Cymbalick Music 2026 Golden era of electronica is revitalized on an array of evocative pieces from a renowned harvester of sonic details. The pursuers of the swath Tim Morse has been cutting for more than twenty years through the tall … Continue reading
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Metal Breakdown Daily is one page, every weekday: the episode on the player below and the three stories in print, so you can listen, read, or both. Today leads with the Black Sabbath final album that never got made: producer Andrew Watt says Ozzy Osbourne, Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler were all willing to record one more with the original lineup in the early 2020s, and that it ended with a long email from Bill Ward. Tony Iommi, on the record this summer, remembers it differently.
Also today: the Osbourne family host the purple-carpet world premiere of Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning in Los Angeles on October 14, two weeks before the film of Ozzy’s final show opens in cinemas worldwide, and Slayer mark forty years of Reign In Blood with a liquid-filled zoetrope vinyl that ships November 20.
STREAM THE METAL BREAKDOWN DAILY NOW:Scott Penfold opens today’s Metal Breakdown Daily with Andrew Watt’s account of the Black Sabbath album that died in an email and why Tony Iommi’s version doesn’t match, then the Back To The Beginning premiere and cinema dates, Slayer’s blood-filled Reign In Blood, and a Take on who really deserves the blame. Download the free Loaded Radio App on Apple iOS and Google Play and stream the show now.
Producer Andrew Watt says Ozzy Osbourne wanted to make one more Black Sabbath album with the original four in the early 2020s, that Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler agreed on the condition Bill Ward took part, and that Ward couldn’t commit and closed the door with a long email.
Watt, who produced Ozzy’s last two solo albums, Ordinary Man and Patient Number 9, told the story on the Lipps Service podcast. Ozzy wanted to keep recording but didn’t want to repeat himself, so he suggested Sabbath, and Sharon and Ozzy asked Watt to make the calls. ‘Ozzy was like, “If Bill does it, we’ll do it,”‘ Watt said. Iommi ‘was into it as long as Bill was there.’ Butler’s answer: ‘If the other guys are in it, I’m in to do it.’
Then came the drummer. ‘Bill was not going to be able to make the record, he wasn’t able to do it for a multitude of different reasons,’ Watt said. ‘The other guys were all into doing it, and then Bill sent us all this long email, and then it was over.’
The part Watt leaves out is Iommi. Speaking to Classic Rock this summer, the guitarist said Watt was ‘very keen’ on a follow-up to 13 and that he himself was not; he didn’t like the idea of another album after the one that already closed the Black Sabbath catalogue. Both accounts can be true. ‘I’m in if Bill’s in’ is how men who’ve known each other sixty years say no without saying it.
LIVE & LOUD: Stream the World’s Hardest Radio Station 24/7Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning, the film of Ozzy’s final concert at Villa Park, has its world premiere on Wednesday, October 14 at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, hosted by the Osbourne family, before opening in cinemas worldwide from October 28.
The premiere is a purple-carpet event with a limited number of tickets on Ticketmaster, and half of every ticket sold goes to Los Angeles homeless charities. The film, from Mercury Studios and Trafalgar Releasing, is presented in Dolby Atmos and 5.1 and was directed by Ben Wainwright-Pearce, with the concert itself directed by Tim Van Someren.
What’s on screen is July 5, 2025: Ozzy’s solo set and then the original Sabbath four, together for the first time in over twenty years, in front of a hometown crowd that had waited decades. Seventeen days later he was gone. Sharon Osbourne’s line in the announcement: ‘He said the only thing that would make him happy was if he could perform again and say goodbye to his fans.’ Geezer Butler: ‘To me it was like pure love. It was just a wave of love.’
And Bill Ward: ‘Felt completely at home in a place where I belong.’ Put that next to the first story. The man who supposedly killed the last Sabbath album didn’t want to make a record. He wanted to play with his friends one more time, and the setlist he got to play is the one that’s going to cinemas.
Slayer have announced a liquid-filled zoetrope vinyl pressing of Reign In Blood for the album’s fortieth anniversary; pre-orders are open now and the record ships November 20.
