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Voivod will head to Europe this summer with a different voice at the microphone after frontman Denis “Snake” Bélanger stepped away from the run to deal with a family matter. Filling in for him will be former Voivod vocalist and bassist Eric Forrest, who fronted the band during the mid-to-late ’90s and now leads E-Force.

The band shared the news through social media, confirming that the upcoming European dates will move forward with Forrest on vocals.

“Eric Forrest (aka E-Force) to the rescue as Denis Bélanger (aka Snake) needs to attend to a family matter this summer.

“E-Force from 1994 to 2000 was the lead singer and bass player for the formidable power trio years of Voivod. Upon return from a successful UK/Ireland tour with festivals in Iceland, Netherlands and Spain, Snake received news that weighed heavily on him and needed to make a very tough decision.

“The band unanimously agreed that family matters most and were set to cancel the upcoming run of summer European shows from July 10 to August 16, when Snake suggested perhaps the band could carry on if E-Force was available and interested. After all, Eric is part of the Voivod family and is actively performing, but dealing with his own health issues. Once reached, Eric was beyond flattered, and said he’d be able to clear his schedule and his health was in check.

“A set list has been worked out. Rocky, Chewy, and Away look forward to performing with E-Force and will be thinking of Snake. The show will go on and the Cosmic Voivod Multiverse keeps expanding.

“We are Connected!”

Forrest also shared his thoughts on returning to the band for the tour: “Greetings to all! I am honored and blessed to be asked to fill in for Snake this summer, to keep the Voivod fans, band, legacy in motion!! I’m very thrilled to be part of this tour. I never ever imagined this, but I’m happy and motivated to step in and take care of business…Can’t wait to see you all! Merci, santé!”

Forrest served as Voivod‘s singer and bassist between 1994 and 2000, appearing during one of the band’s heavier and more aggressive eras. While he continues to deal with his own health concerns, he has confirmed he is fit to perform and was able to adjust his schedule for the European dates.

Rather than canceling the run, Voivod decided to keep the tour on track with Forrest handling vocal duties while Snake focuses on his family. The remaining members—Rocky, Chewy, and Away—will continue the shows alongside their former bandmate until Snake is ready to return.

The post ERIC FORREST Returns to VOIVOD for Summer 2026 European Tour as SNAKE Takes Family Leave appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

Ben Gibbard and his Death Cab For Cutie bandmates have been seemingly everywhere promoting their excellent new album I Built You A Tower, including here at Stereogum. The latest stop on the promo tour is Vulture, where Gibbard sat down with Jesse David Fox for the new episode of the Good One podcast. The interview runs nearly 90 minutes, and it covers all kinds of subjects, including the new album, Gibbard’s work with Dua Lipa, the history of indie music, the New York Times list of the 30 greatest living American songwriters, and more.

The post Ben Gibbard Explains Why The Velvet Underground Are Better Than The Beatles appeared first on Stereogum.

Ice Nine Kills have premiered an expanded alternate music video for their latest single, “Play Dead.” The horror-loving metalcore band created the track in partnership with the asymmetrical multiplayer horror game Dead By Daylight, having first unveiled the video's visuals during a recent livestream event. The song was written in collaborati… Read More/Discuss on Metal Underground.com

E-Force previously fronted the band from 1994 to 2001.

The post Voivod Welcome Back Eric “E-Force” Forrest For Their European Tour As Denis “Snake” Bélanger Tends To Family Matter appeared first on Theprp.com.

Last month, LA-based queer/trans electropop-bass duo Alli Logout and Margo XS, who release incredibly magnetic music as deBasement, dropped their knockout single “STAY IN YOUR LINE.” I’m happy to announce that that single is part of a new EP HARDBODY that’s coming July 17 via In Real Life Records. They’ve announced the upcoming project with the new single “CUT THE LINE,” which is a detailed account of all the dumb bullshit and annoying people one can encounter on a late night out. Not to mince words, but it’s brilliant.

