After teasing it earlier in the year, Ghost have revealed all of the details of their upcoming concert film.
Titled ‘2 Big To Rig’, it will be released in cinemas and IMAX for a limited time from August 26.
Tickets for the showings will be going on sale from July 23 at 6am PDT / 9am EDT / 2pm BST from right here.
The filmed was shot on 16mm film at Mexico City’s Palacio de los Deportes, where the band played two shows as part of the Skeletour in 2025, a route that took Ghost through North America and Europe as well.
The film is named ‘2 Big To Rig’ for a plethora of reasons, mainly as a means of showing off the vast production for those unable to be a part of it because of being outside of the territories it was physically unable to put it on.
Not just an exclusive look at the live show, thanks to the No Phones policy at every show on the tour, but the film will also include behind-the-scenes footage of the crew.
Kymberli Frueh, EVP Content Acquisitions & Programming at Trafalgar Releasing, said: “Ghost captured the final nights of the legendary Skeletour’s first leg on 16mm film in Mexico City – creating a nostalgic experience and a fitting farewell to an era for fans.
“We’re proud to share it with cinema audiences worldwide before Ghost takes a well-publicised break. It’s the perfect way to close such a significant chapter in the band’s history and give fans a chance to relive this moment together.”
Taylor Momsen doesn’t have a lot of luck with potentially deadly critters. In May 2024, while her band The Pretty Reckless were opening for AC/DC in Seville, she was bitten by a bat onstage, requiring a two-week course of anti-rabies shots. Then, in April this year, the singer was bitten for a second time, this time by a poisonous spider – once again while on the road with AC/DC, but this time in Mexico City.
“I don’t know whether getting bit twice means I’m lucky or cursed,” she says with a laugh.
The fact that she was even up there onstage with AC/DC is something few could have predicted when she entered the public consciousness as a child actor, first as a button-nosed five-year-old softening a heavily-made-up Jim Carrey’s heart in the 2000 movie How The Grinch Stole Christmas or later as one of the stars of glossy teen soap Gossip Girl.
Her reinvention as the black-eyelinered singer of The Pretty Reckless at the very end of the 2000s was one of the more unexpected career pivots of the last couple of decades. A string of grungy yet anthemic albums silenced the detractors a long time ago, though, as did the backing of the likes of Soundgarden and AC/DC, both of whom hand-picked The Pretty Reckless to support them.
But her journey has been coloured by loss. In 2017, her idol Chris Cornell died while her band were on the road with the grunge legends. The following year, The Pretty Reckless’s producer, Kato Khandwala, was killed in a motorcycle accident. The double tragedy sent her into a self-destructive spiral of substance abuse, binge-drinking benders and meaningless sex to numb the pain.
“For a while, I felt like, ‘What’s the fucking point? Everything I love is dead,’ and that’s a very dark place to be mentally,” she reflects. “I didn’t care if I lived or died, until there was a moment where I had to make a choice between life and death.”
Thankfully, she made it through the darkest period of her life. Now 32 years old, and having just released The Pretty Reckless’s fifth album, Dear God, she’s finally living by her own script.
“I live and breathe rock’n’roll,” she says sincerely.
How are you recovering from the spider bite on your leg?
“If I hadn’t caught it, I might have had to get it amputated. My doctor was joking that I should go and buy a lottery ticket because it’s such a bizarre, one-in-a-billion chance. I got out of the hospital against medical advice; they wanted to admit me, and I went, ‘No, I have a fucking show to play.’ Even if it might lead to a poisonous leg amputation, I’d literally die for the music.”
Why is rock’n’roll your top priority?
“It’s a love you can’t outgrow. I resonate with the ethic of rock music so deeply – it’s existential and powerful and everything I am always searching for in humanity. It’s more than just loud guitars, but then, at the end of the day, loud guitars are also fucking awesome. So there’s that.”
How has music help you understand yourself over the years?
“I grew up in a household where my father revered rock’n’roll, so I was very fortunate to be exposed to really, really great records. I was humming songs before I could talk; it was a language that always made sense to me. I started playing instruments and writing songs when I was about five or six, and it gave me an outlet from my very strange upbringing.”
I didn’t understand that I was working on The Grinch. It felt like playing dress-up.
You rose to fame as a child actor. What was that life like?
