“Fun Night” is the debut single from The Brickabrats out of Portland, Oregon — a foursome that reminds me of all the bands that made me fall in love with punk rock back in the ’90s. The band likens itself to “Screeching Weasel making out behind a 7-Eleven with The Queers while Sloppy Seconds steals beer from the gas station next door,” and I am here for that! Sometimes I want to hear pop-punk that has found a way to grow up a little. But other times, I just want pop-punk to be simple, stupid, and (above all else) pure fun. The Brickabrats aren’t trying to be original or practice rocket science. They aren’t hiding their influences. They want to write the catchiest possible songs and blast them with maximum enthusiasm. It’s a simple approach that a million other bands have tried. But they pull it off so well that you wouldn’t want it any other way.
“Fun Night” is about getting ready to party, but they’re talking about the sort of party I would have actually gone to — where people chow down on junk food and listen to cool records. Getting into pop-punk in the ’90s wasn’t just about discovering music that seemed like it was made for me. It was about bonding with all the other misfits and weirdos who loved the same stuff. That spirit is baked into “Fun Night,” a song that is literally all about anticipating good times and putting everything else to the side. You know there will be shenanigans, but there’s an undeniable innocence at play as well.
“Fun Night” is the first taste of The Brickabats’ debut EP THWACK! (as far as I’m concerned, there can never be enough onomatopoeia in record titles), which releases January 22nd. I have to respect that level of planning ahead when I haven’t even figured out what I’m having for breakfast 40 minutes from now. If you’re not a pop-punk person, “Fun Night” won’t turn you to the dark side. But something tells me that The Brickabrats don’t make music for people who dislike pop-punk. If you do like pop-punk, this is a band to watch!
Against The Current have released another taste of their upcoming full-length ‘To Death & Back’, and it is more drama of the highest order.
The track is called ‘White Noise’, and finds the band at their most decadent and delicate. Beautifully melodic and brimming with fantastical emotion, it is another wonderful addition to his forever expanding era.
Vocalist Chrissy Costanza had this to say about the song:
“White Noise is one of those tracks that you instantly know is going to be insanely fun to play live. It’s about that feeling of someone that you just can’t seem to get out of your head, like ‘white noise’ in the background they’re always there. I loved getting to write with Cass and Max, the sessions are always a blast and that energy comes out in the song.”
‘To Death & Back’ is set for release on October 30. Here is previous offering. ‘Protégé’:
The band will be kicking off a UK/EU tour on the day of the album’s release. Here are all the dates they will be playing:
OCTOBER
30 – GLASGOW SWG3 (TV Studio) 31 – LEEDS Leeds Beckett Students Union
NOVEMBER
01 – MANCHESTER Academy 03 – BIRMINGHAM O2 Institute 04 – LONDON O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire 06 – PARIS Le Trianon 07 – SAARBRÜCKEN Garage 08 – BRUSSELS Ancienne Belgique 11 – KÖLN E-Werk 12 – UTRECHT TivoliVredenburg 13 – HAMBURG Grosse Freiheit 36 14 – BERLIN Metropol 16 – VIENNA Simm City 17 – MUNICH Muffathalle 19 – ZURICH Komplex 457 20 – STUTTGART LKA Longhorn 21 – WIESBADEN Schlachthof
If you have a big family you may have seen this play out. It’s Christmas. A boy who we’ll call Harry opens a huge present. Inside is a marvellous gift covered in bells and whistles that must have cost a fortune. But Harry isn’t happy. He bursts into tears and stomps around making it very clear; this isn’t what he wanted and everyone thinks how spoiled he is. The new EP from Love Is Noise is called ‘The Space Between Happiness and Heartache’ and it makes you feel like Harry.
