Described by Kerrang! magazine as “better than a Led Zeppelin reunion” and hailed by Warner Music as “Europe’s best tribute to Led Zeppelin,” LETZ ZEP has earned its reputation as the world’s premier tribute to the greatest rock band of all time.
Celebrating the legendary music of Led Zeppelin, LETZ ZEP delivers an electrifying live experience that captures the raw power, soul, and swagger of the original band in their prime. Hear Zeppelin‘s Biggest Anthems including Stairway to Heaven, Immigrant Song, Black Dog, Rock and Roll, Kashmir, Whole Lotta Love, Ramble On, Heartbreaker, Good Times Bad Times, Dazed and Confused plus many more fan favourites.
Even Led Zeppelin’s founding members Jimmy Page and Robert Plant have attended Letz Zep performances. So impressed were they, they personally invited the band to perform at the official launch of Led Zeppelin’s compilation album Mothership.
Letz Zep are a powerhouse tribute show featuring the music of Zeppelin, performed loud and live. As audiences often say: “Close your eyes, and it’s Led Zeppelin themselves.”
This is the Ultimate Classic Rock Night Out.
Setlist includes – Achilles Last Stand
Black Dog
Communication Breakdown
Dazed and Confused
Heartbreaker
Immigrant Song
Kashmir
Moby Dick
No Quarter
Ramble On
Rock and Roll
Since I’ve Been Loving You
Stairway to Heaven
Thank You
Whole Lotta Love
Album Review: Slayer – Hell Awaits [40th Anniversary]
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
I’m going to start this review with the assumption that if you’re reading it you’re at least familiar with Slayer and their body of work, be that whole career or merely the later parts. For those of us old enough to remember hearing Slayer for the first time it was like nothing we ever heard before. They seemed to have taken the speed and spite of Venom and somehow turned it up even more than the Geordies had. The 1983 debut album, Show No Mercy, had Venom’s fixation on the darker side of life, tracks like Evil Has No Boundaries, Die by the Sword, Black Magic, and The Antichrist could have been interchangeable with material from Welcome to Hell et al.
The 1984 EP, Haunting the Chapel began to show signs of Slayer’s move toward a more familiar sound, which was fully realised on Hell Awaits, their sophomore full length where, as Kerry King is reported to have said: “Slayer became Slayer.”
If the previous two releases had shown songwriting coloured by Venom, it was fellow First Wave of Black Metal band, Mercyful Fate, who would influence Hell Awaits. Three of the seven songs exceed six-minutes in length and featured more progressive elements than the band had shown previously.
From the opening ritual of the title track’s demonic chanting –which was actually ‘Join us’ played in reverse – leading to the interlocking of all four elements musically coming together, to the diabolical carnage, sharp snappy vocals and thin production lending the whole thing an otherworldly feel, this is classic Slayer that stands up to anything the band have released since.
Tom’s bass creep and lurks just beneath the surface of At Dawn They Sleep’s tale of vampirism; Crypts of Eternity has the guitars low in the mix, but it all adds to the chilled atmospherics of the record.
More in keeping with the direction Slayer would follow from here, Kill Again has a grooving riff and some machine gun guitars, that start to sketch out the band’s sound going forward; Praise of Death is a simple but effective riff that allows King and Hanneman to experiment a little; Necrophiliac is more speed than thrash, with Tom’s bass tolling like a death bell. Hardening of the Arteries closes out the album with some dissonant snapping vocals and an outro that takes up right back to the start of the record and those dark choral chants of the opening section.
Seismic for the mid-Eighties – this was a time when Glam & Hair Metal ruled the charts – Hell Awaits laid the groundwork for Reign in Blood’s game-changing appearance but a year later. The combination of King and Hanneman on guitar and Araya and Lombardo on rhythm duties was an unstoppable force back then, though only Hell Awaits itself would feature regularly in the band’s live sets going forward, with the occasional appearance of Necrophiliac and Kill Again.
This fortieth anniversary reissuing of Hell Awaits doesn’t mess around with the original mix from ’85, leaving Brian Slagel’s production and Bernie Grundman’s mastering as was back then to maintain the atmospherics of the day.
Available as either a three-vinyl version, including a sixty-page hard cover book, Hell Awaits presented on fire splatter coloured vinyl, a replica ticket, tour laminate and German tour poster, plus slip mat, posters and fliers. The three CD version also includes the book and poster, with the second and third CDs and vinyl being Slayer’s show at Zeche in Bochum, [then West] Germany on 18th June 1985.
By the time of this show, Hell Awaits had been in the record stores for a couple of months, and the eighteen-song set reflects the assumed familiarity with the album. All seven tracks get aired, scattered among Slayer’s dark past of Captor of Sin, Fight Till Death and The Final Command. In facteverything Slayer had recorded to that point was included in the Bochum show; the quality of the recording is rudimentary but shows a band in the first flushes of youth and making hay while the sun shines. Tom’s voice starts to show limitations by Die by the Sword and he seems to pin the band’s colours to Black Metal’s first wave in the intro of The Antichrist; but this is the roots of the juggernaut that would soon enough steamroller big stages for decades to come.