“I booked The Grinch when I was five. At that age, it’s fun, and it had always been a part of my life. I didn’t understand that I was working, it felt more like playing dress-up. Then there was an element of moving around a lot for work, going in and out of schools and trying to make friends. It felt isolating a lot of the time, but that’s also what made music so important for me. I loved it because it became my solace.”
When did you realise it was time to make the big shift from acting to music?
“When I started working on the TV show Gossip Girl, it felt like my character became my identity. Rather than shooting a commercial or a movie, it was a regular part of my schedule, and it never went away. I was this character all the time to the public. And it was the first time the tabloids were interested, and that sort of fame can be cruel. It got to the point where Gossip Girl was almost overtaking myself and my identity. I wasn’t a young girl coming into my own, someone with these grand ideas of what I wanted to do. So I quit, formed The Pretty Reckless and I never looked back.”
How did you find the transition from acting to music?
“Thankfully, the Gossip Girl writers made it a little bit easier for me – I couldn’t get out of my contract, but they were gracious enough to write me out of the scripts. They understood that I just wanted to make music and said, ‘You don’t have to act this season, you can go on tour.’ I’m forever grateful to them for that. Then I was able to go and record [The Pretty Reckless’s 2010 debut album] Light Me Up and live life on the road.
“[Producer] Kato Khandwala and [guitarist and songwriter] Ben Phillips were the first two that really got me. They didn’t try to change what I was doing or shape it in any way other than supporting and embellishing it. I always wanted to be the one telling the story, and I wanted to be the one in control, creating the vision, and they let me do that.”
How did the public react to the shift?
“It felt like being a rock star, like I’d always dreamed – the fans were there, going crazy, identifying with the music. But when I looked at the grander picture of public perception, there was a lot to overcome. I understand how people must have seen it: a 15-year-old girl quit a teen soap opera to go on tour with a rock band, trying to be taken seriously as an artist. It’s a fairytale I’d forgive people for laughing at. But there was a lot of pressure to prove myself.”
How did that feel?
“It was frustrating when people wouldn’t take me seriously, even though I was doing everything the real way. I didn’t try to take a shortcut – we toured in a small van, played small shows, really worked for it. But it was perceived as if I’d taken a shortcut. People might’ve known me from my acting, but in reality that was its own hurdle, because I had to overcome my youth. It was exhausting… I just wanted to be taken seriously. Eventually I just stopped caring what people thought.”
Who were some of your earliest supporters who took you seriously?
“Obviously the band, but I’ve also been supported by so many musical idols of mine. Being taken on the road to support Soundgarden was one of the craziest phone calls I’ve ever gotten. Knowing that Chris Cornell appreciated my music… they’re my favourite band in the world, and hearing that from him was huge for me.
Taylor with Soundgarden’s Kim Thayil at 2019’s Chris Cornell tribute gig. (Image credit: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Chris Cornell Estate)
“It was the same with AC/DC. When Angus Young calls you and goes, ‘Hey, I love your band!’, you know you’re doing something right. Before the tour I told my manager, ‘I’m making a new record – unless AC/DC or The Rolling Stones call, don’t bother!’ About two weeks later, my agent calls saying, ‘Taylor, you’re not gonna believe this, but AC/DC called and they want you on their tour.’ I felt like I was tripping. About a week after that, he calls again, and he goes, ‘You’re not going to believe this, but The Rolling Stones have also called…’ I kind of manifested it.”
Chris Cornell passed away in 2017, and your producer Kato Khandwala died the following year. How did that impact on you?
“Relationships like those feel so intimate that it’s hard to put into words… but both of them played such an important role in my life in so many ways. Chris was an idol of mine, and I hugged him the night before [he passed away]. Kato was my musical partner and best friend – I talked on the phone with him every single day. Losing him felt like losing a piece of myself.
“I just try to do my best to keep Chris and Kato’s memories alive, but grief is a wound that never heals. The one-two punch of losing them made me enter a very dark period of my life. I shut down, lost a lot of elements of myself, forgot who I was. I didn’t know what the point of life was any more.”
I hugged Chris Cornell the night before he died
When I Wake Up on the new record hints at some of that period. When was the moment you realised that something had to change?
“It’s quite a dark story, but there was a there was a moment where I had to make a very conscious choice whether I was going to live or I was going to die. It wasn’t subtle. After that, I chose life, got clean, and I wrote [The Pretty Reckless’ 2021 album] Death By Rock And Roll to help process the grief. I’d usually turn to music, but I couldn’t even listen to music, because it all brought back too many emotions I was not equipped to deal with yet. It felt like a core part of my identity had been taken away.”
