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Seit 1994 gehören Mob Rules zu den Konstanten der deutschen Metal-Szene. Aus einer Band aus Wilhelmshaven wurde über die Jahre eine feste Größe im Power und Melodic Metal. Im Rockcast spricht Sänger und Gründungsmitglied Klaus Dirks über die Anfänge, Wacken, Scorpions, Ronnie James Dio, wichtige Besetzungswechsel und das neue Release Stories From The Verdant Vale.

Vom Proberaum auf die großen Bühnen

Die Geschichte von Mob Rules begann 1994. Matthias Mineur und Thorsten Plath suchten gemeinsam mit Schlagzeuger Arvid Mannott nach einem Sänger. Klaus Dirks hatte zu diesem Zeitpunkt bereits Gesangsunterricht genommen und stieß schließlich zur Band.

Die ersten Monate standen ganz im Zeichen des Songwritings. Aus den ersten gemeinsamen Ideen entstand ein Programm, das 1994 im Cadillac in Oldenburg erstmals live präsentiert wurde.

Musikalisch entwickelte sich die Band vom zunächst rockigeren Ansatz immer stärker in Richtung Heavy und Melodic Metal. Iron Maiden gehörten zu den wichtigen Einflüssen.

Mit Savage Land nahm die Geschichte Fahrt auf. Die EP wurde an Plattenfirmen verschickt. Der Kontakt zu Limb Music führte schließlich zum ersten Plattenvertrag. 1999 erschien Savage Land.

Kurz darauf folgte ein gewaltiger Schritt: Mob Rules spielten als Support der Scorpions vor rund 7.000 Zuschauern. Für eine junge Band aus Wilhelmshaven war das ein besonderer Moment.

Wacken, SPV und Hollowed Be Thy Name

Auch beim Wacken Open Air standen Mob Rules bereits früh auf der Bühne. Mit Temple Of Two Suns entwickelte die Band ihren Sound weiter und setzte verstärkt auf orchestrale Elemente und Keyboards.

Der Wechsel zu SPV und Steamhammer führte zu einem weiteren wichtigen Kapitel. 2002 erschien Hollowed Be Thy Name. Für Rockcast-Host Tippi war dieses Album der Einstieg in die Musik von Mob Rules.

In den folgenden Jahren wechselte die Besetzung mehrfach. Oliver Fuhlhager verließ die Band, Sven Lüdke kam hinzu. Mit Helloween ging es auf Tour.

2005 dokumentierten Mob Rules ihr zehnjähriges Jubiläum mit der Live-DVD und Live-CD Signs Of The Time, aufgenommen im Pumpwerk Wilhelmshaven.

Komplexe Songs und internationale Erfahrungen

Mit Ethnolution A.D. gingen Mob Rules musikalisch weiter in die Tiefe. Der sechsteilige Titelsong dauert rund 24 Minuten. Später folgte mit Radical Peace ein weiteres ambitioniertes Werk, darunter ein rund 20-minütiges Stück über die Ermordung John F. Kennedys.

Radical Peace führte die Band auch in die USA zum ProgPower-Festival in Atlanta. Dirks erinnert sich an Fans, die teilweise mehrere Tage anreisten, um Mob Rules live zu erleben.

Trotz dieser Erfahrungen entschied sich die Band bewusst gegen eine klassische Profikarriere. Die Musiker wollten Musik machen, ohne wirtschaftlich davon abhängig zu sein. Für Dirks war diese Freiheit wichtiger als der Versuch, aus Mob Rules einen Vollzeitjob zu machen.

Ronnie James Dio und besondere Momente

Zu den emotionalsten Geschichten des Gesprächs gehört die Begegnung mit Ronnie James Dio.

Mob Rules supporteten Dio bei einer Clubshow in Osnabrück. Dirks erinnert sich besonders daran, wie selbstverständlich und respektvoll Dio mit Musikern und Fans umging.

Eine geplante gemeinsame Tour konnte wegen Dios Erkrankung später nicht stattfinden. Die Begegnung selbst blieb für Klaus Dirks trotzdem ein Höhepunkt der Bandgeschichte.

Neue Besetzungen und Beast Reborn

Nach weiteren Veröffentlichungen verließ Gründungsmitglied Matthias Mineur die Band. Klaus Dirks und Arvid Mannott gehörten damit zu den letzten Gründungsmitgliedern.

