The American guitarist and composer Lenny Kaye, best known for his work with Patti Smith and Her Band, has announced details of his new live album, Lenny Kaye and Friends: Riot in Oxford Street. The album was recorded at 100 Club on 4th and 5th April 2024 and has been executive produced by Joe Delorenzo, […]
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Interviewed by Cat Finch
Descendancy chat with us at Bloodstock about their route to the festival via Sheffields Metal 2 The Masses. We discuss the band and their support, the influences, talk about writing a new record and a lot more.
You can listen to the interview below, or jump over to any of the usual streaming services!
Youtube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Youtube Music
Check out all of our interviews on the usual podcast channels!
Youtube | Spotify | Apple Podcasts | Youtube Music
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UNTER STRØM return with Fragment, a dark and immersive electronic cut that pushes melodic techno into industrial territory. Built around evolving arrangements, pulsating rhythms, cinematic textures and a constantly shifting atmosphere, the track avoids predictable repetition, allowing each section to develop organically. The duo of Alex Gonzales and John Kunkel bring together melodic finesse and raw industrial grit, creating a production that feels equally suited to a late-night club and a darker cinematic landscape. Mixed by Aaron Short and mastered by Mike Marsh, Fragment captures UNTER STRØM at their most instinctive, expansive and uncompromising.
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Twenty years after they formed in Gothenburg, Sweden, neo-psychedelic hard rockers Graveyard have finally achieved what all neo-psychedelic hard-rocking bands set out to achieve: victory in our Tracks Of The Week contest. So congratulations to them, and may their journey continue unthwarted.
Joanne Shaw Taylor locked in second place, while our old friends Girish & The Chronicles came in third, but we’ve already moved on from that, and the new combatants are listed below. Vote for your favourite at the foot of the page.
Oh hell yeah, this totally rocks and then some. A sumptuous, boot-scootin’ groovefest with gritty heartland and Americana in its blood, Main Street U.S.A serves as a reminder of Grace Potter as one of rootsy music’s quietly superior voices. Expect vivid storytelling, dirty guitar swagger and a big juicy chorus draped in sparkles. Hot off her new album, Trespasser, which is out now.
These guys’ gig at London’s Electric Ballroom is still one of the best shows we’ve been to this year, so we were delighted to see this clever setlist highlight (from their latest album Pull Like A Dog) getting the single treatment, complete with a video montage of recent live triumphs. It’s heavy and introspective, straight-shooting yet subtle. A powerful, unexpected but searingly effective cocktail: pummelling beats fresh off the Dublin streets they used to busk on, riffs straight out of the Metallica-come-Pantera guidebook and the tenderest of traditional folk storytelling.
John and TJ reconnect with the bluegrass heritage of their hometown – Deale, Maryland, in the shadow of the Appalachian mountains – on this sweetly lilting, swamp-slidin’ new taste of their next record, Watertown. If Little Feat grew up playing bar gigs in a working-class fishing town (as the Osbornes did) they might have played this. “We’re not just getting back to where we were born and raised, but to the roots of where we started musically,” TJ Osborne says. “A time when music wasn’t dictated by anything other than what our hearts and souls wanted to say.”
Kicking off with a riff that made us think a little of Free’s Fire And Water, Always Been Love puts you right in the room with the reunited Temperance Movement – no excess polish, just a lot of simmering, bouncing energy that peaks in an arresting bridge section. Frontman Phil Campbell recently told us it’s his favourite track on the album, New Promise Land Incorporated, which comes out this month.
Artfully, gently conjuring the sort of pensive melancholia and emotional baggage that comes with much of midlife, the latest QOTSA single sets lo-fi soulfulness to a toe-tapping mid-tempo beat. “It’s a song about distance,” Homme says. “About how someone can be your entire world only to simply vanish. And about the strange vertigo of being on the receiving end of that.”
Skate-rocker, surfer dude and friend to the seals (he’s partnering with the Cornish Seal Sanctuary, among others), Kit Trigg combines environmentalist wordplay and scrappy 90s energy in one sharp yet loose-limbed rock banger, all sunshine, lurking rain clouds and the British seaside. “The riff came quickly as soon as I got home [driving to his new Breacon homestead from Farnham, where he grew up] and the chorus was inspired by early 90s hiphop,” Trigg says. “We have such a sweet deal on this planet, let’s look after what we have!”
Maryland’s favourite sons Clutch are back with their first new music since 2022’s Sunrise on Slaughter Beach, and long-term fans will be relieved to discover that they still sound exactly like Clutch, pumping and grooving along in the most righteous rock’n’roll manner imaginable: If songs came with an aroma, The Drifter Returns would smell of creosote. There’s no news of a long-player yet, but we suspect it won’t be too long before album number 14 is hoving into view.
Danielle Nicole made her name as one third of blues-rockers Trampled Under Foot with brothers Kriss and Nick, but has been flying solo for more than a decade now. New album Fireflies was written in the wake of Kriss’s early death from cancer, and grief kept Danielle from completing some of the songs, but you’d never know it from Gaslight, which is uplifting and funky, packed with sass and swagger. Danielle is currently on the road in the US, and plays five UK shows in February.
Reviewed by Emma Corbett
The beating of the drums evokes a Palaeolithic ritual, reminding us of whence we all came. The Shaman’s cries, delivered in otherworldly tones, feel as though they have travelled through the ages to reach us; absolutely something for fans of Wardruna and Heilung.
Sauntering into the intro, the drums brute-force the hairs on your arms to attention, raising goosebumps. A windswept beach emerges in the mind’s eye, the Shaman standing beside a fire, preparing for battle.
