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  • Album Review: Armored Saint – Emotion Factory Reset

    Album Review: Armored Saint – Emotion Factory Reset

    Reviewed by Rich Oliver

    Armored Saint are one of the mainstays of US heavy metal. A band that has been active on and off since 1982 and released some classic albums of balls to the wall, fist pumping heavy metal in the 80’s and early 90’s. They are a rare band who have retained mostly the same line up throughout their career with guitarist Jeff Duncan being the newest member (and by newest he joined the band in 1989!). The rest of the band – singer John Bush, bassist Joey Vera and brothers Gonzo Sandoval on the drums and Phil Sandoval on the guitars – have all been in the band since the very early days. Having played together for nearly 45 years, they all know what works with Armored Saint but also never sit comfortably and do the same album twice. As Joey Vera states ““Each Armored Saint record, to me, is like a new skin for the band, a different chapter. I don’t think we’ve ever repeated ourselves. Every album has been pretty different from the previous one, a snapshot in time”.

    “Emotion Factory Reset” is Armored Saint in 2026 – the ninth album from the band and a right shitkicker of an album that acknowledges the bands past and heritage but sounds vibrant and punchy for modern audiences. As John Bush puts it – “We can all take inspiration from our previous records, but that was a different time. Armored Saint don’t want to make another March of the Saint. I want to keep moving forward, but we know who we are, it’s not like we’re going to dish out the new trip hop, black metal, bluegrass album.”

    Album Review: Armored Saint - Emotion Factory Reset

    The band continue to straddle the line between straight up heavy metal and hard rock but bring in influences from each members own listening tastes and the songs themselves vary from fist banging heavy metal tunes such as ‘Close To The Bone’, ‘Hit A Moonshoot’ and ‘Throwing Caution To The Wind’ to groovy rockers such as ‘It’s A Buzzkill’, ‘Ladders And Slides’ and ‘Bottom Feeder’. The band also go into softer territory with ‘Buckeye’ which sees deeply personal lyrics from John Bush and also the use of slide guitar by Jeff Duncan.

    Armored Saint have been on a winning streak with recent albums such as “Win Hands Down” and “Punching The Sky” and that streak continues with “Emotion Factory Reset”. The band have never been in the upper echelons of the heavy metal hierarchy being more of a cult act with a dedicated fanbase but the quality has always been there. As John Bush himself states “Armored Saint don’t release an album every year, it’s about quality, not quantity. At the end of the day,as long as we feel it’s great, that’s the most important thing”. Hard to argue with that and “Emotion Factory Reset” is another great album chock full of hard rocking metal anthems with fantastic songwriting and amazing performances. Any self respecting old school rocker and metalhead should be all over this album.

    For all the latest news, reviews, interviews across the heavy metal spectrum follow THE RAZORS’S EDGE on facebook, twitter and instagram.

    The post Album Review: Armored Saint – Emotion Factory Reset appeared first on The Razor's Edge.

  • ADRIAN VANDENBERG Announces “My Whitesnake Years” August 2026 U.S. Tour With Co-Headliners VINNIE MOORE & MARCO MENDOZA

    Adrian Vandenberg has announced the “My Whitesnake Years” U.S. tour, an August 2026 run co-headlined by guitarist Vinnie Moore and bassist and vocalist Marco Mendoza. The three veterans collectively represent decades of work across Whitesnake, Thin Lizzy, UFO, Ted Nugent and beyond. The tour features two complete 75-minute-plus performances per night, or a single extended 90-minute show with intermission. Moore and Mendoza will also perform a collaborative set together, drawing on material from across their shared careers. VIP meet-and-greet packages — limited to 25 per show — are also available.

    Vandenberg first built his name in the early 1980s fronting his self-titled band Vandenberg, scoring international hits with “Burning Heart” and “Friday Night.” That visibility led to a long association with David Coverdale and Whitesnake, where Vandenberg contributed the guitar solo to the multi-platinum “Here I Go Again” and co-wrote material for Slip of the Tongue and Restless Heart. He also appeared on Starkers in Tokyo, Live at Donington and the band’s Greatest Hits reunion tour. More recently, he co-headlined with Geoff Tate on the latter’s Operation: Mindcrime tour in 2024, and played the 2025 Monsters of Rock cruise before a successful East Coast headline run. His current recording outlet is Vandenberg’s Moonkings.

