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In the liner notes of The Acoustic Verses, the final album of Green Carnation’s first iteration, guitarist/ bandleader Tchort teased the second part of a trilogy that promised to be a continuation of their absolutely essential second album, Light of Day, Day of Darkness. The Chronicles of Doom never came to be, as the band disintegrated roughly a year after The Acoustic Verses dropped. I, as a rabid fan, was crushed by this dissolution and was more than just a little hyped when the band reunited a little under a decade later.

As promised, Tchort and his reassembled co-Tchorts ceased the experimentation that defined much of their previous output and focused on creating epic, progressive, and fucking excellent doom when they began releasing new music again. And though that trilogy didn’t pan out the way as originally intended, it has now been completed. And it’s damn good.

A Dark Poem, Part III: The Messiah Complex concludes a triad of explorations not unlike Natalie Merchant’s in the late 1990s: to examine Ophelia, the partner of the titular character in Shakespeare’s Hamlet, but through the lens of 19th-century French poet Arthur Ribaud. A fittingly tragic character who embodies all that is good and just but is driven mad by her lover’s feigned madness, it’s little wonder that Ophelia has inspired centuries’ worth of artistic endeavor across multiple genres and disciplines. We won’t go into any literary analysis here (my days as a student of literature are decades in the past anyway), so we’ll stick to the music itself.

Briefly, The Messiah Complex fucking owns. “Unconditional Artificial Chemistry” opens with a distant and appropriately moody piano, with an equally distant melody that feels part keyboard, part theremin, and part disembodied spirit floating nervously over it. A deep and pummeling doom riff with a variation on that same harrowing motif almost sliding overhead preps us for the unmistakable voice of Kjetil Nordhus, a man whose understated power has perfectly paired with Green Carnation’s bleak nature for over a quarter century. Tchort has absolutely held to his conviction that Light of Day, Day of Darkness is the quintessential Green Carnation sound, and his compatriots have done a remarkable job of staying true to that identity during his leave of absence. With Tchorty back in action and the sound largely unaltered, we’re reassured that Nordhus and bassist Stein Roger Sordal have faithfully held to Tchort’s mission: to expand the Light of Day journey without merely recycling it.

The title track follows with due diligence: it is a lengthy, somber, and largely unpredictable voyage that hits us with multiple callbacks from the rest of the Dark Poem trilogy without ever feeling like a rehash, always keeping us guessing, and taking multiple cues from 70s prog and psychedelia without ever sounding forced or stale. This has been key to Green Carnation’s many faces over the decades: even when they went goth rock with Blessing in Disguise, straight-ahead metal/rock with The Quiet Offspring, and fully mellow on The Acoustic Verses, they never once sacrificed the cohesion that made them instantly recognizable as only Green Carnation. I can think of few other outfits who can don as many masks as Green Carnation has without sacrificing an ounce of their identity. Are these guys a metal band, or are they formally trained thespians?

“Broken Souls, Common Enemies” is the last conventional song of the trilogy, a beast of a tune that greets us in 5/4, briefly breaks into some amorphous meters, and then alternates between its previous groove and other odd times. Time sigs aside, “Broken Souls, Common Enemies” is a journey to the end of night unto itself, replete with flute-laden acoustic breaks, twangy guitar solos befitting an Americana record, and waltzable blast beats supporting Grutle Kjellson’s returning roars, all neatly packaged into a brief-feeling epic that never sounds forced or disjointed. Blink, and nearly ten minutes have gone by behind you.

The true conclusion of the Dark Poem trilogy is one I’m frankly under-qualified to properly critique: it is an actual orchestral suite that revisits the many themes and motifs we’ve heard throughout this spellbinding trilogy. All the hallmarks of formal composition are present: harmonic inversions, meticulous arrangement, sparse use of parallels, yada yada yada. Properly employed compositional theory is all yay and bravo and stuff, but what ultimately matters is how it hits the listener. And lemme tell you, “A Dark Poem: Orchestral Suite” hits hard; it is a beautifully and sensually woven piece that, especially at its apex, masterfully illustrates with sound Ophelia’s descent into madness after her father’s death and her rejection by her supposed beloved. You can literally feel her drowning while listening to this suite, and it doesn’t take much imagination to visualize her flower-adorned corpse as this composition concludes. Dayum.

I’ve often remarked that Load and Reload would have been much better if the fluff had been scrapped and the highlights of those albums had been released as a single record. With A Dark Poem, Green Carnation has done the opposite, but with much greater effect. Like that pair of Metallica albums, this trilogy feels like a cohesive whole, but with each installment deliberately kept brief and impactful, Green Carnation have delivered a trio of albums that feel like a thoughtfully scripted miniseries. Each chapter stands on its own, but the whole towers when unified. Given its premeditation, execution, and bravery, I daresay it might even stand alongside Light of Day, Day of Darkness.

