American rock band Evanescence has released their sixth studio album, Sanctuary, via BMG and Columbia Records. The 12-track record serves as an emotional and heavy return for the group, channeling frustration and hope through their signature cinematic sound. The release includes the anthemic lead single “Who Will You Follow,” alongside “Afterlife,” which previously served as a soundtrack feature for the Netflix animated series Devil May Cry.
Led by frontwoman Amy Lee, Evanescence has spent over two decades defining their unique blend of hard rock, gothic atmospheres, and soaring vocal melodies. Sanctuary marks the group’s first full-length studio release to feature bassist Emma Anzai, who joins the lineup as they continue to evolve their theatrical sound. The band built the new record with the intention of creating a space for listeners to find comfort and connection through music.
To support the new album, Evanescence is preparing to embark on an extensive headlining world tour. The trek begins on June 11 in West Palm Beach, Florida, and will feature support from acts including Spiritbox and Poppy. The tour is currently scheduled to hit arenas across North America, the UK, Europe, Japan, and Australia, with additional dates planned into 2027.
International music project Lunar Paths, formed by Diane Dubois and Kevin Hunter, will release its new single, Bloom, on May 30. The track marks the duo’s first standalone release of 2026 and will be available across major digital platforms, with an accompanying music video scheduled for release later this summer.
After several months of relatively quiet activity, the band revealed that recent challenges, including health issues, technical problems with recording equipment, and personal circumstances, temporarily slowed their creative output. Despite these setbacks, Lunar Paths have continued working on new material, with additional collaborations and releases already in development.
According to the band, Bloom began life as a heavily industrial composition before gradually evolving into something more atmospheric and evocative. The finished track incorporates Latin influences and embraces an aesthetic the duo describe as “desert gothic.”
Lyrically, the song draws inspiration from the rare blooming cycle of a nocturnal cactus whose flowers appear only under exceptional circumstances, sometimes after decades of waiting. This imagery serves as a metaphor for obsession, longing, and the pursuit of something so beautiful and elusive that it risks consuming those who seek it.
Formed in 2021 after reconnecting through social media, Lunar Paths brings together two veterans of the original gothic scene. Diane Dubois, known for her work with Skeletal Family and Cold Dance, and Kevin Hunter renewed their musical partnership decades after sharing stages during the post-punk and gothic movement of the 1980s. Despite being separated by thousands of miles, the pair have built Lunar Paths entirely through remote collaboration.
Since their earliest releases, Lunar Paths have developed a distinctive sound that blends goth rock, post-punk, darkwave, and contemporary electronic elements while refusing to be confined to a single genre. This spirit of experimentation has become one of the project’s defining characteristics and is once again evident in Bloom.
BEHRU‘s Pluto is a captivating melodic techno journey that balances cinematic atmosphere with dancefloor momentum. Driven by emotive synth work, evolving textures, and a carefully crafted sense of tension and release, the track unfolds with patience and purpose, drawing listeners deeper into its immersive sonic world. Blending elements of progressive house and modern melodic techno, Pluto delivers both emotional resonance and rhythmic energy, making it equally suited for reflective listening and late-night club settings.
Elegant, expansive, and expertly produced, it showcases BEHRU’s talent for creating electronic music that connects on both a physical and emotional level.
The Constellations‘ Stay Strange is a vibrant anthem for outsiders, dreamers, and anyone determined to preserve their individuality in an increasingly uniform world. Blending infectious energy with thoughtful songwriting, the track celebrates authenticity, curiosity, and the courage to walk a different path. Its uplifting spirit and memorable hooks are matched by a message that feels both timely and timeless, encouraging listeners to embrace what makes them unique rather than conform to expectations. Equal parts reflective and empowering, Stay Strange stands as a bold reminder that originality is something worth protecting.
Los Angeles (CA) – Trad-Metallers ORGA MECHA have released, “Cries of Redemption,” the second single from forthcoming full-length debut album, Humanity.exe! The track features none other than Slough Feg’s Mike Scalzi!
The official video for “Cries of Redemption” is available at: youtu.be/01IHED8o0vg
ORGA MECHA is a Southern California band that melds traditional heavy metal with electronic textures and futuristic, sci-fi driven themes!
The music of ORGA MECHA weaves 1980s sounds in the vein of Judas Priest, Iron Maiden and Dio, with synths, glitchy vocal effects and electronic drums heard among artists such as Dance With the Dead and Muse. Thematically, the group focuses on classic science fiction, societal decay and heavy metal unity.
