As Bloodstock gets closer, we delve deep into the line up to find out more about some of the bands playing the New Blood and EMP stages at this years event.
Today we chat with Wrex
Please introduce yourselves.
Brighton-born duo WREX make electro-charged alternative rock to turbocharge heartbeats, snap necks and fill both dance floors and mosh pits. Shades of punk, nu-metal, pop and trance collide and coalesce but never clash; a wild explosion of riffs and synths that pulls from influences as diverse as While She Sleeps, Faithless and Linkin Park. This is the WREX blueprint: a fierce, all-enveloping wall of sound with little time for music’s outdated boundaries or conventions; creativity, joy and emotion unbound.“WREX is about letting go-It’s a release from everything that’s going on in the world around you, a purge of everything you’re thinking and feeling.
Whilst WREX is perceived as a DUO. Mae Seaton (Vocals) George Donoghue (Vocals & Guitar). We like to refer to it as a space where we can all let loose.
For Bloodstock we will be joined by our live band, Greg Walton (Lambrini Girls), Joe Constable (Circuit Of Horrors, The Rocket Dolls) and Sam Jones (Bleed Again).
How would you describe your sound?
We describe ourselves as Nu-Punk, Combining elements of Nu-Metal and Punk Rock.
How did you land your spot on the Bloodstock bill?
It was one of those F*CK it moments, we filled out the online form not expecting to hear anything. And when the email came through it was a pinch ourselves moment.
What does playing at Bloodstock mean to you?
For us this is a huge moment, for an unsigned independent band. No Manager, No Booker we are stoked to be getting on major festivals and Bloodstock are one of the first to take the punt on us.
Its of course a legendary festival and has a huge amount of history and prestige in the UK Metal Scene, we grew up watching online videos of bands at bloodstock so this is for sure a special moment.
For people who’ve never seen you live, what can they expect at Bloodstock?
Imagine a fizzed up can of pop. That energy, with its fair share of catchy choruses and tasty riffs.
What day are you performing?
Sunday
What other bands are you looking forward to watching at Bloodstock this year?
Judas Priest, Graphic Nature and Dream State. We are gutted to miss Battle Snake. They are amazing! Go see them!!
Playing the EMP Stage is just the first steppingstone in a bands journey. What’s next in your plans for world domination?
We have a UK and EU tour for September/October/November to wind this year up. Bringing us to 60 something shows this year. This is to support something special of course
Are you camping with the fans? Which campsite are you heading for?
Unfortunately we aren’t, we are coming straight in from Rebellion Festival and we will be heading home after JP due to life commitments.
You’ve gotta keep hydrated at Bloodstock, what is your drink of choice for the weekend?
You can’t beat a lovely cold pint of cider on a summers day.
Linkin Park built one of the most powerful catalogs in modern rock by combining heavy guitars, electronic textures, hip-hop rhythm, and deeply emotional songwriting. From the breakthrough force of Hybrid Theory to the renewed energy of From Zero, this complete A-to-Z song list traces the band’s evolution across albums, eras, and generations of fans. Linkin Park launched from Agoura Hills, California, carving a profound impact on rock music at the turn of the millennium with their explosive blend of nu-metal, alternative rock, and electronic elements. The group formed in 1996 as Xero, with high school friends Mike Shinoda, Rob Bourdon,
Japanese metal powerhouse KNOSIS, the boundary-pushing project led by acclaimed multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ryo Kinoshita, returns with a brand-new standalone single Kushizashi arriving via SharpTone Records. Serving as the band’s first new music since the release of their debut album GENKNOSIS in 2025, Kushizashi is a fierce declaration of intent. Fusing razor-sharp riffs, crushing grooves, […]
For many, they’re forever tied to the shallow sheen of 80s arena rock and The Breakfast Club – but they had an inventive side waiting to be discovered. In 2012 we asked: how prog were Simple Minds?
