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Posted on May 20th 2026, 1:30p.m.

The 1993 shoot-’em-up was wildly violent and hugely successful. Thanks to Bobby Prince’s awesome soundtrack, it was also beloved by the metal crowd.

There’s something slightly bittersweet about reviewing The Final Ride. On one hand, this is a powerful live document from one of hard rock’s most enduring guitar heroes in George Lynch. On the other, it underlines a lingering truth longtime fans may struggle to ignore – for many of us, Lynch Mob was always as much about the voice as the riffs.

That’s no disrespect whatsoever to Gabriel Colon, who delivers a genuinely impressive performance throughout. I can attest to that having seen the band on this very tour when they hit Australia last year. He absolutely nailed it live. He has the range, the attitude and the presence. But provenance matters in bands with legacies this deep, and for me Lynch Mob will always be defined by the vocals of Oni Logan – or, the rather fine Robert Mason.

Still, taken purely as a live album in its own right, The Final Ride has plenty going for it.

The set opens strongly with ‘Lightning Strikes Again’ before rolling into ‘River Of Love,’ one of the definitive tracks from Wicked Sensation, an album that remains a genuine glam metal classic. That debut produced archetypal late-80s hard rock cuts like ‘She’s Evil But She’s Mine’ and ‘For A Million Years’ too, which makes their absence here all the more puzzling. Only ‘River Of Love’ and the title track survive the cull.

The Dokken material is unsurprisingly among the album’s strongest moments. ‘Paris Is Burning’ still crackles with energy, but ‘It’s Not Love’ is absolute perfection — one of the greatest hard rock songs of the era and arguably a top ten track of all time in this reviewer’s book. The closing one-two punch of ‘It’s Not Love’ into ‘Wicked Sensation’ is exactly what fans hoped this farewell release would deliver.

Elsewhere, the setlist choices are occasionally baffling.

‘Hell Child’ gets the nod from Wicked Sensation ahead of genuine classics like ‘She’s Evil But She’s Mine’ and ‘For a Million Years’, while ‘Rain’ feels like an even stranger inclusion given the depth of material available from that record. They’re not bad songs by any means – far from it – but when you’re sacrificing career-defining tracks, the selections feel oddly stubborn.

Likewise, the more recent material struggles to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the classics. ‘Caught Up’ from Babylon never truly lifts off in this company, while “Time After Time” sounds polished enough but lacks the spark and memorability of the older material surrounding it. ‘Let The Music Be Your Master’ — representing the oft-maligned Smoke And Mirrors — is another deep cut that hardcore fans may appreciate more than casual listeners.

One thing nobody can question is the musicianship. George Lynch remains an utterly compelling guitarist, still capable of delivering that instantly recognisable tone and fluid phrasing that helped define an era. Gabriel Colon arguably shines brightest on ‘Street Fighting Man,’ even if longtime fans may still hear Robert Mason’s voice in their heads during every chorus.

And perhaps the most telling thing about The Final Ride is what isn’t here. There’s nothing from last year’s supposedly final studio album Dancing With The Devil — a record so under-promoted that not everyone even received it for review. That omission says plenty on its own.

In the end, The Final Ride succeeds less as the definitive final statement of Lynch Mob and more as a reminder of just how incredible the George Lynch catalogue really is. When this album hits its highs, it absolutely soars. And when those final notes of ‘Wicked Sensation’ ring out, the fire still burns.

“The Final Ride” Tracklist:

1.    Lightning Strikes Again
2.    River Of Love
3.    No Good
4.    Caught Up
5.    Hell Child
6.    Let The Music Be Your Master
7.    Time After Time
8.    Paris Is Burning
9.    Rain
10.    Street Fighting Man
11.    It’s Not Love
12.    Wicked Sensation

The post ALBUM REVIEW: LYNCH MOB – The Final Ride (Live Album) appeared first on The Rockpit.

Posted on May 20th 2026, 1:08p.m.

Pennsylvania’s The Preps are back with their new EP, Unstoppable, on Fool Records. The Preps have been making melodic hardcore for thirty years and this latest release, their first in over fifteen years is a great addition to their discography. Knocking out six songs in fifteen minutes, Fatlou and crew have put together a record that keeps with that classic hardcore sound, but also pushes them to a new level. 

Check out Unstoppable:

Catch the the Preps on tour:

No Rules Tour 2026:

May 29 – McGarvey’s – Altoona, PA

May 30 – The Back Alley – Williamsport, PA

June 4 – Punk Rock BBQ – Saltsburg, PA 

June 11 – 27 Club – Asheville, NC

June 12 – Tin Rook – Charleston, SC

June 13 – Franken House – Ellenwood, GA

June 14 – Tilty McFlippers – Martinsburg, WV

July 10 – The Depot – Baltimore, MD

July 11 – Dante’s – Frostburg, MD

July 12 – Tilty McFlippers – Martinsburg, WV

July 17 – Mahoning Drive-in – Tromathon – Lehighton, PA

July 18 – The Twitch House – Bloomsburg, PA

July 19 – Concrete Jungle, Lehighton, PA 

July 19 – Union Vapors – Dickson City, PA

Aug 15 – Wild Air Beerworks – Asbury Park, NJ

Aug 28 – Rock N Race – Salem, OH

Aug 29 – Buffalo Bill House – Perryopolis, PA

Oct 3 – Sherman Theatre – Stroudsburg, PA

Oct 23 – Pappy’s Pub – Waynesboro, PA

Oct 24 – O’Shaugnessy’s – Alexandria, VA

Sound City is an open-hearted celebration of music and those who make it

The heavy psych-rock landscape is about to get a major injection of energy. Varaždin’s own 3 Suns Of