Reign In Blood came out on October 7, 1986, which makes yesterday the anniversary proper, and the pressing is exactly what it sounds like: red liquid sealed inside the disc, with zoetrope artwork that animates as it spins. It isn’t the band’s first bleed. Metal Blade did a 250-copy blood-filled pressing of Show No Mercy in 2024 and it was gone almost immediately. This one’s for the record that matters most, the twenty-nine minutes that sit at the top of any honest Slayer albums ranking.
The anniversary isn’t only on vinyl. Slayer have been playing Reign In Blood front to back since September, with Sick New World in Fort Worth on October 24, two nights at the Kia Forum in Los Angeles on November 13 and 14, and South American dates with Kreator through December. For the band most fans put at number one in thrash, a forty-year-old album in a gimmick sleeve would normally be a shrug. This one isn’t, because Reign In Blood is the one record where the gimmick and the music are telling the same joke.
The story of the Sabbath album that never happened is being told backwards, and the drummer who doesn’t give interviews is carrying the blame for a record his guitarist has said he didn’t want.
Watt’s account is credible as far as it goes. He made Ozzy’s last two records and he was in the room; the calls happened. But Iommi has already said, on the record, that he wasn’t interested in a follow-up to 13. So either Tony told a producer what he wanted to hear, or Tony told Classic Rock what he actually thought. Only one of those is the Tony Iommi anyone has ever described.
The counter-argument is real: Watt was closer to Ozzy than almost anyone in those last years, and Ozzy plainly wanted to keep working. That is the most Ozzy thing imaginable. But Ozzy wanting an album and the band wanting an album are different things, and Bill Ward is the easiest man in the story to blame because he’s the one who never talks.
Here’s the side we’re on. The final Black Sabbath album came out on July 5, 2025, and it was called Villa Park. Four men, one night, the last word, and in three weeks you can watch it in Atmos. The band that invented heavy metal in a single day in 1969 got to end it in a single night in 2025. Nobody needs a thirteen-and-a-half. Yesterday’s post argued Megadeth should leave the word ‘final’ alone once it’s been used. Sabbath already have. Leave the ending alone; they got it right.
According to producer Andrew Watt, yes. He says Ozzy Osbourne wanted to record one more album with the original lineup in the early 2020s, that Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler agreed as long as Bill Ward took part, and that Ward couldn’t commit and ended the idea with a long email. Iommi has said separately that he didn’t want a follow-up to 13.
Speaking to Classic Rock in summer 2026, Iommi said Andrew Watt was ‘very keen’ on a follow-up to 13 but that he himself didn’t like the idea of another album after it, and that Watt didn’t fully understand what working with the original band was like.
Ozzy & Black Sabbath: Back To The Beginning opens in cinemas worldwide from October 28, 2026, via Trafalgar Releasing, in Dolby Atmos and 5.1. The world premiere is Wednesday, October 14 at the Orpheum Theatre in Los Angeles, hosted by the Osbourne family.
A limited number of tickets for the October 14 Los Angeles premiere are on sale through Ticketmaster. Half of every ticket sold goes to Los Angeles homeless charities. Regular cinema tickets for the October 28 release are through local theatres and the film’s official site.
The liquid-filled zoetrope pressing of Reign In Blood, released for the album’s fortieth anniversary, is available for pre-order now and is expected to ship on November 20, 2026. Slayer are also performing the album in full at anniversary shows through December.
Metal Breakdown Daily is Loaded Radio’s weekday rock and metal news show, hosted by Scott Penfold. New episode every weekday morning on the free Loaded Radio app for Apple iOS and Google Play, and right here. Follow Loaded Radio for the stories as they break.
The post Metal Breakdown Daily: Ozzy Wanted One More Sabbath Album, The Back To The Beginning Film Gets A Premiere, And Slayer Bleed On Vinyl appeared first on Loaded Radio.
Grand Theft Auto VI will feature a heavy metal radio station playing Black Sabbath, Pantera and Slayer songs, and hosted by Slayer members Tom Araya and Kerry King.
Developer Rockstar (living up to its name) has detailed the soundtrack for their upcoming, hugely-anticipated action-adventure title and offered previews of which of the six radio stations which players will be able to tune into.