The post deBasement Announce New EP <em>HARDBODY</em>: Hear “CUT THE LINE” appeared first on Stereogum.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
HEXJAKT UNLEASH OCCULT DOOM RITUAL ON FOUR ALTARS OF SIN SPLIT OUT NOW VIA MAJESTIC MOUNTAIN RECORDS
Stream: https://recordu.lnk.to/Four_Altars_of_Sin
Purchase: https://www.majesticmountainrecords.com/products/four-altars-of-sin-4-way-split-with-kaiser-doomherre-hexjakt-and-ordos
Västmanland, Sweden — Swedish doom force Hexjakt emerge from the underground with a crushing contribution to the four-way split Four Altars of Sin, out now via Majestic Mountain Records.
Formed in 2024, Hexjakt have rapidly established themselves within the Scandinavian doom and stoner underground with a sound defined by weight, patience, and atmosphere. Their approach feels less like a traditional band and more like a slow-moving ritual, where repetition becomes pressure and distortion becomes environment.
Built on thick, fuzz-drenched guitars, cavernous low end, and deliberate pacing, Hexjakt’s sound sits at the intersection of collapse and transcendence. Every passage is stretched, sharpened, and allowed to breathe until it becomes something heavier than structure alone.
A SOUND ROOTED IN OCCULT ATMOSPHERE
Hexjakt’s identity draws from occult symbolism, existential dread, human fragility, and the unknown forces shaping perception and control. Nothing in their music is rushed. It unfolds gradually, layering tension until it becomes immersive and consuming.
Their contribution to Four Altars of Sin reflects this philosophy, delivering a bleak, unfiltered vision of modern existence where power, decay, and shadowed intent sit just beneath the surface.
FOUR ALTARS OF SIN — A SHARED NORTHERN RITUAL
The release unites four distinct voices from the Nordic underground:
Doomherre — Blood Relics of Old (6:51)
Ordos — Inferno (10:50)
Hexjakt — Svartkonst (6:38)
Kaiser — Sonic Satan (11:14)
Each band contributes exclusive material, forming a unified statement of heaviness, atmosphere, and intent. The split functions as a collective ritual space, highlighting the evolving identity of Scandinavian doom at its most uncompromising.
RELEASE DETAILS
Four Altars of Sin
Release Date: June 26, 2026
Label: Majestic Mountain Records
Format: Limited Vinyl / Digital
Released via Majestic Mountain Records, the project continues the label’s commitment to underground heavy music and collaborative releases that push beyond traditional album structures.
ABOUT HEXJAKT
Hexjakt is a doom metal trio from Västmanland, Sweden, formed in 2024. The band crafts slow-moving, atmospheric heavy music built on dense fuzz, deep bass resonance, and hypnotic pacing.
Their work favors immersion over immediacy, constructing sonic environments rather than conventional song structures. Lyrical themes explore occultism, existential uncertainty, cosmic dread, and the fragility of human perception.
Check them out on YouTube and subscribe!




  Follow the band at these links:
https://hexjaktband.com/
https://facebook.com/hexjaktband
https://instagram.com/hexjaktband
https://www.youtube.com/@hexjaktband
https://hexjakt.bandcamp.com/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/2HgMgKzgLwCZjdMA7iyfyU
Contact: Toni Åkerman / info@hexjaktband.com

Nightwish vocalist Floor Jansen has unveiled the official lyric video for her latest solo single, “Run”. The song marks the first new solo material from the Dutch singer since the release of her debut album, Paragon, in March 2023.

While Paragon leaned into melodic rock, pop influences and emotional ballads, “Run” points toward a heavier and more direct direction without leaving behind the melodic style that has become one of Jansen‘s trademarks.

Speaking about the new track, Jansen said: “To me, ‘Run’ is about no longer making yourself smaller to fit into a shape that was never yours. It’s about taking off the mask, trusting your own movement, and daring to be seen that way. Musically, it feels like the start of something new. A little heavier, a little more direct, but still honest, still melodic, still completely me.”

Born in the Netherlands, Jansen joined After Forever at just 16 years old. The pioneering symphonic metal band released five studio albums between 2000 and 2007 before ending its run in 2009.