Release Date: September 4th, 2026
Record Label: Season Of Mist
Genre: Progressive Metal

Musicians:

• Kjetil Nordhus / Vocals
• Alejandro Perez / Drums
• Stein Roger Sordal / Bass
• Terje Vikk “Tchort” Schei / Guitars
• Bjørn Harstad / Guitars
• Endre Kirkesola / Keys

A Dark Poem, Part III: The Messiah Complex Tracklist:

1. Unconditional Artificial Chemistry
2. The Messiah Complex
3. Broken Souls, Common Enemies
4. A Dark Poem: Orchestral Suite

Order the album here.

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The band previously had a song featured in the Disney+ ‘Marvel Zombies’ animated series.

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Reading Rising Festival has announced its return for 2026, taking over The Facebar on Saturday 7th and Sunday 8th November for what promises to be its biggest and most ambitious weekend to date. Dedicated to welcoming established touring acts to Reading while providing a vital platform for grassroots and local talent, this year’s lineup is … Continue reading Reading Rising Festival returns to The Facebar with InMe and Lastelle headlining

Sean Ragon, founder and frontman for the goth- and punk-rooted psych-folk band Cult Of Youth, has died. “It is with a heavy heart that I say, Sean Ragon has left this mortal coil,” reads an announcement from the band’s Facebook page. “Thank you to all of you for the support over the years. Love will prevail.” No cause of death has been listed. He was 45.

The post Cult Of Youth’s Sean Ragon Dead At 45 appeared first on Stereogum.

The multi-platinum rap-rockers are a surprise addition to the fest.

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Members of LANDMRVKS, Eternal Enemy and more will guest on the record.

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It’s September, which means Perennial’s Modernism is right around the corner. We’ve heard “What’s New On The Beat Scene,” “Modernism,” and “Ready! Steady! Go!,” and today the New England trio is unleashing the quick, sprightly finale “Emma Peel.”

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I walk through fire with my head held high
Is that really such a crime? 

Leaving a faith can redraw the borders of reality. Certainties that once governed time, guilt, desire, and the fate of the self fall away at once, leaving freedom inseparable from vertigo. A person must decide which pieces of the old world deserve burial, which can be carried forward, and how to inhabit a life no longer mapped by inherited answers.

Portland post-punk quartet Nyx Division enters that exposed territory with By Design, a new single rooted in vocalist Domino Monet’s experience of escaping the Mormon church. Released ahead of the band’s East Coast dates, including a set at NYC’s A Murder of Crows, the song follows the collapse of a prescribed worldview into the frightening, sensuous freedom of choosing what comes next. Monet describes the subject as “the liminal expanse between awe and terror,” where ontological loss meets the exhilaration of reconstructing a world from its broken pieces.

By Design opens with acoustic guitar and a dry, vibraslap-like rattle, setting a touch of spaghetti-Western theater ahead of Monet’s first lines. The full band soon bears down through Justin Cory’s heavy guitar figures and Mason Wilkinson’s firm percussion, while Alex Rivas sends a nimble bassline dancing underneath. As the initial force relaxes into a melodic groove, the track takes on a psychedelic hue. Cory’s guitar reaches toward the broad alt-rock and shoegaze sweep of bands like Catherine Wheel while retaining the core rhythmic pull of 80s post-punk.

Monet supplies the song’s greatest sense of scale. Her held notes tremble with heat and conviction, drawing upon the commanding tradition of women rock singers from the 1970s and ’80s. Fire, memory, sin, and survival pass through the lyrics as lived conditions rather than decoration. The repeated title carries a productive reversal: language often used to justify a divinely ordered universe becomes a declaration of self-authorship. Design now belongs to the person who endured the old plan and walked away with the right to make another.

That tension gives the track its lift. The music recognizes the cost of departure while making room for appetite, beauty, and volition. Its dance-floor momentum feels connected to the body’s return after years spent beneath doctrine, and its desert atmosphere suggests an open horizon where terror and possibility share the same immense sky.

Listen to By Design below: 

Formed in Portland in 2021, Nyx Division brings post-punk, goth, and rock ’n’ roll into a muscular, romantic union. The group released the Dark Star EP in 2022, followed by the 2025 singles Soldier of Love and Midnight Lights. By Design expands that approach through acoustic color, psychedelic breadth, and a hard-earned sense of release.

Nyx Division now heads across the East Coast for four early-September appearances. The band shares the Philadelphia, Worcester, and Cambridge dates with eX-Tradition. Their September 4 stop places them at New York’s Bowery Ballroom for the first of the festival’s two main nights at A Murder of Crows XI, appearing alongside Anja Huwe, Rosegarden Funeral Party, Creux Lies, and Guilty Strangers.

Nyx Division East Coast Tour Dates

• September 3 — Philadelphia, PA — Cousin Danny’s Lounge, with eX-Tradition, NRG, and Subtle Body
• September 4 — New York, NY — Bowery Ballroom, A Murder of Crows XI
• September 5 — Worcester, MA — Distant Castle, with eX-Tradition
• September 6 — Cambridge, MA — Middle East Upstairs, with eX-Tradition

Follow Nyx Division:

• Instagram
• Bandcamp

The post “I Feel Like a Star Again” — Nyx Division Become the Architects of Their Own Destiny in “By Design” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

The Who By Numbers, released in early October 1975, is the seventh studio album by The Who and marked a watershed moment for the band, as its songs were, for the most part, more introspective and personal than those they had released previously. The record was a commercial success, peaking at #8 on the U.S. Billboard chart and #7 in the U.K., partly due to the success of one of the album’s lighter moments, “Squeeze Box”, which became an international hit, reaching the top ten in the U.K., top 20 in the U.S., and #1 in Canada.