Among them is metal station 106.6 The Chamber, which promises “no rules! Just riffs!” and is co-hosted by “DJs Tom and Kerry”. A two-minute taster is available on the Rockstar website, featuring Araya and King’s voices plus snippets of Black Sabbath’s I, Slayer’s Raining Blood and Pantera’s Mouth For War.
The other stations include Cocoteo FM, a modern Latin station hosted by Bad Bunny and RaiNao. Robyn and model Alex Consani will co-host Flash FM’s “best in pop”, while Morgan Wallen, Lana Del Rey and Del Rey’s husband Jeremy Dufrene will lead Back Country Radio, the home of “renegade country”.
Rounding out the options will be African music station AfroBank FM and country station Dirty South Classics.
In addition, Rockstar have detailed a 34-track soundtrack album which will be available from November 19 (the same day as the videogame’s release) on streaming services, vinyl and CD. Six singles are currently available, including offerings from Travis Scott, Morgan Wallen, Rauw Alejandro, and Yung Lean featuring Metro Boomin and Future.
Heavy metal stations have been part of the Grand Theft Auto universe before. 2008’s Grand Theft Auto IV had the Liberty City Hardcore station featuring music by Cro-Mags, Agonistic Front and others; the Episodes From Liberty City compilation added tracks by Cannibal Corpse, Soulfly and more. The 2009 handheld gaming entry Chinatown Wars featured the Anvil station, named after the Canadian band of the same name and dedicated exclusively to their music.
Grand Theft Auto VI has been in development since 2018, shortly after the release of Rockstar’s title Red Dead Redemption 2. Development has cost an estimated total between one billion and two billion USD, and the release has been publicly delayed twice: first from 2025 to May 2026, then to its current scheduled date.
Today, Swedish metal powerhouse ELEINE drop their new single and music video ‘Ich Sehe Dich‘, taken from their highly anticipated fifth studio album, ‘The Water Taste Of Blood‘, arriving December 4th via Algoth Records. Stream ‘Ich Sehe Dich‘ – here Pre-order ‘The Water Taste Of Blood’ – here Where previous singles painted the picture of […]
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Progpower USA will return to Atlanta, Georgia on September 9–11, 2027, ushering in a new chapter for one of North America’s longest-running and most distinctive progressive and power metal festivals.
Following the retirement of founder and longtime promoter Glenn Harveston, co-promoter Milton Mendonça will take the helm of Progpower USA, carrying forward the festival and the community that has grown around it for more than two decades.
The 2027 edition will move to a three-day format while retaining the identity and approach that have defined the festival throughout its history. The newly announced lineup features Eluveitie, Wind Rose, Nevermore, H.E.A.T, Unleash The Archers, Lynch Mob, Masterplan, Metal Church, Vision Divine, Triosphere, Einar Solberg, Silent Skies, Ihlo, Royal Sorrow, Power Paladin, and Advent Horizon, with one additional band remaining to be announced.
For Mendonça, taking over the festival is deeply personal. He first attended Progpower USA 24 years ago before eventually becoming part of the team himself.
“Twenty-four years ago, I attended ProgPower USA for the first time, and I remember what it felt like the moment I walked into the venue. It was a feeling of belonging. I decided then that this was the place I needed to be every year, and I would do whatever I could to attend. Years later, as a co-promoter, I started having first-time attendees come up to me and share that same feeling. To me, that says everything about the atmosphere of this festival and why it has endured for so long,” says Mendonça.
“ProgPower has been part of most of my life. I met some of my best friends there, and I know people who met their best friends, their spouse, and people who first came as teenagers and now bring their kids. It’s the one weekend our community looks forward to every year. It means that much to a lot of people, and there was no way I could let that end.”
As Progpower USA enters this next era, Mendonça says preserving what Harveston built remains his priority.
“The most important thing to me is honoring Glenn’s legacy. Other than scaling the festival down to three days, my goal is to keep everything the same. The blueprint stays. Regardless of who is at the helm, ProgPower USA will always be ProgPower USA. There is nothing else like it anywhere.”
Since its inception, the festival has built its reputation by bringing together internationally established acts, sought-after North American appearances and emerging artists from across the progressive and power metal worlds. Just as importantly, the festival has developed a community that extends far beyond the stage, with generations of attendees returning to Atlanta year after year.