How did you rekindle your love for music?
“The simple answer is, it took time. I had to look back and rediscover where the love began, and the answer was The Beatles. They were the first band my dad ever played me, when I was coming home from the hospital. Then, almost in chronological order of bands I fell in love with throughout my youth growing up, I re-listened to all those records and trained myself to remember where the love stemmed from. Then, I could eventually listen to Soundgarden records again, and they brought me comfort instead of immense pain. Music was the path back.”
Devil In Disguise, from Dear God, is dedicated to your Gossip Girl co-star Michelle Trachtenberg who died in 2025. Does your music help you reassess your relationship with death?
“Lyrics will always be a way for me to process life, and life and death are two sides of the same coin. So it only makes sense that writing helps me process death, too. It’s something I’ve explored in my writing ever since the first record, and I’m constantly coming to terms with it. A lot of this new record is processing things like that, wondering whether to let grief destroy you – which it almost did, in my case – or whether you can turn it into something that gives you power. To go back to Death By Rock And Roll, the record starts with Kato’s footsteps. Having him with me became my superpower.”
It’s like you can let the people live on.
“It’s like rock’n’roll transcendence, putting a person’s memory into a track. That, and it allows you to process and move forward in life. But the grief never gets easier, it just transforms. Everyone I’ve lost in my life is scarred onto my body forever, and they’re a part of me that I carry with me.”
You were raised Catholic. How has that shaped how you view death?
“I was raised in the church when I was younger, but I’m not involved in any organised religion at this point in my life. But there are some things that stick – like an awareness of those grand concepts of life and death. It gets you thinking about our physical being, our spirituality. I like to get a little existential and confessional. To me, Dear God is looking to something larger than yourself – you could even call it the universe – and wondering why life is how it is.”
On tour with AC/DC in 2025. (Image credit: Frank Hoensch/Redferns)
The title track of the new album features a lyric about the neighbours looking over and thinking ‘that little girl we knew has surely gone insane’. Do you think anyone from your Catholic past thinks your career is some act of grand blasphemy?
“Probably some of them. I’m sure there’s some people from my childhood that are confused… but I could be totally wrong. They could be in the front row at a show for all I know!”
You had a real full-circle moment last year, when your Grinch co-star Jim Carrey inducted Soundgarden into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame and you performed Rusty Cage and Black Hole Sun. How did that feel?
“Crazy – talk about a universal alignment. When I got asked to sing at the induction, I didn’t even know Jim Carrey was going to be there. When I found out, my head just about spun around on my body. I hadn’t seen him in 25 years, and it was the 25th anniversary of The Grinch, and I’d just released Taylor Momsen’s Pretty Reckless Christmas album.”
I told my manager, ‘Unless AC/DC or The Rolling Stones call, don’t bother!’ Two weeks later, my agent says, ‘AC/DC called.’
On the 2016 single Take Me Down you sang, ‘I gave my life to rock’n’roll.’ How much have you sacrificed?
“I’ve given my entire life to music. So it’s fair to say I’ve sacrificed everything for it. But at the same time, I don’t think that that’s a sacrifice at all, because it’s the only thing I love. I wouldn’t change anything.”
Would the young Taylor be proud of you today?
“A young version of me would be really proud of me. I wanted to play in a rock’n’roll band, write my own songs and express myself openly, and so I’m doing exactly what little me wanted to do. And I think she’d be proud of everything I’ve overcome, and the fact that I’m still here, still alive. Every day I wake up and I don’t know if I’m going to be a mess again, or be absolutely fine. Against all odds, all obstacles, I’ve bulldozed through to get where I am right now.”
Dropkick Murphys hail from Quincy, Massachusetts, where they were formed in 1996, initially as a side project by bassist and vocalist Ken Casey. The band’s early days revolved around a gritty punk-rock scene infused with a distinctly Celtic influence, rooted deeply in their working-class Boston heritage. They quickly cultivated a strong local following through energetic live performances and relatable lyrical themes centered around blue-collar life, camaraderie, and Irish-American pride. Since their inception, Dropkick Murphys have released eleven studio albums, each capturing the spirited essence of their live shows. Their debut album, “Do or Die” (1998), produced by Lars Frederiksen of
Militarie Gun are going to be releasing a deluxe version of their latest album ‘God Save The Gun’, featuring some new additions including a very special collaboration.
