Just last year, the LA-based indie rock minimalist Lael Neale released her album Altogether Stranger on Sub Pop. This fall, she’ll follow that LP with a new one called As Killers Do — sick title — on her own label Consensual Sound. Lead single “Slip Away” is a haunted, sophisticated garage rock jam that sits on some grand cosmic continuum between Stereolab and the Ramones. It promises great things ahead.
Chat Pile have released “Same Rules”, their new single from their forthcoming third full-length album, Who Loves The Sun, scheduled for release on September 4th via The Flenser. The track is accompanied by a music video directed by Bug Mane. Read more…
Frank Beard‘s health has forced ZZ Top off the road, at least for now. Rolling Stone reports that health issues affecting the band’s longtime drummer led to the cancelation of the group’s Hollywood Bowl date last week, part of the ongoing “The Big One” tour.
A ZZ Top spokesperson confirmed to the outlet that guitarist/vocalist Billy Gibbons and bassist Elwood Francis are continuing the tour without Beard, with drummer Michael Monahan filling in behind the kit.
When the Hollywood Bowl show was scrapped, Gibbons addressed the cancellation directly. “Insurmountable obstacles require canceling their Hollywood Bowl performance”, he said in a statement, adding that the “friends, fans, and followers of ZZ Top are the best in the business and that the band is counting on everyone to bear with them for this brief interruption”.
Beyond the Rolling Stone report, other outlets have filled in more of the timeline. Beard and the band reportedly played through the cancelation’s immediate aftermath, with Monahan stepping in for an August 8 show at the Mountain Winery in Saratoga, California, days after the Hollywood Bowl date fell through. Beard‘s more familiar substitute, longtime drum tech John Douglas, has not been the one covering this particular absence, a departure from how the band has typically handled Beard‘s time off in the past.
This isn’t the first health scare Beard has dealt with recently either. He stepped away from the band’s “Elevation” tour last year for an unspecified procedure, later reported to involve foot and ankle problems, and needed another break from touring later in the year before returning to the lineup. Douglas covered those absences, just as he did back in 2002 when Beard underwent an emergency appendectomy.
Beard has held down the drum stool for ZZ Top for more than 55 years, playing on every one of the band’s studio albums starting with ZZ Top’s First Album in 1971.
His billing on those records tells its own small piece of trivia. He was credited under the nickname “Rube,” appearing as “Rube Beard” on the band’s debut and again on Tres Hombres, the group’s third album, while being listed under his real name on Rio Grande Mud, the second. Every album after Tres Hombres has credited him simply as Frank Beard. Fittingly for a founding member of one of rock’s most bearded bands, he’s the one member of ZZ Top who doesn’t actually have a beard, sticking mostly to a mustache aside from a brief goatee phase in the 1990s.
Away from the band, Beard lives in Richmond, Texas, where he owns and runs the Top 40 Ranch. He’s also a scratch golfer with a local reputation built on tournament play and community appearances.
ZZ Top was formed by Gibbons in 1969, with both Beard and the band’s late bassist Dusty Hill joining the following year. Hill died in July 2021 at age 72, with Francis, previously Hill‘s longtime guitar tech, stepping into the bass role.
No word yet on how long Beard will be away from the tour or further specifics on his condition.
Richie Owens, the Nashville-based singer-songwriter, producer, and multi-instrumentalist known for fusing deep country roots with rock and punk grit, will embark across the Atlantic this August for a run of UK tour dates with fellow roots musicians Bob Ocker & Joe Sharp. Deemed the The UK Pub Crawl, this trek marks Owens‘ return to the UK stage […]
Dark ambient pioneer Lustmord and metal’s most restless drummer have officially teamed up. Dave Lombardo, best known for his tenure behind the kit in Slayer, and Lustmord, widely credited as one of the architects of modern ambient electronic music, are now working together as Lustmord Lombardo.
The pair’s debut album, The Pulse of Atoms, arrives Oct. 2 via Ipecac Recordings. As a preview, they’ve dropped “Paleomagnetic Resonance” today, giving the first real taste of what the collaboration sounds like in motion.
Lustmord described the record as deliberately hard to place in time or genre. It isn’t tied to a specific period, he explained, whether that’s last year, a decade ago, two decades ago or five years into the future. The goal was to build something with its own identity rather than leaning on familiar musical language or history, something that reaches back much further than that. He called it the sound of planets dying or stars being born, a bigger picture than any one genre, the sound of the universe being born and dying. It’s not rock and roll, he said.
The two go back further than this record suggests. Lombardo and Lustmord first crossed paths backstage at a Fantômas show, introduced by mutual friend Buzz Osborne around the time Lustmord and Melvins released Pigs of the Roman Empire, their 2004 collaborative album. Roughly two decades on, the pair reconvened as Lustmord Lombardo, landing on a sound that swings between cold and distant one moment, frantic and engaging the next. The Pulse of Atoms pulls a side out of Lombardo that longtime fans haven’t heard before and pulls Lustmord back toward his industrial roots.