ProgPower USA 2027 takes place September 9–11, 2027 at Center Stage in Atlanta, Georgia continuing the almost 3-decade tradition of the festival being hosted at Center Stage.
For festival updates, ticket information, and additional announcements, visit the festival’s website.
The post PROGPOWER USA Announces 2027 Lineup As Long-Time Co-Promoter Takes Helm appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.
– October 8th, 2026 –
New Video/Single Now Playing + Pre-Orders Available
Watch/stream CELESTIAL SANCTUARY’s “Lashed By Chain” HERE
There is a point in every band’s evolution when it becomes necessary to strip everything back and ask a simple question: What is it that makes us who we are? For UK death metal force, CELESTIAL SANCTUARY, that question became the foundation for Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul, a bold and uncompromising new album that sees the band refining their identity by refusing to conform to anyone else’s expectations.
Photo by Steve Dempsey
“Our intention this time around was to refine what actually this ‘CELESTIAL SANCTUARY thing’ is,” the band explains, “filtering out all the bullshit, ignoring trends and ignoring what people expect us to do, and we’re a way better band for it.”
The answer isn’t to abandon death metal, but to look beyond its boundaries. CELESTIAL SANCTUARY approached Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul, their Metal Blade debut out January 22nd, 2027 with an organic understanding of their complete metal DNA, retaining the violence and extremity at the core of the band while allowing a much broader spectrum of influences to shape the songwriting, dynamics and production. The band describes the album as roughly 25% death metal and 75% everything else that makes up their conception of heavy metal.
Across 47 minutes, the album unfolds as a violent and expansive journey through death, folklore, and the darkest corners of the band’s home territory. The story is a bastardization of the history and legends surrounding Bury St. Edmunds, drawing from centuries of local mythology, atrocities, and executions. The piercing and beheading of King Edmund, the spectral Black Shuck, the infamous Red Barn Murders, the Witch Trials, the Sunken Bells of Dunwich, the Lantern Man, and the many brutal executions that once took place throughout the region all become raw material for CELESTIAL SANCTUARY‘s twisted narrative.
Comments CELESTIAL SANCTUARY vocalist/guitarist Tom Cronin on lead single, “Lashed By Chain,” and the accompanying video, “This was the first song to be written for this album and an immediate statement of intent for what to expect. Tight, fast riffing, a brutal slam that jumps out of the shadows to piledrive you into oblivion and a big dual guitar solo that wouldn’t sound out of place in a Maiden tune. The lyrics follow the story of a knight who has one hand crossed with gold and riches, and the other with iron symbolizing that he’s sold his destiny to fight an unwinnable war. The theme treads the line of yearning to return to the things you love, the drive to survive, and the cruelty of false hope – being driven to survive in the most hopeless of times. Don’t be fooled… there is nothing positive about this and there is no happy ending.
“Musically, we wanted to channel a tighter rhythmic sound on this record. We really wanted to push the limit of what we could do with syncopated riffs and sudden time signature changes.
“We wanted to make a video that felt real, gritty and tactile,” he continues. “As a video producer by trade, I see a lot of videos that feel like an afterthought, so we took a considered approach with every element of the video. As I was directing and producing it myself, I felt a responsibility to make this as fucking cool as I possibly could.”
“We filmed it in a 9th century, deconsecrated church that was built on a burial site in England’s first city. We composed every shot of us playing meticulously and complimented that with high contrast lighting to match the colours in the animation and album artwork. We shot, graded and edited in such a way so you can feel the energy and aggression of our performance pouring out of your screen and into your face!“
“When it came to the animation element of the video, we purposely wanted something tangible, so we worked with Ben Amos Cooper to create visuals that compliment James Bousema’s album artwork in their own way. While they each have their own identity, the two are so undeniably entwined.”