Gleichzeitig entwickelte sich zwischen Dirks und Sven Lüdke eine enge kreative Zusammenarbeit. Daraus entstand unter anderem Beast Reborn.

Das Album brachte Mob Rules einen besonderen Erfolg: Platz 37 der deutschen Albumcharts.

Auch Florian Dyszbalis kam zur Band. Er war zuvor bereits lange als Roadie und Teil des Umfelds von Mob Rules aktiv gewesen. Schließlich wechselte er auf die Bühne.

Rise Of The Ruler und die Rückkehr ins Savage Land

Nach den Veränderungen während der Corona-Zeit und einem weiteren Besetzungswechsel entstand die Idee, die Geschichte von Savage Land fortzuführen.

2025 erschien Rise Of The Ruler.

Für Mob Rules war das Album eine Rückkehr zu den eigenen Wurzeln. Auch optisch wurde das Projekt aufwendig umgesetzt. Für ein Video wurde ein Park in Rinteln in eine postapokalyptische Welt verwandelt. Fahrzeuge, Statisten und eine große Crew waren beteiligt.

Auch Fotograf Karsten Koch, der bereits die frühen Bandfotos aufgenommen hatte, kehrte für das Projekt zurück.

Aus Bonusmaterial wird ein neues Release

Eigentlich sollte Stories From The Verdant Vale lediglich Bonusmaterial für eine aufwendige Edition von Rise Of The Ruler werden.

Doch Mob Rules wollten keine einfachen Demos oder alternative Versionen liefern. Stattdessen entstanden neue Songs.

Aus den geplanten Bonus-Tracks entwickelte sich schließlich ein eigenständiges Release.

Stories From The Verdant Vale erscheint am 21. August 2026. Die fünf neuen Songs führen die Geschichte rund um Savage Land und Rise Of The Ruler weiter. Die Vinyl-Ausgabe enthält zusätzlich fünf ältere Stücke, die bislang nicht auf Vinyl erschienen waren.

Die neuen Songs heißen:

1. Savage Land Reprise
2. Master Of The Black Crow
3. Masquerade Ball
4. Above The Maelstrom
5. Balance Of Power

32 Jahre Mob Rules

Heute kann Mob Rules auf mehr als drei Jahrzehnte Bandgeschichte zurückblicken. Mehr als 100 Songs, zahlreiche Alben, Tourneen, Festivalauftritte und mehrere Besetzungswechsel gehören dazu.

Trotzdem ist die Motivation unverändert. Die Musiker machen Mob Rules, weil sie diese Musik machen wollen.

Stories From The Verdant Vale setzt die Geschichte der Band nun fort und verbindet die Gegenwart mit den frühen Savage-Land-Tagen.

Im kompletten Rockcast-Gespräch erzählt Klaus Dirks ausführlich, wie Mob Rules entstanden sind, welche Begegnungen ihn besonders geprägt haben und warum die Band nach 32 Jahren noch immer weitermacht.

Danke für´s Lesen. Punkt!

ALBUM DIREKT BEI DER BAND BESTELLEN

 

Der Beitrag Rockcast-Interview: Mob Rules-Sänger Klaus Dirks über Stories From The Verdant Vale erschien zuerst auf Live, laut, legendär!.

Dogstar, the alt-rock trio featuring Keanu Reeves on bass, returns to the Philadelphia region this week with three shows in support of its new album All In Now — capping a run that marks the band’s sustained revival after roughly two decades away from recording. The dates include a stop inside a casino-resort complex in Atlantic City, a theater in Hershey, and a club night in Philadelphia proper, all confirming that the reunion is no one-off nostalgia event.

Atlantic City Rock Night and What It Means for Fans Watching From Abroad

The Atlantic City date lands at Sound Waves at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino, per The Philadelphia Inquirer, placing the concert directly inside a resort where a casino floor is steps from the stage. That combination is definitional to Atlantic City’s entertainment identity: a rock gig and a gaming room sharing the same building on the same evening, neither one requiring a separate trip.

Writing from the Croatian market, the Rizik.hr Team notes that this pairing is exactly what defines the appeal. Atlantic City’s draw is how both things happen together in one night, one complex. Croatian fans who cannot make the transatlantic journey get a version of that same concert-night-plus-gaming combination delivered at home, and the editorial team points to Rizik as the platform that serves that audience locally.

