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Blondie's back with fresh material after a decade, and this one hits different. The new album features final recordings from their late drummer Clem Burke. Continue reading…

Posted on October 15th 2026, 1:00pm

Carmine Appice leads his reactivated band on a cover of the 1963 Howlin' Wolf gem. Continue reading…

Like many others in the early 1980s as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal took off, a band named Rhabstallion set off to make their mark. They hail from a couple or three junctions along the M62 motorway from yours truly and back in the day put in the “hard yards” to get noticed. […]

The post Rhabstallion: New Live and Raw Review first appeared on New Wave of British Heavy Metal.

It’s been 40 years since we lost Cliff Burton, but the legendary Metallica bassist has left a legacy that still resonates today. We talk to his friends, music teachers, former bandmates and producers, alongside the artists who have been influenced by the immortal music he made.

Former Megadeth bassist David Ellefson recalls how frontman Dave Mustaine, who played with Cliff in the early days of Metallica, received a phone call telling him his friend had passed away. Dave then wrote Megadeth classic In My Darkest Hour.

“Here we are, still talking about him as if he was still here,” says David of Cliff’s legacy and reputation as a musical innovator. “Because he is. His music and his heart and his spirit are still here with us.”

Elsewhere, we get onboard Ozzy Osbourne’s actual crazy train, in a new attraction at Universal Studios Hollywood. Created for their Halloween Horror Nights experience, it features unseen artwork from the Double O – and a giant bat!

Meanwhile, Maynard James Keenan gets The Hammer Interview treatment. The Tool, Puscifer and A Perfect Circle frontman reveals why vampires drove him out of LA, and why retirement is “not a fucking option”.

We also get rock royalty Dave Grohl in a room with thrash royalty Anthrax, to talk homemade tattoos, shots with Dimebag and the majesty of Motorhead. Because why not?

The stars of the very first Ozzfest share their memories of the event that changed metal forever, while Iron Maiden’s longest-serving drummer, Nicko McBrain, divulges what he’s learned from marriage, aliens and the time Ozzy Osbourne saved him from falling into the sea.

President’s controversial leader grants us an audience, Chelsea Wolfe lifts the veil on her most mainstream record yet, and Castle Rat frontwoman Riley Pinkerton explains how she became the Rat Queen.

Plus, we meet Unpeople: the band who brush their teeth to Cattle Decapitation.

All this, along with Slaughter To Prevail, Ministry, Deftones, Tony Iommi, Devildriver, Black Spikes, The Primals, Cult Of Luna, ArcTanGent, Brocarde, Alice Cooper and much, much more.

Only in the new issue of Metal Hammer, on sale now.

Order it online and have it delivered straight to your door

Look for long-awaited new albums from U2, Asia and Molly Hatchet – and the fall return of Record Store Day. Continue reading…

Creedence Clearwater Revival icon to open for Zach Bryan after they wrote and recorded a song together. Continue reading…

As the year begins to transition into the sort of gloomy weather that proves a perfect companion to doom metal, this fall season isn’t quite cooperating. Rather than the gloom pervading the cover art’s beautiful painting by Larisa Brechun, the light is still keeping us. Only a few days before Mother of Graves’s latest take on ’90s-style death/doom, the temps around my parts hit 80°F. Does the good cheer this warmth brings hamper any enjoyment for the music Mother of Graves plays? Hardly. This mid-October release date has become a tradition for the Indiana quintet. Grymm enjoyed their debut over a pumpkin spice latte when they released Where the Shadows Adorn on October 14, 2022. When Carcharodon admired their “sweet, sweet sadboi vibes” in his TYMHM 2024 post, they had released The Periapt of Absence on October 18. Now releasing The Light That Keeps Us on October 16, the promo promises us that, yes, this is still your grandfather’s Mommy Graves.