Watch CELESTIAL SANCTUARY‘s “Lashed By Chain” video HERE
CELESTIAL SANCTUARY‘s Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul will be released on CD and digital formats as well as vinyl in the following color variants:
Weeping Old Flesh (US)
Rotting St. Edmund (EU – Ltd. 500)
Milk Of The Haggard Teet (EU – Ltd. 250)
Frozen Frothed Gob (EU – Ltd. 250)
Find pre-orders at: metalblade.com/celestialsanctuary and additional merch at: celestial-sanctuary.com/store
Cradle Of The Rotten, Shrine To Those Most Foul Track Listing:
01. Where the Blood Flows
02. Bonestorm
03. They Worm Their Way In
04. Cradle of the Rotten
05. Shrine to Those Most Foul
06. Enter the Sanctuary
07. Lashed by Chain
08. A Dogged Act
09. Subhuman Scum
CELESTIAL SANCTUARY will support Khemmis on their upcoming EU/UK tour beginning this weekend. See confirmed dates below.
CELESTIAL SANCTUARY w/ Khemmis:
10/10/2026 Die Tropete – Bochum, DE
10/11/2026 Metropool – Hengelo, NL
10/13/2026 The Flapper – Birmingham, UK
10/14/2026 The Bread Shed – Manchester, UK
10/15/2026 The Underworld – London, UK
10/16/2026 Kola – Portsmouth, UK
10/17/2026 Backstage by the Mill – Paris, FR
10/18/2026 Desertfest – Liege, BE
10/19/2026 Naumanns – Leipzig, DE
10/20/2026 Subzero – Prague, CZ
10/21/2026 Cassiopeia – Berlin, DE
10/22/2026 Monkeys – Hamburg, DE
CELESTIAL SANCTUARY:
Tomás Palmer-Cronin – vocals, guitar
Matt Adnett – guitar
Jay Rutterford – bass
James Burke – drums
https://www.celestial-sanctuary.com
https://www.instagram.com/celestialsanctuarydeathmetal
https://www.facebook.com/CelestialSanctuaryDeathMetal
https://x.com/csdeathmetal
https://www.youtube.com/celestialsanctuarydeathmetal
Although the birth of ‘indie’ in the United Kingdom can be traced back to the 1970’s, with elements of the sound traceable in everything from David Bowie’s Berlin period to Paul and Linda McCartney’s Ram album to Buzzcocks‘ hugely significant Spiral Scratch EP, it was the 1980s that is considered the true golden age of the genre.
The mod revival, new wave and post-punk movements that were spawned from the punk scene continued to evolve throughout the decade, ultimately coalescing into the cache all term of indie, in the process giving us one of the broadest, most eclectic and creatively fertile periods in British guitar music.
Whether it was borrowing from the experimental sounds of 60’s psychedelic rock, the dark, dour feel of goth, the strutting glam of Roxy Music or even the explosion of a brand-new style in acid house and electronic music, the amount of classic records released in this period is quite staggering. Here is that story in five albums.
As tempting as it would be to pick a massive selling or iconic artist like The Jam or Echo & the Bunnymen here, you’d be mad to sleep on Scotland’s Orange Juice if looking for a band with a long lasting and clearly evident influence on the sound of indie-rock here in the UK.
Although their second album Rip it Up, released later the same year, is almost certainly the one they’ll be remembered for as it features their most well-known song in the form of the album’s title-track, the band’s debut album is arguably more ahead of its time and features more signposts as to where the genre would travel throughout the decade and beyond.
Frontman Edwin Collins is now rightly revered as one of Britain’s finest ever songwriters, and You Can’t Hide Your Love Forever expertly nails everything from the pure pop that would make Blur superstars on Wan Light, the weird garage jangle so beloved of Franz Ferdinand on Tender Object, the mod-revival sound of basically half of the Brit-pop bands on opener Falling and Laughing and indulge in the dry wit and sarcastic pomposity that Morrissey would end up making a career out of. It may be the lowest seller on the list, but, song for song, it can compete with any album here.
For decades The Fall have been the United Kingdom’s ultimate cult band. The late Mark E. Smith and his ever-revolving cast of musicians gobbled up an endless number of musical styles and genres over the years, but their eighth studio album, This Nation’s Saving Grace, could well be the one with the longest lasting impact.