She later formed Revamp, releasing two albums in 2010 and 2013 before becoming a permanent member of Nightwish. Her first studio album with the Finnish symphonic metal band was Endless Forms Most Beautiful, released in 2015, followed by the internationally successful Human. :II: Nature. in 2020.

Alongside those studio releases, Jansen also appeared on Nightwish‘s live albums Showtime, Storytime, Vehicle Of Spiritand Decades: Live In Buenos Aires while touring extensively with the band.

Outside of Nightwish, Jansen reached a broader audience in 2019 through the Dutch television series Beste Zangers. Her performance of “Phantom Of The Opera” alongside Henk Poort became a major hit, and she received the prestigious Dutch Popprijs award in recognition of her contributions to Dutch music. That same year, tickets for her first solo tour sold out in less than 24 hours.

Jansen first took the stage with Nightwish on October 1, 2012, at Showbox Sodo in Seattle, Washington, after the departure of longtime vocalist Anette Olzon. She officially became a full-time member of the band in 2013.

The post FLOOR JANSEN Releases Lyric Video For Single “Run” appeared first on Sonic Perspectives.

He is set to be discharged today and will need some time to heal.

The post Malevolence’s Alex Taylor Undergoes Emergency Surgery, Band To Continue Tour Without Him appeared first on Theprp.com.

Imaginary not real

In a world that has fallen from grace

And in the park, the rush begins to make its way down

Down, down he goes

After more than a decade as DRIFT., Nathalia Bruno has pushed the project into a new, harder shape. The solitary synth work of earlier releases has given way to a full-band attack, with Max Oscarnold on guitar, Finn Kidd on drums, and Lucy Lucifer on keys joining Bruno for Violence For Your Furs, out September 16 via God Unknown Records. The shift suits her: the music still carries her familiar chill, but now it comes dressed in glam-goth sleaze, rock n roll cabaret menace, and the charged feeling of a London night already halfway off the rails.

Rough Rider is the record’s streetlamp confession, a nasty little ride through Kingsland Road where romance has been mugged and left arguing with itself. Bruno sings as if she has spent the afternoon listening through walls, picking up curses, sirens, and the burden of the Ten of Wands card. “There’s a world outside your door” hits as a dare from someone who has seen what waits there and still reaches for the handle.

The band plays with the cruel economy of people who know excess works best with a switchblade tucked under the coat. Oscarnold’s guitar scratches at the corners, Kidd’s drums shove the song forward with alley-cat impatience, and Lucifer’s keys give the scene a cabaret stink, part cheap perfume, part electrical burn. Bruno sits above it all with a delivery that calls up Alan Vega, Anne Clark, Fad Gadget, hanging out at an after-hours where somebody has put Suicide on repeat and locked the exits. Those names are coordinates, useful because they sketch the room: black leather humour, broken drum-machine discipline, art-school dread, and the blessed naïveté of rock still thinking salvation might be hidden in volume.

The song’s lyrics are chock full of bodies, cops, masks, vomit, bikes, glass, meat, overdose; lovely stuff, because pop music has spent too many years selling self-help lotion to people who need a brick hurled through their window. DRIFT. gives us “cold country” and “hope country” as two names for the same cracked pavement, and the trick is that both feel true. Every generation gets told it lives with promise, then spends the night finding out that promise has a boot on its throat.

The video, with Bruno performing behind wet glass, pushes the song deeper into that aquarium panic, as though we are watching a nightclub priestess from the wrong side of the tank. She appears trapped, blurred, touchable and unreachable at once, making theatre out of distance while keeping pain clear of boutique gloom. The images smear, the song stalks, and the quartet sounds thrilled by its own bad news. You can almost smell beer, rainwater, burnt cable, and an extinguished clove cigarette.

Watch the video for Rough Rider below:

Rough Rider belongs to the tradition of songs that know the city can crack jokes while bleeding and pass for hard while begging somebody, anybody, to notice the damage. DRIFT. has found a new body for Bruno’s private apocalypse.

Listen to Rough Rider below and pre-order Violence For Your Furs here.