“Making music can be so much fun. The creativity, being together, the three of us in a room. To be able to make a record, and then to tour and do it again. I feel really grateful.”

How a Hockey Sweatshirt Started a Band

Dogstar‘s origin sits somewhere between a pickup hockey game and a Los Angeles grocery aisle. Reeves, now 61, spotted drummer Robert Mailhouse, now 64, in 1991 wearing a Detroit Red Wings sweatshirt and asked if he knew of a nearby pickup game. A friendship followed, and so did a band.

“We lived in the same neighborhood, and we went to the same grocery store. And he was wearing a Detroit Red Wings sweatshirt. I asked him if he knew where there was a pickup game,” Reeves recalled. Mailhouse, for his part, went back to his Thursday-night skate in Burbank and told the group he thought he had found a goaltender. When Reeves showed up, Mailhouse said, he was genuinely good.

The early Dogstar featured singer Greg Miller, who fronted the band on a 1995 tour opening for Bon Jovi in Australia and New Zealand. Brett Domrose, now 57 and a film composer and former member of punk outfit the Nuns, replaced Miller before the debut album. Domrose and Mailhouse, who has acted in Days of Our Lives and CSI, completed a lineup that felt built to last — until it didn’t.

The band released Our Little Visionary in 1996 and followed it with Happy Ending in 2000. Two years later, Dogstar dissolved. Domrose was direct about why. “We’d been going through the meat grinder with different record labels. It wears you out,” he said. Reeves‘ career as Neo in the Matrix franchise, which launched in 1999, added another centrifugal force. There was no dramatic fallout among the musicians — just accumulated weight pulling the project apart.

Reeves as the Last Line of Defense

The pandemic created space that the three hadn’t had in years. Mailhouse described it plainly: “You rethink your life. You get together and find you have all this time and fewer distractions. That put us all in a good mood to get back and try some stuff.”

When they finally plugged back in, Reeves recalled, the connection was immediate. “We plugged in, and Robert picked up his sticks, and Brett put on his guitar… There it was.” Domrose had a similar reaction: “You slide into your old comfortable slippers. I felt it right away.”

What is notable about the reunion, and what distinguishes Dogstar from other actor-musician projects, is how deliberately Reeves stays out of the front. He has said he never harbored rock star ambitions beyond playing air guitar on a tennis racket. His role is bass and occasional backup vocals, and that is precisely where he wants to be.

Domrose reached for an analogy rooted in the same sport that brought the two men together. “You are the last line of defense as a bass player and a goalie. If the bass player drops out, you’ve got nothing.” Mailhouse extended it in a different direction: “He’s the melody of the team.”

All In Now and the Producer Who Shaped Its Sound

The band’s new album arrives with a sound the Inquirer describes as rugged yet melodic and grunge-adjacent, something that would sit comfortably alongside Bush, Stone Temple Pilots, and early Radiohead from the mid-1990s. That framing is not mere comparison shopping — it says something about where the band’s sensibility actually lives, regardless of the two-decade gap.

To record it, Dogstar landed producer Nick Launey, whose credits include Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Amyl and the Sniffers. Mailhouse was candid about the good fortune involved. “I mean all this work he’s done with Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and more recently, Amyl and the Sniffers. All these great bands, and now little old Dogstar. I think we got lucky.”

All In Now is actually Dogstar’s second album since the reunion. The band released Somewhere Between the Power Lines and the Palm Trees in 2023 and has since headlined shows and played festival dates across the United States and Europe. A third album is already on Reeves‘ mind.

Three Shows, One Film, and a Band With Forward Momentum

The Philadelphia-region run begins with the Atlantic City casino-resort date, followed by Union Transfer in Philadelphia on August 12 and the Hershey Theatre on August 18. The three venues represent a range — club, theater, and resort stage — that reflects a band operating with enough confidence to move through different formats without anchoring itself to any single one.

Reeves is also heading into production on a film called Shiver, directed by Tim Miller, in which he plays a Caribbean smuggler. He described it with characteristic economy: “Sharks… Time machine… Groundhog Day… Fun!” The film is due next year, meaning Dogstar’s current tour runs alongside a parallel career that shows no signs of quieting.

His words about the band, though, make clear where his investment sits. “This is our second album since we got back together. It’s exciting. So let’s make a third. Keep it going!”