    Moore is best known for a 21-year run with UFO and a well-regarded solo catalog, with additional studio and live work alongside Alice Cooper and Vicious Rumors. Mendoza brings 26 years with Thin Lizzy, seven years each with Whitesnake and Ted Nugent, and stints with The Dead Daisies and the current Satchvai band.

    Vandenberg said: “Really (REALLY!) excited to cross the ocean again with my top-notch band to honor my 12 years in the golden era of Whitesnake! Be prepared to scream along with all the big ones like ‘Still of the Night’, ‘Here I Go Again’, ‘Judgement Day’, ‘Fool for Your Lovin”, etc etc. No doubt about it, this is an absolute BIG ROCK tour with Marco and Vinnie celebrating their years in Journey, Thin Lizzy and UFO. You don’t wanna miss this! We are ready, are you?!?”

    Mendoza added: “I have to say that I’m very excited and looking forward to the U.S. run of dates in August, and sharing the stage with Adrian Vandenberg and Vinnie Moore. And having the opportunity to introduce my own music and also to pay tribute to some of my past participations and collaborations, like Thin Lizzy and Ted Nugent, along with Vinnie on some UFO tracks and some of his original stuff. It’s just going to be a great run… Don’t miss it. See you there!”

    Moore said: “Thrilled to be doing this tour with Marco and Adrian. Going to be a blast to play a couple UFO songs, as well as some of my tunes and some Thin Lizzy. This is going to be a lot of fun and I’m looking forward to it. See you all soon.”

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    The post ADRIAN VANDENBERG Announces “My Whitesnake Years” August 2026 U.S. Tour With Co-Headliners VINNIE MOORE & MARCO MENDOZA appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

  • First to the Barrier – Der Iron Maiden Rockcast-Talk

    Heavy-Metal-Leidenschaft unterm Mikroskop: „First to the Barrier“ bringt den ultimativen Iron-Maiden-Talk auf die Ohren

    Die Welt des Heavy Metal ist reich an Legenden, doch kaum eine Band mobilisiert eine so treue und detailverliebte Anhängerschaft wie die britischen Ikonen von Iron Maiden. Für genau diese Hardcore-Fans, Sammler und Konzertjunkies gibt es ab sofort eine neue akustische Anlaufstelle im Netz:

    „First to the Barrier – Der Iron Maiden Rockcast-Talk!“

    Das frische Format bricht bewusst mit den klassischen Mustern oberflächlicher Musikberichterstattung. Statt schneller News-Happen und austauschbarer Stammtischparolen liefert die Show tiefgründige Einblicke, persönliche Anekdoten und Geschichten aus der Fankurve, die in keinem Wikipedia-Artikel zu finden sind.

    Hinter dem Mikrofon versammelt sich ein Trio, das die DNA der Band wie kaum ein anderes lebt und atmet: Alex, Klaus und Tippi. Gemeinsam bringen die drei Podcast-Host eine geballte Ladung Fachwissen, jahrzehntelange Konzerterfahrung und pure, ungefilterte Leidenschaft mit. Sie sprechen nicht als distanzierte Beobachter, sondern als Teil der weltweiten Maiden-Familie – direkt, ungeschminkt und auf Augenhöhe mit den Hörerinnen und Hörern.

    Drei Experten, drei außergewöhnliche Perspektiven

     

    Charly-Alex – Der Sammler und Performer: Seine Sucht begann im Jahr 1995 beim legendären Konzert im Hamburger Gaswerk. Seitdem sammelt er alles, was mit der Band zu tun hat. Über 700 Vinyl-Scheiben füllen mittlerweile seine Regale, flankiert von rund 130 T-Shirts. Auf Tourneen zieht es ihn konsequent ganz nach vorne – eben First to the Barrier. Und wenn er mal nicht an der Absperrung steht, findet man ihn am Mischpult, wo Sound und Sicht perfekt harmonieren. Seine Liebe geht sogar so weit, dass er regelmäßig als Bandmaskottchen „Eddie“ für die Hamburger Tribute-Band Powerslave auf der Bühne steht. (Foto Rockfotograf.de)

     

     

    Klaus Vanscheidt – Der Profimusiker: Der Gitarrist aus Mülheim an der Ruhr bringt die Perspektive des Profis ein. Klaus stand schon auf den Brettern des Wacken Open Air und spielte sogar bereits live mit Blaze Bayley zusammen, dem Maiden-Frontmann der späten Neunziger. Sein persönliches Erweckungserlebnis feierte er als 16-Jähriger am 26. Oktober 1984 auf der legendären Powerslave-Tour in Essen. Mehr als 40 besuchte Konzerte folgten bis heute. (Foto: Cora Stern)

