery can feel whispered, wounded, commanding, or ritualistic, cutting through the electronic framework with theatrical force. On Trace, that chemistry is central: machinery and voice, pulse and poetry, body and alarm.

“Mutate” opens the album with drones that sound like metal being cut, before a galloping bass synth melody pushes the track forward with immediate force. Katsanos’ analogue electronics and drum programming give the song its relentless propulsion, while Tiniakou’s voice begins close, dark, and breathy before sharpening into an old-school goth edge. Buzzing synth sighs gather around the pulse, and when the drums lock into a dance beat, the track surges with classic 80s synthpop and darkwave energy. It churns, glows, and moves with the confidence of an opening manifesto.

Through its lyrics, “Mutate” frames the night as a ritual of self-remaking, where performance, fashion, fire, and the dance floor become weapons against conformity. The lyrics reject fixed identity, social obedience, faceless control, and dull authority, choosing eruption over submission. Through theatrical reinvention, the song turns mutation into survival, style into armor, and the transformed body into a radiant act of defiance.

“Find” begins with an ascending synth loop that feels almost mystical, rising and falling like a coded signal in the dark. Cinematic synth sighs drift beneath the melody, while Katsanos’ spare electronic framework leaves enough empty space for tension to gather around every repetition. Tiniakou’s vocal sounds haunted, sad, and resigned, drawing from the emotional severity of classic 80s minimal synth without slipping into pastiche.

The song’s lyrical structure reads like a minimalist inventory of growth through pressure. Time, wrongdoing, pain, courage, thought, and speech become stages in the difficult work of self-recognition. The song suggests that fear is not defeated by silence, but by naming it; even in isolation, the act of speaking proves that something has passed through the void and been heard.

“Alexia” opens with crackling, popping percussion before dark synth pads enter, followed by a sharp wail, a simple bass synth figure, and a buzzing melodic line. Katsanos’ programming keeps the track grounded in pulse, while the surrounding electronics feel vaporous, nocturnal, and lunar. Tiniakou’s reverbed vocal arrives with a witchy, dreamlike aura, giving the song the feel of a darkwave/minimal synth apparition.

The imagery in “Alexia” follows a spectral woman through night, landscape, dream, and city before she disappears into morning. The words move through sand, mirrors, snow, memory, and the senses, turning the title figure into a myth of escape. She is present everywhere and unreachable at once, making reality feel briefly fragile, sensual, temporary, and unfinished.

“She Is In The Dream” opens with an ominous weight, led by a thicker EBM-style bass synth and droning, cold, wind-like pads. Compressed claps snap through the atmosphere as Tiniakou’s vocal moves from gauze to witchy clarity. Midway through, a Kraftwerk-like synth pulse enters, shifting the track toward a hypnotic blend of synthpop, darkwave, and minimal synth. Katsanos’ low-end pressure and rhythmic architecture give the nightmare a dancefloor skeleton, while the vocal performance turns the dream into accusation.

Lyrically, “She Is In The Dream” turns desire, guilt, shame, and punishment into a recurring nightmare. The song’s words conjure a woman as judge, accuser, and wounded image, forcing the lyrical narrator into a confrontation with dread and bodily pain. Erotic fixation and religious torment blur together, and waking offers no real escape; the dream remains lodged in the body.

“Region” begins with rustling, clockwork-like sounds before giving way to a deep bass synth and cinematic pad. A wistful keyboard melody enters, then a hi-hat beat, and Tiniakou’s voice carries the song toward something almost folkloric. There is a fairy-tale quality here, like a legend told in a cottage on a windswept moor, but the atmosphere is private, wounded, and strange. Katsanos’ palette of analogue synths and unusual textures gives the track an antique mechanical shimmer.

The lyrics for  “Region” recount the return to childhood as a half-lit emotional geography. Dollhouses, trains, books, toys, sealed crimes, and unhealed time gather into a place where memory stays open. The words address someone lost inside a soundless internal territory, offering devotion and protection as if love might still survive fear, absence, and remembrance.

“Always Here” opens slowly with misty, faint droning before a pulsing bass synth enters like a rapid heartbeat. A quick bell-like warning flickers through the atmosphere, and Tiniakou’s whispered delivery heightens the sense of threat. When the beat locks in, Katsanos’ programming gives the song a darkwave dancefloor charge, with the deep bass melody pushing forward like blood under pressure. As the bell motif returns more frequently and becomes more melodic, Tiniakou’s voice cracks through the layers like a command.

Lyrically, “Always Here” is a stark meditation on emotional survival. The song presents laughter, tears, thought, and dreaming as necessary acts against numbness and surrender. Without feeling, imagination, and reflection, the lyrics warn, people fade into the false reality of the “seeming real.” Renewal begins by rediscovering what was present all along, beneath fear and resignation.

“Diver” sets itself in motion with a machine-gun percussion beat, a dull warning synth, pulsing electronics, and icy cinematic pads. Katsanos’ drum programming turns the track into a piece of urban machinery, while the synths move like rails, screens, and locked doors. Tiniakou’s voice carries an electroclash edge while remaining rooted in darkwave, adding human volatility to the mechanical enclosure.

The lyrical terrain of “Diver” transforms public transit into a claustrophobic descent through anxiety, compulsion, and sensory overload. The words move through trains, tracks, crowds, voices, bodily signals, and the pressure of routine until motion itself becomes a cage. Maps and routes fail to locate the heart; the body keeps traveling, but the self remains trapped inside noise, metal, and panic.

