Clairo is inspired, and it’s a beautiful thing. The pop artist is in the thick of making her fourth album, the follow-up to 2024’s Charm. In TikTok posts, she vlogged about the music she’s working on, while currently on a recording trip, the third of the recording process so far. Across three videos she talked about the importance of documenting inspired moments, considering that there’s usually years of waiting for a spark to catch. They’re all lovely snippets that will have you feeling hopeful about the creative drudge.
It’s been almost exactly four years since Ibeyi, the duo of French-Cuban twin sisters Lisa-Kaindé and Naomi Diaz, released Spell31, their last album. The two sisters have been living apart from each other in recent years, but they came back together to record the upcoming Offering, their first LP since going independent. Where their past…
Long before joining the Eagles and stepping onto some of the biggest stages in the world, Walsh was already developing his style through years of club work, garage bands, and relentless touring. He was born Joseph Fidler Walsh on November 20, 1947, in Wichita, Kansas, and spent much of his childhood moving because of his stepfather’s military career before eventually settling in Columbus, Ohio. Music became central to his life during his teenage years, especially after he first heard the Beatles. He learned several instruments before focusing heavily on guitar, playing in local Ohio bands while attending Kent State University.
Voivod has released the second single from its upcoming live album Symphonique, out June 5, 2026, via Century Media Records. “The End of Dormancy (Symphonique)” is now streaming across DSPs, accompanied by an official visualizer from Cloud Motion Design. The first single, “Forgotten in Space (Symphonique),” is also available.
Symphonique captures Voivod‘s June 4, 2025, performance at the Grand Théâtre in Québec City alongside the Orchestre Symphonique De Québec — a collaboration that fused the band’s pioneering futuristic metal with a full symphony orchestra across 12 songs and 73 minutes. Century Media describes the record as functioning like “an epic piece of cinema.”
Guitarist Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain on “The End of Dormancy (Symphonique)”: “This one is very special to me. I wrote the riffs imagining Roman naval battles with a full orchestra, like the movies from the ’50s and ’60s. It has a very dramatic vibe. Little did I know that what we synthesized for a four-piece band would eventually explode into its primary, original imagined form. It’s one of the most orchestral pieces on the album, and I remember the crowd’s reaction after the grand finale. It was one of these rare life’s perfect moments. I’m very grateful for that incredible experience.”
Drummer and founding member Michel “Away” Langevin said, “This live album with the Quebec Symphony Orchestra is a longtime dream turned reality. Thankfully, we will experience it again in 2027 with the Orchestre Symphonique du Saguenay-Lac-St-Jean, right in the region where Voivod formed back in 1983. We wish to take this show across the globe with local orchestras one day, but in the meantime, I hope you will enjoy this epic release. It’s the closest we’ve ever come to sounding like a dystopian sci-fi movie soundtrack, another dream of ours!”
The path that brought the collaboration to life was characteristically unlikely. In a December 2024 interview with The Metal Voice, Langevin recalled the odd chain of events: “It came through a strange chain of circumstances, where I did an interview for the magazine L’Itinéraire, for homeless people selling magazines on the street, and then I did an interview with one of the journalists for the magazine, and it ended up being published online by La Presse. And then the people directing the orchestra, the organization, they were made aware of that by one of the musicians from the orchestra, who is a metal dude and he’s a fan.”
Langevin continued: “It’s funny because since my cousin Richard Langevin is married to Diane Dufresne, a famous singer from Montreal, and she had done the orchestra before, so they got in touch with him, because I was mentioning him in the article because he showed me how to draw. [Laughs] And anyhow, they phoned Richard, my cousin, and he phoned my mother. [Laughs] And when I came back from touring with Voivod, I had a message on my answering machine saying that the orchestra were looking for us. So, quite amazing.” He added: “We didn’t approach [the orchestra], but we always talked about either doing symphonic shows or doing a soundtrack for a sci-fi movie or something like that. It’s part of the dreams we have.”
Mongrain, who previously arranged material for a brass quintet that performed with Voivod at the 2019 Montreal International Jazz Festival, worked closely with orchestrator Hugo Bégin on adapting the band’s music: “My help with the project was to provide the music sheets to the arranger, Hugo Bégin. He did an amazing job. He took the music sheet that I wrote for guitar and bass. So he had a template to work on. And so he orchestrated it for the whole orchestra and added his own color to it. And it’s very efficient. It’s like a movie soundtrack, like the movie we used to watch, like ‘Planet Of The Apes’ and ‘Ben-Hur’ and ‘Mad Max’ and all that. Voivod has been influenced since the beginning by those movies, so you can hear it, but with the whole orchestra, it’s very exciting… It’s gonna be grandiose.”
