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Florida’s WAGE WAR recently announced their new album Landfall, which is out digitally October 9 via Fearless Records. Now, they reveal God Complex. God Complex proves why the Florida band has ascended the metal ranks to become one of the most talked about bands in the genre. It’s another sonically relentless anthem featuring gnashing and […]

TSIM management today confirmed that the giant puppets last seen at the band’s destructive expedition across the seatbacks of the Sydney Opera House will once more grace an Australian stage. The puppets will make what is likely to be their last appearance ever, this Saturday at Melbourne’s Forum Theatre, effecting the third totally different show […]

KYLE MILLION | Go Venue Magazine

Legendary Canadian band Our Lady Peace hit southeast Kansas on Saturday, October 3, 2026, to entertain generations of fans eager to grab merch and relive memories. Ironically, in their 30 years of making music and touring, they had never performed in this area, but locals were thrilled that Kansas Crossing, located in Pittsburg, booked them for this tour. The Coral, the venue’s name, is a standing-room-only space similar to the Granada and other mid-sized stages, with the added feature of an ADA-accessible area along the wall stage right. While more venues should embrace accessibility like this, there’s always room to improve so everyone can enjoy the show and have a clear view from a wheelchair or seat.

They kicked things off strong with “Sound the Alarm” and “One Man Army,” as Rain Maida’s vocals were echoed word-for-word by fans who had cherished and memorized the lyrics over the years. Rain’s powerful performance included stories about his bandmates, like how they made sacrifices to boost the band’s success and popularity. Though not an original member, Duncan Coutts—who first appeared in the “Starseed” music video—has been with the band ever since. Like many long-standing bands, lineup changes have happened for various reasons, whether artistic or health-related, but Our Lady Peace has managed to keep and even grow their fan base despite the challenges of the music industry.

All in all, it was an incredible show where old and new fans rocked out together, having a blast—exactly what live music is all about.

[See image gallery at www.govenuemagazine.com] All images © Kyle Million

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The post CONCERT REVIEW: Our Lady Peace at Kansas Crossing in Pittsburg, KS appeared first on Go Venue Magazine.

…O sun, that healest all distempered vision, thou dost content me so, when thou resolvest,
that doubting pleases me no less than knowing! -Dante Alighieri, Divine Comedy

Golden Apes have spent more than twenty years making music for people who think a bass guitar should sound slightly dangerous, a baritone ought to carry bad news with dignity, and every decent chorus deserves at least one guitar line large enough to knock over the furniture. On The Sun Came Up Tremendously, the Berlin band sounds completely at home with that assignment. Ten songs move between post-punk, dark wave, gothic rock, dreampop, and bruised alternative rock, yet the record never feels like a display cabinet of influences. Golden Apes know this country too well for tourism. They have lived here.

There is plenty of history in these songs, of course. You can hear The Cure in the open space around certain guitar lines, Chameleons in the upward sweep of others, Cocteau Twins in the gauzier passages, and the severe romantic machinery of Clan of Xymox when the keyboards begin closing in. White Lies, Interpol, Lowlife, and The Horrors, drift through the bloodline. Yet Golden Apes have reached the point where influence is less a matter of borrowing than instinct. Twenty-plus years will do that to a band. Eventually your record collection gets absorbed into your nervous system.

The Sun Came Up Tremendously follows 2024’s Our Ashes at the End of the Day as the second installment in a planned trilogy, with material written across 2024 and 2025 and recorded at Thommy Hein Studios in Berlin between late 2025 and early 2026. Thommy Hein also contributes guitar, joining vocalist and keyboardist Peer Lebrecht, guitarists Maximilian Hennig and Stephan Schoenfeld, bassist Christian Lebrecht, and drummer Salomon Bosse. The production favors size without polishing away the pressure inside these songs. Basslines keep pushing forward, drums give the record a stern physical gait, and the guitars are allowed to bloom, bruise, and occasionally swallow the room.