     

     

    Tippi – Der Memorabilia-Spezialist: Tippi teilt nicht nur das exakt gleiche Einstiegsdatum wie Klaus – den geschichtsträchtigen Abend 1984 in Essen –, sondern auch die tiefe Hingabe zur Band. Er hat sich über die Jahrzehnte ein enormes Insider-Wissen im Bereich Autogramme und seltene Rock-Memorabilia aufgebaut. Die Wege von Klaus und Tippi kreuzten sich kurioserweise erst im Jahr 2001 über eine Ebay-Auktion für ein Ticket in London. Aus diesem digitalen Deal entstand eine tiefe Freundschaft und die Basis für unzählige Geschichten, die nun im Podcast ausgepackt werden. (Foto Gleis 11)

     

    Ein Podcast abseits des Mainstreams

    „First to the Barrier“ erscheint in unregelmäßigen Abständen als exklusives Sonderformat innerhalb des etablierten Rockcast-Podcasts. Die Macher nehmen sich bewusst die Zeit, die es braucht, um tief in die Historie, die Musik und das Phänomen Iron Maiden einzutauchen. Es ist eine Liebeserklärung im Audioformat – von Fans für Fans, die den Geist der eisernen Jungfrauen perfekt einfängt.

     

    Die aktuellsten Rockcast-Folgen und Interviews und Talks findest Du auf Rockcast.de

    Danke für´s Lesen, Hören, Abonnieren und Teilen. Dur Rockst!
    Punkt.

    Der Beitrag First to the Barrier – Der Iron Maiden Rockcast-Talk erschien zuerst auf Rock-Music.net – Live, laut, legendär!.

  • Sun Guts (Car Bomb) Announce Sophomore Album “Supervoid”, Stream New Track “Terminator Cross”

    Arriving digitally in August and in September on physical formats.

    The post Sun Guts (Car Bomb) Announce Sophomore Album “Supervoid”, Stream New Track “Terminator Cross” appeared first on Theprp.com.

  • “This Strangeness I Feel” — Witchita Synthpop Duo Brave Boy Release “A Faint Voice at Loudest” LP

    A faint voice, in Samuel Beckett’s Company, calls from the edge and urges the body toward the plunge. Brave Boy takes their name from that suspended instant, and on A Faint Voice at Loudest, the Wichita duo of Mary Harrison and Eric Harrison treat the pop song as a similar precipice: a place where desire, dread, memory, and self-recognition gather before the fall.

    The record began, by their account, as a “10 songs in 10 days” exercise, a private discipline against hesitation, sounding like a suite of sleek, strange rooms, each one lit by DX7 glass, LinnDrum snap, saturated bass, and guitars. Brave Boy may move within the weather systems of post-punk, dream pop, synthpop, and the softer outskirts of sophisti-pop, but their best moments come from the pressure placed between those languages. The guitars carry Johnny Marr-like filigree, the rhythms recall the disciplined body music of 1980s R&B and electro-boogie, and the synths suggest a world where Cocteau Twins, The Blue Nile, New Order, Prince, Choir Boy, and Jam & Lewis productions all share a midnight-train platform.

    At the centre is Mary Harrison’s voice, a dramatic instrument with glam edges and a theatrical reach that never collapses into camp. She sings as though the room is both stage and confession booth, pushing Brave Boy’s songs toward emotional theatre without losing their pop intelligence. Eric Harrison’s production surrounds her with movement rather than murk: chorused guitars, bright mallet tones, and basslines that keep the album’s feet on the floor even when its eyes are fixed somewhere above the ceiling.

    There is a pleasing contradiction in the phrase Eric uses for the record, “hidden haze under the funk.” It explains much of A Faint Voice at Loudest. These songs seep upward through the grooves in a peculiar charge: intimacy trying to speak through distance, romance distorted by expectation, gender and identity viewed through a cracked mirror.

    The brightest passages bubble and burst with almost garden-like light. One can picture fireflies, lanterns, and a twilight game of pursuit, yet beneath that delicate surface the music keeps pressing forward with urgent physicality. Mary’s voice holds firm inside the glow, tender and commanding, while Eric’s guitars and synths flare, vanish, and return in altered shapes. Vulnerability can have a backbeat, and that the faintest voice sometimes travels furthest when the body is already moving.

