Seattle pop-punks EEP-OOP! will be releasing their sophomore LP Choices next Friday, September 11th on Mom’s Basement Records. The Dying Scene Record Radar has received an exclusive transmission containing never before seen photos of the vinyl color variants!
Check ’em out and listen to a few tracks from the record down below. And set a reminder to head over to the Mom’s Basement webstore next Friday at 12pm eastern to grab your copies of this bad ass record! End transmission.
Brooklyn alt-rock four-piece Sorry Darling, featuring Liz Wagner Biro (vocals/guitar), Steve Bailey (vocals/guitar), Jackie Land (bass), and Dan Holodak (drums)—was born in 2022 out of a shared obsession with big guitars and massive, singalong hooks. The band originally grew from the songwriting union of Wagner Biro (Wild Yawp, The Significant Looks, Blaze Pascal) and Bailey (The Sharp Shadows), who bonded over the gritty swagger of The Libertines and the lush, wistful pop of HAIM.
With the addition of Land (a reformed San Francisco metalhead) on bass and Seattle transplant Holodak on drums, the lineup clicked immediately. Drawing inspiration from powerhouse acts like The Pretenders, The Cranberries, The Beths, and Beach Bunny, Sorry Darling strikes a sweet spot between classic power-pop and modern alt-rock, fueled by infectious guitar leads and deeply relatable lyricism.
“Like You” tackles the way a relationship can erode someone’s sense of self and capability. Its accompanying music video follows a pageant queen who places second and wakes up questioning the life she’s built.
It’s an energetic, deep and intense song, amazingly performed by the band with a perfect production for the genre. Check out the super catchy chorus and the very inspired guitar solo at the end of the song. The single is the second offering from their upcoming EP Mirrors. Give the video a go (very well made as well) and follow the band if you like what you hear.
https://open.spotify.com/artist/1H4LxUS94jnx99C6D0EKtLNo other local band could contain Steve Harris’ ambition and songwriting. After cycling through such East London rockers as Gypsy’s Kiss and Smiler, and having his ideas be deemed too complicated by his bandmates, the bassist set out on his own in 1975 and started the most consistently larger-than-life-sounding group in heavy metal history. Iron Maiden’s twirling guitar harmonies, galloping basslines and theatrical performances set a standard for pageantry that many have imitated, but none have emulated. Now celebrating their 50th anniversary with a book, a documentary and their globe-trotting Run For Your Lives world tour, they’re still growing bigger and bigger.
After a number of early lineup changes, 1980 debut Iron Maiden established the cornerstones of their sound, as well as their imagery: undead mascot Eddie glared out from the sleeve, with subsequent artworks later transporting him to the far future, Ancient Egypt and plenty of spots in between. 1982’s The Number Of The Beast introduced current, fan-favourite lead singer Bruce Dickinson and his piercing wail. His voice proved to be the final piece of the puzzle, as the album marked their first of many UK chart-toppers.
Maiden spent the remainder of the 80s growing in stature, touring relentlessly while releasing such classics as Powerslave and Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son, whereas the 90s brought multiple setbacks: the rawer-sounding No Prayer For The Dying was a critical dud, then Dickinson left in ’93. Blaze Bayley took his place at the mic, and while he took to the job with gusto, the material around this time was far from their best. Dickinson, along with 80s guitarist/co-songwriter Adrian Smith, returned in ’99.
Since the reunion, Maiden have yet to find the roof to their popularity. Each tour has filled larger venues, and their career came full circle in summer 2025: they headlined the 68,000-capacity London Stadium, a stone’s throw from where Steve Harris grew up, half a century after they started. As the band prepare to release vinyl reissues of their 80s and early 90s catalogue (out December 11), join Metal Hammer on a journey through their 17 studio albums.
It may feature Maiden’s only number-one single, the enjoyably daft Bring Your Daughter To The Slaughter, but the follow-up to the mighty Seventh Son From A Seventh Son now sounds like a misguided stab at getting back to basics. There are a few decent songs here – the title track and The Assassin certainly have their charms – but thanks to the hook-free likes of Fates Warning, No Prayer For The Dying is Maiden’s worst album by some distance. Mother Russia is pretty funny, though.
Yes, The Angel & The Gambler is at least five minutes too long. Yes, the ending of Don’t Look To The Eyes Of A Stranger is a bit weird and sounds like a mistake. But Virtual XI is officially better than No Prayer For The Dying for two reasons: it has The Clansman on it, which is a stone cold classic, and the unfairly maligned Blaze Bayley sings his heart out throughout, most notably on breakneck kick-off Futureal and the gently magnificent Como Estais Amigos: an underrated Maiden gem.