Farewell begins with a plaintive guitar that sounds as if it’s emerging from a dream, and an open space that immediately calls The Chameleons to mind, though The Horrors’ later grandeur also shows in the way the arrangement keeps adding height. It is a lovely opening, sad without collapsing into self-pity, and expansive without turning into marble-statue rock. Peer Lebrecht sings as though he has already accepted whatever the song is grieving, which somehow makes the ache sharper. By the time the rhythm section settles in, the track feels less like a goodbye than the long walk away from one.

The Light (Inside Us) comes on harder. The guitars widen, Christian Lebrecht’s bass digs in, and the verses carry a conversational quality before the chorus breaks open into a shoegaze-heavy rush. The seduction of scale takes center stage: the chorus is huge enough to make a ceiling seem temporarily optional, yet the band keeps enough dirt in the guitars to prevent grandeur from becoming ceremony. This is music reaching for the upper rows while keeping both boots on the club floor.

Milk and Poison turns inward and drops the temperature. Its opening feels like ripples on water with dream-pop textures, though the song soon settles into an anthemic ballad buoyed by these currents, sailing on broad synth pads, acoustic accents, surging guitars, and Peer’s low, expressive voice. He has one of those voices that can make a grocery list sound vaguely incriminating, and Golden Apes wisely avoid burying it beneath unnecessary decoration. The arrangement gives him room, then closes around him in slow degrees.

Resistance is where the record’s architecture comes into sharpest focus. A resonant guitar figure opens the track, answered by a low keyboard tone, as hi-hats hiss at the edges and the bass builds steady pressure. The arrangement grows heavier until the guitars reach the emotional scale of mid-eighties gothic rock. Peer remains composed as the band swells around him, and that restraint gives the song its authority. Near the center, a clean, melodic guitar solo arrives with almost startling simplicity, offering a brief clearing before the vocal returns with greater weight. No pyrotechnics are needed; the song already knows where its gravity lies. At intervals, the drums break into splashes and the rhythm pulls back, leaving more air around Peer’s euphoric delivery. The measured bass, sober guitar tone, and baritone gravity recall Scottish cult band Lowlife, while the surrounding textures remain recognizably Golden Apes.

Helion heads toward the same terrain as Clan of Xymox and The Chameleons, with traces of Joy Division in its resigned vocals and the stern drive of its rhythm section. An emotional barrage of drums and surging guitars carries the song forward, giving its sense of exhaustion an almost overwhelming physical force. There is something perversely satisfying about how controlled it remains amid all that turbulence. Plenty of bands mistake gloom for permission to wallow; Golden Apes keep pushing through it. It is the sort of song you want to hear live, feel in your chest, and carry with you on the walk home after everybody else has disappeared.

Where the River Ran slows the pace and brings Peer’s baritone into Nick Cave territory. The drums begin with a plodding military tattoo, giving the song a processional character, while guitar and synth gradually stretch outward until the arrangement takes on a shoegaze breadth. The transition works because the band allows it to happen patiently. What begins in discipline ends in something far less contained.

Evelyn (One Day) opens with a long sigh, which is about as efficient a piece of scene-setting as anybody could ask for. The resemblance to Lowlife grows even stronger here, recalling the Scottish band at their most wistful, thoughtful, and romantic. Dream-pop synth textures surround Peer’s voice, while dramatic splashes of guitar and percussion accent the song’s tender emotion, not unlike The Cure’s “Push.” Once again, Golden Apes take the form of a ballad and keep expanding it until the walls seem to move outward. The song swells like the ocean, its quieter passages gathering strength before euphoric surges of guitar and drums break across the arrangement. Their fondness for large choruses could become ridiculous in less experienced hands, but the rhythm section keeps the drama tethered to muscle.

Radiation opens with a steady drumbeat and dirgeful tones before Peer’s rich, deep baritone bellows with unusual force, almost thunderous without losing definition. The chiming guitars and rhythm section pull back to give him room, though the melodic bassline remains palpable, felt in the heart and bones. With the song’s titular refrain, a surge of guitars seems to radiate toward the fingertips, giving its emotional release a physical reach. The drums then quicken in anticipation, and the guitars sweep in sustained arcs before the refrain returns, each repetition gathering strength from the space the band leaves around the voice.