The writing process skipped the traditional song structure altogether. Lustmord constructed shifting walls and vortices of sound first, then left space for Lombardo to layer in percussion and synthesizer parts on top. Once everything was tracked and arranged, Lustmord handled mixing and mastering himself, a job that meant finding balance between two players whose musical footprints are both, in their own ways, enormous.
Lombardo said he’s especially proud of the collaboration because it stands apart from everything else he’s done. Working on this body of work with Lustmord, whom he called legendary, capable of rattling the plaster off venue walls, made the project feel different from anything in his catalog.
Pre-orders for The Pulse of Atoms are live now, including two limited vinyl variants (clear and smoke), a CD pressing, and digital pre-saves.
Lustmord has long been regarded as one of the founding figures of dark ambient and industrial music, active since the early ’80s. His work leans on field recordings, low-frequency drones and cinematic sound design to build immersive, atmospheric pieces, and his catalog stretches across dozens of solo records and collaborations, with his fingerprints turning up in film and game scoring as well as experimental electronic production more broadly.
Lombardo, a Grammy-winning drummer, helped shape the sound of thrash and extreme metal with his playing and remains one of heavy music’s most versatile percussionists. Beyond his role as a founding member of Slayer, his résumé includes stints with Fantômas, Suicidal Tendencies, Dead Cross, Mr. Bungle, Misfits and a long list of other collaborators. His 2023 solo debut, “Rites of Percussion,” drew praise from NPR, which called it a very different side of one of metal’s most punishing drummers.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey just crossed a billion dollars at the global box office. Tom Holland, the permanently fresh-faced young actor who played Telemachus in The Odyssey, might hit double that number with Spider-Man: Brand New Day. If only for zeitgeist-related reasons, this is obviously a good moment for the LA-based musician and producer who calls himself Telemakus to announce an album, and Telemakus is doing exactly that today.
Rising Swedish death metal stars Orbit Culture have paid tribute to late At The Gates frontman Tomas Lindberg, four years after taking part in Lindberg’s final tour before his death.
Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, singer/guitarist Niklas Karlsson, whose band supported At The Gates and fellow Gothenburg melodic death metal pioneers In Flames across Europe, remembers Lindberg as a “metal uncle” who was approachable and down-to-earth.
Although At The Gates played a handful of festival shows in 2023, it was their last full-length tour with their singer before he was diagnosed with adenoid cystic carcinoma, a rare cancer of the mouth and pallet, in December 2023. He died in September 2025 aged 52, following complications in his recovery.
“[Lindberg] was so fucking kind to new, young bands,” Karlsson says. “The most down-to-earth guy you’ll ever meet. In one of the green rooms, he was watching skiing and drinking beer, and he was like, ‘You want to go out and play some darts?’ So we played darts with him and shit like that. He felt like a metal uncle, and it’s so sad that he got taken away at such a young age. We miss him.”
The singer/guitarist also remembers how In Flames, who headlined the tour, became one of Orbit Culture’s biggest champions. As well as opening for In Flames in Europe, Orbit Culture have performed at the band’s festival Göteborg Brinner and played with them across North America in summer 2022.
“I talked with Anders [Fridén, In Flames singer] a year or two ago and he said, ‘What separates you guys from other bands is you took the risk. You’re where you are today because you took stupid risks and they paid off,’” Karlsson explains.
“Our stupidest risk was our first US tour with In Flames in 2022. We were worth maybe $4,000 and we rented a bus for 60 grand. The funny thing is that we sold so much merch, we actually came home with profit! It was a stupid risk and I wouldn’t advise it, but, when you have a dream, you just try to pursue it, I guess.”
Lindberg co-founded At The Gates after the split of his previous band, Grotesque, in 1990. Though they initially specialised in a form of progressive death metal, they became one of the leading forces of the melodic death metal scene in the mid-90s, alongside In Flames and fellow Gothenburg band Dark Tranquillity. Their third album, 1995’s Slaughter Of The Soul, is seen as a masterpiece of the genre.
At The Gates split in 1996 but reformed in 2008 and made another four albums. The latest, The Ghost Of A Future Dead, was released after Lindberg’s death and featured vocal takes that he demoed shortly before his cancer surgery in early 2024. The music, artwork and tracklisting were approved by the singer.
News of Lindberg’s death was met with a wave of tributes from fans and peers. Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt said that “as a frontman … he was awesome, plain and simple. Wild!” and “intellectually, he seemed to be a step above and beyond your generic metal musician”. Trivium’s Matt Heafy called him “one of the most important singers/screamers of any metal band”.
