Much-loved Brit-rockers Little Angels have released their first new music in more than three decades. Hero (That Was Then, This Is Now) comes from the band’s upcoming Big Bad & Back EP, which will be released on November 6. It’s their first new music since the Too Posh to Mosh, Too Good to Last! album in 1994.
“This was never in the plan,” say the band, who announced their first shows in a decade earlier this year. “We would never make a new record unless we felt we still had something to say… and it turns out we do. Toby [Jepson] started writing new ideas, and while we were rehearsing the set for the tour, we started to jam around this new material, and it just felt great.”
“Lyrically, the challenge was always going to be: how do you take what Little Angels represented back then and bring it into the modern world with guys that are now in their mid-50s?” adds frontman Jepson. “We discussed what the past meant to us and the penny dropped.
“This wasn’t about youth anymore. Of course not. It’s about reflecting on where we had come from, and the kind of people we are now, and all of a sudden, it made sense – this is about returning home.”
The Big Bad & Back EP was recorded at Chapel Studios in Lincolnshire and mixed by Mike Fraser in Vancouver. Fraser, best known for his work with AC/DC, Bon Jovi and Aerosmith, also recorded and mixed Little Angels’ 1994 single Ten Miles High.
“We encouraged him to evoke the spirit of those great records that he mixed back in the day,” say the band.
The Big Bad & Back EP is available to pre-order now. Little Angels’ UK and Ireland tour kicks off in Dublin on November 9 – full dates below.
Little Angels: Big Bad & Back tour 2026
Nov 09: Dublin Opium, Ireland Nov 10: Belfast Limelight, UK Nov 12: Glasgow O2 Academy, UK Nov 13: Manchester O2 Ritz, UK Nov 14: Leeds O2 Academy, UK Nov 16: Norwich UEA, UK Nov 17: Newcastle O2 City Hall, UK Nov 19: Oxford O2 Academy, UK Nov 20: Nottingham Rock City, UK Nov 21: Wolverhampton KK’s Steel Mill, UK Nov 23: Cardiff Depot, UK Nov 24: Liverpool O2 Academy, UK Nov 26: Bristol O2 Academy, UK Nov 27: Bournemouth O2 Academy, UK Nov 28: London O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire, UK Nov 29: London O2 Forum Kentish Town, UK
Finnish death metal quartet HEKATOXEN have now premiered their debut full-length Obsidian Majesty in its entirety through Death Metal Promotion, ahead of its October 2 release on Nuclear Winter Records.
The band follow their 2022 Utter Darkness EP with a record steeped in the traditions of their homeland’s nineties death metal, yet shaped around a distinct sense of songwriting and atmosphere.
Across eight tracks, HEKATOXEN move between punishing guitar work, muscular rhythms and passages where the tension is allowed to build rather than simply explode, giving the album a strong internal pulse. The result is a collection that feels firmly connected to the Finnish underground while avoiding a purely retrospective approach.
Hailing from Tampere, HEKATOXEN return with a record that tightens every aspect of their sound, delivering a darker, sharper and more determined expression of death metal. Obsidian Majesty moves through a landscape of razor-edged riffs, where heaviness never comes at the expense of movement; the songs hit hard, but they also breathe, shift direction and reveal a band with a clear understanding of dynamics.
Rooted in the classic language of Finnish death metal, the album does not rely on mere repetition of familiar formulas. HEKATOXEN take inspiration from the genre’s foundations while shaping those elements into focused compositions built around memorable riffs, strong structures and a tangible sense of purpose. Every track feels designed to stand on its own, equally effective through headphones and on stage.
Avoiding unnecessary complexity, HEKATOXEN embrace the power of well-crafted songwriting: concrete, immediate and uncompromising. Obsidian Majesty captures a band refining its identity, balancing old school instincts with a contemporary edge and proving that tradition can still cut deep when handled with conviction.
Track list:
01 – Lost Souls Epitome 02 – I Am Them 03 – Spawns Of Darkness 04 – Haunting Ceremony 05 – Domus Vilomaxus 06 – Grave Reveries 07 – At Hellsrivers Pathway 08 – Vanguard The Dark
Line-up:
Jussi – vocals, lead guitar, acoustic guitar, synth Niko – rhythm guitar Risto – bass guitar Vesa – drums
For fans of: Demigod, Adramelech, early Sentenced, Funebrarum
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There aren’t many record labels with as much personality as Sub Pop. Less a business than a state of mind, it began life in mid-80s Seattle as a fanzine edited by Bruce Pavitt (it was originally titled Subterranean Pop, and gave away compilation tapes of local underground bands), and grew to become the refreshingly snark-infused, ultra‑DIY figurehead of the city’s burgeoning grunge scene. It provided a springboard for Nirvana, Soundgarden and Mudhoney, among others, and established its dysfunctional family as the heart and soul of the city’s musical awakening.