“Presence” is built around a deep, dark synth melody that rises and falls in repeated melodic beats, building tension until layers of icy pads gather beneath it. Katsanos’ electronics create the sensation of moving forward through a storm, while Tiniakou’s vocal begins with almost melancholic restraint before the song’s drama tightens around her. The result is cold but not empty, severe but not distant.

In its lyrical arc, “Presence” turns perception into a borrowed, compromised act. The song moves through urban machinery, denial, surveillance, and mass anonymity until one figure breaks the spell. Beauty becomes a disruptive force that strips away false sight, forcing blindness before clarity. Freedom does not arrive through comfort, but through confrontation with reality.

“Sometimes” is the vocal exception on Trace, carried by George Katsanos. His sorrowful delivery has a gravity reminiscent of Brendan Perry’s deeper, mournful register in Dead Can Dance. Misty synths and a piano-like melody give the track a slightly folky darkwave character, while the snare drumbeat moves like a despondent march forward. The arrangement does not overstate the pain; it simply walks with it.

The confession at the center of “Sometimes” is one of emotional collapse. The words cycle through tears, death-wish imagery, longing, helplessness, suffocation, despair, and emptiness without dressing the pain in abstraction. Its repetition gives the song the force of a private admission, capturing depression not as a single dramatic event, but as waves that keep returning.

“Alien Room” moves on a pulsing bass synth, witchy vocal wails, cold harmony effects, and a dance beat that keeps the room spinning. Katsanos’ low-end movement and programming give the song its hypnotic structure, while Tiniakou’s voice turns the domestic setting into an incantation. The atmosphere feels ritualistic, almost brushing against dungeon synth in places, but the track remains physical, tense, and strange.

In the song’s strange domestic vision, “Alien Room” turns ordinary space into a paranoid science-fiction chamber. Couches, windows, drinks, stained floors, broken objects, and living-room details become signs of invasion. The words mix pulp cosmic imagery with everyday dread, suggesting that the end-times charge may arrive not through spectacle, but through ordinary collapse inside the home.

“ΚΡΥΦΟ (Hidden)” closes the album with a propulsive darkwave beat, whoops and wails, smoldering Greek-language vocals from Tiniakou, and a catchy guitar riff. Katsanos’ rhythmic drive gives the finale its bodily force, making the track one of the album’s most dancefloor-friendly moments. After so much dread, memory, pressure, and transformation, the closer does not retreat into shadow; it moves through it.

Sung in Greek, “ΚΡΥΦΟ (Hidden)” centers on concealment, self-address, and unheard voices. The song connects private suffering with children, sand, earth, sea, breath, betrayal, dawn, and the first cry of awakening. Hidden knowledge becomes both a burden and a force pressing toward revelation, turning secrecy into motion and suppressed pain into sound.

By the time “ΚΡΥΦΟ (Hidden)” fades, Trace has completed a circuit through mutation, fear, memory, transit, perception, collapse, invasion, and disclosure. Incirrina’s third album is not merely a genre exercise in dark electronic, synthwave, and coldwave form. It is a document of friendship, craft, and resistance: the work of artisans who make music together, share it, and reinvent themselves against the odds. Its title becomes its method. Trace leaves behind the imprint of searching for wondrous diversions, meaningful transformations, and small, transitory acts of care and defiance.

Incirrina’s Trace is out now via Cold Transmission Music. Listen to the album below, and order it here.

George Katsanos and Irini Tiniakou’s journey as Incirrina began in Athens in late 2017. The duo released 8.15 in 2019 through Geheimnis Records, followed by the digital maxi single Utter in 2020, the split maxi single Devastations / R.Daneel with The Man & His Failures in 2021, and Lip Led Scream in 2022 via Cold Transmission. They later released Immersion in 2024 and the singles “Only One Smile Alone” and “ΚΡΥΦΟ (Hidden)” in 2025.

They have appeared at numerous gigs, live stages, and festivals across Greece and Europe, including Germany, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Italy, Switzerland, Hungary, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Croatia. Their festival appearances include Death Disco Open Air Festival, Wave-Gotik-Treffen, Athens Music Week, Metavasis Festival, Japan Festival, schwarts + Bruits De La Cave Festival, Athens Digital Arts Festival, Pliisken Festival, Cold Transmission Festival, and Morphic Festival. They have also opened in Athens for Front 242, Soviet Soviet, Die Selektion, and Potochkine.

Beyond the club and concert stage, Incirrina have also moved into theatre. In 2024, they composed music for Andrew Keatley’s Alligators, directed by Giannis Laspias at Gloria Theatre in Athens, with the music performed live on stage. They also composed soundscapes and orchestrated songs for Little Women, adapted, translated, and directed by Athina Hatziathanassiou at Alambra Theatre.

Their unique blend of analogue electronic instrumentation, distinct vocal quality, and band chemistry has made their live performances especially powerful, described as having emotional melodies that stick in the mind, heavy and strong beats that impel the body to dance, and vocals that cut through the musical layers, leaving a lasting impact.

Upcoming Live Dates

• 10 July 2026 — TBA
• 24 October 2026 — Sounds From The Heart Festival, Dynamo / Werk 21, Zürich, Switzerland
• 25 October 2026 — Lovataraxx & Incirrina, Die Stadtmitte, Karlsruhe, Germany

Follow Incirrina:

• YouTube
• Facebook
• Website
• Instagram
• Bandcamp
• Spotify

The post “The Night Is Mine” — Greek Dark Synth Duo INCIRRINA Finds Shelter From Dystopian Conformity with “Trace” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.