Last year’s debut album, ‘To Live In A Different Way’, sounded like My Bloody Valentine via Loathe. It combined a restrained heaviness with shoegaze, like a dream. You weren’t sure where one wall ended and another began. It led you along a corridor, the boundaries were blurred and they faded into each other, and yet there is a destination, a pathway. By contrast, this just sounds like Loathe. It’s not a bad thing. However, it means they have traded one sound for another and you might not be impressed.
Open the wrapper and inside the EP are three songs and a short interlude. They share a sound that is too rich to describe as ‘modern metal’ but fits within that bracket. The songs ‘Smile’ and ‘The Rain that Follows Me’ feature thick, heavy guitars that thump along, propelling them forwards. They’re decorated with pick-slides, making them feel naughty like the heaviest Architects tracks on ‘Holy Hell‘. However, both feature layered, harmonious vocals that at least attempt to create the strange, dreamlike quality that made their debut so alluring. Each layer interacts with the other so that Alex Ioannou’s voice is both dominant and filling the spaces in an intoxicating blend. He also finds interesting ways to keep his lyrics in step with the music by over-emphasising each syllable. So, for example, he sings the word ‘me’ as ‘may-ay-ay’ giving it a distinctive sound. Both songs are strongly crafted pieces that make the EP worth checking out.
All three band members, Cameron Humphrey, Sam Clark and Ioannou, concocted and produced the EP together, giving it a clear sense of direction and purpose. It’s also a way to show off this new sound. They refer to it as a “concept EP,” exploring the complex way they hide darkness. Ironically this is the same theme as their debut album, just presented in a more straightforward way.
The accurately titled ‘Fury’ is an entirely different beast. Featuring massive, thudding, bassy guitars, it sounds angry and dirty. Ioannou’s crusty yells get swept away amongst the sonic battering, meaning it has no interest in the smudged beauty of dreams, unless they border on the nightmarish.
Love Is Noise are exploring a new pathway. ‘The Space Between Happiness And Heartache’ sounds too sure of itself to be a creative experiment. Like Harry, you can be disappointed what the EP isn’t, or embrace what it is; a rich, layered exhibition.
Loathe formed in Liverpool in 2014 and developed into one of the most distinctive heavy bands to emerge from the British metalcore scene. The current lineup centers on vocalist Kadeem France, guitarist and vocalist Erik Bickerstaffe, drummer Sean Radcliffe, and bassist Feisal El-Khazragi. From the beginning, the group mixed extreme metal and metalcore with electronics, progressive ideas, atmospheric textures, and a willingness to move far outside conventional heavy-music boundaries. The band’s first project, Prepare Consume Proceed, appeared independently in 2015 before SharpTone Records reissued it in 2016. Loathe followed with the concept-driven debut album The Cold Sun in 2017 and
Objectionable confession from the gate: The 2023 debut from The Keening, Little Bird, didn’t get a lot of attention from me. I feel kind of awful admitting that for reasons I’ll get into in a moment, but just know that the root of the issue was twofold: 1) Like a number of my Last Rites compatriots, I was—and continue to be, especially since their reformation—a big fan of Rebecca Vernon’s previous heavy endeavor SubRosa, and The Keening debut felt a bit like SubRosa Lite. 2) Over the years, I have developed some curious hangups concerning one-person projects in genres that feel better suited for full bands.
Addressing the first “SubRosa Lite” issue: Um… So what?
Release date: October 16, 2026. Label: Relapse Records.
