Black Spikes are an exciting experimental metal band blending everything from black metal to trap into their heavy, aggressive sound. The release of their new concept album YDOS is imminent (unless you’re reading this after August 28th, in which case it has already been released!).

I talked with vocalist Agni to discuss the narrative arc of the new album, the themes and concepts behind it, and the band’s biggest musical influences.

Reuel

Hello Agni! It’s a pleasure to chat with you! How are you doing?

Agni

Hello! Thank you for having me! I’m doing great — we’re in a very exciting period right now. YDOS is finally about to be released, and we’re really looking forward to sharing the whole album with people.

Reuel

You will soon release the new album! How would you describe Ydos to our readers who have never heard your music before?

Agni

YDOS is a concept album about human vices. We imagined a pure land where different vices are born, take on their own forms, and begin their journey towards us — humans. Each song represents a different vice or stage of this story, so the album has a strong narrative running through it.
Musically, it’s very much Black Spikes — heavy, dark and aggressive, but also melodic, electronic and experimental. We don’t really like putting ourselves into one box, so our music takes many different turns, leading to very different emotions.

Reuel

Exciting! You combine many different styles into your music: black metal, trap, djent… In your own eyes, what is the thread that ties all these styles together into something uniquely yours?

Agni

I think the thread is simply us. We’re not trying to deliberately mix genres just to sound unusual. We write whatever feels right for a particular song and emotion. If a trap beat works better than a traditional metal rhythm, we use it. If a black metal part makes the atmosphere darker, it belongs there.
And I think our visual side is also a big part of that identity. Music, lyrics, costumes, makeup, masks, choreography and videos are all connected for us. We want Black Spikes to feel like a whole world, rather than just a collection of songs.

Reuel

The album opens with a mother giving birth to human vices on Motina and ends with everything turning to dust on Dulkės. Did you write these ten tracks in chronological order to fit that arc, or did the storyline come together after the songs were finished?

Agni

The full story became clearer as we were creating the album. Some ideas for the songs already existed and then found their vice, while others were created specifically around a particular vice and its story.
MOTINA became the beginning of the vices — it was the first song we wrote for this album. DULKĖS, however, wasn’t the last song we wrote. It simply felt like the natural ending, where everything eventually disappears.
So it wasn’t a case of writing ten songs strictly from beginning to end. It was more like building a puzzle and gradually discovering how all the pieces fit together.

Reuel

When you write a concept album like Ydos, does focusing on a specific theme, like the vices in this case, restrict what you can talk about, or does it actually broaden your scope through the lens of that theme?

Agni

Yes, it restricts it. But at the same time, it’s easier when you already have a direction. When you have a specific theme, you can dig deeper into it, dedicating the whole album to the story.
It doesn’t mean there’s less to talk about — quite the opposite. You can look at the concept from many different perspectives. A vice can be a demon, a character, a feeling, or even a part of yourself.

Reuel

Beautiful! If all the tracks on Ydos came to life and became real people, which one of these songs would you be most excited to meet? And which would you like to avoid?

Agni

I’ve already met SENAS DEMONAS — I bet we all have.


Actually, a conversation with a particular person inspired Sime and me to create the story behind this song, as we both wrote the lyrics. We met an elderly person – an exceptional and talented personality, but someone who had been broken by a life that wasn’t easy on him. His life was coming to an end, and the main things he had to teach us were how to manipulate people, never share your true plans, never open up and never trust anybody.


It made me think: maybe we’re the ones who grow these vices ourselves. And if we were more honest and open, maybe these demons wouldn’t grow within us.

Reuel

I really loved the switches from clean to harsh vocals. The way you switch made the contrast more visible and more enjoyable. How do you decide what parts get clean vocals and which get harsh? Is that driven by the lyrics, the energy of the music, or a mix of both?

Agni

It’s definitely both. For the story to be told in an organic way, everything has to be connected. The lyrics, vocal technique, character and music all must match. And that’s not an easy task to achieve.

Reuel

Indeed. If someone has never heard Black Spikes before, which track off Ydos should they listen to first to get the best overall picture of your sound?

Agni

That’s a difficult question. I don’t think we can easily pick one song that completely describes our sound, because the songs differ so much.
In that sense, I would probably pick MARA. The song switches direction so many times that it’s almost impossible to attach it to one specific metal genre.