They may have emerged during a period synonymous with synthpop and the New Romantics, but Simple Minds have always possessed serious prog credentials. Early reviews made great play of their use of keyboards – verboten after punk – with many in the music press suggesting they had more in common with the prog brigade than they did the spiky-topped hordes.
They toured with Peter Gabriel in 1980, at the ex Genesis singer’s invitation, and later recorded a version of his song Biko. Their first three albums were produced by John Leckie, tape operator on Syd Barrett’s Barrett and balance engineer on Pink Floyd’s Meddle and Wish You Were Here. Their fourth and fifth albums – originally conceived as a double – were produced by Steve Hillage, bearded member of pothead pixies Gong and a man known for his noodling guitar work and penchant for wearing a tea cosy for a hat.
And that’s without mentioning the latterday Minds, aka the mullet years, when frontman Jim Kerr assumed the persona of a seer and the music became even more marked by ostentation and pomp. Some have even drawn parallels between their 1989’s Belfast Child and Dave Gilmour-era Pink Floyd. How prog were Simple Minds? Very prog.
“Were people surprised when I got involved?” wonders Hillage of producing Sons And Fascination and Sister Feelings Call in 1981. “No. It made sense for them and it made sense for me. One thing we had in common was a shared love of German psychedelic music – bands like Neu! and Can, with a side order of Kraftwerk.”
Had he been listening to Simple Minds prior to working with them? “Yeah, I’d been following them,” he says. “I was particularly into [third album] Empires And Dance and tracks like Celebrate. I’d heard them being played in clubs but I didn’t actually get to see them live until March 1981 when I saw them play Tiffany’s in Glasgow. I thought they were brilliant – an interesting combination of rock and trance and this dark futuristic thing.”
Could they, with their keyboards-dominated sound, have existed a decade earlier, during the prog age? “It wasn’t like a Rick Wakeman or Keith Emerson style of keyboards, Mick MacNeil’s background was in traditional Scottish bands and he created these original lines that made his synths sound like bagpipes. He did pioneering work with sequencers and arpeggiators. There was maybe a Pink Floyd element to what he did, but it was a lot more like Giorgio Moroder or Chic.
“Promised You A Miracle [their 1982 breakthrough single] was more influenced by Diana Ross’ Upside Down [written by Chic] than anyone prog. I’d say their prog tendencies became apparent through their love of Genesis – Abacab was a favourite when I worked with them – and of Peter Gabriel. That said, considering they started out as a punk band in the wonderfully named Johnny & The Self Abusers, musicianship was a thing they were proud to have as a frontline quality.”
Jim Kerr remembers growing up in Glasgow in the early 70s with prog bands forming a crucial part of his soundtrack. “[Guitarist] Charlie Burchill and I lived in the same street on a housing estate. We lived in a tower block and for some reason our flat was the one where everyone listened to music. I had a lot of older friends, and through them I got into Genesis, Yes and Van der Graaf Generator.
“A playlist for a typical night would include Yessongs, Jethro Tull, Stooges, Stevie Wonder and Van der Graaf – but bigger than all of them would be Hawkwind. They were a cosmic biker band; the missing link between hippie, prog and punk.
“I saw Yes on the Yessongs tour. I didn’t relate to them emotionally, but I did when I saw Gabriel with Genesis doing Foxtrot. He had a Clockwork Orange, Malcolm McDowell edge, whereas Yes – I loved the bass and the rhythms, but once Wakeman started going off his head on all that classical stuff, I couldn’t relate to that.”
Kerr’s immersion in the records of Genesis, Kevin Ayers, Roy Harper and Pink Floyd gives the lie to the idea that those bands made music for prissy middle-class students. It was a soundtrack to working-class life. “Well, there was fuck-all else,” argues Kerr. “This was before punk, and the only bands coming to town to play gigs were people like Ayers and Harper and Genesis. It appealed to me: they were inventing their own world.”