City Walls slows everything again, returning to the Cave-like gravity heard earlier. The drums drag with deliberate weight while a manic hi-hat keeps scratching at the surface, and eerie female backing vocals add an uneasy human presence around Peer’s lead. The song feels boxed in by design. Space exists, but none of it seems comfortable. Every instrument appears to occupy its own corner while the room keeps shrinking.

Then comes Dreams (Gone By), opening with strange industrial textures before a weighty rhythm section and eerie synth tones take control, recalling London After Midnight’s Kiss. The percussion has real physical heft, but the gloom gradually recedes as the song opens into the brighter dream-pop romance of Modern English and Lowlife. Golden Apes carry that change with the emotional swell established throughout the album, letting the arrangement expand without losing the force of its darker beginnings. A brief pause for a wistful guitar chime offers some breathing room before the gothic dance rhythm returns, subtly brighter now, and the song surges again.

As a closer, it gives the album one last change in texture, moving from industrial unease toward romantic release while retaining the emotional weight of the previous nine tracks. By this point, the record has passed through goth, post-punk, dreampop, dark wave, and broad alternative rock without sounding indecisive.

Golden Apes can write a severe club track, a huge guitar chorus, a graveyard ballad, or a slow piece that sounds built for stained glass and bad decisions, and somehow Peer Lebrecht’s voice keeps the record unified. His baritone carries longing, isolation, regret, and the occasional flash of release without turning every lyric into a public execution. There is drama here, plenty of it, but the band understands proportion. Even at their biggest, they leave enough space for the songs to breathe.

The Sun Came Up Tremendously is also the work of a band with very little interest in pretending they discovered any of these styles yesterday. Golden Apes’ long touring history, including appearances at Wave-Gotik-Treffen, Castle Party, and Murder of Crows, plus stages shared with The Chameleons, Pink Turns Blue, And Also the Trees, She Past Away, Whispering Sons, TRAITRS, Then Comes Silence, and others, has given them the practical education that comes from watching songs survive outside the studio.

The title may promise sunrise, though nobody should expect birds chirping outside a kitchen window. Golden Apes prefer their light complicated, filtered through regret, desire, bad choices, and the stubborn suspicion that survival can occasionally be worth the inconvenience of a journey through hell and back. The only way to reach dawn, after all, is through the night.

The Sun Came Up Tremendously is out now through Icy Cold Records. Listen to the album below and order here.

Catch the band live on the following dates:

Follow Golden Apes:

• Official Website
• Bandcamp
• Instagram
• Facebook
• YouTube

The post Berlin Post-Punk Outfit Golden Apes Climb From the Depths Toward the Light on “The Sun Came Up Tremendously” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Photos thanks to Jake Miller, Austin Cooper, Jordan Pantoja Photography, Who Is Say, Steve Thrasher, Priscilla Rodriguez, Dan Virchow, Ray Duker, Sam Shapiro Media, The Grainy Perspective Welcome to HEAVY’s photo gallery from Aftershock Festival 2026, capturing four days of absolute sonic warfare at Discovery Park in Sacramento, California. As West Coast’s ultimate destination for […]

Since their formation in 1979 London’s post-punk pioneers Killing Joke have established themselves as one of the finest cult acts this country has ever produced.

They’ve evolved from their early gritty punk and dub mash up, to touch on industrial metal, goth melodrama, slick new wave pop and much, much more over their time together, in the process inspiring everyone from Metallica to Nirvana to LCD Soundsystem.

It’s been a wild ride – to our knowledge, no other band fled to Iceland during the ’80s in the hope of escaping the apocalypse – but, the line-up of the band which released their self-titled debut album in 1980 – Geordie Walker on guitar, Youth on bass, ‘Big’ Paul Ferguson on drums and Jaz Coleman on vocals – was the same which released their most recent record, Pylon, in 2015.

