Posted on April 5th 2026, 7:57a.m.
Blog
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SNL: Jack Black Rocks Out With Jack White, Stars In “Carry On Wayward Son” Sketch
Tonight was Jack Black’s fifth time hosting Saturday Night Live and Jack White’s sixth time performing, including once with the White Stripes (he also played SNL50: The Anniversary Special last year). The duo known as Jack Gray made the most of the clever booking by appearing in a couple of sketches together.
The post <em>SNL</em>: Jack Black Rocks Out With Jack White, Stars In “Carry On Wayward Son” Sketch appeared first on Stereogum.
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“There would be no Holiday In Cambodia without Hawkwind”: Jello Biafra discovered the space rockers in a copy of Penthouse – and wound up singing Silver Machine with Nik Turner
The former Dead Kennedys leader admits he hasn’t loved every line-up of Dave Brock’s outfit, but that doesn’t affect their impact over the years -
Dave Whetstone Calls On FAIRPORT Camp On Fresh Platter
He didn’t only play with such FAIRPORT CONVENTION offshoots as THE ALBION BAND and WAZ! and the band members’ solo projects – Dave Whetstone composed several songs for the mothership per se, songs that landed on and a few other … Continue reading
The post Dave Whetstone Calls On FAIRPORT Camp On Fresh Platter appeared first on DMME.net.
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LIVE REVIEW: THE POGUES With special guest John Francis Flynn -‘A celebration of 40 Years of Rum, Sodomy and Lash’
There has always been something about The Pogues that has captivated me. When ‘Rum, Sodomy & Lash’ came out forty years ago I didn’t appreciate their music at all. Over the years as my tastes became more adventurous, I found myself exploring the world of The Pogues and the album that was recommended I start this journey with was in fact this record.
Unfortunately, we lost the incredible lyrical mastermind behind The Pogues in 2023, Shane MacGowan, but through this line up we still get to experience it. Celtic punk, folk, folk punk whatever you choose to call it. The Pogues invented this genre that has inspired so many since, something that has kept me revisiting the band over the years.
A fourteen-year hiatus changed a lot of things and that includes the structure of the band as we see them today. So how do The Pogues sound in 2026? Better than ever in my honest opinion and live they are just an incredible experience.
Kicking things off tonight was John Francis Flynn, who as it is revealed later an active member of The Pogues live. To be honest I went in without expectation tonight and in some ways I am glad I did. John Francis Flynn, what a great Celtic name by the way took to the stage and he along with saxophonist Pete gave us a set that was different to anything I had expected. You got the feeling from his name that we would possibly visit some traditional Celtic music, delivered in a familiar nature. How wrong could I be. What Flynn did was deliver a thirty-five-minute set of atmospheric Celtic tunes that were backed by sampled/looped Celtic inspired percussion, saxophone and Flynn himself on a fender telecaster. Now this could have worked if there was a personality behind it all. Flynn was bland, uninspired and almost looked as if he didn’t want to be here. No engagement with the audience and if this was setting the tone for tonight, we were going to be in trouble. I don’t have much to say about Flynn, he showed up did his thing and left me far from warmed up or inspired.
Perhaps this was a stroke of genius because from the moment The Pogues took to the stage there was an energy and electricity in the room. The crowd had been saving themselves for this and boy oh boy did they enjoy every moment of the twenty-four song set that included two encores totalling six songs, between them the setlist was nothing short of superb. It had everything you want from a show. It built and built and built and the joy in The Forum tonight was simply next level.
A show like this doesn’t need production, it doesn’t need bells and whistles (unless they are Irish of course), what it does need is charm, character and a rawness that comes from storytelling. What The Pogues do in a live setting is create a show that grabs you and smuggles you along on a songwriting journey. From the opening intro pre-recorded jig we were encouraged to clap along. A welcome to country was performed and received such a huge reaction. The real magic began and voices were loud and proud singing along with every word of ‘Sickbed’. The energy is simply electric and this kind of storytelling is exactly as you would imagine it would have been in the times they were set in. Lyric not only sung but spat at us just enhances the authenticity in which Spider Stacy delivers the words and phrasing of MacGowan shows that MacGowan’s spirit is still here and a part of this band. This kind of authenticity you simply can’t replicate without heart and passion.
Tonight’s performance I can only imagine as being one that fans hadn’t seen before. A cast of rotating lead vocalists Lisa O’Neill who made her debut on Australian shores, Daragh Lynch, Iona Zajic, John Francis Flynn along with Stacy create a whole new narrative, one that is rich in depth, stylistic honour and interpretation. To hear the female and male voices deliver this treasure trove of tunes is spellbinding. Each voice giving something special, unique and hauntingly familiar to the feel of the performance.
Seeing the original members in James Fearnley, Spider Stacy and Jem Finer, the bond they have bond created through the songs is just incredible. Through this trio MacGowan was never far from the stage, you felt it.