Addressing that second issue: Despite exhibiting some clear traits of modern(ish) sludgy doom, The Keening is largely rooted in a gothy form of dark folk, and that actually works quite well for one-person projects because it’s a deeply intimate / personal offshoot that often embraces a solitude factor. That side of things notwithstanding, The Keening also benefits from the fact that, while predominantly focused on Vernon’s strengths as a multi-instrumentalist and songwriter, there are a number of guests that bring additional dynamics to the table, which, pure and simple, is one of the issues I often have with one-person projects connected to the metal realm and its allies. Those friends come up BIG on Devotion, fortifying the album’s more dramatic face, as well as delivering a good portion of the album’s more melodic moments in lieu of guitar solos. For those keeping score, and in an effort to spread the love, here’s the list of guests, many of whom also helped out on Little Bird:
» Andrea Morgan (Exulansis) – violin and viola
» Lily Breshears (Shears) – harp
» Kelly Schilling (Dreadnought) – flute
» Dan Partridge – French horn
» Jackie Perez Gratz (Grayceon, Giant Squid, Brume) – cello
» Lisa Lipton – clarinet
Bottom line: I let album number one pass me by for mostly unfound reasons, and now that I’ve finally yanked the ol’ belfry out of the wazoo, I am attempting a bit of atonement. And in case you’re wondering what served as the impetus for my sudden 180, the decidedly unembellished answer is this: Devotion whooped my ass.
Million doll-hair question numero uno: What changed in The Keening camp to allow the sophomore effort to land such a mighty early blow?
Not a lot! Play both albums back-to-back and you will find yourself immersed in a very similar vibe of swirling, sweeping, somber and spectral dark folk peppered with a very specific form of, um, “chamber doom” (sludgy heaviness swaddled in low-pitched bowed string instruments) that, while not unique to the West Coast, certainly stands as one of the region’s more recognizable modern metal traits. So, yeah, expect an overall slower-paced affair that swings back and forth between a fairly witchy form of folk (think 1973’s The Wicker Man) and… Well, SubRosa.
That being said, I do think Devotion eclipses its predecessor. Sure, that’s at least in part based on the fact that the record managed to connect with me almost immediately, but I also believe it makes better use of the things that made Little Bird a GOOD record. The production (by the very same team, including venerated vet Billy Anderson) feels bigger and more lavish, allowing the quieter moments to feel even more intimate, the weightier moments to land more… thumpingly, and just generally providing a more immersive and enveloping experience in general.
Additionally—and I very well could be overstepping my bounds here—it feels like Vernon’s confidence as a writer of ‘softer music’ has taken a step forward. Not sure if its because she’s penning more songs on the piano or something, but the lighter side of Devotion, especially the fully gutting “Devotion IV– O Mother,” totally slays. Pair that with what feels like a stronger emphasis on delivering a hook and you’ve got something that hits the pleasure centers quickly and sticks to the ribs well after the album ends.
Then there’s the more ineffable factor adding to the Devotion windfall that’s centered around the two contrasting environments Vernon experienced while penning the record. The infrastructure was laid down during an extended stay a friend’s cabin near an Idaho ski resort during the offseason, with the remainder of the work being grinded out while staying with her father at a senior living facility in Spokane, Washington. Needless to say, the raw emotion tied to the latter must have been off the scale, and Vernon is very forthright in the promo materials for Devotion about how deeply supportive her recently departed father was with regard to her artistic endeavors, as well as revealing the following traumatic testimony:
“When my Dad was 19, he was the drunk driver in a car accident that resulted in the death of an 18-year-old girl who was supposed to start college the next day. The girl’s mother forgave him and was worried about my Dad and the state of his life. Her actions stayed with him and he was able to turn his life around a few years later. He went on to meet and marry my mom, have a family, and become a colonel in the Air Force. He was loved by everyone who knew him. He visited the girl’s mother a few years ago, as she was dying in a hospital. My Dad was non-judgmental towards people who make big mistakes in life.”
Life is such a wildly unpredictable, often pitiless venture that frequently feels more like a trial than it does a blessing, and the most any of us can hope to do with our time on this sphere is to take whatever hand we’re dealt and use it / strive to improve it for the betterment of ourselves inwardly and endeavor to facilitate and champion those who happen to share our fleeting duration. I will never NOT be impressed with the hardships humans manage to endure and (hopefully) triumph over, and I can only hope that Vernon’s time spent with her father amidst his final months were as much a boon for her as a similar situation was for me several years ago. Based on the work begat from all of this, I would have to assume so, because, while certainly deftly traversing the more shadowy realms of “dark folk meets thumping doom,” a redemptive sense of optimism still manages to permeate through these 42 minutes.