The post DOGSTAR Brings KEANU REEVES Back to Bass for Philadelphia-Region Dates on New Album Tour appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

Enslaved will release their seventeenth studio album, Mið, on October 30 via Nuclear Blast Records. The lead single “Solar Will” is out now with a video, and the band have set their audience a genuine puzzle to go with it: vocalist Grutle Kjellson says the lyrics are built on a rivalry between two figures from Norse mythology, and he’s deliberately refusing to name them. Thirty-five years into one of the most consistently restless careers in heavy music, that’s about right.

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What Mið means

Start with the title, because it’s doing more work than most album titles.

Mið is Old Norse for “centre” or “middle.” That eth character — ð — is pronounced roughly like the “th” in “the,” so it comes out closer to “meeth” than “mid.”

The band frame the record around the concept of the axis: the middle, the origin, and the infinite reach of the present moment. A centre whose reach is infinite.

For a band that named their last two albums after Norse locations and deities — Utgard in 2020, Heimdal in 2023 — turning inward to the idea of the centre itself is a logical next step, and the closing track “I Miðju” translates roughly as “in the middle.” The album is bookended by the concept.

Which is very Enslaved. Nobody else in extreme metal builds records like philosophy theses and gets away with it.

The riddle in “Solar Will”

Here’s the fun part.

Kjellson says “Solar Will” explores archetypal conflict — in nature, in the cosmos, in mythology, and above all inside the human mind. In this case that conflict is expressed through one of the enduring rivalries in Norse mythology, embodied by two figures he describes as important but often somewhat overlooked.

And then he refuses to name them. Deliberately. He says readers familiar with the tradition will recognise them instantly, but he’d rather each person decode the lyrics themselves — arguing that inviting interpretation and cultivating wonder is one of the essential functions of lyric writing.

So let’s have a go, and we’ll flag this clearly as our reading rather than confirmed fact.

The strongest candidates are Sól and Sköll. Sól is the sun goddess who drives the chariot across the sky each day. Sköll is the wolf who chases her relentlessly, and who in some tellings finally catches and devours her at Ragnarök. It’s a pursuit with no resolution until the end of the world — which lines up precisely with what Kjellson says next: that the conclusion, or more accurately the absence of one, suggests chaos and dreams matter as much to human beings as the things we perceive through our senses. He says the song advocates not for resolution but for acceptance and assimilation of contradictory forces.

A pursuit that never resolves. A sun that is both giver and destroyer. Two figures central to the cosmology and consistently overlooked next to Odin and Thor.

That’s our answer. If you’ve got a better one, the comments are open — which is presumably exactly what he wanted.

Guitarist Ivar Bjørnson’s framing is more direct and a lot funnier. His point: sun cults have existed roughly forever, the sun is a nurturing and terrifying parent that grants and obliterates life, and an object of worship that awe-inspiring demands classic riffs, Bonham-esque drum grooves and blistering melodic flares. That’s what it sounds like to him.

The video was made by Kolibri Media, longtime collaborators based in Bergen.

Mið tracklist

1. Non-Being
2. I Am Ice (featuring Johan Sara Jr)
3. Solar Will
4. Mountain
5. Spirit Helper (featuring Kevin Kicking Woman)
6. Parting
7. Tales of Trees
8. I Miðju

The two guests nobody’s talking about

Look at tracks two and five again, because this is the most interesting thing on the tracklist and it’s getting almost no coverage.

Johan Sara Jr is a Sámi musician and composer, working in the joik tradition — the indigenous vocal music of the Sámi people of northern Scandinavia, one of the oldest continuous song traditions in Europe. Kevin Kicking Woman is a Blackfeet Nation musician from Montana.

Two indigenous vocal traditions from opposite sides of the northern hemisphere, on the same Norwegian progressive black metal record.

That’s not a novelty booking. Enslaved have spent thirty-five years working with ancestral tradition and pre-Christian belief systems as living material rather than costume, and bringing in artists whose own traditions run on the same principle is a genuinely thoughtful extension of it. On a record about the centre and the axis, having two voices from different edges of the world speak to each other is the entire thesis made audible.

Nobody else in this genre is thinking at that level.

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Thirty-five years of refusing to sit still

Some context for anyone who knows the name and not the catalogue.

Enslaved formed in Haugesund in 1991 — not Bergen, where they’re now based, and a distinction plenty of coverage gets wrong. Founders Ivar Bjørnson and Grutle Kjellson were teenagers. The Yggdrasill demo followed in 1992, the Hordanes Land mini-album in 1993, and their debut full-length Vikingligr Veldi in spring 1994.