Sadly, with the death of Geordie Walker in November 2023, it’s unlikely we will hear anything more from one of the world’s most singular bands.

Here’s Killing Joke’s back catalogue re-reviewed, rated and ranked.

15. Outside The Gate (1988)

The only Killing Joke album that doesn’t really sound like Killing Joke, Outside the Gate is the kind of album that could be seen as a nostalgic little time capsule of the kind of slick ’80s pop that conjures up images of neon lights and rolled up sleeve jackets if it had been released by anyone else.

But Killing Joke have so much material that has aged brilliantly, so many albums that stand up to scrutiny today, that the OTT, overly emoting synth pop on display here is lacking in comparison. Outside the Gate isn’t terrible, it’s just a bit odd, thin, cheesy and throwaway in such a fantastic back catalogue.

Buy Outside The Gate

14. Brighter Than A Thousand Suns (1986)

Certainly not as glaring a ‘WTF?’ as Outside the Gate, Brighter Than A Thousand Suns is arguably an even less interesting artefact in the Killing Joke vaults just by being, you know, a little bit dull.

This album avoids taking the wooden spoon purely thanks to the inclusion of the excellent Wintergardens, which really shows up how uninspired Killing Joke sound throughout the rest of the record. The more melodic era of the band, which produced some classic material, plateaued here.

Buy Brighter Than A Thousand Suns

13. Fire Dances (1983)

Killing Joke would quite drastically change their sound in the aftermath of this, their fourth album, and listening to Fire Dances it feels like a necessary change. You can tell here that the formula they had been leaning on heavily in the early part of the career was starting to creek a bit.

Opener The Gathering has become iconic, and the strut of Dominator is cool, but Paul Raven’s first album with the band is a very one-dimensional record from a group who are capable of so much better.

Buy Fire Dances

12. Hosannas from the Basement of Hell (2006)

Within two years of the release of Killing Joke’s 12th studio album, the original line-up of the band would be back together. The passing of bassist Paul Raven in 2007 would inspire the reunion, and it’s a shame that the last album he played on would be such an average affair.

Hosannas… is without doubt one of the heaviest KJ albums, and opening song This Tribal Antidote is a brilliantly crushing way to start a record, but it soon becomes exhausting, largely due to it being fairly one paced.

Buy Hosannas from the Basement of Hell

11. MMXII (2012)

Two years’ prior, the reunited original line-up of Killing Joke had released one of their finest albums. They couldn’t follow it up with anything as essential though.

MMXII is thematically heavy, with Jaz Coleman musing on the paranoia inspired by the prospect of the end of the world, and opener Pole Shift is an 8-minute plus epic that ranges from deep synth dub to raucous thrash riffing. But, overall, the songs that made Absolute Dissent such a success were replaced with a fair bit of bluster, and nothing truly memorable or dynamic enough to live up to its predecessor.

Buy MMXII

10. Revelations (1982)

This is where it starts getting difficult. Revelations is placed this low not because it is a bad record, but more due to the fact that the rest of Killing Joke’s albums are all very good indeed, and the quartet’s third long-player is ultimately more of the same as we’d had before.

There are a few absolute ragers here in the shape of the singles Empire Song and Chop Chop, surely one of their weirdest ever singles, and nothing present is bad. But it was starting to feel like Killing Joke had nailed their sound and were becoming slightly too comfortable with it.

Buy Revelations

9. Democracy (1996)

Slated at the time, Democracy really deserves to be re-evaluated. It’s an odd album, and certainly, considering the UK was at the height of its Brit-pop obsession, its dense, weird, warped grooves were totally out of step with the zeitgeist of the time.

But even though it wouldn’t be considered one of Killing Joke’s finest moments, the stomping opener Savage Freedom, the eight-minute death disco of Aeon and the psychedelic chaos of Prozac People all sound unique, and uniquely excellent, all these years later.