The band have joined forces with Mannequin Pussy’s Marisa ‘Missy’ Dubice for ‘World’s Always Burning’, a breezy brit-pop banger full of tranquil atmospheres and shimmering intent. The combination of Missy’s caramel tones with Ian Shelton’s gruff delivery is pitch perfect, and demonstrates just how many textures, layers and combinations of sound and stature the band have at their disposal.
Ian had this to say about the concept of the deluxe edition of the record, stating, “Everything in ‘God Save The Gun’ became so focused on the internal, that when it came to fitting these songs in, it felt like they had stepped outside of that perspective. In my head these songs started to form into the feeling of finally coming to after being so caught up in your own head, and then realising the rest of the world is still out there and you haven’t been actively participating.”
‘God Save The Gun’ (Deluxe) will be released on August 07 via Loma Vista Recordings.
The new artwork looks like this:
Whilst the tracklisting is more like this:
1. Pt II 2. B A D I D E A 3. Fill Me With Paint 4. Throw Me Away 5. God Owes Me Money 6. Daydream 7. Maybe I’ll Burn My Life Down 8. Kick 9. Laugh At Me 10. Wake Up And Smile 11. I Won’t Murder Your Friend 12. Isaac’s Song 13. Thought You Were Waving 14. God Save The Gun 15. 3 AM 16. I’ve Said Too Much featuring Dazy 17. World’s Always Burning featuring Mannequin Pussy
The band are set to hit the road across the US on the ’20 Songs For 20 Dollars’ tour’ later this year, with support coming from softcult,Shady Nasty and Dazy. Here are all of the dates:
SEPTEMBER
05 – PRYOR Rocklahoma Festival 06 – OKLAHOMA CITY Beer City Music Hall 08. -DALLAS AM/FM 09 – AUSTIN Mohawk 10 – BATON ROUGE Chelsea’s Live 12 – TAMPA The Orpheum 13 – MIAMI Churchills 14 – ORLANDO Conduit 16 – ATLANTA Masquerade – Hell 17 – NASHVILLE Eastside Bowl 18 – CARRBORO Cat’s Cradle 19 – CHARLOTTESVILLE The Southern 20 – WASHINGTON Black Cat 22 – PHILADELPHIA Underground Arts 27 – BOSTON Paradise Rock Club 29 – CLEVELAND Grog Shop 30 – DETROIT The Loving Touch
OCTOBER
01 – CHICAGO Metro 03 – MILWAUKEE Vivarium 04 – MINNEAPOLIS Fine Line 06 – DENVER Bluebird Theater 07 – SALT LAKE CITY Metro 09 – SEATTLE Neumos 10 – VANCOUVER Rickshaw Theatre 11 – PORTLAND Hawthorne Theatre 13 – SAN FRANCISCO The Chapel 14 – FRESNO Strummer’s 15 – LOS ANGELES The Regent Theater
Oh, and if that wasn;t enough, they are going to be supporting the legendary Sex Pistols featuring Frank Carter on three dates. Those look like this:
OCTOBER
16 – SAN DIEGO SOMA 17 – TEMPE Marquee Theatre 18 – LOS ANGELES Hollywood Palladium
If you like your heavy music served with a side of absolute, unadulterated chaos, then grab a cold beer and brace yourself. Gold Coast alternative metal titans Sunk Loto are officially heading back out on the road this August for their highly anticipated Dead Shadows Tour. Trust me when I say this is shaping up […]
Having slept on the first few releases from Australia’s Snorlax, I approached Toxic Current—the Aussie one-man blackened death metal band’s third full-length—with fresh ears. I won’t bore you with any references to a certain anime franchise. But like an energy vampire I will bore you to tears with the following brief review of Toxic Current.
If your music veers off course enough that it’s often described by people who are only vaguely familiar with metal as “extreme metal,” then I want to hear some absolutely unhinged stuff. And that’s exactly what Snorlax delivers on Toxic Current. The blackened death metal categorization still largely works, but there’s also a healthy, very much detectable pinch of grind sprinkled almost equally throughout. That surprising element really sold me on Snorlax. If there’s anything Toxic Current could use more of it is grind. But the existing, roughly 70/30 blackened death to grind ratio is effective enough.
