A Psychedelic Symphony will see THE CHURCH joined by a 30 Piece Symphony Orchestra under the baton of celebrated conductor and composer GEORGE ELLIS. Together they will perform an epic orchestral set as they reimagine and enhance their beloved songbook including Under the Milky Way, The Unguarded Moment, Metropolis, Reptile, Almost With You and more.
“A lush violin sweep here, a 12-string guitar flourish there. This is The Church in ultra luxe mode”
Timeless, enigmatic, and unmistakably their own, The Church have occupied their own space in Australian music with a body of work that continues to evolve without losing its spell. The Church have never stopped growing or innovating.
No ordinary concert, A Psychedelic Symphony is a rare chance to experience the songs you already know and love, added to by suitably grand orchestral arrangements.
A wonderful celebration of the music of one of Australia’s most important bands.
“The orchestra chime in at ideal moments, building songs to shimmering crescendos”
Quivira to return with a brand-new single in June, the fourth track from their upcoming debut album due out this September. The new song, “Kicking Rocks,” is an instrumental jazz-prog fusion piece featuring Evan Stanley on guitar, John Baker on bass, and Lisa LaRue on keyboards.
“Kicking Rocks” tells the story of someone down on their luck, aimlessly wandering an alley and kicking rocks until the rocks kick back and life suddenly changes for the better. At its heart, the track carries the message that things ultimately work out the way they are meant to. The song was inspired by the image of a late-night backstreet jazz club, blending atmosphere, emotion, and improvisational energy into a powerful instrumental journey.
Quivira’s upcoming debut album will hit the streets this September. Stay tuned for more details on this atmospheric new release.
A Los Angeles-based guitarist, singer, and composer, Evan Stanley is best known as the frontman of Amber Wild and as one half of the duo Stanley Simmons alongside Nick Simmons.
The track will be available on Bandcamp as well, as all popular streaming platforms.
Quivira is a progressive rock project based in Topeka, Kansas. Consisting of Jake Livgren (Emerald City Council, Proto-Kaw) on vocals, John Baker (Forever Twelve, Mars Hollow) on guitars, and Lisa LaRue (RematriNation, 2KX) on keyboards and VST instruments. The project blends historical themes, classic rock, and cinematic progressive rock into multi‑movement works that emphasize narrative cohesion, harmonic exploration, and textural depth. The debut album focuses on the story of pre-Kansas “Quivira”, the Native American villages that Coronado believed held gold.
For press inquiries, interviews, or review copies, please contact the artist or label directly.
Quivira Email: 785arts@gmail.com
Melodic Revolution Records Email: melodicrevolutionrecords@gmail.com
Höör is a small community that you pass through when driving further into Småland, Sweden. The city is home to a rising star of the metal scene. Hailing from southern Sweden, Eradikated was founded in 2021 and released their debut album in 2023. Their first album, “Descendants”, received positive feedback, and the band is now… Continue Reading →
Described by Kerrang! magazine as “better than a Led Zeppelin reunion” and hailed by Warner Music as “Europe’s best tribute to Led Zeppelin,” LETZ ZEP has earned its reputation as the world’s premier tribute to the greatest rock band of all time.
Celebrating the legendary music of Led Zeppelin, LETZ ZEP delivers an electrifying live experience that captures the raw power, soul, and swagger of the original band in their prime. Hear Zeppelin‘s Biggest Anthems including Stairway to Heaven, Immigrant Song, Black Dog, Rock and Roll, Kashmir, Whole Lotta Love, Ramble On, Heartbreaker, Good Times Bad Times, Dazed and Confused plus many more fan favourites.
Even Led Zeppelin’s founding members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have attended Letz Zep performances. So impressed were they, they personally invited the band to perform at the official launch of Led Zeppelin’s compilation album Mothership.
Letz Zep are a powerhouse tribute show featuring the music of Zeppelin, performed loud and live. As audiences often say: “Close your eyes, and it’s Led Zeppelin themselves.”
This is the Ultimate Classic Rock Night Out.
Setlist includes – Achilles Last Stand
Black Dog
Communication Breakdown
Dazed and Confused
Heartbreaker
Immigrant Song
Kashmir
Moby Dick
No Quarter
Ramble On
Rock and Roll
Since I’ve Been Loving You
Stairway to Heaven
Thank You
Whole Lotta Love
Album Review: Slayer – Hell Awaits [40th Anniversary]
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
I’m going to start this review with the assumption that if you’re reading it you’re at least familiar with Slayer and their body of work, be that whole career or merely the later parts. For those of us old enough to remember hearing Slayer for the first time it was like nothing we ever heard before. They seemed to have taken the speed and spite of Venom and somehow turned it up even more than the Geordies had. The 1983 debut album, Show No Mercy, had Venom’s fixation on the darker side of life, tracks like Evil Has No Boundaries, Die by the Sword, Black Magic, and The Antichrist could have been interchangeable with material from Welcome to Hell et al.
The 1984 EP, Haunting the Chapel began to show signs of Slayer’s move toward a more familiar sound, which was fully realised on Hell Awaits, their sophomore full length where, as Kerry King is reported to have said: “Slayer became Slayer.”
If the previous two releases had shown songwriting coloured by Venom, it was fellow First Wave of Black Metal band, Mercyful Fate, who would influence Hell Awaits. Three of the seven songs exceed six-minutes in length and featured more progressive elements than the band had shown previously.
From the opening ritual of the title track’s demonic chanting –which was actually ‘Join us’ played in reverse – leading to the interlocking of all four elements musically coming together, to the diabolical carnage, sharp snappy vocals and thin production lending the whole thing an otherworldly feel, this is classic Slayer that stands up to anything the band have released since.