ORGA MECHA is composed of Melissa Pinion (vocals/keyboards & also of STYGIAN CROWN), Raoul Rañoa (lead guitar), Rob D (bass), and Richie “Captain Black” Brooks (drums & also of NINTH CIRCLE).
Photo Credit: LaDean Rañoa
Named in homage to the 2001 Stephen Spielberg classic “Artificial Intelligence,” ORGA MECHA‘s robust debut full-length album aims to reach both longtime classic fans, as well as metalheads looking to explore unchartered terrain.
“It’s all about classic metal, sci-fi and keytars. We’re excited to finally unleash this project and our music!” – Orga Mecha
Humanity.exewill be released June 26 on digital and CD (U.S. only) formats.
All Music Written & Arranged By: Pinion, Rañoa, Rob D and Captain Black. All Lyrics By: Pinion.
Drums Recorded By: John Haddad @ Trench Studio in Corona, CA, Oct. 2025
All Guitars and Bass Guitars Recorded By: Raoul Rañoa @ Rullian Studio, Redlands, Calif., November 2025.
All Lead & Backing Vocals Recorded By: Melissa Pinion @ Black Door Studio in Highland, Calif. November 2025.
Guest Vocals by Mike Scalzi (SLOUGH FEG) and guest voice acting by Chris Reifert (AUTOPSY) recorded by Tom Gears @ Subterranean Studio Oakland, Calif., December 2025.
Mixing By: Raoul Rañoa, Rullian Studio, Redlands, Calif., Tucker Thomasson, Megadungeon Recording, Bloomfield, Ind., Corwin Deckard, Bloomington, Ind. and Brendin Ross @ Black Death Studio, Los Angeles, Calif.
Mastering: Charles Elliott @ Tastemaker Audio in Los Angeles, CA, March 2026.
Legendary rock drummer Carmine Appice has doubled down on his long-standing claim that Metallica was the first true heavy metal band, in a new interview with Poland’s MetalSide.
Appice said (transcribed by Blabbermouth): “I consider heavy metal starting with Metallica. Before all that, it was hard rock. The crunchy guitars, the buzztone guitar, and the double bass following the guitar, that’s what started heavy metal. Everything else before that — Mötley Crüe and Van Halen, Blue Murder — everything’s hard rock. Heavy hard rock. But metal comes from the guitar for me.”
Appice first publicly made the claim in a 2020 interview with Pete Pardo of Sea of Tranquility, in the context of how grunge devastated hard rock’s commercial standing in the early ’90s. “Those days, nobody would touch us, because we were all dinosaurs,” he said at the time. “All the NIRVANAs and stuff — grunge was in, [and] nobody wanted to touch us, all the bands. Ted Nugent, DIO… I was playing with Edgar Winter in ’91, ’92, while doing Mother’s Army, and I was playing clubs with Edgar Winter — like 500-seat clubs. Dio was playing the same clubs with my brother [Vinny Appice on drums]. Everybody was [experiencing a drop in popularity]. Black Sabbath wasn’t happening. Ozzy [Osbourne] really wasn’t happening. Nobody was happening except Nirvana and Stone Temple Pilots, Pearl Jam, and all those guys.”
When asked to reconcile Metallica’s resilience through that same era, Appice drew a hard distinction: “Metallica was not like all these other bands. Metallica, I consider the band that really created what you’d call heavy metal. All these other bands — Mötley Crüe, Blue Murder… It’s hard rock — that’s not heavy metal. That Metallica sound, that sounds like scratching guitars, that, to me, is what heavy metal is, which turned into death metal and speed metal, and every other metal. But Ozzy’s first album was hard rock. Mötley Crüe was hard rock. Whitesnake — it’s hard rock. King Kobra was hard rock. It was all hard rock. Blue Murder, they detuned a little bit, and it was heavy, but it wasn’t what I consider heavy metal. Heavy metal was that really scratchy guitar sound.”
Appice is the original drummer of Vanilla Fudge, with whom he still records and performs today, and is a founding member of Cactus and Beck, Bogert & Appice. He has also held stints in the bands of Ozzy Osbourne and Rod Stewart, co-writing the latter’s No. 1 hit “Da Ya Think I’m Sexy?” Rolling Stone ranked him the 28th greatest drummer of all time. His autobiography, “Stick It!: My Life of Sex, Drums, and Rock ‘N’ Roll”, was published in May 2016 by Chicago Review Press.