One band isn't in even after being nominated eleven times. Continue reading…

Some bands perform songs; others deconstruct them until they are born anew. With the release of their live

It’s impressive how some artists work in multiple bands at once, and more impressive how common this seems to be. Often, the fact that an act is a side-project of or also features a particular musician is the sole reason you check them out, conferring a degree of quality or prestige. Piołun is one of these bands, a duo comprised of Mānbryne and ex-Blaze of Perdition guitarist Łukasz Barański—who here also handles vocals—and relatively unknown drummer Vitor. Like those groups, Piołun is black metal in a style that has grown increasingly associated with the Polish scene in particular—melodic but understated, enriched with a pinch of atmosphere and a slightly gritty vibe. The band’s debut, Rzeki Goryczy, was met with general acclaim, and it should therefore delight fans that Exolvuntur follows closely in its footsteps, albeit aiming to be “more dynamic and melodic.” In fact, this sophomore is exemplary in many ways, but not all of them are complimentary.

Exolvuntur is simple on the surface, sticking to unflowery tremolos and uncomplicated tempos, occasionally employing group¹ vocals for roaring emphasis. Particular turns of instrumental phrase echo those of Mānbryne (“Moribunda,” “Hiems”), while others carry a more Sethian tone (“Manifest-kresu,” “Czas”). But Piołun don’t ape anyone so much as draw from a common well of spiritedness. More overtly than on the debut, they hit upon the familiar hazily-layered riffing and minimalistic melodic scales of second-wave-cum-meloblack in general, and structure their compositions uniformly around the recurrence of a singular uplifting high guitar line. This allows them to centre their spirit, which vitriolic vocal delivery and the occasional nods to the epic in their key refrains demonstrate they have an abundance of. Spirit and familiarity only go so far, however.

Piołun know how to write a smart rhythmic hook and a melancholic lead. Repeated stop-starts (“Sierpniowy-brzask,” “Hiems”), an offbeat to the descent of a tremolo (“Manifest-kresu”), and emphatic push-pulls between vocal delivery and guitar line switching (“Moribunda”) make for a consistently spunky energy. It pairs well with Exolvuntur’s best refrains, which feel mournful in that vaguely medieval sense only the trvest black metal is capable of (“Manifest-kresu,” “Sierpniowy-brzask,” “Proba-Sznura”). Exolvuntur is rather more uplifting than harrowing, filled with layered, iterated melodies (“Sierpniowy-brzask”) and anthemic, emphatic roars (“Czas,” “Kolo-zycia”). This applies to forward-launching blazers (“Manifest-kresu,” “Kolo-zycia”), rhythmic fillers (“Czas), and mellow bridgers (“Sierpniowy-brzask,” “Moribunda”) alike. It’s nothing you haven’t heard before but like a favourite hoodie or comforting tv show you’ve watched so many times, you know every line, there’s something endearing and warming about this album—strange as that would seem given its overt heaviness and darkness.

Yet Exolvuntur’s charms mask a simplicity that approaches shallowness. These shimmering lead riffs that are good in isolation and already familiar in an abstract sense are recycled with barely a semitone of difference across the record (“Sierpniowy-brzask,” “Proba-Sznura,” “Hiems”); the remainder feel like filler. Operating between a handful of notes that could constitute a theoretical “average” for this style of meloblack, their cadence, execution, and frequency is not only predictable but so void of imagination that they make every movement feel trite and their emotionality manufactured. It forms a key part of the problematic repetitiousness that plagues Exolvuntur, where tempos suffer from a similar banality, mechanically moving between a tripping march and nondescript blastbeat of some form, killing the fire of a stinging lead and with nary a fill or rollover to be heard. “Heard” is key here, because the drums somehow sound jarringly clacky at one moment and anaemically muffled everywhere else—like a bongo in a phone booth—which makes potential drum gymnastics very difficult to distinguish. At the heights of speed and intensity, vocals and much of the guitars are swallowed by this mire such that everyone is jostling for position, and passionate snarls feel unintentionally strained rather than punchy.

Piołun did not need to fall back on triteness. Not only are there sweeping refrains (“Proba-Sznura”) and passionate arcs (“Manifest-kresu”) that demonstrate a flair for the dramatic and deep, their very debut Rzeki Goryczy does too. The duo exercised restraint in keeping Exolvuntur below 40 minutes, but that restraint seems to have bled into the songwriting, in a genre and proclaimed take on it that necessitates at least a little excess—in emotion, heaviness, speed, or complexity. Exolvuntur is a slice of nostalgia for some, a comforting wash of approximately vicious black metal, but it shows how great a distance there is in evoking a sound and using it to evoke anything else.

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Rating: Disappointing
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Malignant Voices
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook
Available Worldwide: May 22nd, 2026

The post Piołun – Exolvuntur Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.