Buy Democracy

8. Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions (1990)

With former PiL/Ministry drummer Martin Atkins powering the group from the back, Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions is an incredibly important album in the Killing Joke discography that rarely gets the credit it deserves.

Yes, it’s rather low on this list, but it may well be one of the band’s most important releases, as they ditched the lightweight synth pop sound of the late ’80’s and adopted the apocalyptically angry sound of industrial metal. You can hear the influence of Ministry on songs such as the scathing Money is Not Our God and Intravenous, and they sound great.

Buy Extremities, Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions

7. What’s THIS For…! (1981)

Having to follow a truly classic debut album is a challenge for any band. And while What’s THIS For…! undeniably falls short of Killing Joke’s startling debut, there are some incredible post-punk songs here. For proof, just check out the opening one-two of The Fall of Because, with its tag-teaming guitar and drum attack, and Tension, which, with its marching drum beat and popping dub bass, would be in the very highest echelons of a list of the band’s greatest ever songs.

Not everything here scales the same heights, but the likes of Follow The Leaders and Butcher play their part in making this a worthy follow-up to a great debut.

Buy What’s THIS For…!

6. Pylon (2015)

The most recent Killing Joke album, Pylon got far closer to recapturing former glories than 2012’s MMXII did. There is all manner of harsh, white noise all over Pylon, but the hooks that make Killing Joke soar were back in spades.

Opener Autonomous Zone is a pounding, driving banger, New Cold War is packed full of evil, grinding dread, Euphoria is a beautiful, dreamy pop song covered in filth and Big Buzz is as close to an arena rock song as they have ever managed. This deep into their career, for Killing Joke to release a record this good is a phenomenal achievement.

Buy Pylon

5. Killing Joke (2003)

The Dave Grohl one. After 7 years of inactivity, Killing Joke returned with everyone’s favourite Foo Fighter, a long-time fan, plonking his bottom onto their drum stool. The result is one of the most urgent-sounding albums of the band’s career, with Grohl’s instantly identifiable style driving the riffs of Geordie Walker in a thrilling way. Just listen to the garage squeal of Blood on Your Hands for evidence.

The inclusion of songwriting credits from Gang of Four’s Andy Gill, alongside Grohl’s contribution, make this the most singular sounding Killing Joke record. The two men helped nudge the Londoners into garage rock territory, which is something you never knew you needed, but you really do. A true one off.

Buy Killing Joke

4. Pandemonium (1994)

At a time where Ministry, Fear Factory and Nine Inch Nails were considered the cutting edge of heavy music, Killing Joke proved that they were more than capable of keeping up with the industrial metal heavyweights.

Pandemonium is a very, very, ’90’s sounding album, but you cannot argue with the grinding, pounding beats that the band produce here, and the fantastically deranged performance by Jaz Coleman, who barks and coughs his way through Exorcism, delivers a shamanic warble on the excellent Black Moon and even adds some much-needed melody to the haunting Pleasures of the Flesh.
Buy Pandemonium

3. Night Time (1985)

The one featuring the biggest hit of their career, the fantastically swooping Love Like Blood, but there is plenty more thrills to discover on Night Time. The juddering title track has an evil Depeche Mode vibe to it, the sleazy glam goth of Kings and Queens is instantly danceable, and the riff to Eighties is so good that it ended up being stolen by Nirvana for Come As You Are.

The main reason that Night Time sits so high in this list is that it is the first time Killing Joke really managed to tame their sound enough to fill it with real pop nous, without losing any of the existential dread that defines them.

Buy Night Time

2. Absolute Dissent (2010)

The band’s first album with the original line up for 28 years is an incredible return to form. Killing Joke had been on decent form before the return of Youth, but the bassist’s return seemed to revitalise everyone involved in the band, leading to this superb record.

The title track is as heavy as anything they had ever done, but the amazingly catchy synth throb of lead single European Super State and the beautiful dub lament of Ghost of Ladbrook Grove show that Killing Joke had remembered that their greatest strength lies in the depth and dexterity of their music. One of rock’s finest comebacks.