Unsurprisingly, line-up changes had plagued the band prior to the recording of the album, with their rhythm section, brothers Paul and Steve Hanley, leaving in 1984. Still, Smith had a good relationship with producer John Leckie, who seemed to have a knack for bringing out the pop sensibilities in guitarist Brix Smith, whilst also keeping the chaotic punk rock edge that had come to define The Fall. The result is an album that is full of swerving post-punk and Smith’s distinctive yelping, but also is catchy as hell. Songs like the jangly dance noise collision of Bombast, the slow hand blues goes post-punk of Vixen or Spoilt Victorian Child, which is a both a fantastic ear-worm and a disorientating noise freak out, are all fantastic.
Within a few years, Pavement, Sebadoh and more would adopt similar principles, and Blur sold a shit load of records a decade down the line copying this exact blueprint.
If Orange Juice showed how pure pop could be utilised in an indie framework and The Fall pointed the way toward more discordant and angular sounds, both being hugely influential in the process, so The Jesus and Mary Chain did the same by taking the harshness of noise rock and giving it a melodic, marshmallow quality.
The result of Jim and William Reid’s desire to mix harsh Stooges guitars with sunkissed Beach Boys melodies and a Phil Spector-esque wall of noise, Psychocandy did that to a tee, leading to them doing as much as anyone (possibly bar Cocteau Twins) to invent a design for the shoegaze bands that would begin to spring up in their wake. Beyond its influence though, this is just a perfect noisy, indie rock record: when The Jesus and Mary Chain rage on In a Hole they sound magnificently raw and gutsy, the riff on The Living End wouldn’t be a million miles away from Black Flag were it not for the chamber pop vocal, and when they’re delicate, such as on the goth Isley Brothers swing of Cut Dead, they as fragile as music can be. Wonderful stuff.
The Smiths were already a cult favourite who had begun to fully cross over into the mainstream when their third album was released. And there’s no real radical change to their approach on The Queen is Dead, but the sheer strength of songs here dictate that this is the album that had to be included.
Where previous darlings of the UK indie scene like Robert Smith or Ian Curtis were glumly downbeat (the former) or genuinely tortured (the latter), frontman Morrissey brought an arch sense of the hopeless romantic to the scene. His palpable sense of disappointment, distain even, mixed with wonderfully overdramatic lyrics, such as comparing himself to Joan of Arc on Bigmouth Strikes Again, brilliantly give real emotional heft to these songs. That plus the unique guitar work of Johnny Marr and the superbly underrated rhythm section of drummer Mike Joyce and late bassist Andy Rourke created a perfect balance of power and pathos, influencing everyone from Suede to Pulp to The 1975 to an entire generation of US emo artists in the process.
Somewhere there is an alternate universe where The Stone Roses were able to follow their remarkable debut album up quickly and, most importantly, with a similar level of quality, and they go on to be the definitive band of the 90’s. That’s obviously not what happened, but, nonetheless, The Stone Roses have more of a legacy than many artists with 40-year careers and multiple albums could dream of achieving.
As the second summer of love blossomed in mid-1989, as the barriers between guitar music and the euphoric sounds of the free party, acid house movement crumbled away and as young fans found common ground in sharing the pure joy that music can bring, there couldn’t have been a better world for The Stone Roses’ debut album to be born into. Their mix of 60’s psychedelia, most notably in the sublime guitar tone and playing of John Squire, the throbbing, beat filled pulsing rhythms of bassist Mani and drummer Reni, and Ian Brown’s brilliantly breathy, wonder-filled vocals, utterly encapsulated everything that felt revolutionary, beautiful and special about that time.
If the track listing reads like a greatest hits set, that’s because it basically is: Made of Stone, Waterfall, I Wanna Be Adore, She Bangs the Drum and, of course, the breathtaking closing I Am the Resurrection are all iconic songs. From the look, to the influences they were bringing to the genre, they created the blueprint for the Brit-pop explosion that would follow in the 1990’s. An explosion they sadly went AWOL for, but, regardless, their influence was inescapable.
(written by Islander) Those of us who dwell in the moldering and morbid halls of NCS were first attracted to the Scottish death metal band Penny Coffin through their Conscripted Morality EP in 2023 (they had released two others before that). Our sewage-loving DGR penned some paragraphs about it at that time, including these: “Playing […]
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