The band consisting of Pete Fraser, Holly Mullineaux, Jordan O’Leary, Daniel Hayes, Fiachra Meek, Ian Williamson and Jim Sclavunos (of Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds fame) all wore the appropriate musical hats to deliver these songs with such an understanding of what they are. Some wearing more than one musical hat throughout the night Sclavunos taking on additional percussive duties.
However, I must say that I have never been quite so in awe of a piano accordionist as I was of James Fearnley tonight, at seventy-one years of age he was so much fun to watch and embodied the spirit of a twenty something as he performed. Jem Finer while he was quite subdued his presence and contribution are immense on the hurdy gurdy, banjo and mandolin. Spider Stacy well, he is in a league of his own, he gave the grit to tonight’s performance and stepped into the role of leader and centre point of the band.
As we worked our way through the ebbs and flows of tonight’s set the music and songs, we were taken on a journey quite like any other. It grabbed you by the shirtfront at times and moved you at other times cradling you in the stories and emotions. There was that snot nosed punk attitude when they pushed the crowd simply loved it. Tonight the Forum was packed tight, so much so that when the people next to you moved, you moved too. You moved with joy though, you couldn’t help dancing, bouncing, singing and leave any concern you had at the door, this is the power of music.
With all of this said you couldn’t imagine a show like this being too polished, it would sterilise the charm of it all, however the rough edges had purpose adding drama and magic. Rock, punk, folk and all the other genre boundaries that wove themselves into each other transported you into these songs and the storytelling. At times it felt like you were thrust into a dimly lit Irish pub, the air thick with smoke as you were told tales. At other times you were in the middle of a rowdy pub celebrating life, the little wins and living your best life.
Tonight’s performance of Waltzing Matilda was unexpected and my personal highlight of the set. It’s something you didn’t expect and as a first timer seeing the band it showed a love of our history and culture, a respect for our own story. The Pogues are nothing but a class act. I even warmed to John Francis Flynn as his place in the delivery of the songs held weight and earned a ton of respect from me. It’s the fun and camaraderie on that stage tonight that made this such a special and powerful performance. The joy in the audiences faces tonight along with their voices being loud and proud drew you in.
Somehow twenty-four songs and a near two-hour performance seemed to pass by in an instant, making good on the saying time flies when you are having fun. Tonight The forum and I had the best time, and I simply can’t wait to do it again. Many I spoke to said they were coming back on Tuesday night for the second show too.
If you can find a ticket somehow, somewhere to any of the remaining shows, I urge you to do it. These shows haven’t sold out without reason. I just wish it hadn’t taken me forty years to figure it out and discover the brilliance of The Pogues live.
Setlist : Sickbed, Wild Cats, Brown Eyes, Billy’s Bones, Navigator, Planxty, Jesse James, Man You Don’t, Body Of American, Old man Drag, Parting Glass, Dirty Old Town, Rainy Night, Pistol, Poor Paddy, Waltzing Matilda, London Girl.
Encore : Irish Rover, Dreams, Boys From Hell, Dark Streets, Sally
Encore 2 : GreenlandThe Pogues Gallery
All image credits Shot by Slaidins Photography
With special thanks to Menard PR for the media accessThe post LIVE REVIEW: THE POGUES With special guest John Francis Flynn -‘A celebration of 40 Years of Rum, Sodomy and Lash’ appeared first on The Rockpit.
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Review METAL CHURCH “Dead to Rights”
Metal Church are among the greats of heavy metal, with their early albums being true classics of powerful US metal. Following the release of “Congregation of Annihilation”, the future of this iconic band appeared uncertain. However, bandleader Kurdt Vanderhoof managed to breathe new life into the band. A big part of this revival comes down… Continue Reading → -
“It’s All in Your Hand” — Boston Dystopian Post-Punk Outfit PROLES Channel Cult Horror in Video for “The Following”
Your fantasy your forgery
You can turn it on
But its killing meThere was a certain 1980s horror logic that understood the television set not as furniture, but as a body in mutation: a bright rectangular mouth fed on VHS tape, spitting back instructions on who to trust, what to want, and how to dissolve yourself into the signal. Boston dystopian post-punk outfit PROLES tap into that same diseased voltage on “The Following,” a track that, to our ears, obliquely casts modern social media as less a tool than a cult ritual in modern dress, where the screen glows, the face shifts, and devotion is measured in performance.
The song’s lyrics – flashes of plastic worship, fabricated selves, borrowed fame, and the command to follow the followers – sketch a world where influence spreads like wildfire. In the band’s new video, that unease is driven home by the appearance of Marshall Herff Applewhite Jr. of the Heaven’s Gate cult: one of the late twentieth century’s most chilling televangelists of annihilation, now folded into a fever-dream of surveillance, mimicry, and mass suggestion.
