ââ¦melodic invocations of infernal menace, stultifying misery, haunting eeriness, and towering black-shrouded grandeur⦠Sulphur is a tremendously good album and a very memorable one.â â No Clean Singing Sulphur, the brutalizing new album from vile […]
This summer, Eaux Claires, the music festival that Bon Iver main man Justin Vernon co-founded with the National’s Aaron Dessner, will make its grand return to Vernon’s Eau Claire, Wisconsin hometown. It’ll be the first Eaux Claires fest since 2018. Earlier this year, Vernon unveiled the festival’s lineup, and it includes luminaries like Aimee Mann, Daniel Caesar, Dijon, Lil Yachty, Kevin Morby, and “Bon Dylan.” Today, Justin Vernon tells us what “Bon Dylan” is.
Rock ‘n’ roll has always been about excitement and danger, the ability to subvert the norm and turn it into something visceral. As time goes by, it seems like more and more is pushed to reach that new high, the old shocks becoming jaded due to repetition and expectation, familiarity breeding contempt.
In the 1970’s, bands like KISS and Alice Cooper pushed the theatrical side of rock, bringing genuine drama and a sense of otherworldliness to the scene, the latter having some great songs to boot.
Nowadays, it’s down to Slipknot, Lordi, Ghost and Sleep Token to bring that air of mystery, the former of course having been readily exposed without their masks, but there remains a frisson of curiosity as to real identities as each lets the music do the talking.
It has been written that President were years in development, a top-secret project that brought all of Download to a standstill when they made their debut onsite at an absolutely rammed Dogtooth Stage last year.
Their brief but impactful set was the talk of the weekend, a truly viral event with hundreds claiming they were there when in actuality they were far from the tent.
President – Nick Rayns LCR, UEA, Norwich – 20 April 2026. Photo: zakpinchinfilms
With quite a few more dates under their belts, this debut UK tour was the chance for people to really get a chance to see the band up close, every date selling out in record time.
When the travelling campaign trail hit Norwich, fifteen hundred squeezed into the venue for the rally, ready to hang on every word.
Things had reached fever pitch by the time vocalist President, guitarist Heist, bass player Protest, and drummer Vice strolled onto stage and tore into the soaring yet crushing Fearless in front of a crowd in a state of near hysteria, as they chanted its title with arms raised.
President – Nick Rayns LCR, UEA, Norwich – 20 April 2026. Photo: zakpinchinfilms
With their heady blend of Metalcore and electronica, the outfit can build skyscraping anthems like Dionysus that float along with an almost pop melody yet wind up with a blistering breakdown that sees the vocalist at his rawest.
Pacing the stage as his masked compatriots pour everything into their instruments, President sees every eye glued to him, the tall anonymous figure blending circus ringmaster and siren.
A gorgeous RAGE is transfixing, the punch of the heavy section in such stark contrast to the electronic burbling that leads to it like being suddenly doused with a bucket of icy water.
Throwing in a cover of Deftones number Change (In The House of Flies) worked well, the song a natural fit into the set and moved wordlessly into set closer Conclave as an extended finish brought out the angular muscle of its last notes.
President – Nick Rayns LCR, UEA, Norwich – 20 April 2026. Photo: zakpinchinfilms
A swift return for three more numbers finishing with a delightfully unhinged mix of light and shade, with In The Name of the Father, the quartet left the stage, the rally complete and the committed dazed.
With a total running time of just over forty minutes, it seems like President have a lot of work ahead of them to justify headlining a tour with such a brief set, and at times the evening seemed unnecessarily stretched to compensate for this seeming lack of material.
With the ever-growing use of AI in music and effects slathered live shows, the experience of going to a gig is changing rapidly to fit with the TikTok generation, the medium having to work ever harder to gain and keep attention.
President tread a fine line at the moment, capturing their own zeitgeist with some great songs but are in danger of becoming a novelty when the world is starting to look for something with a more human touch.
On Friday, April 24th, The Punk Rock Museum will host an opening for Fast As Hell. Louder Than Both. This is a new exhibition by photographer Alison Braun. It is a visual record of a cultural turning point when underground music scenes overlapped and redefined one another.