Another general rule is that if you’re a one-person band, please have some sort of ethos or vision and transfer that to your recording. If it’s a bit of a mess, you can clean that up. Or don’t. But your mission cannot be to sound like a full band. You are not a full band. And you have the benefit of your one, undiluted voice. Fortunately, Snorlax’s Brendan Auld also, seemingly, adheres to this rule, as Toxic Current certainly sounds purposefully and intentionally brutal, caustic, and sometimes even catchy.
What I love most about Toxic Current are the little hints at care and depth. It’s the threading of a riff (“Manifestation”). Or the subtle nod that the band is about to drop a tonal change on you right quick (the mostly ambient instrumental “1984” before Snorlax kicks it into high gear with “Insignificance”). And, of course, speaking generally, it’s also the willingness to hit you—and hit you often—with a tire iron to the face (“No Fate,” “Into the Void,” “Control,” and most everything else).
Snorlax’s Toxic Current is well produced and well written fun that is not just brutal but also smarter than it will be given credit for. And not because of the band name which, admittedly, seems at least questionable. No, it is smarter than it will be given credit for because the proper mix of chaos and coalesce—disfunction and function—is, or seems, anyway, difficult to achieve. Yet Snorlax has achieved just that with Toxic Current.
Trap, like rap and hip-hop, is largely a solo pursuit. The individual needs to stand out. Hence with each release Mimi Barks’ image changes, as does her sound. It’s a state of constant reinvention making it hard to pin down exactly who she is or what her music will sound like. Two years ago, her album ‘This Is Doom Trap’ gave the impression she was hurtling along, unsure of a direction. Imagine the animated film The Wrong Trousers where Gromit is riding an out-of-control train frantically laying track in front of him, desperately trying not to crash.Thatwas the sound. By embracing that joyride, new EP ‘Dreamstate of Fear’ careens off in a thrilling new direction. As its title suggested, ‘This Is Doom Trap’ was an attempt to define her music. It was a sprawling collection, dipping into different sounds, combining trap beats and rapped vocals, darker, screamy alt-metal stylings and softer soundscapes. This release plays with those same ideas, but is weirder and far more intense.
Basically, this EP is split in two, opening with three gleefully gnarly trap/nu-metal hybrids before changing shape. ‘Dreamstate Of Hell’ is built around the flickeringtick-tick-tickhi-hat beats that define trap but quickly becomes an unsettling brew of looped chord stabs and vicious guitar licks. Its chorus sounds like a corrupted Linkin Park; uncanny yet strangely catchy. Similarly, ‘Ophelia’ has the heart of a pop-punk classic buried amongst the mixture of synths, and licks and clicks. This paves the way for the EP’s centrepiece ‘Jericho’, a strange mutant built over the thud and throb of a programmed drumkit rather than a repetitive hi-hat undercurrent. Ugly, shifting guitars create a nightmarish canvas while her contorted vocal paints an uncomfortable, druggy, and deeply intoxicating portrait.
Two short, textured instrumentals bleed away the EP’s energy making its second half feel like an extended coda. However, it’s not short of ideas and ‘Power durch verrat’ features rapping in a European language (Possibly German) which stresses the harsh consonants andshhhsounds in a way that works remarkably well over a straight beat. On ‘Butterfly In Chains’, she dredges up an infectious chorus while the music spits and sputters like a basket of snakes in a fireworks factory.
One of trap’s biggest stars Travis Scott has more than a billion YouTube views on singles like ‘Goosebumps’. So the question is, does Scott define trap? Is that why so many artists heavily process their voices? In contrast to ‘This Is Doom Trap’, this EP breaks with that style. Each song presents her voice in fascinating ways, and yes, although the vocals are treated it’s never heavy-handed or unpleasant, helping her voice twist and contort. It’s also interestingwhen she treats her vocals, how intimate her songs can feel, and how she shifts the space between her tone and the listener. In effect she pursues afeelingthat suits each song’s style.
Filled with fizzing, hissing vocals coiled around stressful, anxious beats ‘Dreamstate Of Fear’ is a caustic and creative reinvention.
Three of the biggest names still with us from the original New Wave of British Heavy Metal years have albums due to be released. Well, two of them confirmed and another planned. Who are the three? Cloven Hoof, Saxon and Girlschool. Cloven Hoof are first with the release of Never a Prophet in Your Owen […]
If you like your heavy music served with a side of absolute, unadulterated chaos, then grab a cold beer and brace yourself. Gold Coast alternative metal titans Sunk Loto are officially heading back out on the road this August for their highly anticipated Dead Shadows Tour. Trust me when I say this is shaping up […]