On the latest episode of TheOsbournes podcast, Sharon and Jack Osbourne addressed the controversy surrounding the recently announced Ozzy Osbourne A.I. avatar, which will enable fans to hold conversations with a digital version of the late Black Sabbath frontman through a partnership between the Osbourne family, digital human technology company Hyperreal, and Proto Hologram. The avatar will enable the digital Ozzy to have conversations with fans and move, speak, and respond as he would.
Addressing critics of the project, Jack said (transcribed by Blabbermouth): “What we’re doing — this isn’t, and I’ve said it, this isn’t ChatGPT with dad’s face on it. It’s a closed A.I., so it’s not connected to the Internet. We built a database, and I cannot emphasize enough that this is the only information that either my dad said or was accurate, or was written accurately about him.”
Sharon pushed back on cash-grab accusations: “Why go on a jet when there’s a propeller? What are you doing? Well, you know what? Technology moves on, and I’m sorry for those people. I’m not asking you to come. I don’t want your f***ing money. I don’t need your f***ing money… And the thing is, for somebody to turn around to me and say I’m doing a cash grab — no, you don’t know my husband, okay? I know my husband, and my husband would say to me over and over, ‘After I go, how long do you think I’ll be remembered? How long do you think?’ And I’d go, ‘I just don’t know, ’cause I’ll probably be going with you, so don’t ask me.’ But the thing was, for 10 years we have been exploring it… And we’re moving with the times… I’m not gonna let anyone bastardize my husband.”
Jack emphasized the family’s desire for full ownership and control: “The most important thing for me is that when we create this digital imprint of Dad, we create it, we own it, we control it. And it’s something that…” “…we’ll pass on through our family,” Sharon added. “And it’s for our grandkids.”
Jack acknowledged the commercial dimension plainly while clarifying what the technology actually is: “And at the end of the day, if keeping Dad alive and accessible to a fan is a cash grab, then f***ing guilty as charged because at the end of the day, entertainment and the industry that we’re in, none of this is for f***ing charity… But the technology that we are utilizing, it is not Claude or ChatGPT, which you can ask any question about anything. It’s a closed A.I. module that is not connected to the Internet.”
On fears the A.I. could become uncontrollable, Jack was dismissive: “Someone said, ‘Oh, it’s dangerous. You can’t control it.’ And I was, like, ‘What the f*** do you think this is, Terminator? It’s gonna go sentient and next thing you know Ozzy’s gonna launch the nukes?’ But I think, for me, it’s not about pretending he’s still alive. For me, it’s about making sure he’s never forgotten.”
Jack and Sharon also compared the project to widely accepted forms of legacy preservation — from audiobooks to centuries-old books still in print — and pointed to the Michael Jackson biopic, which has earned nearly a billion dollars, as evidence that fans actively seek immersive engagement with deceased icons. “Either we’re gonna do it, or someone else is in 50, 20 years, whatever,” Jack said. “This will become the norm for every well-known person. Just like when people started creating f***ing websites for their bands.” Sharon cited ABBA’s concurrent hologram run in London as further precedent: “And they’re not even f***ing dead.”
Digital Ozzy will appear in Proto Luma units — life-size, patented holoportation devices featuring an 86-inch multi-touch volumetric display, 4K resolution, high-fidelity speakers, and spatial computing/conversational A.I. capabilities — in the U.K. and U.S. beginning late summer 2026.
“Every element of this avatar was built exclusively from authenticated, approved source material: curated, consented, and controlled by the people who love him most,” Hyperreal CEO Remington Scott said in a statement. “This is a living performance, not a rendering.” “It’s an honor to be trusted to bring one of the true gods of rock back to the world to continue to connect with fans,” added David Nussbaum, founder of Proto Hologram. Hyperreal previously created an A.I.-powered avatar of the late Stan Lee for the 2025 Los Angeles Comic Con, where visitors paid $15 to speak with the holographic figure.
Ozzy died July 22, 2025, of a heart attack at age 76; his death certificate also listed coronary artery disease and Parkinson’s disease. His final performance was at the “Back to the Beginning” charity concert in Birmingham, U.K., alongside the original Black Sabbath lineup of guitarist Tony Iommi, bassist Geezer Butler, and drummer Bill Ward.