Reuel

What musicians can you credit as the ones who inspired you, personally, in your life or career as a musician?

Agni

There are so many that it’s difficult to name just a few. I grew up listening to very different kinds of music, which made me open to almost every genre.
But I think it’s important to mention a few names that have influenced me during my journey with Black Spikes.
Halestorm and The Pretty Reckless were very important in the beginning. When we formed Black Spikes, we started by practicing covers of these bands, and I loved both vocalists.
Then me and Sime fell in love with In This Moment and their stage presence. That inspired us to start creating our own performances and to think about Black Spikes as something bigger than just music.
And Tatiana from Jinjer was the person who inspired me to start my own journey into harsh vocals. She has this beautiful combination of being a lady and a true beast at the same time — I love it.

Reuel

Great names! Thank you for your time, Agni! Is there anything else you’d like to add?

Agni

I’d just like to say thank you to everyone who has supported Black Spikes so far. YDOS is a very important album for us, and we put a huge amount of ourselves into it — not only musically, but also visually and emotionally.
We really hope people will listen to it as a whole and take their own journey through the story.
And, of course, we can’t wait to bring YDOS to the stage.

The post Interview | “We Want Black Spikes to Feel Like a Whole World” – Agni (Black Spikes) first appeared on FemMetal – Goddesses of Metal.

Their new EP will be out in October.

The post Blood Of The Earth (Thy Will Be Done, Ex-Crowbar, Etc.) Debut “Petrichor” appeared first on Theprp.com.

Foreigner is deep into its 50th-anniversary victory lap, and the next stop is a fully overhauled edition of Head Games, the band’s multi-platinum third album. Coming off last year’s deluxe treatment of Foreigner 4, the band has now remixed and remastered the 1979 record for an Oct. 30 release on CD/Blu-ray, black vinyl and DSPs. Kicking things off is a newly unearthed outtake, “Trouble,” available digitally starting today.

Producers Jeff Pilson, Foreigner‘s bassist, and longtime collaborator Wyn Davis oversaw the reissue, which also includes a new liner-notes essay from music journalist Ken Sharp tracing the album’s history. The original Head Games lineup — Lou Gramm on lead vocals and percussion, Mick Jones on guitar, piano and vocals, Ian McDonald on guitars and keyboards, Rick Wills on bass and backing vocals, and Dennis Elliott on drums — delivered hits like “Dirty White Boy” and the title track. It was a record of lasts and firsts: Wills‘s debut with the band, the final appearance from founding members McDonald and Al Greenwood, and the last time Jones sang lead on a Foreigneralbum.

The reissue’s Super Deluxe CD/Blu-ray edition packs in the freshly remixed original 10-track album alongside a full disc of outtakes and alternate takes, plus a previously unreleased live set from the Head Games tour with staples like “Cold as Ice” and “Feels Like the First Time.” A Dolby Atmos Blu-ray mix rounds out the set. Beyond the Super Deluxe package, the album will also land as a standalone 1LP vinyl pressing, an Atmos version of both the full box and the standalone remix, and a Digital Super Deluxe Edition for streaming.

The real find here is “Trouble,” cut in May 1979 at Atlantic Studios in New York during the original Head Gamessessions and co-produced at the time by Roy Thomas Baker. It surfaced during research for the reissue and has now been remixed for its first-ever commercial release, arriving with a newly recorded guitar solo from Peter Frampton, a longtime friend of Jones. The track ships as a seven-inch single backed with fellow Head Games-era rarity “Zalia,” available direct-to-consumer through Rhino.com and the band’s own merch store.

Head Games dropped in September 1979 and cemented Foreigner as one of the defining rock bands of its era, following the massive success of the band’s self-titled 1977 debut and 1978’s Double Vision.