Follow DRIFT.:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• Bandcamp
• Spotify

The post Between Hope and Despair — DRIFT. Announce “Violence For Your Furs” With Video for Sordid Synthpunk Track “Rough Rider” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Hamilton, Ontario, extreme‑metal outfit METALADIAN erupt with the release of “Deaditation,” the ferocious and hypnotic title track single from their upcoming debut album out on Canada Day, July 1st, 2026. After more than twenty years of composing, refining, and shaping the band’s sound, composer, lead vocalist, and drummer Andrew Brophy finally unveils the first official chapter of METALADIAN’s long‑awaited recorded legacy.

“Deaditation” is METALADIAN’s most aggressive and unrelenting work, a dizzying, chromatic, multi‑vocal assault built on a three‑stage structure: plateau, ascension, descent. Each time the cycle restarts, the tempo subtly increases, dragging listeners deeper into a spiralling frenzy.

“The interplay between vocalists is quick, dizzying and hypnotizing… the music is incrementally and constantly gaining momentum, driving the track to a spiralling frenzy by the final descent,” adds Brophy.

Lyrically, the single paints a blackened world where victims reclaim power through a psychic retaliation, a Deaditation, forcing abusers to feel the pain they inflicted “100,000 fold.” Musically, it opens with riotous crowd samples, chromatic bass lines, droning harmonies, ripping feedback, and a tribal drum solo that launches the track into its relentless progression.

Fans of extreme metal, progressive death metal, and classical‑influenced metal will immediately recognize the ambition and precision behind the single.

Listen to the lyric video for “Deaditation” at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hjKm_7NoCs

Arriving July 1, 2026, “Deaditation”is the culmination of more than two decades of writing. Brophy began composing the framework on classical guitar in 2003, later expanding the material into a full three‑album arc.

Track Listing:

1. Left Hand Path – 9:44
2. Deaditation – 6:21
3. No Worse Death Than The Loss Of All Hope – (Wondering Why I Wonder Why) – 7:35
4. Confrontation With God – 11:59
5. Cure For Judgement – 6:51
6. Welcome To Your Holy Hell – 8:49
   Album Length: 51:19

The debut album is a story‑driven descent and ascent, moving through spiteful violence, spiralling depression, suicidal ideation, 
confrontation with God, revenge, and finally, redemption.

“The album is drenched in violence and darkness, but with a hint of light that begins to show itself as the album progresses,” says Brophy.

Musically, the record is dense, chromatic, harmonically lush, and rhythmically punishing. Vocally, all four members contribute in a rapid‑fire call‑and‑response style: Andrew Brophy (drums, lead vocals) with melodic leads and rhythmic anchors, Dustin Smith (bass) brings guttural, ogre‑like lows, Dan Brophy (guitar) adds vicious, rabid‑dog riot vocals and Ruth Guechtal (guitar) exports ripping, high‑screeching screams. The result is a massive, layered vocal machine unlike anything in the Canadian metal landscape.

METALADIAN formed in Hamilton, Ontario, as the vehicle for Andrew Brophy’s intricate compositions, music that blends thrash, death, progressive, and technical metal with the darker works of classical composers such as Bartók, Penderecki, Mussorgsky, Stravinsky, Beethoven, and Mahler.

“Metaladian is my passion, my main source of creativity and catharsis for years,” adds Brophy.

Their sound is best described as complex, emotional, heavy, dark, and hypnotizing. The band’s lineup is deeply interconnected: Andrew and guitarist Dan are brothers, Ruth (guitar) is Dan’s wife, and Dustin (bass) is their “metal brother from another mother.”

All four also perform in the Hamilton extreme‑theatre metal act 30 Immolated; 16 Returned, and three members hold classical‑music degrees, including two doctorates in composition.

Recommended for fans of Strapping Young Lad, Metallica (early), Suffocation, Bela Bartok, and Ludwig Van Beethoven, METALADIAN’s “Deaditation” is available for pre-order at: https://metaladian.bandcamp.com/

More info:

​https://www.facebook.com/metaladian/​

​https://www.instagram.com/metaladian​

https://www.tiktok.com/@metaladian

Source: ASHER MEDIA RELATIONS