Mother of Graves continues to hone what made many listeners fall in love with them on their last two records. They hop from an aggressive Paradise Lost-style of death/doom to a slower and thicker shade of My Dying Bride funeral doom with some Swallow the Sun and early Katatonia mixed in. Their transitions between these elements feel effortless thanks to impeccable mixing from Dan Swanö. Mother of Graves shines in their ability to craft evocative melodic doom. The eight-minute opener, “Wingless Soul,” contains a melody so catchy that it’ll stick like a well-loved lollipop that slipped from your hands and tangled itself in your beard hair. And speaking of Swanö, he has a brief part singing cleans on the opener, albeit a little awkwardly.¹ “Wingless Soul” displays a little bit of everything the band has to offer, from gentle piano to cleans to heavy doom to up-tempo death. While it’s a strong start, it’s not even the best thing on the album.

Nowhere does Mother of Graves better demonstrate the power of their songwriting prowess than on the final three songs of The Light That Keeps Us. “A Moonlit Tryst” begins like a piece from a Dolven record, complete with nighttime campfire sounds and acoustic guitars. The brutal, slow-moving doom that follows casts a mournful spell that’ll leave you feeling crushed in the most gentle way possible. When “The Beggar’s Allegory” begins with its beautiful gothic piano tune, it feels almost like more of the same thing. Yet the track dives into a speedier death/doom anchored by a killer melody, and there are moments on it where you can hear whispers of early Opeth. “The Endless Climb,” however, comes pretty close to SOTY material, with a terrific melodic lead, some violins, and a gentle classical piano bit, all coalescing into a conclusion that just may be the year’s most powerful.

Yet, The Light That Keeps Us falls just short of the greatness of The Periapt of Absence. It doesn’t as consistently weave its spell, as a few songs in the front half lack the impact of the rest. Mother of Graves also employs some spoken/whispered word bits throughout the record that pull listeners out of their doom-y trance. They rear their ugly head in the already lengthy “Wingless Soul” and also conclude “Through the Pale Shade” with a whimper. The worst section comes from “Eventide Angel,” though that tune at least ends in terrific, aggressive fashion. In a way, these are nitpicks, but they go to show that this album just isn’t as consistently great as its predecessor. With a more pared-back tempo, it’s also not as immediate, though it offers plenty of rewards on repeat spins.

Three records in, Mother of Graves continue to impress with their emotive compositions and incredible performances. Brandon Howe growls with strength and depth, evoking the image of a gentle giant—powerful yet sensitive. Coupled with Ben Sandman and Chris Morrison’s calculated riffs, which effortlessly carry the music from dense heaviness to melodic beauty to tenderness, Mother of Graves writes music that’s comforting in its familiarity yet rewarding in its depth. It wouldn’t surprise me if this ends up on many year-end lists, and maybe with repeat spins it could elevate itself onto mine. Whatever the case, I look forward to their next album to land October 13, 2028.

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Rating: 3.5/5.0
DR: 6 | Format Reviewed: 320 kbps mp3
Label: Profound Lore Records
Websites: Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Site
Releases Worldwide: October 16th, 2026

The post Mother of Graves – The Light That Keeps Us Review appeared first on Angry Metal Guy.

Posted on October 15th 2026, 12:16pm

The abyss stares back.

Amid the vibrant and growing ranks of old-school heavy metal revivalism, the Spanish scene has enjoyed a healthy share of the load thanks to the strides made by the likes of Witchtower, Iron Curtain, Rave In Fire, and a few others. Cut from the same New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal cloth with perhaps a greater helping of NWOBHM orthodoxy, Catalonian quintet Streamer has been on an impressive independent studio tear since their 2013 founding with their 2020 sophomore LP Light Of Death making some notable waves in the European underground despite the band’s touring efforts being hampered by the concurrent Covid 19 pandemic.

These efforts are poised to hit pay dirt with the arrival of their latest and third full length album Into The Void, buoyed by joining the massive roster of High Roller Records and bringing a correspondingly potent and refined metallic product to the table.