They came out of the same Norwegian scene that produced Mayhem, Emperor and Darkthrone — and while that scene became infamous for reasons that had nothing to do with music, Enslaved were the ones quietly building something that would outlast all of it.

The evolution has been continuous rather than jarring. Early Viking-tinged black metal gave way to progressive song structures, clean vocals, seventies prog textures and psychedelic passages, without ever fully abandoning the ferocity underneath. It’s why they land on our ranking of the most influential black metal bands and the definitive Viking metal list simultaneously, and why they turn up in almost any serious conversation about where extreme metal actually went after 1995.

They’re arguably the band that made atmospheric extremity respectable rather than niche.

Bjørnson and Kjellson remain the only constant members. The current lineup is completed by Arve “Ice Dale” Isdal on guitar, Håkon Vinje on keyboards, and Iver Sandøy on drums.

Check Out – The Lost Archives: 13 Forgotten 2000s Metal Bands That Defined a Decade

Where to see them

Mið arrives October 30, and there’s already a significant date on the horizon beyond it.

Enslaved are confirmed for Maryland Deathfest 2027, running May 27–30 in Baltimore, where they’ll perform Vikingligr Veldi in its entirety — the 1994 debut, front to back.

There’s something neat about that. A band putting out their seventeenth album built around the concept of the centre, and simultaneously going back to play the first thing they ever made. Origin and present moment, which is more or less what the record is about.

TL;DR

• The album: Mið, out October 30, 2026 via Nuclear Blast Records. Eight tracks. Enslaved’s seventeenth studio album.
• The title: Old Norse for “centre” or “middle,” pronounced closer to “meeth” than “mid.” Closing track “I Miðju” translates as “in the middle.”
• The single: “Solar Will,” out now with a video by Bergen’s Kolibri Media.
• The riddle: Grutle Kjellson says the lyrics centre on a rivalry between two overlooked Norse figures, and deliberately refuses to name them. Our reading is Sól and Sköll.
• The guests: Sámi joik artist Johan Sara Jr on “I Am Ice,” and Blackfeet Nation musician Kevin Kicking Woman on “Spirit Helper.”
• The band: formed in Haugesund in 1991, now based in Bergen. Ivar Bjørnson and Grutle Kjellson are the only constant members across all seventeen albums.
• Coming up: Maryland Deathfest 2027, where they’ll play their 1994 debut Vikingligr Veldi in full.

FAQ

Seventeen albums deep and they’re still setting homework. Have a go at the riddle — who do you think the two figures in “Solar Will” are? Drop your answer in the comments. And keep it locked on the Loaded Radio stream — follow Loaded Radio for daily rock and metal news.

The post Enslaved Announce New Album Mið, And The Single Comes With A Riddle appeared first on Loaded Radio.

The band previously encountered some technical errors amid their initial launch of the track yesterday.

The post Ghost Launch “Umbra” Live Video From Their Impending New Concert Film ‘2 Big To Rig’ appeared first on Theprp.com.

Shygirl is back with her first new music of 2026. Last year, she was busy with the star-studded Club Shy Room 2, and earlier this year she was on the screen, appearing in Charli XCX’s The Moment and Madonna’s Confessions II – The Film. The British star is kicking off a new era with today’s new single “Alyse.” It’s an abrasive, ominous club cut written and produced with Karma Kid and JD Reid. Colleen, who shared Libres antes del final earlier this year, helped compose the track. It comes with an intense music video developed from an original story and script by Shygirl and George Smale and directed by Francesco Loy Bell and Oliver Bell. Watch below.

The post Shygirl – “Alyse” appeared first on Stereogum.

Toronto metalcore veterans Dawn Vally have weathered the storm and returned stronger than ever. Following a turbulent few years that nearly brought the band to […]

The post Alive & Kicking: DAWN VALLY Talks EP Near Death Experience appeared first on Metal-Rules.com.

Filmed In Sao Paulo last September.

The post Bruce Dickinson Shares Music Video For His Updated Version Of “Change Of Heart” appeared first on Theprp.com.

Foo Fighters played Huntington Bank Field in Cleveland on Monday night, August 11, 2026, running through nearly three hours of material in front of a not-quite-full stadium. Dave Grohl, 57, led a band he has fronted for 31 years — and did so with the particular weight of a northeastern Ohio native returning to his own corner of the country.

