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Melodic punk rock outlet Gucci Chain Letter, a new band formed by longtime veterans of the Vancouver and

Later this month, on March 27th, Finnish stoners Monsternaut will release their sophomore record entitled Approaching Doom. It was engineered and mastered by A. Kippo at Astia-Studio A. To taste a first piece of the new music, give a listen to the title track.
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The scene birthed some of the biggest acts in rock history. Continue reading…

Mid-Michigan melodic alt-rock band Silktail returns with their strongest release to date, A Better Place Than Me. The five-song EP, recorded

Entering a new era with a revitalised line-up and renewed positivity, Polar have stormed stages at Resurrection Festival,

At one time, anarchy and punk rock went hand in hand, taking the side that we should be a society without rulers, government, or established authority. While a good number of punk rock bands still believe in these principles, somewhere along the line, the idea of no government got put to the wayside. Yet, the roots of these beliefs started in London in the early 1970s at the Centro Ibérico. This has been documented in Nick Soulsby’s new book, Born of Struggle, Living in Hope: The Anarcho-Punk Lives of the Centro Ibérico 1971-1983, reminding us that anarchy wasn’t just an aesthetic, but had a physical presence.

Started by anarchist Spanish writer Miguel García García, the Centro Ibérico began with his printing of the Anarchist Black Cross Federation’s newsletter, Black Flag. Soulsby documents some of García’s past which included fighting Nazis in World War II and later being exiled from Spain. These details give us the spirit and intention of García’s vision for the Centro Ibérico. The center he founded served as a place for anarchists to meet and discuss ideas, and morphed into a venue for bands to play for a portion of the center’s twelve-year history.

Nick Soulsby’s writing is very accessible. His retelling of the anarchy movement paints a different picture than previously reported. The text is broken up by pages of pictures and newspaper clippings from Black Flag or other publications. Sometimes he provides the full articles to give context rather than break up the narrative. 

The book is very well researched and features interviews with a good number of people telling the history and personal histories of the Centro Ibérico, but it’s not overrun with interviews. They are actually more sparse than expected. There were sentiments that some of the true anarchists were upset at punks’ co-option of anarchy, mostly aimed at the Sex Pistols who seemed to be commercializing their ideas.

Soulsby’s book doesn’t just beguile us with politics. The anarcho-punk bands of the late 1970s and early 1980s have their roots intertwined with the center’s history. He also traces how the anarcho-punk scene emerged in regards to the center. For you Crass and Poison Girls fans, part of this book is a bit of an extended footnote on their histories, with both bands playing the Autonomy Centre, a meeting place and music venue put together by like-minded anarchists. Eagle-eyed fans would remember the mention of it in the liner notes of Crass’s Christ The Album. Even Wattie from The Exploited gets a mention in a somewhat funny exchange.

What is clear is that a scene was being built and funded by the bands and the people who wanted it to flourish. The Centro Ibérico may not have been as long-lasting as some of the venues, but it is still poignant in the ways communities grow. We’ve reached the point in punk rock history books where authors can fully flesh out aspects that were once footnotes in earlier pieces of work. I think it’s a good place to be, and Nick Soulsby’s book is a great read if you are into the scene’s history rather than just the music.

Pick it up here from PM Press.

Get your fix of tricky arrangements, slow tempos and foreboding vibes right here! Continue reading…

My general lack of awareness and the fact that The Mountain King themselves submitted the album via contact form and didn’t give much away in their promo pack left me unprepared for Pike Dreams. In the hazy air of the promo sump, I caught the word ‘doom’, but when I hit play on Pike Dreams that’s not quite what I got. As much as the name and cover art seem to scream Sabbathian (neo-)classical heavy metal, stoner, and of course doom, Pike Dreams is ambient, synth-led post-rock, and it’s instrumental. The German duo have been lurking around the borders of drone/stoner/doom since 2014, and do not operate as a solely instrumental act. That Pike Dreams speaks to its being created as “a slow cycle of reflection on human history across the last two millennia,” where each song is named for a particular year of great social and societal change in Europe. Marrying evocation with execution is a difficulty especially acute for instrumental music—how does The Mountain King fare?

As an ambient album, Pike Dreams leans heavily towards synth, with touches of piano, barely-there percussion, and heavily-muted guitars. It carries a feeling of nostalgia that manifests dualistically in fuzzed-out soundscapes and grainy warmth à la Boards of Canada (“1066,” “1381”), and on the other through dungeon-synth, and quasi-medieval horns and melodies (“1328”). This seems appropriate given the record’s historical concept. Its modernity surfaces in subtle hints at an industrial edge to riffs that break the surface of haze and resonate between echoing pulses, reminding me fragmentarily of Phal:Angst and Haunted Plasma (“1066,” “1789,” “2026”). What Pike Dreams is most of all, however, is quiet. Regardless of the music’s precise direction, it remains blanketed by fog with every element subdued, magnifying the meaning of the word ‘reflection’ in the album’s description.

The Mountain King take the ‘less is more’ approach not only to volume, but also to the structure of the record and the compositions themselves. Pike Dreams could be described as fluctuating between introspective calm and confident expressiveness, but this translates to a change in intensity from 1 to 1.5 on a scale of 10. Gentle pulses trade places with blunt, horn-accented chugs (“476,” “1789”), strings and tremolo blur together in indistinct softness (“1525,” “2010”), and trap beats support liquid guitar-synth hybrids (“1789,” “2026”). Often, the blurred boundaries of physically and synthetically-crafted sounds are beautiful, melodically and precisely in their dreamlike ethereality (“1066,” “1524”). Often, however, do the persistent understatement of movement and omnipresent muting hamper Pike Dreams’ ability to gain its listeners’ attention. This muffling is no doubt intentional, and does work well at intervals: for instance, in the service of contrast or transition (“2010”); acting as a musing pause (“1524”); or to amplify a melody’s poignancy through almost painful delicacy (“1066”). Yet its unequivocal application to all moments of all songs can make even the grandest passages underwhelming.

In this regard, it’s uncertain how a listener is meant to relate Pike Dreams to its subject matter. On the one hand, the deliberate vagueness of the soundscape mirrors a look back through the mists of time, and allows the audience to project their own sentiments onto its subtle evocation. On the other hand, this same nature prevents the audience from connecting to the music itself, and from connecting the music to its supposed year of reference. More minimalist tracks (“1328,” “1381,” “2026”) may work better when the listener detaches, but more expressive ones (“1066,” “1524,” “2010”) when the listener invests in their refrains—and the ones in those tracks are often very lovely. Whether there’s an issue here will be down to the role one designates to a concept album—especially of the instrumental and ambient kind.

Pike Dreams is as hard to pin down as you might expect from the above and from its appropriately mysterious title. As a whispering, quite beautiful, backdrop, it makes for a soothing and introspective experience that I can’t deny I enjoy returning to. In many ways, it’s a breath of fresh air amidst a constant storm of fast and extremely heavy music that so often fills these halls, and a chance to exhale and let go in a time of conflict and strife. The Mountain King may not have done enough to fully embody their themes or impress their compositions’ identities upon the listener, but how it feels for the duration is worth something.

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Rating: Good
DR: 10 | Format Reviewed: VBR mp3
Label: Void Key Recordings
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Releases Worldwide: March 6th, 2026

The post The Mountain King – Pike Dreams Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.

Berlin-based psych post-punk band The Underground Youth release new single ‘O’ Evangeline’ featuring Sade Sanchez of L.A. Witch.

Dez Dare‘s ‘These Days Are Wild & Blind’ is a collection of 12 songs that will be released