The X-Factor is only half a classic Iron Maiden album, with a disastrous mid-album slump that almost certainly put lots of people off at the time. The first 20 minutes (Sign Of The Cross, Lord Of The Flies, Man On The Edge) are glorious, but after that it’s slim pickings. Again, Blaze’s contribution was far, far better than he was ever given credit for and both Blood On The World’s Hands and The Unbeliever are underrated corkers, but Maiden’s dark album did a bit too much plodding and not enough galloping.
As with The X-Factor, there is half a classic Maiden album in here. Only mad people don’t love the title track, of course, and you can take your pick from Afraid To Shoot Strangers, Childhood’s End, Fear Is The Key and the criminally overlooked Judas Be My Guide for a song of equal quality. On the negative side, From Here To Eternity was meat and potatoes with no seasoning, Chains Of Misery was a misplaced yob chorus and Weekend Warrior was a song about football hooligans, which isn’t the kind of thing we generally want Maiden to sing about. It’s hardly Where Eagles Dare, is it?
Understandably overshadowed by its revelatory predecessor, Brave New World, Maiden’s 13th studio album was cursed with the band’s worst ever artwork. But beyond that, Dance Of Death is pretty damn great. An album of strong moments, rather than a compelling, convincing whole, its diversity is its greatest asset. Everything from the short, sharp Wildest Dreams and the glowering No More Lies through to the towering Paschendale and the hazy, heavy rush of Face In The Sand sounded unmistakably and triumphantly Maidenesque, but in a variety of imaginative and sometimes unexpected shades (not least on acoustic closer Journeyman). And if the title track strikes you as a bit, you know, Stonehenge… well, that’s all part of the fun, surely?
Much like Dance Of Death, The Final Frontier suffers from being preceded by one of Maiden’s most momentous records, A Matter Of Life & Death. But it’s hard to find fault with the British legends’ 15th album, even if its rather peculiar, quasi-futuristic intro, Satellite 15, proved divisive among the faithful and the somewhat lightweight The Alchemist prompted many fans to shriek “Hasn’t Bruce Dickinson used that title already on one of his solo albums?” Songs like Isle Of Avalon, Starblind and When The Wild Wind Blows are among the finest Maiden have written since the return of Bruce and Adrian in 1999, and if Coming Home doesn’t make you weep like a bereaved onion farmer, you should probably consult a physician immediately.
Though not as sprawling as the immense of Book Of Souls, fellow double-album and direct follow-up Senjutsu remained no less ambitious or expansive in the 10 minutes trimmed from the former’s endurance-testing 92-minute run-time. Bolstered by one of the most straight-shooting Maiden singles in well over a decade in Writing On The Wall, Bruce and the boys pulled out another masterclass in how to turn an overabundance of ideas into a riveting musical journey – namely by using the lot. Though kept off the top spot of the UK Music Charts for the first time since 2006’s A Matter Of Life And Death by Drake, Senjutsu still asserts Iron Maiden’s status as one of the greatest heavy metal bands on the planet.
Some may be surprised that Maiden’s (sort of) comeback album isn’t higher up the list, but that’s the band’s fault for making so many classic albums. Don’t shoot the messenger. With Bruce Dickinson and Adrian Smith joyously reinstated, Brave New World was always destined to be a stormer, and so it proved: The Wicker Man was their finest single since the ‘80s, Ghost Of The Navigator was a thrilling reinvention of the classic Maiden sound, Blood Brothers was a ballad with incisive emotional clout… and so on. Only the slightly cack-handed Out Of The Silent Planet let the side down, but no one noticed because they were too busy bellowing along to Dream Of Mirrors.
Again, Maiden’s 2015 album would be higher up the list if they hadn’t spent the ’80s being the greatest heavy metal on the planet. It’s undeniable that its dramatic backdrop of Bruce Dickinson’s battle with cancer ensured that The Book Of Souls seemed even more of a big deal than it would have been anyway (and that’s a pretty big deal, because Iron Maiden), but the contents more than lived up to the preceding, real life commotion. From the thunderous If Eternity Should Fail and the rampaging Speed Of Light to quintessential Steve Harris epic The Red And The Black and the ferociously catchy Tears Of A Clown, The Book Of Souls is simply another creative peak for metal’s best loved band. And yes, Empire Of The Clouds is preposterous, but in the best possible way. This is what heavy metal is for, after all.