Stadium Scale and the Digital Culture Behind a Night Like This

According to cleveland.com, the show stretched close to three hours inside a major NFL venue — the kind of event whose production infrastructure and cultural footprint extend well beyond the crowd in the seats. The Geek.hr Team, a Croatian technology and geek-culture editorial desk, covers exactly this intersection: the sound engineering, the screen walls, the catwalk staging geometries, and the online fan communities that record, stream, and collectively relive a stadium night long after the last note fades. Those phenomena — the machinery of live rock at stadium scale and the digital ecosystems that distribute and preserve it — represent the beat that GEEK HR covers for readers who track how technology reshapes live entertainment.

“Do you like rock n’ roll music? Well, tonight we’re gonna kick your ass with rock and roll!”

That early crowd address from Grohl set the register for the evening. What followed was as much a cultural event as a concert — one whose resonances a technology-oriented desk would find as instructive as any rock fan.

Grohl’s Ohio Roots Give the Night Personal Weight

Grohl is a native of Warren, Ohio, a northeastern Ohio city not far from Cleveland, and the trip back carried meaning well beyond the performance. During the run-up to the show, he visited his grandparents’ graves in Warren and Niles for the first time in 26 years, remarking onstage that the entire experience had been meaningful. The grave visits were not schtick. They were the private counterpart to the public night.

The homecoming extended to regional comedy. That same morning, Grohl caught a Cleveland-area tribute band called The Foo Fathers on Fox 8 local news. He brought it up from the stage, calling it “The weirdest morning I’ve ever had!” and crediting the group with “Taking Dad rock to a whole new level.” The anecdote landed because it was local and verifiable — a detail that only works in the specific city you’re actually standing in. He also dedicated “Times Like These” to fathers in the crowd, asking fans to turn and embrace their dads in the moment. The dad thread, comic and sincere at once, ran through the night.

A Hit-First Setlist Built Around Omission as Much as Inclusion

The band opened with four consecutive rock radio staples — “All My Life,” “The Pretender,” “Times Like These,” and “Rope” — a sequencing choice that reads less like a warm-up than a declaration. No gradual build, no deep cut to test the room. The crowd was handed the biggest cards first.
What was absent mattered too.

Foo Fighters‘ 2026 album Your Favorite Toy did not appear anywhere in the set, despite being the band’s most recent record. The decision to leave new material off suggests a deliberate calculation: in a stadium still finding its footing emotionally after years of loss and lineup turbulence, familiar songs carry more shared weight than new ones.

Grohl kept younger fans oriented through banter that acknowledged the generational gap directly. Before playing “Big Me,” whose music video was a fixture on MTV’s “120 Minutes,” he gestured at the MTV-era references he’d been deploying and told the younger section of the crowd: “Kids, I know this sounds like Sanskrit, but it actually happened.” Then, practically, he told them to look sideways: “Look at your dad, and do what that 50-something-year-old (person) is doing!” The crowd mechanics were informal but precise — Grohl has been doing this long enough to know which levers to pull and when.

Memorial Threads Woven Into the Show’s Structure

The most structurally distinctive choice of the night was the band-introduction sequence. Rather than a conventional solo showcase, each member played a fragment from a former band. Guitarist Chris Shiflett drew from No Use For A Name‘s “Invincible.” Keyboardist Rami Jaffee recreated The Wallflowers‘ “One Headlight.” Pat Smear offered The Germs‘ “Manimal.” The format acknowledged history without sentimentalizing it — each member arrives from somewhere, and the band is the sum of those arrivals.

The memorial thread ran deeper. “Aurora,” one of the set’s deeper cuts, was dedicated to Taylor Hawkins, the drummer who died in 2022 and whose absence has reshaped the band’s emotional public identity ever since. The dedication was quiet and direct, without elaboration. The closing piece carried the most weight of the night. “The Teacher,” a 10-minute prog-rock-adjacent track drawn from the band’s grief-fueled 11th album “But Here We Are,” ended the set.

Grohl dedicated it to his late mother Virginia, named her hometown of Boardman, and credited Ohio specifically with being a central force in sustaining the band across 31 years. The closer grounded the entire night in place and loss — not in spectacle or catalog dominance, but in the specific geography of grief that brought Grohl back to northeastern Ohio to stand in front of a not-quite-full stadium and mean every word of it.