“Great Migrations” starts and finishes strong; a relentless slab of primitive black metal. A torrent of blast-beats and cavernous vocals fit superbly with its Palaeolithic theme, channeling raw aggression into the image of an ancient people traversing a vast, hostile frozen landscape during the Ice Age. There is an almost physical sense of movement, dragging the listener through the bitter cold.
“Hyperborean” abandons the black-metal assault for something far more ritualistic. Tribal percussion, ominous vocals and guttural throat singing create an eerie, primordial atmosphere, whilst the Shaman’s narration evokes a lost ancient tale passed through generations. Where “Great Migrations” captures the physical struggle of migration, “Hyperborean” feels like a lament for those ultimately lost to it. Just before the minute mark, the song erupts into life, propelling the listener through the ages.
Next comes “Parhelion”. Chants and howls summon a prehistoric atmosphere, stripping away thousands of years of civilisation and transporting the listener back to 12,000 BC, where ritual, survival and nature were inseparable. This feels the most primitive, a glimpse into a ritual lost to time.
“Primordial Bloodlines” brings the odyssey to its conclusion. Smooth guitar melodies give the track a gentle, swaying quality, evoking happiness and hope. After the brutality of survival, humanity may one day reconnect with its ancient heritage and remember who we truly are.
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[Cover Art by Daniel Karlsson]
Februus is a one-man project driven by the prodigious and still developing talents of Sweden’s Andreas Karlsson. His latest, Construction of Conflict, delivers 40 minutes of guitar-centric death metal that, despite being packed to the gills with compelling and competently performed riffs, never quite coheres into a consistently enjoyable album.
Release date: September 4, 2026. Label: Transcending Obscurity.Construction has been a challenging listen because so much of my criticism boils down to “I’d like this more if it was totally different.” But Construction of Conflict is an ambitious effort worthy of some constructive criticism, so here’s three bits of it that I think might steer the good ship Februus in the right direction.
Sometimes, when I can’t quite put my finger on what’s falling short about a given album, I’ll pump my LR peers for their thoughts.
From the mighty Danhammer, “it has this sorta uncanny feeling like the main guy can’t help but … ‘think in guitar.’”
And from the sui generis Seth Buttnam, “I think duder needs to work with other people.”
It’s a solid “yes” to both observations, from me.
To my great shame, I have long attempted to walk the path of a guitarsman. Spending countless hours (when I had them at my disposal) laying down riffs into a digital audio workstation, then layering programmed drum tracks beneath them, gradually iterating on riffs and refining drum tracks until the song feels “done.” There’s a purity to this kind of work, but what it screams for is disruption. Not necessarily a better idea, just a second one. Somebody to say, “what if we threw a time change in here?” Or … “This riff at 2:40 of ‘Genocide By Default’ just kind of … ends. Maybe we need to work up a transition.”
I’m sure you’ve caught one of the countless retellings of how Lars Ulrich nudged Kirk Hammett into rewriting the “Enter Sandman” riff so that we’d hear “the first part three times then the last part at the end.”
Ulrich’s input was awkward, inarticulate, musicologically inept, and ultimately so correct that Metallica are now so rich they deal in rare art and ride horses avocationally.
What I’m saying here is that Karlsson doesn’t even need to introduce more talent into Februus; he just needs another brain to disrupt and redirect a vision that, quite often, is too pure for its own good.
Construction of Conflict lacks not for tricky little riffs that roll right off the fingers, but it often feels like there’s just too many. A track like “Measure of Escalation” bombards you with them, never quite asserting a melodic theme that might encourage the listener to truly sink their teeth in. By my ears, there are two paths out of this predicament.
Option 1: Pare down the riff menu by half, draw the tempos back by about 20 bpm, and really lay that shit in. As of today, Februus is a kinda-sorta but not quite proggy and melodic death metal band that never truly excels at either category. Could a significantly simpler approach help Februus’ stronger riffs soar? I don’t think it would hurt.
But I prefer …
Option 2: Karlsson becomes who he truly is; 2026’s heir to the great and powerful Dan Swanö. This is the harder path, because it calls upon Karlsson to integrate some currently non-extant elements into his game. Let’s write some catchy rockers à la “Black Tears” or “Uncreation.” You know what I’m talking about? Two to three rib-sticking riffs assembled in verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus fashion with an honest-to-goodness vocal hook thrown in for good measure. Construction of Conflict has all the raw materials to pull off that kind of thing; the work of Februus’ third album will be working that stuff into the stuff of songs.
While Karlsson’s dominant riffing style most reminds me of the aforementioned Swanö, there’s a secondary mode on display here that hints at a surprising inspiration: Vindsval of Blut aus Nord.
Check out how Karlsson drills down into a simple but sublimely melodic, relatively minor guitar lead midway through “The First Limb is Cut.” If it doesn’t transport you to the very same icy climbs Vindsval first evoked in Memoria Vetusta II then I really think you’re not listening closely enough.
We get more of the melodic good stuff at about :40 of “The Misery That Awaits the World” and 2:45 of “Fueled by Narcissism.” Presently, these moments are subservient to Karlsson’s proficient but less impressive death-metal riff-o-ramas, confined to often poorly telegraphed interludes. I see a much more fruitful future for Februus if he starts leading with his stronger foot.
Yes, well, that’s true. But that’s because Februus is actually good and has the potential to be even better. If this album truly sucked, I’d just dash off a message to the Last Rites mucky mucks with some nonsense about how my kid has an earache and dog has diarrhea and anyway I just don’t really have much to say about this Februus album, so if somebody can string together 12 words about a grindcore album for tomorrow morning, that would be huge. But Construction of Conflict deserves to be heard and responded to, much more than thousands upon thousands of metal albums that get released every year. I don’t really know if I charted the proper trajectory for this project, but I’m sincerely hopeful Karlsson finds a way to transform his seemingly endless array of good ideas into a handful of memorable songs.
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