Fuming Mouth are ready to return with their third LP The Ringing Bell, due out everywhere July 17th. Featuring 11 new tracks, it was recorded by Kurt Ballou at God City Studio in Salem, Massachusetts. Joining them on drums is Jay Weinberg (ex-Slipknot, ex-Suicidal Tendencies). Read more…
There’s a strain of thrash that has always been more interested in the wrong chord than the right riff, more invested in structural disorientation than crowd-circle efficiency. Voivod built a career on it. Coroner made it elegant. Atheist dragged it into jazz territory and dared you to follow. Baltimore’s Nuclear Tomb have spent the better part of a decade quietly absorbing that lineage, and with Epoch Inhumane, their second full-length, they’ve stopped paying tribute and started issuing their own terms.
The band arrived at this moment through a methodical accumulation of form: the Admission of Guilt demo in 2018, two EPs (Succumbing, Offer Your Life), and the 2024 debut Terror Labyrinthian, which established the core identity — progressive thrash with death metal tendencies and a refusal to stay in any lane comfortably. Epoch Inhumane doesn’t reinvent that identity so much as sharpen it to a point. Faster tempos, more dynamic range, tighter construction — all in service of what the band does best: keeping you off-balance without losing you entirely.
The album’s thematic layer rewards attention. Track titles — Faithless Continuum, Broken Promise, Barren Essence, The Coward’s Curse, Falling Out the World of Lies — cluster around a worldview of institutional failure and disillusionment. The title itself frames dehumanization as a systemic, epoch-scale condition rather than a personal grievance. Whether Epoch Inhumane constitutes a deliberate conceptual arc continuing from Terror Labyrinthian or something looser and more atmospheric isn’t entirely clear, but the consistency of imagery gives the album a coherent moral weight that elevates it beyond standard thrash polemic.
Mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege — whose fingerprints can be found on landmark records from Nails, Power Trip, and Integrity — the album carries the kind of low-end authority that separates serious underground metal from its more polished cousins. Engineered and mixed by Matt Michel at Viva Studio, the production keeps the chaos legible: dissonant chord voicings land with definition, JD Lookabill’s drum work registers every nuance of a kit that’s doing considerably more than keeping time, and Amelia Morris’s bass sits forward enough to function as a genuine compositional voice rather than reinforcement.
That rhythm section is foundational to what makes Epoch Inhumane work. “Falling Out the World of Lies” — one of two pre-release singles — announces its intentions early: tempo shifts that feel inevitable rather than arbitrary, groove-forward drumming that propels the dissonance rather than anchoring it. “Unbowed and Averse” is the album’s most experimental statement, built on odd chord voicings, a bass-forward double-time stomp, and an outro that pairs double-bass chugging with fiery lead work that earns the contrast. “Faithless Continuum” channels early Possessed in its lead runs — trills and strangely placed dissonance deployed not for shock value but to sustain a particular atmosphere of creeping dread. “Broken Promise, Barren Essence” is among the heaviest cuts, threading d-beat and blast sections through the progressive weirdness without sacrificing either.
Guitarists Michael Brown and Matt Ibach — joined on select leads by Demir Soyer — demonstrate what genuine fluency in a style looks like as opposed to mimicry. Brown’s vocals are a further differentiator: a heavily reverbed, mid-range death/black growl that sits atmospherically rather than cutting above the mix in the conventional thrash sense, and the effect is unsettling in the best way. “Lifeless Transformation” is the album’s most kinetic moment, running through a crushing 4/4 verse, a mid-tempo break, and fiery lead work in quick succession. “Terminally Emboldened” brings the death metal-adjacent speed back in force, riffs and solos coiled beneath the colossal rhythm section. The title track closes on an eerie clean guitar passage before a pounding, slithering riff locks in beneath anguished growls — the album’s longest track at 5:02, though you’d never notice, because the band hasn’t stopped moving.
The one genuine division among listeners will be “Butcher’s Lament,” the album’s lone instrumental, which occupies a genuinely strange corner of the tracklist. Comparisons to Rush on hallucinogens aren’t inaccurate; whether the detour reads as the album’s most inventively peculiar moment or its most self-indulgent depends on your appetite for deliberate structural disorientation. I’d argue it belongs — the album would feel less fully realized without a track that takes the progressive impulse to its logical extreme — but its placement at track seven creates a noticeable drop in momentum that doesn’t fully resolve until “Terminally Emboldened” reasserts the band’s velocity.
Ten songs in 36 minutes. No filler, no runway, no concessions to palatability. Epoch Inhumane is the work of a band at the top of their game who have internalized their influences completely enough to stop sounding like them.
Nuclear Tomb aren’t imitating the architects of progressive thrash — they’re building on the same fault lines, and Epoch Inhumane is one of the most intentional and dangerous-feeling underground metal records of the year.