50 years on, The Who By Numbers is to be reissued this October as a 5CD/1Blu-Ray super deluxe edition boxset featuring a 100-page hard back book with photos, memorabilia & exclusive notes from Pete Townshend and Who expert Andy Neill, 92 unreleased tracks and mixes, brand new Atmos, 5.1 & Stereo mixes by Pete Townshend, 11 of Pete’s original demos for the album, tracking sessions from Ramport & Shepperton Studios, early mixes, guide vocals, the fullest version of Live At Vetch Field, Swansea, Wales, June 12, 1976 released to date and on the Blu-Ray audio and video from a previously unreleased Who concert shot on 2” videotape from Metropolitan Stadium, Pontiac, Michigan.

The Who’s show at Pontiac, Michigan, on December 6, 1975, set the record at the time for the largest-ever indoor rock concert attendance, with 76,896 people. The entire show has been exhumed from The Who’s archives and professionally cleaned up, with remastered audio. It now stands as one of the few existing visual records of this memorable Who tour, their last with the irrepressible Keith Moon.

Six months later, The Who played three British football grounds under the banner Who Put The Boot In. The first of these, at The Valley, the home of Charlton Athletic, was recognised by the Guinness Book of World Records as the world’s loudest rock concert. The third show at Swansea FC’s Vetch Field was recorded for a proposed live album, and over the years, songs from the Swansea concert have appeared on official Who releases. Now, the available original mix tapes have been remastered and returned to their original order. The show was Keith Moon’s last proper show before a British audience, capturing the level of performance power The Who attained over the year-long tour.

Produced by Glyn Johns, who had previously worked with the band on their 1971 album Who’s Next, The Who By Numbers, despite its light-hearted John Entwistle-drawn sleeve and massive hit single, features some of the darkest songs ever recorded by the band. This new super deluxe edition sheds light on the making of the album and the state of mind of its composer, Pete Townshend. As he puts it in the 100-page making-of-the-album book that accompanies the box set, “I could feel a new wave or reaction and rebellion coming in the music business; the big bands were becoming careless and self-indulgent. I wanted my songs to continue to have a cathartic function for our audience. When punk hit a few years later, I was not surprised.”

The Who are one of the top three greatest rock legacies in music history, with 9 U.S. & 10 U.K. top ten albums, and 14 U.K. top ten singles.

They have played over well over 2,000 gigs in a career spanning over 50 years, including venues such as Woodstock, Monterey Pop, Glastonbury (twice), Hyde Park (four times), The Isle Of Wight (three times), the closing ceremony of the 2012 Olympics, Desert Trip, Shea Stadium, The Superbowl half time show and Live Aid to name but a very few.

Emerging in the mid-1960s as a new and incendiary force in rock n’ roll, their brash style and poignant storytelling garnered them one of music’s most passionate followings, with the legendary foursome blazing a searing new template for rock, punk, and everything after.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, the band has placed 27 top-forty singles in the United States and the United Kingdom and earned 17 Top Ten albums, including the 1969 groundbreaking rock opera Tommy, 1970’s pummelling Live At Leeds, 1973’s Quadrophenia, and 1978’s Who Are You. The Who debuted in 1965 with a trio of anthems “I Can’t Explain,” “Anyway Anyhow Anywhere” and “My Generation.” Since then, they have brought the world hits such as “Pinball Wizard,” “Won’t Get Fooled Again,” “Who Are You” and “You Better You Bet.”

In 2008, they became the first rock band ever to be awarded the prestigious Kennedy Center Honors. The Who has performed all over the world, including global music events for the Super Bowl XLIV Halftime Show in 2010 and closing the Summer Olympics in 2012. The Who continued their charity work by playing a concert in January 2011 to raise money for trials of a new cancer treatment called PDT. In December 2012, they performed at the Hurricane Sandy Benefit in New York.

Alongside his groundbreaking work with the Teenage Cancer Trust in the U.K., in November 2012 Daltrey, with Townshend at his side, launched Teen Cancer America.

Both Roger and Pete delivering their own memoirs (Pete’s Who I Am was released to much acclaim in 2012, and Roger’s Thanks A Lot Mr. Kibblewhite; My Story was embraced by critics in 2018) it’s fitting that the two remaining WHO members have shared their incredible legacy in literary fashion, for few bands have had a more lasting impact on the rock era and the reverberating pop culture than The Who.

The band released their first new album in thirteen years, the critically acclaimed WHO in 2019, and toured the world with their ‘Moving On’ and ‘The Who Hits Back!’ symphonic shows with a full orchestra, which were commemorated in 2023 with the album The Who With Orchestra Live At Wembley, recorded at London’s legendary Wembley Stadium. 2025 saw The Who saying goodbye to their legions of loyal fans in the U.S.A., but their music will live on forever.

Who By Numbers is available to pre-order here.

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