There’s only a scrotum hair’s breadth between Maiden’s first two albums, so swap them around if you must. Iron Maiden was an audacious debut: raw, fiery, subtly progressive and delivered with utmost passion and power, its songs are all established classics and its finest moments – the exhilarating Prowler, the monumental Phantom Of The Opera, the spine-tingling Remember Tomorrow – are as good as anything Maiden have ever recorded. As Steve Harris has often noted, the production is a little flat, but that hasn’t stopped millions of people from banging their heads to Running Free and perennial set closer Iron Maiden, that’s for chuffing sure.
Maiden were on fire at this point: Killers was an explosive confirmation of the immense potential the band had shown on their debut, with an even greater sense of momentum and conviction thrown in. Few albums begin with as much haughty braggadocio as this one, as heroic intro The Ides Of March and the pummelling Wrathchild give way to Murders In The Rue Morgue, a song so ridiculously exciting and joyfully metallic that it once made this writer fall off his bike (it’s a long story). It’s also worth nothing that Paul Di’Anno voice is a thing of raucous wonder throughout his Maiden swan song. His tenure was brief but props to the big guy for his huge contribution.
Is there anything more exciting than the opening drum fill that kicks Piece Of Mind off? Nicko McBrain made his presence felt for the first time on Maiden’s fourth album and with material as strong as The Trooper, Flight Of Icarus, Revelations and Dune-inspired closing epic To Tame A Land, he was given the perfect showcase for his inestimable talents. Elsewhere, Die With Your Boots On is a peerless rabble-rouser, Still Life is a slice of dark, brooding brilliance and Sun And Steel is an irresistible buckling of the swash. If you ignore the daft lyrics to Quest For Fire, Piece Of Mind is more or less flawless. I know. You try writing a fucking list. Seriously.
Nostalgia may dictate that Maiden’s run of phenomenal records during the ‘80s will always top these kinds of lists, but it’s equally true that the band’s efforts since 2000’s Brave New World deserve to be regarded with similar reverence. Of the five albums they’ve made since the millennium dawned, A Matter Of Life And Death stands out as the heaviest, darkest and most thrillingly cohesive of the lot. The fact that Maiden performed their 14th album in its entirety on the subsequent tour – and got away with it with room to spare, let’s face it – says it all: this is a stone cold classic. Highlights are many, but These Colours Don’t Run and The Longest Day would grace any list of Maiden’s greatest songs, and for those who like a dash of prog with their metal, the likes of The Legacy, Brighter Than A Thousand Suns and Lord Of Light are hard to beat.
Don’t get pissy if you think Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son should be number one. Anyone that doesn’t own every one of the top four albums in this list should relinquish their metal licence immediately. Yes, this is a flawless masterpiece and the icing on the cake of an eight-album run that has still yet to be bettered in heavy music history. It starts with Moonchild – an onslaught of goosebumps, guaranteed! – and continues through what now reads like a laundry list of platinum-plated Maiden classics, ranging from immaculate singles Can I Play With Madness and The Evil That Men Do through to the fervent proggery of the title track and The Prophecy’s otherworldly squall.
The most underrated of Maiden’s ’80s albums by a mile, Somewhere In Time came between two major milestones and, as a result, seldom gets the props it deserves. In fact, it’s fucking stunning and still sounds fresh and vital 40 years later. Caught Somewhere In Time is one of Maiden’s greatest album openers, Wasted Years one of their finest singles and closing epic Alexander The Great is a strong contender for the song most Maiden diehards would cheerfully stab a relative to see performed live. Oh, and then there’s Heaven Can Wait… and Stranger In A Strange Land… and Sea Of Madness! SEA OF FUCKING MADNESS! This is a really good album. Yes.
There is only one reason that The Number Of The Beast is not sitting at the top of this list, and it’s name is Gangland. One filler track aside (and yes, I agree, they should have put Total Eclipse on instead), Bruce’s first album with Maiden is a wall-to-wall triumph. Never mind the classic singles, listen to Children Of The Damned or Hallowed Be Thy Name or 22 Acacia Avenue and try not to feel instantly better about your life. Guaranteed to feature in every list of the greatest heavy metal albums ever made, and rightly so, The Number Of The Beast is 44 years old and still slams like a Muhammad Ali haymaker.