The post FOO FIGHTERS Bring a Three-Hour Rock Homecoming to Cleveland’s Huntington Bank Field appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

Norwegian progressive black metal pioneers ENSLAVED will release their 17th studio album, Mið, on October 30, 2026, through Nuclear Blast Records. The announcement arrives alongside “Solar Will,” a new single accompanied by an official video created by longtime Bergen-based collaborators Kolibri Media. Watch the official “Solar Will” video Stream “Solar Will” Derived from an Old […]

Source

ALEX GRYCZANOWSKI | Go Venue Magazine

Big Thief delivered an ethereal set at the Val Air Ballroom on Aug. 17, 2026, in Des Moines, Iowa, that had the crowd literally stomping their feet and begging for more. The audience came alive when Big Thief came on stage and everyone had their own moments to the music, whether it be holding their partner, screaming lyrics or simply swaying and enjoying the moment.

Big Thief is an indie folk band composed of vocalist-guitarist Adrianne Lenker, guitarist Buck Meek and drummer James Krivchenia. The band was also joined by their touring bassist, Joshua Crumbly, who was credited for bass in Big Thief’s latest album, Double Infinity.

The band was accompanied by opener Ben LaMar Gay, whose set was vibrant and uncategorizable. Though the genre is near impossible to name, the long, stark songs were reminiscent of a hybrid of jazz and folk, most notable in the drums and guitar played throughout Gay and his homies’ jam session. Gay utilized various onomatopoeias, a trumpet with a plunger mute and bells to build a creative ambiance.

Music is a form of art, but Gay’s performance and composition was more than the art itself. It felt as though Gay was painting a canvas with his music and creative lighting decisions throughout his set. It almost felt as though the music Gay and his band made grew brighter toward the end, as if “making a sound in a dark world,” Gay said, was a sound that brought light to life in a dark world.

Big Thief’s setlist has been different each stop of the Somersault Slide 360 Tour. The group walked on stage ablazing, opening with “God is Good,” a Vic Chesnutt cover. The entire crowd intently watched the band perform. It felt peaceful in the Val Air Ballroom.

Lenker’s voice shined throughout the evening, with a sort of Midwestern drawl to her range that felt just right, especially for a show in Iowa. The venue’s reverb built upon Lenker’s vocals as they rang out and it had the audience in a chokehold. Some fans were shouting “I love you Adrianne!” between songs, hoping to get her attention with their praise.

Of course, the band had incredible moments on stage. There were songs where each member of the band had a beautiful, soulful solo on their respective instrument. There were a few songs where distortion was used on guitars. With the band’s heavily acoustic-based sound, it was exhilarating to hear their incorporation of it in their sound.

When Big Thief played “Vampire Empire” the crowd sang along. In certain parts of the song, such as the chorus, Lenker stopped singing and let the crowd take over instead. It felt as though every single person was singing along with their entire heart. It was not only a beautiful performance, but a beautiful intimate moment with the crowd too.

Big Thief walked off the stage and the audience wanted more. The crowd clapped and begged for one more song. They grew so desperate that they started stomping on the ballroom floor, and it echoed like thunder throughout the venue until the band came back on stage to perform “Masterpiece” and “Incomprehensible.”

What’s most impressive about this tour is Big Thief’s set length: nearly 2 hours. It is incredible to see Big Thief play a set that long, considering that they perform nightly and also switch up the setlist every night. Big Thief should be applauded that their energy never noticeably wavered throughout the night.

If anyone has the chance to see Big Thief, they should seize the opportunity. Their performance brought the entire crowd together and had them begging for more. Their indie folk songs that are packed with an emotional punch need to be heard live to feel their impact.

Big Thief’s setlist included the following songs:
God is Good (Vic Chesnutt cover) | Rock and Sing | Born for Loving You | Sadness as a Gift (Adrianne Lenker) | Trade Tomorrow | 6-7-8-9 She’s Fine | Spud Infinity | Contact | Flower of Blood | Simulation Swarm | Christmas Day | Not | Shark Smile | Vampire Empire | Mary | Love So High | Cattails | Spatchcock Chickenshit Bingo | Masterpiece | Incomprehensible

Big Thief

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Ben Lamar Gay

[See image gallery at www.govenuemagazine.com] All images © Alex Gryczanowski

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The post Emotional Lyrics, Intimate Moments Highlight Big Thief at Iowa’s Val Air Ballroom appeared first on Go Venue Magazine.