Written and performed by the band and recorded and mixed at Noise Collaborative Studios by J. Negro, “The Following” lurches out of the dark with buzzing analogue synths, a tight heartbeat click in the drums, and guitars that smear themselves across the mix like smoke against stone. The whole thing carries the reek of old-school deathrock and late-night VHS horror: sepulchral, theatrical, and slightly unclean, with reverb-laden vocals that drift between gothic incantation and menace. When the track locks into the lines about fantasy and forgery, it takes on the force of a chant, less a chorus than a congregation forming in real time. PROLES are clearly aiming at the falseness of self-display and the seductions of image culture here, but the song never turns into a lecture. It stalks, it seethes, it lets the sickness speak for itself.
Directed and edited by Nick Mehos, the video renders that theme in a blur of cult television, basement ritual, and glamorously degraded decay. Gretchen Shae appears in white lace at a small keyboard, doubled and ghosted against hanging fabric as if caught between séance and stage set. Elsewhere, the band’s performance footage is chopped into unstable transmissions and glowing CRT tableaux: basslines arrive in smeared close-up, faces split and mirror across the screen, and a red eye symbol burns like a warning signal in the static. Figures wearing oversized eye masks drift through dim interiors, hands reach toward television screens as if trying to cross over, and Applewhite’s face appears in degraded broadcast form, not simply as found footage, but as a terrible emblem of mediated persuasion. The whole thing feels part deathrock pageant, part public-access nightmare, part slasher-title-sequence hallucination.
Watch the video for “The Following” below, and order the track here.
PROLES are Gretchen Shae on vocals and synth, Jason O’Blivion on vocals and guitar, Daniel Denied on bass, and Nikki Severen on drums. The video stars the band, with additional camera work by Korri Lee and Jason Negro. As both song and visual statement, “The Following” lands as a sharp little dagger aimed at an era of self-manufacture, where every platform promises connection and every glowing surface asks for obedience.
Listen to “The Following” below, and order the single here.
Follow PROLES:
Art Credit: Nick Mehos @nrm_design_ The post “It’s All in Your Hand” — Boston Dystopian Post-Punk Outfit PROLES Channel Cult Horror in Video for “The Following” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
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Sabina Beyli Releases “Bad Habits” Music Video; New Single “Bones” Out April 10
Sabina Beyli is an Azerbaijani singer-songwriter and Berklee graduate currently based between Boston and New York. Her music is influenced by alternative rock and focuses on themes of personal conflict. On April 3rd, she released the official music video for her song “Bad Habits,” which originally debuted in late 2025. The new visuals provide a cinematic companion to the established track.
Earlier this year, Sabina released the single “Culprit” along with its own music video. She is scheduled to release her next single, “Bones,” on April 10th, and it can be pre-saved at the link below.
Follow Sabina Beyli
The post Sabina Beyli Releases “Bad Habits” Music Video; New Single “Bones” Out April 10 first appeared on FemMetal – Goddesses of Metal.
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Pagan Records to Release 30th Anniversary Reissue of Sacrilegium’s “Wicher”
Thirty years after its initial emergence from the Polish underground, Sacrilegium’s seminal debut, Wicher, is set for a reissue via Pagan Records. Originally released in 1996, Wicher is one of the most influential and atmospheric works of Polish black metal, a record that captured the freezing, pagan spirit of the era with a raw, melodic grandeur that few have since replicated.
In celebration of this 30th anniversary, Pagan Records is unearthing the album in its most authentic form to date. This reissue features the original, “lost” cover art, rediscovered after decades, and includes the full lyrics for the first time in years.
Set for release on 11 April 2026, the reissue will be available in multiple high-quality formats: jewelcase CD, double splatter vinyl, double blue vinyl, double white vinyl.
Released during the “golden age” of the Polish scene, Wicher stood apart for its ability to balance savage black metal aggression with an evocative, folk-tinted atmosphere. For many, it represents the pinnacle of the genre’s mid-90s evolution, blending cold, razor-sharp riffing with a distinctly Slavic sense of melancholy.
Pre-order now via Pagan Records: https://www.pagan-records.com/pl/searchquery/wicher/1/phot/5?url=wicher
Track-list:
- W Dolinie Rwących Potoków
- Śpiew Kruków Czarnych Cieni
- Wilczy Skowyt
- W Rogatym Majestacie Snu
- Zagubiona Ciemność
- Wicher Falami Ognia
- Szept Nocy
- Tam Gdzie Gaśnie Dzień (bonus track)
Pagan Records online:
Website / Shop: https://www.pagan-records.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/paganrecords
Bandcamp: https://paganrecords.bandcamp.com
YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/paganrecords
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/pagan.records/
Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/user/knxur7q2nz7w1he6qqq60ssq5?si=439870fe0b3d4918
Source: 3nation
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Gig review: CHEZ KANE- Fighting Cocks, Kingston upon Thames, 2 April 2026
No one can accuse Welsh songstress Chez Kane of not putting in the hard yards. This show in Kingston’s rock pub, in my South West London heartland, marked the last of a remarkable ten ‘in-store’ acoustic appearances in seven days … Continue reading The post Gig review: CHEZ KANE- Fighting Cocks, Kingston upon Thames, 2 April 2026 appeared first on Get Ready to ROCK!.