Only a controversial choice for the number one slot if you’ve made the terrible mistake of thinking that Flash Of The Blade isn’t one of the greatest heavy metal songs of all time, Powerslave is better than perfect. If that’s a thing. The album that sent Maiden around the world on the legendary World Slavery tour, turning them into global megastars in the process, it is both the definitive record of the band’s first decade and the album with the best artwork of all time. If you could prove such things scientifically, there would be no room for argument: Aces High, 2 Minutes To Midnight, Powerslave (featuring Dave Murray’s greatest ever solo, fact fans!), the mighty Rime Of The Ancient Mariner… thanks to those four songs alone, Powerslave makes pretty much everything else that’s ever been recorded sound a bit half-arsed. I’m exaggerating, of course. But not much.
Iron Maiden are currently touring North America. A vinyl box set containing their first nine studio albums comes out on December 11.
Reviewed by Eric Clifford
Death metal is having itself a hell of a year. It might be that fate has just happened to find me in her favour lately, but every death metal release I’ve fished from the promo list thus far has been on the right side of “good”, with some (Sallow Moth, Thaetas) being downright exceptional even within a crowded field. Stiff competition, then. Still, pressure builds a diamond – and here comes Pennsylvania’s Vulgar Mephitis with a repository of the meanest riffs your febrile imagination can conjure. We’re on the blast train now boys, and we’re not stopping ‘til we’ve scorched your fucking skin off.
If you’ve heard Vulgar Mephitis’ suitably nasty debut EP, you know what you’re in for. Brace for impact. A locomotive at light speed, churning vortices of convoluting riffs and slams, drums and gurgles painting sky and earth in carrion hues. Terror campaigns of arthropod riffs scurrying about the fretboard, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it swerves and dives in snappy venom injections of songs like “Peer into the Abyss”, it’s rhythms unpredictable but always predatory, sudden tempo switches flicking out so frequently it’s hard to take in at first. “To Dust” shows the band slipping oily tentacles into Ulcerate’s unwholesome territory, with a malfeasant, twisted sense of melody thrashing barbed limbs out of a cold, discordant cage. The album constantly twists in vertigo inducing variations upon the simple theme of punching your lungs through your spine. It refuses to stay still. Slams jostle in emetic waves, nauseous tides of gutter-floor grooves. “Gorging on Greed” births numerous of these, swinging them at you from their umbilical cords like medieval flails. Drumwork is as dizzying as everything else, spitting chunks from one grinder to the next, one minute a cymbal-riding groove driven by frantic kick drums, next the type of blastbeat marathons that burn calories like kindling. To call it “technical” would be true, but nonetheless massively understating how insanely intricate the music is.
If the album has a problem it’s one of memorability. In the moment of listening to it the album is like standing beneath a comet, it will just flatten you – but after the fact what few of your neurons do remain loosely conjoined won’t be in much position to remember much. I felt like I’d been jumped; a remorselessly violent experience to be sure, but I can’t necessarily recall exactly which kick turned my liver into mince, which stamp to the skull first let my brain have an unfiltered look at the world, etc. It is possible to build hooks into even music this unbridled without sapping the testosterone – much of Internal Suffering’s discography lives rent free in my head, Disgorge tracks are indelibly inked into my memory, and I’m fairly sure that even when dementia claims the last fond reminiscences left to me I’ll still be humming along to “Execration Text” by Nile. Future releases – which I’ll be watching for with masochistic enthusiasm – could be absolutely legendary if the band could work in the sorts of incendiary earworms that, say, Unfathomable Ruination unleashed on their “Finitude” release.
Good brutal death should be crushing. It should be unhinged. You should feel at the end as though you’ve been lobbed into a centrifuge full of xenomorph blood. Vulgar Mephitis tick all three of those boxes then jam the pencil through your eye socket. It’s fitting that it releases on the 11th September because this too feels like being hit with a plane. In both doing themselves proud and continuing death metal’s killing spree on into the latter third of 2026, Vulgar Mephitis establish themselves as sure-fire genre heavyweights in the making. Do yourself a favour and hop on the blast train early.
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The post Album Review: Vulgar Mephitis – From Dust appeared first on The Razor's Edge.
Sulferdust is a Finnish rock band formed in 2012. Since Sulferdust started in 2012 the adventures have brought band through many amazing studio session and remarkable gigs around Finland and the Baltics. Members of the band are Juho Peltonen on guitar & vocals, Henri Putto on bass , Pekka Marttinen on guitar & backing vocals and Jarno Valkonen on drums.
I love the pace and the mood of their new song “Dashboard”. The band decribe it as “straightforward, high-energy rock track that keeps the pedal to the metal from start to finish”. The vocals are very catchy the rhythm section is creative, dynamic and powerful and the guitars are very inspired (check out the stunning solo!). A very cool one, amazingly written, performed and produced.