If we allow ourselves to learn a lesson from music experiences such as this, it would likely be something like this: Despite how living in the 21st century all but demands the opposite, remember to embrace as many opportunities as possible to exercise patience, and then celebrate those victories when they eventually pay off. It worked for me by earmarking Little Bird and subsequently jumping back in after getting leveled by Devotion, and it appears to have worked for Rebecca Vernon as well, given that the following statement also happened to be attached to this recording:
“I had procrastinated finishing the tracks and was falling into a pretty bad depression. It felt like it took every ounce of my power to finish them. My Dad played a part in them getting finished; always supporting and encouraging me to keep going, giving me the space I needed to write, holed up in my room for hours with my beloved cat Gabriella. I worked on the demos 8-10 hours a day, just like going to a job, and then ate dinner with my Dad down in the dining room with all the elderly clientele of the retirement home at night. They were all very excited and supportive of my writing an album.”
And, yeah, it’s also worth revisiting this certain truth for the umpteenth time: Take advantage of any occasion to revel in your family and friends. Not only is it good for the soul, it can result in something as emotionally affecting and rewarding as Devotion.
Gooseberry is a trio from Brooklyn, New York, formed in the Autumn of 2019. Gooseberry’s mix of alternative rock, indie, and blues creates a distinct sound in each of their songs. The band comprises Asa Daniels (guitar, vocals), Evin Rossington (drums), and Will Hammond (bass).
The band describes their new song: “Gnash is a 90s guitar-driven rock song in 7/4, what’s not to love? It’s good to make fun of those we perceive as fools, so long as we recognize that often there’s plenty of whatever makes them foolish in us too. Gnash is sung from the perspective of someone who believes that this is truly a dog-eat-dog world. That all this life is a zero-sum game. Therefore, to get over on someone else is the only way to better your situation. To them, everyone else is a fool, a mark in a scheme that will only profit the smartest and boldest. We can only shake our heads with pity at someone like this. However, we are dumber still if we don’t believe we’ve got some of this in our DNA too. I know I’ve got it within me. I want this band to be the greatest band in the world. Ambition can be a dirty beast.” I love the energy and I find the song very interesting, classy and catchy at the same time, reminding me of second decade of Pearl Jam. The song is part of the playlist Rock Rotation.
Give it a go by clicking on the Spotify player below and follow the band if you like what you hear.
On their new song “Dancing,” the trio Drama Dolls blend the breezy, retro charm of Blondie’s “The Tide Is High” with the darker, cosmic pulse of “Atomic,” landing somewhere between sock-hop sweetness and late-night cool. It’s the kind of genre-mixing that reminds us punk, alternative, rock, and grunge are at their most exciting when the lines start to blur.
Opening on a spacious, driving drum groove, “Dancing” runs through the daily frustrations that threaten to derail us before offering a surprisingly simple remedy: let go and have some fun. By the time the song breaks into its infectious “ba-da-ba-da-ba” singalong, resisting a smile becomes nearly impossible.
The track highlights another side of Drama Dolls. They’ve already proven they can inspire us, rile us up, make us laugh, and fuel our frustrations. Here, they give us permission to simply cut loose and shake off the weight of the day. Sometimes the answer isn’t complicated. Sometimes it’s as simple as dancing.
Formed by Egg, Scrambles, and Mama-T, Drama Dolls are three women gleefully defying expectations and creating loud, chaotic, unapologetic rock on their own terms.
Ahead of their forthcoming full-length album, the band has unleashed a string of rambunctious singles that showcase just how much ground they can cover. From the white-hot fury of “I Hate Your Face” to the brat-punk swagger of “Horchata” and the danceable ska and new-wave grooves of “We Like to Party,” Drama Dolls pull from the rich traditions of old-school Southern California punk while injecting the sound with a distinctly modern edge.