With more Top 10 hits than Journey and matching Fleetwood Mac‘s tally, Foreigner sits high on Billboard’s “Greatest of All Time” rankings. According to Nielsen SoundScan, the band’s weekly catalog sales have at times outpaced Led Zeppelin, AC/DC, The Rolling Stones, The Who, Def Leppard, Van Halen and Aerosmith. Ten multi-platinum albums, 16 Top 30 hits and more than 80 million records sold back up the band’s status as one of rock’s most enduring acts, with a catalog that still fills arenas and includes staples like “Juke Box Hero,” “Cold as Ice,” “Hot Blooded,” “Waiting for a Girl Like You,” “Feels Like the First Time,” “Urgent,” “Head Games,” “Say You Will,” “Dirty White Boy” and “Long, Long Way From Home.” The band’s chart-topping “I Want to Know What Love Is” also sits in Spotify’s exclusive Billions Club, and Business Insider recently ranked Foreigner among the Top 40 best-selling music artists of all time.

Head Games is available to pre-order here.

Foreigner‘s current lineup is:

Luis Carlos Maldonado / Vocals
Pilson / Bass
Michael Bluestein / Keyboards
Bruce Watson / Lead guitar
Chris Frazier / Drums
John Roth / Guitar

The post FOREIGNER Marks 50th Anniversary With Reissue “Head Games” Featuring A New PETER FRAMPTON Guitar Solo appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

The supergroup are back to take aim at Christian nationalism and more.

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Arriving October 23 via Season of Mist Underground Activists

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Some more noire.

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A sci-fi concept album at that.

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Pearl Jam bassist Jeff Ament is taking his upcoming photo memoir on the road. Ament and his brother, designer Barry Ament, will mark the September 25 release of Since Forever with nine book events spanning the United States and London.

The stops include two dates at Ohana Festival in Dana Point, Calif., a pair of Seattle appearances, and single shows in Chicago, New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, and London. At each stop, the Ament brothers will sit down with a rotating cast of moderators to walk through images from the book and dig into the stories behind them, along with the decades of creative back-and-forth that got them here.

Since Forever runs more than 250 black-and-white photographs deep, and roughly 90 percent of them have never been shown publicly before. Shot mostly between 1990 and 1998, the collection pulls back the curtain on Pearl Jam‘s early years — tour buses, backstage corridors, studio sessions and all the dead time in between — with Ament‘s own commentary filling in the gaps.

The book actually started as a rescue mission. Jeff and Barry began digging through three decades’ worth of decaying negatives just trying to save what was left, and the cleanup job eventually turned into something bigger: a visual diary of friendship, family and life spent on tour.

Tickets for the full run of book events are available now via this link. Since Forever is up for pre-order and will hit select independent bookstores on Sept. 25.

Ament has been Pearl Jam‘s bassist since day one and went into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame with the band in 2017. Before that, he was a fixture of Seattle’s music scene through the mid-1980s and early ’90s, playing in Deranged Diction, Green River, Mother Love Bone, Temple of the Dog, War Babies, Three Fish, Tres Mts., RNDM, P.E.S.T and Deaf Charlie along the way. His solo catalog includes Tone (2008), While My Heart Beats (2012), Heaven/Hell (2018), American Death Squad (2020) and I Should Be Outside (2021). He also scored FX‘s Under the Banner of Heaven in 2022 and just wrapped a soundtrack for the documentary Montana Grind, and has two Grammy Awards to his name for Best Recording Package.

Born in Havre, Montana, in 1963 and raised in nearby Big Sandy, Ament studied art at the University of Montana before relocating to Seattle in 1983. A skateboarder through and through, he founded Montana Pool Service in 1992, first rebuilding Seattle skateparks before shifting his attention back home. Since then he’s helped fund and build more than 40 skateparks across Montana and the American West, many of them on Native American reservations, giving kids in isolated communities a place to skate and build something of their own.

Barry Ament runs the design side of things. He co-founded Seattle studio Ames Bros with partner Coby Schultz in 1994, and over three decades the shop has produced work for Pearl Jam, Nike, Topps, the Seattle Seahawks, Pagliacci Pizza and plenty of others. Barry started designing in-house for Pearl Jam in the early ’90s — album packaging, posters, T-shirts, even tube socks — and Ames Bros has since put out more than 500 concert posters for the band and other artists.

The Ament brothers’ creative partnership goes back to childhood, long before either of them had a design studio or a band to work for — sketching together, building skate ramps, then mailing artwork cross-country once Jeff left for Seattle. That habit never really stopped.

The post PEARL JAM Bassist JEFF AMENT & Brother BARRY AMENT Announce Book Tour For “Since Forever” Release appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

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The song serves as the first taste of the band’s next chapter

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