At The Gates have not confirmed whether or not they will continue without Lindberg. Their last show was at Aalborg Metal Festival in Denmark in November 2023.
The song immediately uplifts your mood with its classic rock and blues riff. It evokes the vibes of Jerry Lee Lewis, immersing listeners in good feelings. This cheeky tune celebrates the joy of being young. It captures the playful pursuit of girls, lost in the beauty of those delightful bikinis. Perfect for summer, it invites you to dance while taking a nostalgic trip.
The piano, guitar, and bass work together seamlessly. They create a vibrant energy, driving the rhythm with remarkable synergy. The rhythm section, powered by a fantastic drum performance, keeps the groove steady. This strong foundation enhances the overall experience. The instrumentation feels lively and brings a sense of celebration to life.
The saxophone solo is a showstopper. It takes the listener by surprise and breathes new life into the composition. Each note played by the saxophonist feels joyful and expressive. This solo punctuates the track, elevating its spirit considerably. It stands as one of the highlights, making the piece memorable.
Sweet Bikini – Sound and Atmosphere
The lyrics deliver an engaging story. They resonate with anyone who remembers the thrill of youthful adventures. The playful tone adds to the song’s charm. The narrative captures fleeting moments filled with sunshine, laughter, and crushes. These experiences encapsulate the essence of summer and its carefree nature.
As you listen, the energy is infectious. It’s hard to resist moving when this track plays. The blend of rock and blues elements creates a refreshing take. The traditional frameworks of genres are present but reimagined in a contemporary context. This fusion keeps the sound fresh while appealing to a broad audience.
The arrangement is well-structured. There is a balance of instruments that creates richness without overwhelming the listener. The production quality stands out, ensuring clarity in every instrument and vocal line. The crispness amplifies the joy inherent in the music.
Sweet Bikini – Performance and Production
This single encourages enjoying life in the moment. Its infectious positivity is a reminder to embrace youth and spontaneity. When summer arrives, “Sweet Bikini” is sure to resonate with those seeking fun experiences. The song excels at transporting you to a world filled with sunshine and carefree adventures.
As the song concludes, it leaves you smiling. The uplifting energy and vibrant instrumentation linger in your mind. The sax solo, in particular, makes a lasting impression. It reminds you of the joy that can be found in simple moments. There’s an undeniable charm in this track, making it a perfect summer anthem.
This single is a joyous celebration of youth and summer adventures. It’s an invitation to dance, smile, and enjoy life. Derwin Dr Jazz Boyd has crafted a delightful tune that speaks to the heart. This song is highly recommended for anyone looking to brighten their day.
(written by Islander) At this site we try to range widely in our listening and in the music we choose to share, to range widely in both geography and in the stylistic character of what we recommend. We also intentionally spend more time delving into obscure quarters than names most metalheads already know. But of […]
Here at Louder, we’re big fans of House Of Marley’s range of audio products – especially the company’s selection of turntables. And if you’ve been thinking about taking the plunge, now is a great time to do just that because there’s currently deals on two of their record players in both the US and UK.
The first is a brilliant saving of 30% on the Stir It Up Lux, which has been reduced on Amazon US by 30% – down from $399.99 to $279.99. And UK music fans haven’t been left out in the cold either, because you can pick up the same model with a 14% price cut, with Amazon UK taking the price down from £349.99 to £299.99.
Save up to 30% on the House Of Marley Stir it Up Lux turntable The Lux is an upgraded version of the original Stir It Up turntable and offers “improved sound quality, performance and next level tracking”. Made from sustainable and recycled materials, this is an excellent record player, with a top-tier discount.View Deal
The Lux was unveiled back in August 2023 and was introduced to the market as an upgrade to the original model. As you would expect from a House Of Marley product, the Lux has been crafted using sustainable and recycled materials. It has an elliptical stylus, an aluminium head-shell, a bamboo plinth and includes a glass platter along with an anti-skate mechanism, in-built phono pre-amp and Bluetooth 5.3.
However, if you’re looking to get your hands on new turntable with a pair of speakers included, then the original Stir it Up is also available at a reduced cost as a package with two bookshelf 10W speakers.
This is an easy to set up system, and is a great choice of beginner turntable. It’s a two-speed, belt-driven unit with Bluetooth 5.3 and in our House Of Marley Stir It Up review, we awarded in 4.5 stars thanks to its sound, eco-friendly design and overall performance.
House Of Marley was founded by Bob Marley’s son Rohan and the audio firm’s commitment to sustainability is one of their core values. They are linked with One Tree Planted and the Surfrider Foundation.
You can find out more about House of Marley’s support for the drive towards global reforestation and ocean preservation on the Project Marley website.
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