Armed with a fearless, no-rules attitude, these three Dolls remind us that no matter how chaotic life becomes, there’s always room to squeeze a little more joy out of it. I find the song catchy, energetic and in between a few genres, with a chorus that will get stuck in your head. It’s amazingly performed and with a great sound. “Dancing” is out on October 7, with the full album arriving in November. Give this one a spin.
Melbourne’s Mister Co. returns with “Euphoric”, a high-octane new single that perfectly captures the thrill of living in the moment. Combining explosive rock energy with touches of funk, jazz fusion and progressive influences, the track is a celebration of chaos, connection and those unforgettable nights that blur into legend.
Fueled by driving guitars, infectious grooves and a relentless rhythm section, “Euphoric” reveals one of the most adventurous sides of Mister Co.’s musical identity. The band’s technical prowess is on full display, yet the song never loses its raw, spontaneous spirit, striking a compelling balance between precision and pure energy.
Speaking about the track, Mister Co. describes it best: “Euphoric is about having a fucking party! It’s about pushing to the limit, staying up all night and making the best worst decisions in your life!” That carefree attitude runs through every second of the song.
The single also represents another chapter in Mister Co.’s collaborative EP project, a series that highlights the creativity and diversity of Melbourne’s independent music scene. Lia Magu (vocals), James Price (bass) and Judd Selton (guitar) all contribute to the track, bringing their unique talents to an already vibrant musical landscape.
Rather than simply releasing a collection of songs, Mister Co. is building a showcase for Melbourne’s thriving artistic community, bringing together a range of talented musicians under a shared creative vision.
What immediately stood out to me about “Euphoric” is its unpredictability. The funky guitar work, eclectic vocal delivery and inspired rhythm section create a constantly evolving listening experience, while the soaring chorus introduces moments of pure progressive-rock grandeur. Energetic, adventurous and packed with musical personality, “Euphoric” is a track that rewards repeated listens and deserves to be enjoyed at maximum volume.
Give it a go by clicking on the Spotify player below and follow the band if you like what you hear.
Power Trip have shared their first new music in eight years, and first since the passing of vocalist Riley Gale in 2020, and they are coming out swinging in a big way.
The band have returned with not one, but two songs that embody everything that has allowed them to become the modern flagbearers for crossover heaviness.
First up is ‘Precinct 3’, which is as rallying as it is raw, a breathless descent into thrashing riffs and pit-ready grooves, focusing on the ongoing issue of law enforcement who are free to function without being checked or punished for their actions.
Guitarist Blake Ibanez had this to say about it:
“When we were writing this, we wondered what Riley would have wanted to write about. So once we decided on that approach, it honestly came really easily– the lyrics were flowing and it just felt like the right way to kick off this new chapter and honor him. I think he would have been stoked to see it come to fruition.”
Whilst ‘Scavenger’ sits on the more chugging hardcore side of the band’s sprawling sound, delivering sensational mosh parts and unrelenting attitude in abundance whilst focusing on the idea of those who are happy to take credit for the work of others.
Vocalist Seth Gilmore had this to say about the themes:
“There are people out there that ride along and develop some sort of self-importance from association. And from there, they wield that in the wrong directions. Or maybe even against the same people they leeched it from.”
Both songs are set to appear on the band’s upcoming full-length, which is currently set for release in Spring of 2027.
Until then, Power Trip have a trio of live dates to attend. You can catch them here:
OCTOBER
21 – MEXICO CITY Slayer: Reign In Blood 40th Anniversary 24 – FORT WORTH Sick New World Texas
After a long period away, French melodic metal band Born From Lie are back with ‘Into Madness‘, a powerful new chapter that sees the band return to their darkest roots. Formed in Paris in 2014, Born From Lie have released three albums through Brennus Music. Throughout their music, the band has explored the darker side […]