    “We started this album almost accidentally,” the band reflects. “It began as a challenge to write quickly and stop overthinking everything, but somewhere in the process it became the most honest thing we’ve ever made. A lot of the record deals with emotional distance, identity, memory, and trying to connect through noise. Sonically, we wanted it to feel dreamy and atmospheric, but still move physically. There’s a lot more funk and R&B underneath it than people probably expect.”

    On I Saw You There, the room is already dead before desire arrives: another party, another drink, another little social defeat, until one figure cuts through the fog and turns vacancy into fixation. Walk Away answers that rush with rupture, taking the language of obedience, rules, and romantic exhaustion and twisting it into escape; the command becomes a door, and heartbreak becomes the hand that opens it.

    Oh Me, Oh Life moves through loneliness, failed speech, and the bruised search for meaning before finding a thin but stubborn thread of renewal in love and connection. Drifting sinks deeper into the body’s private undertow, where anxiety, memory, and emotional depletion pull the speaker from the present, leaving another person’s touch as the last rope back to shore.

    On Take Back the Nite, devotion curdles into desperation as a lover tries to drag someone back from addiction, absence, and self-erasure through intimacy, need, and sheer force of feeling. With You turns romance into a locked room of recursive arguments and blurred selves, where both parties know the bond is bad for them and still cannot quite cut the cord.

    Feels So Real treats transformation not as triumph but as tremor: the old self breaking open, the new one uncertain, and love left to answer whether it can survive the change. Be a Brave Boy closes on a more brutal inheritance, tracing how childhood shame, parental command, and forced courage can become an inner voice that follows a person into adulthood, still speaking, still wounding.

    Listen to A Faint Voice at Loudest below.

    Follow Brave Boy:

    The post “This Strangeness I Feel” — Witchita Synthpop Duo Brave Boy Release “A Faint Voice at Loudest” LP appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

  • DINO CAZARES on New FEAR FACTORY Album: “I 100% Believe That People Are Gonna Love This Shit — It’s New, It’s Brutal, It’s Heavy, It’s Melodic”

    Fear Factory guitarist Dino Cazares spoke with Duane James of Australia’s Wall of Sound about the band’s upcoming studio album, tentatively due in late 2026 or early 2027 via Nuclear Blast. The record will mark Fear Factory‘s first release with singer Milo Silvestro and drummer Pete Webber, who have been part of the band’s touring lineup for more than three years.

    Asked whether there is a release date yet, Cazares told Wall of Sound (transcribed by Blabbermouth): “I don’t have a date when the whole record’s coming out, but we will be releasing a single soon. I know I’ve said it over the years, but for real, it’s gonna be coming out this year as far as the first single. Actually, more than one single will be out this year.”

    On whether he worries about how the Fear Factory fanbase will receive music with Silvestro at the front, Cazares said: “Nah. What does it mean anymore? It doesn’t mean anything anymore. As long as you believe in what you’re doing, and you 100% love it, it doesn’t matter what anybody says. It comes down to how you feel. And I feel it’s gonna be a classic. Now, if people don’t like it, I don’t know what to tell them. That’s their problem. But I 100% believe that people are gonna love this shit, ’cause it’s new, it’s brutal, it’s heavy, it’s melodic. [There are] beautiful moments on the record. It’s everything that makes Fear Factory a Fear Factory record. And we’re talking about Obsolete and Demanufacture, but this is going to a different place than some of the older classic stuff. This is going to a different place, and the place that it’s gone to is newer, it’s fresher, it sounds modern, it sounds where we are now in this genre of music. And also, a bit forward-thinking as well.”

    The album stays true to the man-versus-machine concept that has defined Fear Factory‘s catalog since the early 1990s. Cazares said: “Conceptually it’s about… It’s always been about the relationship between man and machine and where we are. And obviously, technology has caught up to some of the stuff that we have been talking about over the years on our records. Now, it’s like we’re talking about the next 50 years from now, where we’re gonna be at with this technology. And, of course, everybody’s got this A.I. bug in them, and we’re definitely capitalizing on a lot of our concepts that we came up over the years. And we always felt that we were ahead of the game when it came to that kind of stuff, with a lot of warnings. Especially Obsolete, where we were talking about how a lot of things were gonna become obsolete. Which is true, but not only did they become obsolete, we, as a human species, have learned how to adapt to this, and I think that’s exactly what’s happening. We put out a remix record a couple years ago called Recoded, and the intro said, ‘You adapt or die.’ And that’s it. You have to adapt to where technology is going or you’re gonna get left behind.”