But while their logo remains synonymous with “this primal rock stuff” that would become tagged as grunge (the term ‘grunge’ gained traction after Mark Arm of Green River, and later Mudhoney, used it to describe his music, although he denies coining the phrase), Sub Pop have adapted over the years to survive – sometimes, admittedly, by the skin of their teeth – the evolution of American indie rock after the 90s explosion began to lose its heat. In fact, so varied, extensive and consistently good is their roster, we’ve had to be painfully strict about our choices for the main sections here – no singles (despite excellent one-off releases from Babes In Toyland, Shudder To Think, Cheap Trick, Les Savy Fav and a stereo mix of The Beach Boys’ I Just Wasn’t Made For These Times), no comedy albums (even though there’s genius to be found from stand-up David Cross and musical comedy duo Flight Of The Conchords) and no compilations (but really, do track down Sub Pop 100 and Sub Pop 200 for a spectacular snapshot of a particular time in US punk rock). And even then we’ve had to miss out truly brilliant albums by bands including Codeine, Sunny Day Real Estate, the Postal Service and the Gutter Twins, simply because it’s physically impossible to cram it all into just one feature.
The Sub Pop motto is, “We’re not the best, but we’re pretty good”, but here are the records which made the label great.
Green River – Dry As A Bone/Rehab Doll EP (1987)
They featured Mudhoney’s Mark Arm and Pearl Jam’s Stone Gossard, and you can hear the starting point of both bands in Green River, with their mix of the former’s simple punk approach and the latter’s taste for stadium-ready guitar histrionics.
The tension between the two approaches is what makes Dry As A Bone, in particular, pave the way for the grunge explosion to come – not all of the bands that followed shared the same sound, but they shared an attitude, and as the polar opposite sides in Green River simultaneously gelled and pulled away from one another, a spark ignited. Great cover of Bowie’s Queen Bitch too.View Deal
Soundgarden – Screaming Life (1987)
While the general trope is that the grunge movement was trying to ‘kill’ the LA metal scene, Soundgarden proved quite the opposite: from day one they were out there giving metal a whole new lease of life.
The key was ignoring the past decade of MTV stars and looking back to the forefathers of the genre for inspiration. Their Screaming Life EP starts with a plane howling overhead and just gets heavier from there. Guitarist Kim Thayil’s Sabbath-inspired nosebleed riffs were tuned low enough to tunnel to Australia, while Chris Cornell revived the spirit of Led Zeppelin with astonishing vocal acrobatics.View Deal
Mudhoney – Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988)
Mudhoney frontman Mark Arm was there right at the beginning with Green River, but it was Mudhoney (who he also fronted), with their debut Superfuzz Bigmuff that truly defined both the Seattle sound and Sub Pop’s manifesto.
The deathless Touch Me I’m Sick takes The Stooges’ garage-punk blueprint and smears it with even more grime. ‘Production’ is pretty much non-existent, feedback and tape hiss reign supreme, but as Arm wailed sardonically over earth-shifting basslines a rallying cry went out to a generation.
Twenty-eight years later, Mudhoney are still loyal to the label, and still making a magically filthy racket, but Superfuzz Bigmuff is their defining moment.View Deal
Nirvana – Bleach (1989)
With hindsight, it’s easy to see Bleach as merely Nirvana’s caustic baby steps. But the signs of stardom to come were already there, not least in the subtle, delicate About A Girl, which was so accomplished a song that it was chosen to open their Unplugged live set four years and two mega-selling albums later.
Even at Bleach’s rawest, as on the raging, chaotic Negative Creep, the album seethes with confidence, intelligence and star quality, the songwriting already so nuanced and packed with pop hooks that their breakthrough to the mainstream makes perfect sense. Follow-ups Nevermind and In Utero may get all the attention, but this is an overlooked gem.View Deal
The Afghan Whigs – Congregation (1992)
Congregation was where the Afghan Whigs truly found soul, albeit soul of the darkest type possible. While the alt.rock noise of their earlier work remains, it’s the album that sees frontman Greg Dulli recast himself as an oily, loathsome lothario as he treads through the murky waters of human relationships and gets it horribly, dangerously wrong. It’s sleazily beautiful stuff.