It was clear soon after forming Johnny & The Self Abusers in 1977 that Kerr would incorporate what he’d learned from prog and Krautrock musicians, as well as from David Bowie and Brian Eno’s work in Berlin and the proto-electro of Moroder. The sudden availability of cheap synthesisers made the switch to a more electronic approach inevitable.
Hillage describes Simple Minds as the “the fulcrum” – of prog, post-punk, funk, synthpop, electronica and art rock. “I think the blend was pretty equal,” Kerr reflects, “especially after Mel Gaynor [drums] joined in 1982. He could be as heavy as John Bonham, but he could groove like hell.”
Simple Minds’ use of prog keyboard textures on their first two albums, Life In A Day and Real To Real Cacophony, both 1979, wasn’t entirely unique. There were other punk and post-punk bands moving in that direction, such as Wire, XTC and Magazine. In fact, Simple Minds would sign to Virgin and chose Leckie as studio collaborator because that was XTC and Magazine’s label and he was their producer. And yet there was some residual embarrassment about the path they were pursuing.
“In our first interview with NME we uttered the word ‘Genesis’ and I remember thinking, ‘What did we say that for?’” he laughs. “But Magazine were first. When Howard Devoto left Buzzcocks and came back with [Magazine’s debut single] Shot By Both Sides it was like, ‘Fuck, these guys can all play!’ We hadn’t heard keyboard solos since Rick Wakeman. The same goes for XTC. Those bands had great imagination and needed to know how to play, and Simple Minds did as well.”
After what Kerr regards as a disappointing debut album – which he felt was in the shadow of Joy Division’s Unknown Pleasures – came Real To Real Cacophony, a far more successful move towards the sort of Teutonic electro dance music he had in mind. Empires And Dance (1980) was “one last throw of the dice” to achieve a breakthrough. Job done: Gabriel invited the band to support him on tour in Europe… but it wasn’t plain sailing.
“We got slaughtered every night by the audiences,” Kerr recalls. “Mind you, so did Gabriel – there were a lot of Genesis fans out there who didn’t want to hear Games Without Frontiers. But we were growing in stature night by night. We didn’t see Gabriel much – he was in hotels, we were in a van – but just seeing him play was enough. We couldn’t wait for him to get onstage, not just to see him perform but so we could raid his dressing room for food!
“But Peter showed us there was nothing to be afraid of in big venues; that music could get across. That’s what happens when you grow up with Floyd and Yes – you’re not intimidated by size.”
Simple Minds’ music was becoming increasingly trance-like, with repetitive grooves and propulsive electronic rhythms that nodded to the motorik pulse-beats of krautrock. Sessions were narcotically enhanced: “There were a million joints, with Nepalese balls first thing in morning.”
(Image credit: Press)
Viewed from this perspective, there’s a certain logic in the band hooking up for their next recordings with Hillage. In the wake of acid house in the late 80s, Hillage would re-emerged with an ambient techno project, System 7. “We had an image of the pixie hat and that whole thing,” laughs Kerr, “but when we met him he’d changed. He looked like Robert Fripp, with short hair and a suit. We did one track with him, The American, and it was great. We were in sync. He related to our energy; our streetsiness. We were Glasgow housing estate boys – but we had that cosmic thing from the music we grew up with, and he loved it.”
Hillage says the fit between the 60s casualty and Glasgow upstarts was tighter than people imagined. “I was into funk and disco on my late 70s solo albums,” he says. “I wasn’t just doing big guitar solos. So where I was heading and where the Minds were – there wasn’t much of a gulf.”
He remembers the sessions for Sons And Fascination and Sister Feelings Call as “creatively exciting, if sometimes a bit chaotic.” There was, if anything, a surfeit of ideas, hence the two albums. “Right from the beginning I knew they were groundbreaking and important records,” he says. “This was my first major high-profile project, so it was a steep learning curve. But it was a wonderful experience and it helped me sustain my activities as a producer to this day.”