Tom’s bass creep and lurks just beneath the surface of At Dawn They Sleep’s tale of vampirism; Crypts of Eternity has the guitars low in the mix, but it all adds to the chilled atmospherics of the record.
More in keeping with the direction Slayer would follow from here, Kill Again has a grooving riff and some machine gun guitars, that start to sketch out the band’s sound going forward; Praise of Death is a simple but effective riff that allows King and Hanneman to experiment a little; Necrophiliac is more speed than thrash, with Tom’s bass tolling like a death bell. Hardening of the Arteries closes out the album with some dissonant snapping vocals and an outro that takes up right back to the start of the record and those dark choral chants of the opening section.
Seismic for the mid-Eighties – this was a time when Glam & Hair Metal ruled the charts – Hell Awaits laid the groundwork for Reign in Blood’s game-changing appearance but a year later. The combination of King and Hanneman on guitar and Araya and Lombardo on rhythm duties was an unstoppable force back then, though only Hell Awaits itself would feature regularly in the band’s live sets going forward, with the occasional appearance of Necrophiliac and Kill Again.
This fortieth anniversary reissuing of Hell Awaits doesn’t mess around with the original mix from ’85, leaving Brian Slagel’s production and Bernie Grundman’s mastering as was back then to maintain the atmospherics of the day.
Available as either a three-vinyl version, including a sixty-page hard cover book, Hell Awaits presented on fire splatter coloured vinyl, a replica ticket, tour laminate and German tour poster, plus slip mat, posters and fliers. The three CD version also includes the book and poster, with the second and third CDs and vinyl being Slayer’s show at Zeche in Bochum, [then West] Germany on 18th June 1985.
By the time of this show, Hell Awaits had been in the record stores for a couple of months, and the eighteen-song set reflects the assumed familiarity with the album. All seven tracks get aired, scattered among Slayer’s dark past of Captor of Sin, Fight Till Death and The Final Command. In facteverything Slayer had recorded to that point was included in the Bochum show; the quality of the recording is rudimentary but shows a band in the first flushes of youth and making hay while the sun shines. Tom’s voice starts to show limitations by Die by the Sword and he seems to pin the band’s colours to Black Metal’s first wave in the intro of The Antichrist; but this is the roots of the juggernaut that would soon enough steamroller big stages for decades to come.
There will be a version of Hell Awaits’ 40th Anniversary Edition that doesn’t include the Bochum show and will be limited to 666 copies worldwide and available only through the fan club.
It was blast being able to sit and listen to Hell Awaits front to back again; like being reacquainted with an old school friend you’ve been meaning to call for years but something has always got in the way. In all honesty I don’t tend to reach for Slayer after Seasons in the Abyss whenever I’m in the mood for one of their albums, and I rarely go back to the early days either, sticking with Reign, South of Heaven or Seasons; I’d quite forgotten just how much I enjoyed Hell Awaits back then, and still enjoy it today.
Watch the video for “Killicon Valley (Silicon Dust)” at this location.
Kansas City thrash masters HELLEVATE have posted the official music video for the title track off their new album, Killicon Valley. This five-minute thrash-fest aims its rage at the use of AI in today’s culture.
“This song is the result of several years of us watching the development of AI and ranting about it with each other. So many songs out there about AI have their hearts in the right place, but they always sing about it like it’s Skynet or SHODAN; some unstoppable robot overlord coming to bring the apocalypse,” comments guitarist Joshua Cole about the song.
“Then you actually use it and it’s a crappy productivity tool that only helps create more noise and BS that we all have to wade through, all because some idiot billionaires decided they liked the idea of a computer that could do all their thinking for them and replace those pesky employees. The lyrics fit the music perfectly, as it’s nasty, aggressive, relentless, and fast! If you like your thrash metal played pissed off and at warp speed, we’ve got you covered with this one!”
Vocalist Robert Browne expands on the song’s lyrical theme, “The so-called “leaders” of the tech industry have made shit more expensive, turned a multitude of careers upside-down, and gotten this moronic presidential administration to give them access to sensitive systems. And for what? It fucks up simple tasks. It fills our news feeds with garbage and lies. It gives mediocre idiots with no skill the delusions that they can make art with no effort, all at the cost of the planet that sustains our lives. Older folks who fear AI think it’ll be like a Terminator 2 thing. It’s much worse; I’d rather be blown up than starve.”
Watch the video for “Killicon Valley (Silicon Dust)” at this location.
Killicon Valley is relentless in execution. Eleven tracks of the bullshit-free, ‘thrash-or-be-thrashed’ attitude the band has cultivated over their nearly 20 years of existence. Today, that fury has escalated beyond the breaking point. The result is an album that true fans of old-school thrash can blast with pride.
Watch the video for the album’s first single, “In the Long Grass,” at youtu.be/4pvJtJcOrvo.
Robert Browne – Vocals Dan Whitmer – Guitar Joshua Cole – Guitar Zack Burke – Bass Ruben Lopez – Drums
HELLEVATE will mark the release of Killicon Valley with an album release show at Warehouse on Broadway in Kansas City, MO. Support will come from Jackson Country 5, Meat Shank, and Bloodscent. Check the event page for details.
![Album Review: Slayer - Hell Awaits [40th Anniversary]](https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/65535/55251937602_4e8fe1712c_c.jpg?w=678&ssl=1 "Album Review: Slayer - Hell Awaits [40th Anniversary]")