There will be a version of Hell Awaits’ 40th Anniversary Edition that doesn’t include the Bochum show and will be limited to 666 copies worldwide and available only through the fan club.
It was blast being able to sit and listen to Hell Awaits front to back again; like being reacquainted with an old school friend you’ve been meaning to call for years but something has always got in the way. In all honesty I don’t tend to reach for Slayer after Seasons in the Abyss whenever I’m in the mood for one of their albums, and I rarely go back to the early days either, sticking with Reign, South of Heaven or Seasons; I’d quite forgotten just how much I enjoyed Hell Awaits back then, and still enjoy it today.
Watch the video for “Killicon Valley (Silicon Dust)” at this location.
Kansas City thrash masters HELLEVATE have posted the official music video for the title track off their new album, Killicon Valley. This five-minute thrash-fest aims its rage at the use of AI in today’s culture.
“This song is the result of several years of us watching the development of AI and ranting about it with each other. So many songs out there about AI have their hearts in the right place, but they always sing about it like it’s Skynet or SHODAN; some unstoppable robot overlord coming to bring the apocalypse,” comments guitarist Joshua Cole about the song.
“Then you actually use it and it’s a crappy productivity tool that only helps create more noise and BS that we all have to wade through, all because some idiot billionaires decided they liked the idea of a computer that could do all their thinking for them and replace those pesky employees. The lyrics fit the music perfectly, as it’s nasty, aggressive, relentless, and fast! If you like your thrash metal played pissed off and at warp speed, we’ve got you covered with this one!”
Vocalist Robert Browne expands on the song’s lyrical theme, “The so-called “leaders” of the tech industry have made shit more expensive, turned a multitude of careers upside-down, and gotten this moronic presidential administration to give them access to sensitive systems. And for what? It fucks up simple tasks. It fills our news feeds with garbage and lies. It gives mediocre idiots with no skill the delusions that they can make art with no effort, all at the cost of the planet that sustains our lives. Older folks who fear AI think it’ll be like a Terminator 2 thing. It’s much worse; I’d rather be blown up than starve.”
Watch the video for “Killicon Valley (Silicon Dust)” at this location.
Killicon Valley is relentless in execution. Eleven tracks of the bullshit-free, ‘thrash-or-be-thrashed’ attitude the band has cultivated over their nearly 20 years of existence. Today, that fury has escalated beyond the breaking point. The result is an album that true fans of old-school thrash can blast with pride.
Watch the video for the album’s first single, “In the Long Grass,” at youtu.be/4pvJtJcOrvo.
Robert Browne – Vocals Dan Whitmer – Guitar Joshua Cole – Guitar Zack Burke – Bass Ruben Lopez – Drums
HELLEVATE will mark the release of Killicon Valley with an album release show at Warehouse on Broadway in Kansas City, MO. Support will come from Jackson Country 5, Meat Shank, and Bloodscent. Check the event page for details.
Washington, D.C. gives us 2DCAT, a dark synthpop duo with the sort of backstory that turns the usual press-kit credentials into something far stranger, sturdier, and more alive. Johan Hauck builds most of the hardware synthesizers the duo performs with, which means the machinery here is not some rented glow-box blinking politely in the corner, but a homemade electrical animal with wires for veins and bad intentions in its little metal heart. HAEZL, meanwhile, comes from the opera world, having shared stages with Patti LaBelle, Cynthia Erivo, and Renée Fleming, and that gives 2DCAT a vocal caliber dark synthpop rarely gets: lungs, teeth, diction, and gravitas.
Eat the Rich is the moment the velvet curtain gets yanked down and used to start a fire. The song takes class rage out of the op-ed column and puts it in the public square. Its world is divided with the bluntness of a brick through stained glass: the fed and the feeding, the ruined and the ruling, the families scraping by while some distant class of lizards counts the coins and calls it civilization. The repeated title phrase becomes less slogan than appetite: somebody has been dining for centuries, and now the table manners are gone.
The genius of the track is its lack of dainty pleading. There is no petition being passed around, no well-lit panel discussion, no rich man’s child discovering empathy during a semester abroad. 2DCAT goes straight for the old revolutionary theater: guillotine, blood, fire, the grand machinery of consequence. You can feel the song staring at the polite lie that suffering must always remain dignified, then kicking that lie down a flight of stairs. Its violence is rhetorical, theatrical, and deliberately ugly in the way a cracked mirror is ugly when it finally tells the truth.
The black-and-white video, directed by Johan Hauck, puts this fury inside an abandoned factory, which is exactly where it belongs. Those long shots of dead industry feel like a funeral for labour itself: empty halls, cold walls, the skeletal remains of a place where bodies once turned time into profit for somebody else. There is something chilling about seeing the corpse of work stripped of workers, as if the building has outlived the people it consumed. The imagery is simple, severe, and all the better for it.
Watch the video for Eat The Rich below:
2DCAT’s ‘Eat the Rich’ resonates more deeply because of its placement in the overall emotional progression. Conversely, the earlier single ‘Salvation Will Not Come’ leaves us in silence once hope is broken, with prayer becoming just a formality and idols looking back with cold, marble-like indifference.