The aesthetic that emerges from this fold’s take on 80s-influenced heavy metal thunder is fairly unique, drawing heavily from the vintage punch and guitar-centric approach pioneered by Judas Priest and merging it with a more mystical quality. Obvious early 80s British heavy metal staples like Iron Maiden and Saxon are a heavy influence on the melodic contour and hard-edged character of each song on this 10 track opus, but the haunting atmosphere that their production exhibits and the theatrical quality that often leaps from the speakers between vocalist Edu Halen’s quasi-operatic showcase and strategic employment of atmospheric keyboards also points to a healthy Mercyful Fate/King Diamond presence in the mix. The end result is an album that walks a rather curious line between the sort of fun-loving 80s shtick one associates with Enforcer and Skull Fist and the more occult-like demeanor of Portrait and In Solitude.

In keeping with some of the earlier power metal bands from Europe that Streamer has also cited as influencing their sound, this anthology of metal from the good old days kicks off with a creepy ambient-turned-guitar-driven opening fanfare after the spirit of Judas Priest’s “The Hellion” dubbed “Almanzor”.

Bucking the trend of power metal bands to springboard off the introductory overture with a blazing speeder, “The Day That Barchinona Died” lands on more of an upper mid-tempo shuffling stride that sounds halfway between a homage to Maiden’s “Where Eagles Dare” and a quicker entry out of Cirith Ungol’s arsenal with a harrowing banshee-like display out of Edu’s soaring pipes. Keeping the classic metal influences going at a swift and riff happy pace, crusher entries like “Never Said Goodbye” and “Falling Again” usher in some impressive guitar displays out of axe men Esteban “Master” Sedano and Anhell0ty, both drawing heavily from the melodic template of Iron Maiden and the former also featuring some madcap riffing out of the Jake E. Lee playbook during his mid-80s stint with Ozzy Osbourne.

For every moment that things seem to be locked into a wholly orthodox emulation of one contingent of the traditional metal paradigm, this album effectively mixes things up and forges its own unique take on what the genre was 40 years ago. The more atmospherically dense and mysterious character of “No Turning Back” and its swifter cousin “Liar’s End” still possesses that driving feel that one expects, but comes with a healthy degree of twists and turns, not to mention coming off as darker than a standard Judas Priest banger despite being constructed from similar material.

Arguably the greatest left turn into all-out sonic evil with an epic edge is the maze of an anthem and appropriately named “Insane Word”, complete with a blistering Steve Harris-like display out of bassist Cristian Blade. On the other side of the coin, the straightforward banger “Rock All Around” lands closer to something Twisted Sister might have written and the speed-infused cruiser “Wanted Head” takes a curious interlude into the Old American West at a breakneck pace.

While Streamer isn’t exactly a newcomer to the scene and the sound they’ve constructed is mostly in line with where heavy metal revivalism has been centered since the early 2010s, they have all the elements of a rising star in a locale that has been somewhat underrepresented n the NWOTHM.

Into The Void is the sort of album that clearly doesn’t play things safe, yet the generally compact nature of their songwriting approach and the melodically consonant character that they’ve partly imported from the European power metal template makes for a highly accessible listening experience. Their target audience is predominantly among those whom like their metal cut from the 1982 through 1986 cloth, though given the wideness of the stylistic net that they’ve cast, it would be just as easy to see fans of the Eternal Champion and Slough Feg epic metal camp take to this as much as the broader retro metal craze that’s been streaming out of Northern Europe for the past 20 years.

Release Date: October 16, 2026
Record Label: High Roller Records
Genre: Heavy Metal

Musicians:

• Edu Halen / Lead Vocals
• Jordi Rodenas / Drums
• Esteban Cabezas / Guitars
• Cristian Blade / Bass and Backing Vocals
• Anhelloty / Guitars and Backing Vocals

Into The Void Tracklist:

1. Almanzor
2. The Day That Barchinona Died
3. No Turning Back
4. Never Said Goodbye
5. Falling Again
6. Rock All Around
7. Insane World
8. Wanted Head
9. Liar’s End
10. Into the Void

Order the album here.

The post STREAMER – Into The Void (Album Review) appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.