Give it a go by clicking on the Spotify player below and follow Sulferdust if you like what you hear.
https://instagram.com/sulferdust(Today our Denver-based contributor Gonzo brings us high points of his conversation at the recent Fire In the Mountains festival with members of the Montana band Galvanist, intertwined with his thoughts about their new album The Silence Between Stars, released in May of this year via ATMF.) There’s a particular kind of magic that only […]
The post ANNIHILATION IN THE LIMINAL VOID: A DEEP DIVE WITH GALVANIST appeared first on NO CLEAN SINGING.
Over the past year or so, UK duo Bassvictim captured a lot of people’s imaginations with their blown-out, hedonistic take on experimental bedroom-pop. We were really into their EP ?, which came out earlier this year. It appears that Bassvictim have settled any beef with their hyperpop peer and remix client daine, and they’re about to head out on a North American tour, so it’s a good time for a new single.
The post Bassvictim – “Jagódki (Blueberries)” appeared first on Stereogum.
From Frontiers Music Srl X account:
PRETTY MAIDS ARE BACK!
“Frontiers Music Srl is proud to announce the return of Pretty Maids, who are officially working on a brand-new studio album, set for release in 2027.
Further details about the album will be revealed in the coming months.”
Where’s the joy in this all?
Where’s the light in the dark
My hands hide my tears, I feel so lost
This first day of Fall
Summer does not end so much as loosen its grip. The green world, having spent itself extravagantly, begins to remember that fullness and disappearance are partners. Leaves turn because life is not obliged to remain at its brightest. The air cools, light lowers, and what seemed permanent reveals itself as a passing arrangement. Autumn teaches without speaking: beauty depends upon change, and change upon loss. Yet nothing is truly lost; forms simply withdraw into other forms. The falling leaf is not a failure of the tree, but part of its rhythm. So too, perhaps, are we, within nature’s larger turning. Despair can still dance.
Since forming in Los Angeles in 2021, DECEITS (Kevin Moreno and Francisco Saenz) have dragged the music back toward blood, romance, and movement, pulling from the Spanish-language records that surrounded them growing up and letting those rhythms rub against basslines built for dark rooms.
The First Day Of Fall comes from a worse place. Moreno wrote it the day before his birthday, during a morning when the approaching occasion felt less like celebration than accusation. Birthdays carry the ridiculous expectation that happiness should report for duty on schedule, and the song turns that pressure inside out. Here is somebody staring at another year of existence and wondering whether disappearance might be easier. When Moreno sings, “I dream to be forgot,” the line lands with the ugly simplicity of a thought you wish you had never admitted to yourself.
The music, meanwhile, moves with enough force to keep despair from becoming static. Bass sits at the center with a cold, muscular authority, pushing against a hard drum pattern while guitars spread reverb across the track in broad, abrasive sheets. Gothic synthesizers hang behind the rhythm section, giving the song a sense of scale without smothering its punk impulse. There is a useful contradiction in hearing music this alive carrying words preoccupied with erasure, as though the body has decided to keep moving even while the mind is filing objections.
Moreno’s voice makes that conflict sharper. In the quieter passages he bends into a soft, almost romantic delivery, letting the words hover close to the ear before climbing toward a piercing upper register when the arrangement surges. The shift feels less theatrical than involuntary, like restraint finally losing the argument.
The production owes an obvious debt to the cavernous records of the 1980s gothic underground, though the mix has enough present-day weight to keep the references from turning archival. Reverb creates depth around the guitars and vocals, but the bass and drums remain immediate, physical, and slightly dangerous. Every element seems placed to preserve tension rather than polish it away.
Listen to The First Day of Fall below:
The First Day of Fall turns a private crisis into forward motion, carrying self-erasure, birthday dread, and the changing season inside a rhythm section that keeps pressing ahead. With the Hurt As Much As Me Tour 2026 on the horizon, DECEITS sound ready to take that contradiction straight into the room, where pain becomes volume and motion becomes temporary proof of life. Maybe that is DECEITS’ gift: making anguish feel communal without sanding down its teeth.
Listen to The First Day of Fall below and order the single here.
Hurt As Much As Me Tour dates (Get your tickets here!)
.𖥔 ݁ ˖ With Computer Kill. ☾ With Haunt Me
The band also has a full US + Australia headline run coming up this fall
Australia:
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The post Where’s the Light in the Dark? — Los Angeles Romantic Post-Punk Duo Deceits Share “The First Day Of Fall” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.