The apotheosis of the Minds’ shimmering neo-prog adventurism was 1982’s New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84), produced by Peter Walsh. Their most experimental effort, complete with quasi-religious cover art, also proved their commercial breakthrough; and along with being a big influence on U2 and their producer Daniel Lanois, it was also popular in prog circles.
“Peter Hamill came to our gigs because he loved what we were doing. So did Dave Gilmour and Phil Collins,” Kerr says proudly. It was a glorious period in British music: you could have a successful album with compositions that, as Kerr puts it, “threw out the rulebook and didn’t give a fuck.”
Although Simple Minds arguably peaked artistically with New Gold Dream, and their halcyon days were the early ones, it was after 1982 that the band became world-beaters, second only to U2 in the stadium behemoth stakes. In the wake of their Live Aid performance and the global success of Don’t You (Forget About Me), the Minds began releasing regular No 1 albums and playing the amphitheatres of their childhood heroes Gabriel, Genesis and Floyd.
But from a prog perspective, the early 80s remain their shining moment. Now they’re about to recreate that moment with Hillage as they work together on their 16th album [Big Music was released in 2014]. Talk about back to the future.
Kerr considers: “The last time we worked with him was in 1981 and Britain was on fire, with riots in Brixton and Toxteth. Lo and behold, for our first sessions [in late summer 2011] all this shit is going on in Tottenham while we work with Hillage on a krautrock riff! Everything changes, everything stays the same!”
Aerosmith built one of the longest-running and most recognizable careers in American rock and roll, powered by a classic lineup that became famous for its mix of blues, hard rock, and arena-sized swagger. From Steven Tyler and Joe Perry to the musicians who stepped in during the band’s most turbulent years, each member played a role in shaping the sound and survival of one of Boston’s greatest rock bands. Our Complete List of Aerosmith Band Members presents a list of musicians who were at one time members of the band Aerosmith. It does not include touring or session musicians who
Esben Willems is a happy person. On the surface, such a comment, while true and important, should not get elevated to an opening sentence in a Monolord interview. Maybe that is because the parameters of the interview were well beyond those generally limited to music interviews.
One of the things our interview ended on was the idea of being a father. I asked Esben if the music he is making with Monolord is, subconsciously at least, some kind of legacy gift to his son, a powerful reminder of what his dad helped create with Monolord.
Esben took that question deeper by generalising his contribution as the drummer in the band. “I hope my son just realises that his father did what made him happy.”
From that, Esben followed “that modelling authentic self-expression is an important aspect of being a father.”
None of this should sound incongruous to the heavy soundscapes that Monolord has consistently created over the last ten years, because they are flush lyrics and musical cries with being an emotional and sentient being, living with a battling duality of hope and anxiety about the state of our world.
Monolord is not your typical Doom band, and this interview should permanently cement that notion.
Monolord – Neverending is earning Album of the Year praise, delivering masterful doom, blues and psych with stunning confidence. Photo: James Rexroad
In a 1970 BBC interview with Led Zeppelin, the interviewer tells John Bonham that he does not think he could whistle/hum of the band’s music. To be fair, the band’s heavy take on the blues was surely hard on the ears of music journalists who had been fed a steady diet of The Beatles, still the greatest band ever.
My opening question to Esben was about that–humming. Specifically, if he could guess what song from their 2021 Your Time To Shine album I have been humming consistently since then. To add to the “strangeness” of the opening question, I told him that I can’t even remember humming another song so consistently in the last 20 years.
Esben’s response: “I have no idea…”
So, as you would hope that I did, I started humming the song–the intro to I’ll Be Damned. It’s the guitar parts between the heavy riffs.
On the surface, this could feel like a self-indulgent, esoteric question.
But it wasn’t. It went, for both myself and Esben, to the very heart of why Monolord’s heaviness just hits harder and is so special.
Monolord and Melody
The use of it, and especially combined with melancholy and clever use of “faintness of sound”, has elevated Monolord to a level that their categorisation Stoner/Doom just doesn’t fit anymore, if it ever did to begin with.