Buy Absolute Dissent

1. Killing Joke (1980)

Not just Killing Joke’s best album, one of the best debut albums ever made, and one of the most definitively British records of all time.

The smoggy, industrialised, Thatcherite United Kingdom is perfectly captured in sonic form here; angry, claustrophobic, raw and uncomfortable, Killing Joke seemed to ingest the restless feeling of the working class and turn it into a new and threatening musical style.

Thanks to Metallica, The Wait might be the most famous song on the album (although their version pale in comparison to the original), but every track on Killing Joke throbs and seethes in a wonderful way. Change, Wardance, Requiem, Bloodsport, all are essential listening for any fan of thought provoking, heavy alternative sounds.

An undeniable classic.

Buy Killing Joke

A trailer for Wind Of Change, the long-awaited biopic about German rock legends Scorpions, has finally been released.

The two-and-a-half-minute clip, which features Alexander Dreymon as guitarist Rudolf Schenker, Ludwig Trepte as singer Klaus Meine, Ed Speleers as guitarist Matthias Jabs and Luke Brandon Field as drummer Herman Rarebell, emerges a year after a teaser was released, and 18 months after production commenced.

It is believed that the delay to the release – which was originally scheduled to coincide with the band’s 60th anniversary late last year – is due to the proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount Skydance. The film will now be released in German cinemas on January 28, 2027.

“Lots of music movies only focus on the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll,” Klaus Meine told Classic Rock in 2025. “But this one has another side too. It would be crazy to try and look at sixty years of the Scorpions’ career, so it follows us from the early days up until this very special moment in time [referring to the release of the 1990 single that gives the film its title].”

Wind Of Change also stars Dominic West as the band’s controversial manager, Doc McGhee. West is most famous for his roles as Detective Jimmy McNulty in the HBO series The Wire, and as Charles, Prince of Wales, in Netflix’s The Crown.

The new trailer features a dubbed German voice track, while the original teaser was in English. Both are embedded below.

Last month, Scorpions announced that their remaining 2026 shows – including a residency at Planet Hollywood in Las Vegas – were being postponed due to “unforeseen circumstances.” The affected shows will now take place in 2027. Full dates below.

Scorpions: 2027 tour dates

Aug 27: Zapopan Auditorio Telmex, Mexico
Aug 30: Ciudad de México Palacio de los Deportes, Mexico
Sep 02: Monterrey Auditorio Banamex, Mexico

Sep 09: Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, NV
Sep 11: Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, NV
Sep 14: Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, NV
Sep 16: Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, NV
Sep 18: Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, NV
Sep 21: Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, NV
Sep 23: Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, NV
Sep 25: Las Vegas Planet Hollywood, NV

Find Scorpions tickets.

Tonight was going to be a “box tick” for me, having never seen Magnum before. Which is staggering given that they’ve been going since the year before I was born. Before them, though, a band I had never heard of before. Grand Slam was formed by Phil Lynott in 1984 , played some gigs and folded … Continue reading Gig Review: Magnum / Grand Slam – Garage, Glasgow (2nd October 2026)

Phil Collins has been making the media rounds in the lead-up to his induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame as a solo artist next month. (He’s already in there as a member of Genesis.) The latest stop on the circuit was Friday’s episode of Piers Morgan Uncensored, during which he discussed Donald Trump, Oasis, Taylor Swift, Paul McCartney, and more.

The post Phil Collins Weighs In On “Nasty” Donald Trump, Has An Idea For A Song About America Called “Fat People With Guns” appeared first on Stereogum.

In August, Olivia Rodrigo raised $20 million for women’s rights with her inaugural Daisy Chain Fields festival. Now, the pop star is the latest musician to condemn Cornell amid the rape lawsuit that involves seven Cornell fraternity brothers allegedly drugging and gang raping a young woman in 2024.

The post Olivia Rodrigo Slams Cornell And “Every Institution Who Protects Rapists” appeared first on Stereogum.