From the execution of Giordano Bruno to the vampire legends of Venice, Italian history provides the inspiration for Compendium Horribilis, the forthcoming album by black metal outfit CANTICUM DIABOLI. The record will be released on 11 November 2026 through Ad Noctem Records, in digital and CD formats. Taking its title from the Latin for “horrible […]
Below, The Mission‘s frontman and co-founder Wayne Hussey previews the band’s run of four unique nights at The Forum in London next month in celebration of 40 years of the group’s debut album, God’s Own Medicine.
God’s Own Medicine was released in the same year that London’s accursed M25 was opened, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant exploded and NASA’s space shuttle Challenger blew up. Does it feel like 40 years have elapsed?
[Nodding] It was a long time ago and a lot of things have happened. I’ve made a lot more records since. Certain memories from those days are even more vivid than something I did last week. They were special times. And 40 years is a milestone worth celebrating.
Were you confident that God’s Own Medicine would be successful?
Oh yeah. We’d all been in bands before. It wasn’t like we were new kids on the block, we had worked hard to get to that point. By the time The Mission formed, all of us knew what we were doing.
The album spawned three Top-30 hits and went gold in the UK. How did you react to stardom?
I suppose like everybody else that it affects. You spend many years working towards something and initially it goes to your head. I was a young man around town. I milked it for all it was worth [chuckles]. But that only lasts for a couple of years, and then you begin to find yourself as a person within that maelstrom.
A review in US magazine Trouser Press dismissed the album as “a horrible amalgam of Led Zeppelin, Yes and Echo & The Bunnymen”.
I like Zeppelin and the Bunnymen, and I even went to see Yes when I was younger. We were never popular with the music press so we very quickly learned to take that stuff with a pinch of salt.
You smiled while saying that, almost like it was a challenge that had been relished.
It [banter with the press] was entertaining. With losing the weekly papers all of that has changed. Music journalism has now become more conservative, which is a shame as you no longer get characters like Nick Kent or Paul Morley [of NME]. Certain writers were pretentious to us back then, and it was nice to give it right back to them.
Ironically, John Paul Jones was hired to produce The Mission’s next album, Children. Was that a good collaboration?
Very much so. Suddenly we were being invited round to Iggy Pop’s for tea. We were the first thing John did after Led Zeppelin had split. He was great. He taught us a lot. I’ll never forget that one night we sat up late with him drinking and playing Zeppelin music. He started crying, telling us how much he missed John [Bonham].
Did those days feel like the best of times?
Not particularly. There have been a lot of great moments. We’re preparing a new album now – our first in 12 years – and it’s great to still be making music with your mates. It comes out in February or March of next year. If nobody likes it, then so what? We’re of an age where it doesn’t really matter. We’re doing it for ourselves.
The Mission are revisiting God’s Own Medicine over four gigs for its 40th anniversary. On the first night it will be played in its entirety, followed by other era-specific sets. Throw in different support acts each night and the ‘unique factor’ escalates. Such events are often a treat for the fans, but can be a nightmare for the musicians.
It doesn’t really bother me. When we go out on tour I like to change the setlist every night. There are three or four songs that you have to play, but I thrive on spontaneity. It certainly keeps the band on its toes, and me as well. And I love the idea of these gigs because they’re all in London, so there’s no travel involved.
The Mission play The Forum in London on November 4-7. Find tickets.
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The Tragically Hip were the important band of the ’90s. I have just finished watching the four-part documentary The Tragically Hip: No Dress Rehearsal, which came out in 2024. 2026 also marks the 10-year anniversary of their last show, which was broadcast nationally across Canada.
So, right off the bat, whatever I am going to write here feels stale, perhaps already stated, at least tacitly, by many great Canadian music journalists. As a spoiler alert, it is almost impossible to comment on The Hip’s legacy without living in Canada for the duration of their 30-year career.
So, while what I am going to write is really a distillate of the musical, cultural, and spiritual influence that was so magnificently portrayed over four hours of footage, my perspective is, to be blunt, more important than any of the people who were interviewed about the band.
If that’s not a hot fuckin’ take, I do not know what is.
That even includes the likes of Dan Ackroyd, the actor, George Strombolopoulos, the great Gen X journalist, and some guy named Geddy Lee. All had powerful and poignant observations about the true currency of the band.
How and why does my voice raise the bar on the band’s already elevated status in Canadian music lore? Let me explain.
If we are given one ego card in life, I am going to play mine now. And I have a picture to accompany it. This is Jeff Woods, telling rock ‘n’ roll stories to two of my friends back in 2022 in Toronto.
Jeff Woods telling rock ‘n’ roll stories
He wrote the foreword for my book, Sonic Seducer. He has also interviewed artists like Jimmy Page, Rush and Bowie, to name but three. He knows a fuck ton about rock ‘n’ roll.
A few minutes after this picture was taken, I was quietly eating my steak frites, ordered by all of us. Our attractive bartender comes over and starts talking to Jeff about tattoos and his background as a Canadian radio personality.
I then get this really hard jab in my right shoulder by Jeff, obviously trying to get my attention.
As he gets it, he starts trading looks between myself and her and says, “This guy here knows more about fucking music than anyone I have ever met in my life.”
Music is Jeff Woods’ life. He had the enthusiastic humility and audacity to publicly state this when he clearly did not have to. Ego card being played. Obsession can be “blamed” for the truth of his statement.