Braun‘s early body of work includes striking images of Black Flag and Bad Brains, captured at a time when the hardcore movement was volatile, physical, and defiantly DIY. As hardcore accelerated and metal grew more technical and aggressive, Braun‘s lens tracked the shift.
Bands such as D.R.I., Suicidal Tendencies, and Corrosion of Conformity represent the cultural transformation Braun documented in real time. These artists rejected genre purity, fusing skate culture, hardcore urgency, and metal musicianship into something raw, confrontational, and entirely new.
Many of the photographs featured also appear in Braun‘s book, Shot in the Dark: Metal Volume, available for purchase in the museum’s gift store.
This photo exhibition will open alongside the museum’s debut of Crossover Corner, offering visitors a deeper look into the powerful intersection between punk and metal music.
Crossover Corner highlights influential metal bands that emerged from punk roots and punk bands that evolved toward metal. The exhibition captures the raw energy, style, and cultural impact that shaped the crossover movement between the two genres.
By pairing photography with historical artifacts, the museum offers a vivid look at the artists and communities that helped forge the crossover sound, celebrating a moment in music history when punk and metal collided to create something entirely new.
Back in 2023, the composer Nomi Abadi sued veteran film scorer Danny Elfman for failing to pay several installments in a sexual harassment settlement. A few months later, a Jane Doe also accused Elfman of sexual misconduct. Elfman denied Abadi’s allegations in a statement to Rolling Stone, leading her to sue him again for defamation in 2024; that’s ongoing after a Superior Court judge rejected Elfman’s anti-SLAPP motion. The Jane Doe’s case was dismissed on technical grounds, and Elfman has also sued her for malicious prosecution.
(written by Islander) If you heard the Bringers of Disease debut EP Gospel Of Pestilence it’s unlikely you’ve easily forgotten the experience, even though it was released 15 years ago. But maybe you never came across it. In that case, what should quickly seize your attention for the band’s debut album Sulphur are the people […]
Wayne Moss, the legendary and prolific Nashville session guitarist who played on classic records like Roy Orbison’s “Oh, Pretty Woman” and Dolly Parton’s “Jolene,” has passed away. Moss died on Monday, and Roy Orbison’s Instagram page broke the news. (Incidentally, Orbison would’ve turned 90 today.) No cause of death has been reported. Moss was 88.
Thirty-three years ago in 1993, Porcupine Tree performed their debut gig at The Nag’s Head in High Wycombe. A year prior, Steven Wilson’s experimental double album On the Sunday of Life laid the groundwork for the band’s sound. Now, in 2026, Voyage 35, led by former Porcupine Tree members Colin Edwin and John Wesley, invites fans on a nostalgia trip back to those heady days. On this podcast, Colin and John discuss the origins of the project, what Steven Wilson thinks, and what else is in store.
“There is so much love for the early Porcupine Tree material, and many people have expressed a desire to hear it again,” Colin Edwin told Louder Sound. “As the band evolved, much of this music fell by the wayside. It feels right to revisit it now with a fresh approach and new musical talent.”
John, who joined the band’s touring lineup in later years, shares that enthusiasm: “I’ve always been intrigued by the band’s early period. I’m really looking forward to playing these songs live and seeing where we can take them.”
While Porcupine Tree famously spearheaded a progressive rock revival with 2002’s In Absentia, the decade of incredible music that preceded it remains a fan favourite—much of which was never performed live. Those lucky enough to witness the band’s formative years remember a sense of languid experimentalism and spaced-out improvisation, all enhanced by the immersive projections of the Fruit Salad Lightshow.
Reunited with that original visual magic, Voyage 35 will head out on a short tour of Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, and the UK in September 2026. Fans can also look forward to some very special guests at the London show.
Tour Dates:
Fri 4 Sep Revislate, Italy Campo Sportivo
Tue 8 Sep Aschaffenburg, Germany Colos-Saal
Thu 10 Sep Utrecht, Netherlands TivoliVredenburg
Fri 11 Sep Uden, Netherlands De Pul
Sat 12 Sep Zoetermeer, Netherlands Boerderij
Tue 15 Sep Bristol, UK O2 Academy Bristol
Wed 16 Sep London, UK O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire
Thu 17 Sep Manchester, UK O2 Ritz
Fri 18 Sep Newcastle, UK The Grove
Sat 19 Sep Glasgow, UK The Classic Grand