Last November Band To Watch alums Twin Peaks announced a few 10th anniversary shows for their 2016 album Down In Heaven at Thalia Hall in their hometown of Chicago, which has ballooned into an eight-night run featuring opening sets from a range of locals and friends of the band including Lifeguard, V.V. Lightbody, Post Animal, Finn Wolfhard, and more. Last night, after an opening set from rock ‘n’ roll peers Ne-Hi, they returned to the stage for their first show in six years.
Reckoners sophomore album, Where the Hell Am I?, is out on May 15th. They’ve been releasing a steady stream of singles over the last couple months, but for my money, some of the best tracks are still in store for blues rock listeners when the record hits. Simply put, this record is damn near perfect. There are a couple moments where a track or two don’t quite measure up to the overall extreme quality of the others, but I didn’t give a single song less than an eight out of 10.
Reckoners are a Boston-based five-piece soul and roots rock outfit with a lot of classic rock in their DNA. This is their first record with an organized label and they’ve been coming up the blues rock circuit touring with bands like the Tedeschi Trucks Band, The Wallflowers, and Bonnie Raitt. The band is made up of: Tim Gearan on vocals and guitar, Johnny Trama on guitar, Thomas Arey on drums, Darby Wolf on keys, and Marc Hickox on bass. Also credited for guest support on Where the Hell Am I? are Sonya Rae Taylor on vocals and guitar, Ryan Taylor on guitar, and Kevin Barry on guitar and lap steel.
Where the Hell Am I? is a musically and thematically interesting record. There are times where the songs delve into contemplative or even existential lyrical material, but for the most part both the musical structure and the lyrical themes are upbeat, hopeful, romantic, and inspiring. It’s a feel-good record that is genuinely touching and entertaining. Reckoners’ sound on Where the Hell Am I? is best characterized as lighthearted, optimistic guitar-driven hard rock riffs and solos with interesting drum choices and excellent, epic feeling organ work on keys. There’s a bit of soul and southern rock in there as well. The production and mixing are first rate and the band sounds excellent; I was continuously impressed with the musicianship on display in every song.
The record is divided up into 10 total tracks, all of which are fun and high quality. The real standout tracks are “We Saw It All,” “Don’t Look Down,” “Consuelo,” and ‘Not to Worry.” Please note that out of 10 tracks I gave four of them (almost half) a perfect 10/10 score. “We Saw It All” has a nice crunchy church organ sound with a fun bassline under it that builds out a bouncy and fun romantic tune that describes a day in the life with a lover and how love itself can make the world seem more interesting and delightful.
“Don’t Look Down” is a more country feeling tune (the spirit of ZZ Top is present) that is fast and rambling with upbeat lyrics about falling in love, and features a very nice drum break about halfway through, followed by a big keys and guitar part that feels bluesy and rocking, creating a very profound moment just over 2/3 through the record.
“Consuelo” is a significantly slower and bluesier number than the previous two I mentioned, with a light piano part that manages to balance a tale of heartbreak with a hopefulness for future love. The final(and best) track on the album is “Not to Worry.” It’s big and funky at times almost feels like Parliament-Funkadelic with a big soul chorus, rocking funky breaks in between, and the best guitar solo on the album.
There are only really two tracks on the record that didn’t feel nearly perfect to me: the first track, “Second Skin” which feels a little bit unoriginal, even if it does achieve its goals, and the fifth track, “Silver Stallion,” which at times can feel torn somewhere between a James Taylor song and a ’90s indie song. There’s nothing wrong with either of these tracks, but they don’t achieve the perfection or near perfection of the other three quarters of the record.
So there it is! Where the Hell Am I? is a nearly perfect record from a newer blues rock band that is making their first foray into publishing with an organized label. If there’s any justice in the world, and with a little bit of luck, the quality of this record, along with their touring work will help Reckoners become staples of our genre. If this is the quality of music we can expect from up-and-coming blues rock bands for the rest of the year and looking forward, then the genre is very well positioned indeed. I can’t wait to hear more from them.
The Review: 9/10
Can’t Miss Tracks
– We Saw It All – Don’t Look Down – Consuelo – Not to Worry
For nearly a year now, Drake has been teasing his unfortunately titled new album Iceman, but things really escalated in April when he hid the release date for the project inside a giant block of ice in Toronto. This led to a melee and, ultimately, the reveal that the album would drop today, May 15.…
HULDER, the dark black metal outfit from the USA, will release their new album âVerbolgenâ on August 7th, 2026, in a co-release with 20 Buck Spin, who will handle North America exclusively, while Season of […]