So I asked Esben if this dedication to this melody is conscious or subconscious.
“That’s a really good question,” he said. “Tomas [Jäger] is responsible for the lyrics, but we all contribute. It’s like a Venn diagram, where the final sound is a combination of all our influences, with melody ending up as a consistent theme in our songs.”
Naturally, the discussion of the new album, specifically who produced it–Sylvia Massy, genius behind Tool’s 1993 Undertow–came up. I was intrigued as to how the album felt like the continuation of the musical growth of the previous albums and what Massy brought to the band.
“We have to credit producer Sylvia Massie’s mastery of a thousand small, invisible choices as the key to capturing the band’s vision during the recording process,” he said. “She created a comfortable, home-like environment, which helped the band perform at their best.
“Recording is generally emotionally and physically exhausting, so working with her was such an amazing experience. We were relaxed the very minute we walked into her studio.”
Monolord release Neverending on 29 May 2026 via Relapse Records. The album cover features a painting by M.K. Cooper
Understandably, Esben said in the interview, once the album is finished, the band does not listen to it. The phase of recording is finished, and while there is this emptiness, the band’s focus and energy shift to playing live, where the most powerful example of the band’s synergy is on display.
I commented to Esben that the band’s music is uplifting, even referring to it as romantic Doom. That brought a big smile to his face.
I then shared a quote from photographer Glen Friedman, who photographed so many of the amazing shots of The Z Boys skating in abandoned swimming pools in Santa Monica in the mid-’70s, on his definition of punk: “An intense obligation to the truth of your innermost self.”
“I like that,” Esben said. “I like that a lot.”
Surfing that affirming response, I told him that I see Monolord as a punk band, having found the truth of their innermost self and sharing that obligation with the intensity of their live performances. The Esben smile, which was a constant throughout the interview, might have been at its widest at this point.
It is at this point that I brought up having met Fredrik Nordin of Dozer at RippleFest in 2024, and how we spent most of the time talking about the future of the Earth and our kids.
You know how the interview ends. I started off with it. The warmth and humanity as a punctuation mark on our conversation did not temper the heaviness of Monolord.
Monolord have been great friends of Dunable Guitars for almost a decade, using the brand’s guitars and basses as weapons of choice for their torrential downpour of heavy tones and catchy hooks live and in the studio.
Artist signature models for Thomas Jäger and Mika Hakki are long overdue, and Dunable is happy to finally present their Dunable USA Custom Gnarwhal and R2 Bass signature instruments, limited to only six of each model. For more details, visit dunableguitars.com/collections/in-stock-now.
Monolord released Neverending on 29 May 2026 via Relapse Records. Available as multiple limited-edition vinyl variants, CD and cassette, as well as digital, for more details visit relapse.com/pages/monolord-neverending.
Upon making landfall on the shores of AMG, Southern goth rock outfit Wailin Storms stirred up strong sentiments in our esteemed staff. Madam X praised this Texas-turned-North Carolina quartet’s One Foot in the Flesh Grave (2015) for its ‘oddly dark and tricksy’ swirl of Danzig and 16 Horsepower. Since this (Great) debut, subsequent squalls have been weaker but still potent. Cherd found Rattle(2020) a moving, if unvaried, gust of ‘dark psychedelic twang,’ while The Silver Snake Unfolds(2022) blew fresh air into the band’s ‘fire-and-brimstone snake handling speaking in tongues nightmare music.’ 1 In the Year of Our Lord 2026, Wailin Storms play The Arsonist on their new home, Season of Mist. Conjuring a conflagration for their fifth album, these Durham doom-punk goth rockers may once again set fire to the Score Safety Counter.