    The post DINO CAZARES on New FEAR FACTORY Album: “I 100% Believe That People Are Gonna Love This Shit — It’s New, It’s Brutal, It’s Heavy, It’s Melodic” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

  • King Parrot Announce September UK Tour

    A 9-date run has been confirmed.

    The post King Parrot Announce September UK Tour appeared first on Theprp.com.

  • ‘Beaches’ to Close on Broadway Months Earlier Than Planned

    A musical version of the 1980s tear-jerker will close months earlier than planned after opening in April to negative reviews and soft sales.

  • 13 Years After Making Metalcore History, Live Without Reunite To Launch New Denny’s Burger

    Step into the mozz pit.

    The post 13 Years After Making Metalcore History, Live Without Reunite To Launch New Denny’s Burger appeared first on Theprp.com.

  • RUSH’s GEDDY LEE Recalls Drummers Pitching Themselves Days After NEIL PEART’s Death: “Dude, Wait Two Months — at Least Two Months”

    In a recent interview with Guitar World, Rush bassist and vocalist Geddy Lee addressed something that weighed heavily on him after drummer Neil Peart‘s death in January 2020: the number of drummers who immediately pushed themselves forward as replacements. Lee drew a sharp distinction between the friends who kept their grief to themselves and those who saw an opening.

    “People who are close to us — good friends that are successful drummers — would never infer something like that because they have too much respect, not only for Neil and for the situation,” Lee told Guitar World. “They were grieving as well, so they wouldn’t be so selfish as to say something inappropriate like that.”

    Others, he said, were less considerate. “There were many other drummers who reached out to me in the aftermath of Neil‘s passing that were pushing themselves, and that was most distasteful to me. It was completely inappropriate timing.”

    On how he and guitarist Alex Lifeson eventually landed on award-winning fusion drummer Anika Nilles for the “Fifty Something” reunion tour, Lee said: “We didn’t really know where to begin to look. We started with Anika because she had been recommended to me, and I had done some research on her. I loved her vibe and diverse style.”

    “We didn’t have a list,” Lee added. “When Al and I finally said, ‘Okay, I guess we’re getting serious. Who’s going to sit in that impossible seat? It’s daunting.’ We started with the name that was already on my mind. We called her up, she came, and we hit it off. She brought a lot to the table, but more than her chops, more than her guts, and her willingness to sit in that hot seat, she brought an intelligence and a story.”

    The outreach from drummers was already something Lifeson had referenced publicly. Back in March 2025, around seven months before the “Fifty Something” tour was announced, Lifeson told Q104.3: “After Neil passed, it didn’t take more than a few minutes before we started getting e-mails from all kinds of drummers who wanted to audition for the band, thinking that we were just gonna replace somebody that we played with for 40 years who wrote all the lyrics for our music. I don’t know what some of these people were thinking.”

    Lee had touched on it even earlier. During a January 2024 appearance on “Strombo’s Lit,” the Apple book club curated by Canadian broadcaster George “Strombo” Stroumboulopoulos, Lee said: “Oh, yeah, I heard from all kinds [of people]. That was a very weird moment. My little black book got filled up really quickly.” When Stroumboulopoulos noted that some of those people were “people you thought were friends,” Lee said: “Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was, like, ‘Whoa, that’s just so inappropriate right now. Dude, wait two months. At least two months — if ever.’ It still happens, now that the clickbait freaks are out there talking about Alex and I getting a new drummer and starting Rush again.”

    Peart died on Jan. 7, 2020, after quietly battling brain cancer for three and a half years. Rush held the announcement for three days before going public. In 2022, Lee revealed that Peart had wanted his diagnosis kept private and that he and Lifeson had been “dishonest” with fans at times in order to protect that privacy.

    Rush will play multiple “evening with” shows across Canada, the United States and Mexico on the “Fifty Something” tour, opening June 7, 2026 at The Kia Forum in Los Angeles. Each night features two full sets drawn from a rotating 40-song catalog built from the band’s greatest hits and fan favorites. After their first batch of 2026 dates sold out instantly following the October 2025 announcement, Rush doubled the run and continued adding dates, stretching the North American leg into the fall.

    The post RUSH’s GEDDY LEE Recalls Drummers Pitching Themselves Days After NEIL PEART’s Death: “Dude, Wait Two Months — at Least Two Months” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.