Sonic Seducer – Sunil Singh
Like millions of Canadians, I adored The Tragically Hip. Like several hundred thousand Canadians my age, we experienced the height of the alternative/Seattle/grunge scene. Probably a pretty strong Venn diagram in terms of the intersection between those two.
However, things drop off rapidly if a circle of Metal like Metallica, Slayer, and Judas Priest is introduced in terms of overlap. And things continue to shrink with crossover obsession into its subgenres of the Metal-rap phenomenon of the early ’90s, with bands like Rage Against The Machine, Faith No More, Biohazard, and Downset. Luckily, I saw most of these hybrid bands in dingy clubs.
And I also possess a fourth circle, which is basically the Trojan horse thesis for my book. It was a small circle 30+ years ago, the whole underground world of stoner/doom, which began in the same era as The Hip’s rise to fame.
In 2026, that circle is massive, with the others having disappeared or being relegated to dad rock status, including Metallica.
So while no offence to the great celebrities in the documentary, they are, generally speaking, purveyors of all things Dad rock. They did not really experience the full plate of everything that came out musically in the’90’s.
I did. I saw bands like Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice in Chains, Smashing Pumpkins, and Jane’s Addiction in their early days.
I saw Rage Against The Machine several times, including a show where fans jumped from the balcony right after Bombtrack kicks in after the iconic bass intro.
I saw Shoegazer bands like My Bloody Valentine and Lush.
Parallel to all this was my early experience with the stoner rock scene. I saw Monster Magnet touring on Spine Of God. I saw Fu Manchu on every tour of their ’90s albums.
And I was fortunate to see the original lineup of Kyuss in 1994, living up to their cult status and beyond. As Dave Grohl commented on seeing them in 1992 in Seattle, “They blew my fuckin’ mind.”
My observations about The Tragically Hip just carry more weight. I simply listened to more, saw more, and experienced more. Words matter. Celebrity endorsement of those words, especially without having seen the full vista of ’90s music, does not. Dave Grohl’s words are immune from such an audit. He worships Voivod, another Canadian band. Enough said.
Like most of Canada, I also saw The Tragically Hip. That first time, boy, did they live up to the hype and mystique.
It was 1991. Gord Downie would be sporting his long hair for the last time. We all arrived late and drunk. There was a palpable tension in the air at the intersection of rising fame and crowds that seemed to be liberally sprinkled with bikers, frat boys, and fans who grew up on ’70s fight-filled hockey.
Their live shows easily competed with the best of music at that time. I saw Pearl Jam and Jane’s Addiction around the same time in this same venue. Each of these bands was tapping into the swell of revolutionary change in music, ignited, of course, by Nirvana’s Smells Like Teen Spirit.
Without this kind of beginning to the band, I am not writing this article. They still could have gone on to be a great band, but to be vaulted to the top of the ’90s pyramid of music, they had to possess the aura/magic/energy of Pearl Jam, Jane’s Addiction, Rage Against The Machine, Monster Magnet, and Kyuss.
And, if you are going to write about this apex of ’90s greatness, you also had to have seen all these bands, in small clubs, to make such a claim about the still beloved The Tragically Hip.
No offence, Geddy. But, you were busy with Rush to even have listened to this music, nevermind seen it live.
But, thankfully, The Tragically Hip became more than just a great live band, flirting with the energy of an impending bar brawl.
They ended up writing some of the greatest music ever made, with the lyrics, penned by the consummate poet Downie, being the clarion call for a country always struggling with its nebulous identity to find it.
We may all debate who was the best band of the ’90s. But, in terms of importance that stretches into the domains of musical, cultural, and political for a whole country, no band in that decade accomplished as much. They continually gave to charities. They told Tower Records to “fuck off” when they were asked to play a show on the rooftop of their Toronto store. They hated performative publicity. They sang about Canadian things that only Canadians would know.
And their last gift to the country was bringing attention to the plight of our indigenous people and the lasting trauma of residential schools.
School chums, playing with the loving support of parents, is a beginning that defined the end of that band–love. They loved each other. They loved their parents. They continue to love their kids.
They loved Kingston, their hometown. They loved Canada, and we loved them right back, until that end. A third of the nation watched the last show, appropriately in Kingston, in 2016. I watched the whole show with my parents.
They had only heard about the band because of the national attention that was given this show and the ailing Downie. My parents, proud Canadians, who came to this country in 1970, felt it was a duty to watch this national treasure for the last time.
If you want to know what it was like across Canada that night, this is it. Ahead By A Century had become our unofficial second national anthem.
Usually the motto is You Had To Be There. For The Tragically Hip, it is You Had To Live Here.
I did. I do. They were the absolute best. And, of course, in typical Canadian fashion, I will go Elbow Up if you fight me on this.
The Hip
Call me when a band’s name is abbreviated and sits atop a country’s flag. You don’t get that kind of legacy without earning every possible stripe/badge of influence.
I would be remiss without leaving you with my favorite Hip song, with Feist on vocals. Sometimes our most powerful moments are the quieter ones.
The Tragically Hip’s mark on our country was anything but that. You made a whole country dance, sing, and cry together. There is no disputing the worldwide fame of Rush. But, even they would admit that the powerful idea of Canadian identity must be awarded to the Kingston quintet of childhood friends.
A change of name has opened the door to a darker world for SICKMIND. Formerly known as SILICIUM, the French groove/death metal quartet have released their new full-length Babel Tower, a ten-track record built around collapse, desolation and a civilisation seemingly approaching its final days. Rather than treating the switch to SICKMIND as a simple […]