“Eat the Rich started where Salvation Will Not Come left off,” says Johan Hauck. “That song was the silence after hope runs out. This song is the one that breaks the silence.” That line nails the record’s cruel little engine: hope drains out, anger walks in wearing its coat, and suddenly 2DCAT are no longer mapping despair from a safe distance. They are standing in the wreckage with a homemade synthesizer, an opera-trained voice, and a match.
Listen to Eat The Rich below and order the album here.
Kindred is the nightmarish debut horror novel from long-running extreme music and horror journalist Chip McCabe.
Creed Woodhouse is the horror writer alter ego of author/journalist Chip McCabe, who has written extensively about music for publications such as the Chicago Tribune, Hartford Courant, Hartford Advocate, New Haven Advocate, and Metal Insider. He currently pens the blog TheMetalDad.com where he writes about music, horror movies, and parenting, and he hosts the horror movie podcast The Fiendish Five Podcast, available on all major streaming platforms. While McCabe has authored two non-fiction works – 100 Things To Do In Hartford Before You Die and 666 Days of Metal – Kindred is his first fictional horror novel.
In Kindred, it’s June 1987 and Eric Smith, an otherwise average teenager getting ready to graduate high school in rural southern New Jersey, is plagued by nightmares of a strange hallway and a door with a golden knob. When a young girl is found mutilated deep within the nearby Pine Barrens it sets off a string of events that will forever alter the lives of Eric and all those close to him.
As Eric’s terrorizing nightmares grow increasingly realistic, those around him, including friends and family, begin to slowly reveal their true selves and the secrets they have been harboring. As the line between Eric’s dream and reality becomes completely blurred his entire world begins crashing down and pure evil is manifested.
Kindred is available at bookstores including Barnes & Noble HERE.
A signing event for Kindred will take place at Folklore & Fable in Colchester, Connecticut on May 30th from 1-3pm. More info can be found HERE.
You can also enter to win copies of the book by correctly answering horror movie trivia at the Spooky Popcorn outdoor horror movie series McCabe organizes annually in Hartford. Read more HERE.
“…Kindred offers a super fun and slightly freaky yet compelling storyline for all lovers of a good old-fashioned thriller… Kindred deftly balances its horror elements with mystery elements but never forgets to put its characters first.” – Karen Ponzio
On May 1st, 2026, The Black Keys released their 14th studio album, Peaches. Peaches is a cover album, just under 45 minutes long, made up mostly of lesser known songs from legendary blues artists of the 20th century.
Peaches is not the first cover album released by The Black Keys, but it is likely their best. They do justice to the legends they are paying tribute to, and they add their own flair and signature sound to the historic tunes. The album strikes the perfect balance between sounding fundamentally like the recording band while maintaining the soul of the original music they’re playing.
The Black Keys are primarily made up of Dan Auerbach on vocals, guitar, and some organ, and Patrick Carney on drums and miscellaneous percussion. Additional credits on the album include Eric Deaton on bass, Kenny Brown on guitar, Jimbo Mathis on backing vocals and synthesizer, Chris Saint Hilaire on miscellaneous percussion, Cochemea Gastelum on alto sax. Jared Tankel on baritone sax, Ian Hendrickson-Smith on tenor sax, Dave Guy on trumpet, Andy Gabbard on backing vocals. and Kenny Kimborough on additional drums.
For my money, the best track on the record is the third, “Who’s Been Foolin’ You,” originally written by Arthur Crudup. It’s a big and bold number with crooning vocals that feels very 1970s and has a big noteworthy organ part supporting the guitars. A couple of the other tracks stand out as well.
Particularly striking are the second song, “Stop Arguing Over Me,” a rocking fast tune, and “You Got to Lose,” the sixth track originally recorded by George Thorogood (and written by Earl Hooker), it has a big fun riff in the intro and a very appealing 1950s rock and roll feel. The second to last song, “Fireman Ring the Bell,” has big wailing vocals and a matching guitar rhythm, it’s a very tightly produced song.
The remainder of the record is also very high quality! The only real note I had was on track number five, “Tomorrow Night,” where the vocals feel a little buried in the mix. Overall, the song starts big and stays big and the big squealing guitar intro more than makes up for what might be some vocal issues in the mixing.
After 13 previous albums, The Black Keys have their craft and their sound locked in, and here they’re firing on all cylinders. There’s a reason they are among the top most commercially successful blues rock acts performing currently and they show off those chops here very well. Peaches feels more stripped down and bare than some prior Black Keys records, which is befitting the goal of the record to honor blues players of times gone by. The record is entirely successful at delivering the tried-and-tested Black Keys sound while respecting and refreshing history for blues rock fans.
The Review: 9/10
Can’t Miss Tracks
– Stop Arguing Over Me – You Got to Lose – Fireman Ring the Bell – Who’s Been Foolin’ You
![Album Review: Slayer - Hell Awaits [40th Anniversary]](https://i0.wp.com/live.staticflickr.com/65535/55251937602_4e8fe1712c_c.jpg?w=678&ssl=1 "Album Review: Slayer - Hell Awaits [40th Anniversary]")