The Arsonist stokes the shift Wailin Storms started around Rattle. There, the band refined their swampy pastiche into a more measured fusion of their influences. Past outings in this idiom suffered from songwriting redundancy and sore-thumb tracks. The Arsonist, however, proceeds as a dynamically-sequenced, organically-produced dance between barn burners and smoldering pits. “Dead End” ignites the album with the darkly driving guitar enmeshments of Justin Storms and Ben Melton. Meanwhile, “You Never Answered” bursts with spasmodic rhythms from drummer Mark Oates and bassist Steve Stanczyk. Even when the fires abate, Wailin Storms bring the heat. “Heart of Mine” and “The Arsonist” excel at slow-burn setups with sizzling sendoffs, singeing the skin from within. Whether in the energetic or meditative category, the songs consistently hit the spot, feeling wrought to just the right degree. At 45 minutes, The Arsonist breathes when it needs to and scorches when it wants to.
The apex of this blaze are the vocals of Justin Storms, who mightily impresses with his range. Storms’s wail has recalled Glenn Danzig since Flesh Grave, and it continues to power some affecting choruses (“You Never Answered,” “The Arsonist”). Subsequent releases, however, have seen the frontman branch out beyond the Shirtless Wonder. On The Arsonist, Storms incorporates stylings akin to the silky mid-range of Chris Cornell (Soundgarden) and the alien warbling of Thom Yorke (Radiohead). On that latter reference: Storms’s voice, at its most tender and brittle, brilliantly inflects somber material that wouldn’t sound out of place on Hail to the Thief (“Heart of Mine,” “It’s All Dark Now Where Your Eyes Used to Be”). He even dips into some down n’ dirty blues moans, mixed with a flitting falsetto (“Saved”). Storms is not the only voice on The Arsonist, though; Melton melts faces with aggro shouts, imbuing the blues rock with a noisy edge (“Dead End,” “Never Rest”).2 As thrilling a display as I’ve heard in 2026, The Arsonist stand as a surefire frontrunner for Vocal Performance o’ the Year.3
Criticisms of The Arsonist are minimal and wispy, affording opportunities for further praise. Lighting a spark and growing into a flashover, The Arsonist does falter a tad in its pre-decay transition. “Patient Night” pleases with fun, shaker-fueled shimmies, but it’s a bit simplistic and truncated, comparatively speaking. Following this tune is “The Wind,” a more expansive number possessing sweet pseudo-metal punctuations. Its subdued ending, however, feels like a slightly redundant transition into the excellent closing piano ballad (“It’s All Dark Now…”). Another nitpick concerns lyrics. The Arsonist excels at marrying emotional realism with surrealist imagery. But one moment always sticks out: the punk ending of “Never Rest,” where Storms snarls an equally punk rallying cry (‘Fuck your fucking war…Fuck your fucking war’). I’m no puritan when it comes to profanity, and I like a good protest song as much as the next guy. Alas, something about these lyrics momentarily takes me out of the album’s arrestingly eerie aura.
Extinguishing these critical flamelets reveals a Safety Counter set ablaze. After three attempts, I didn’t think Wailin Storms would ever again produce an album as great as One Foot in the Flesh Grave. The Arsonist proved me wrong, though it’s greatness is of a different kind. Whereas Flesh Grave grounds its twists and turns in Danzigian blues rock/metal, The Arsonist enchants with its seamless shifts between combustible laments and fiery bangers. Arson may be a crime, but missing out on The Arsonist—whether you’re a longtime fan or a newcomer to Wailin Storms—would be the real crime.
Japanese metal powerhouse KNOSIS, the boundary-pushing project led by acclaimed multi-instrumentalist and vocalist Ryo Kinoshita, returns with a brand-new standalone single Kushizashi arriving via SharpTone Records. Serving as the band’s first new music since the release of their debut album GENKNOSIS in 2025, Kushizashi is a fierce declaration of intent. Fusing razor-sharp riffs, crushing grooves, […]
Upon making landfall on the shores of AMG, Southern goth rock outfit Wailin Storms stirred up strong sentiments in our esteemed staff. 