Dulli is also one half of the Gutter Twins, with Sub Pop lablemate Mark Lanegan. Give your full attention to their brilliant Saturnalia album for a further welcome wallow in a mire of their own making.View Deal
Mark Lanegan – Whiskey For The Holy Ghost (1994)
With the Screaming Trees, singer Mark Lanegan was fully integrated into the grunge gold rush by the media. But it’s his solo work that showcased his deep love and understanding of Americana, a genre perfectly tailored to his stunning whisky-nicotine-honey voice.
His previous solo album, 1990’s The Winding Sheet, featured Kurt Cobain as a guest vocalist, but if anything, this album trumps it because there’s nothing to detract from his haunting delivery and delicate, immersive songwriting. It’s a man laying his troubled soul bare. Sometimes spooky, always achingly mournful.View Deal
Sebadoh – Bakesale (1994)
Previously the lo-est lo-fi band in all of lo-fi land, Sebadoh came blinking out of their bedroom to make Bakesale, their first album that didn’t sound like it had been recorded inside a biscuit tin. In fact, now you could hear them properly, it was a revelation that there were actually gleaming indie-rock melodies hidden under there all along.
This time around it was very much the Lou Barlow show (drummer and co-founder Eric Gaffney had ridden off into the sunset by this point), and he proved himself an articulate songwriter with an arsenal of neuroses to showcase, making Bakesale a classic album in the American loser-rock canon.View Deal
Sleater-Kinney – The Woods (2005)
Pulling punches has never been Sleater-Kinney’s style, with the riot-grrrl trio of Corin Tucker, Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss consistently rolling up their sleeves to tackle feminist issues, leftist politics and righteous ire through the medium of their gloriously, deliberately unpolished punk rock.
But their only album for Sub Pop (and their last album for 10 years) found them taking a new approach by embracing elements of classic rock, taking them out of their comfort zone and to a wider audience. The social commentary remains, though – Jumpers is a deceptively upbeat song about suicide.View Deal
Band Of Horses – Everything All The Time (2006)
Around the turn of the century, Sub Pop embraced the dreamier end of the rock spectrum, gaining a huge hit with indie-folk troupe Fleet Foxes’ self-titled first album. But Band Of Horses are the real deal when it comes to sun-drenched 70s-style rock, with the heartbreaking lament The Funeral the haunting centrepiece of this beautiful debut album. There are shades of both the Eagles and The Band, and frontman Ben Bridwell’s high, keening vocals add an other‑worldly element.
Follow-up Cease To Begin, made by a new line-up with only Bridwell remaining from this debut, sees them take a more country direction and is also gorgeous.View Deal
Downtown Boys – The Cost Of Living (2017)
A fantastic example of the vibrant, vital music Sub Pop continue to release into the world, Downtown Boys’ third album – and their Sub Pop debut – takes aim at the social and political divisions currently tearing through America and the border states, bulldozing notions of civility, polite debate and apoliticism in its wake.
Fronted by the fearsome Victoria Ruiz, the band have a knack of throwing their fearlessly confrontational lyrics together with irresistible hooks and wigged out sax, with the furious A Wall and Lips That Bite providing dazzling album highlights.View Deal
It was the summer of 1987, and for fans of hard rock, Sunset Boulevard in Los Angeles was the only place to be. The clubs of The Strip, as it is known, were full of shaggy-maned, (largely) good-looking, attitude-charged and overwhelmingly male wannabes prepared to step over their own dying mother to become the Next Big Thing.
This was a moment in time. Ratt had stuttered with their third full-length record, the previous year’s Dancing Undercover (although it still sold a million). Girls, Girls, Girls was the third consecutive Mötley Crüe album to go quadruple platinum (four million copies). Guns N’ Roses’ soon-to-be-stellar debut Appetite For Destruction was fresh in the racks, and Poison had leapt from an independent to a major label. Even David Coverdale wanted a slice of the action, meticulously retooling Whitesnake for optimum traction on MTV.
At the heart of it all were Taime Downe, frontman of Faster Pussycat, and Riki Rachtman, who would go on to host the MTV show Headbangers Ball. As roommates, the pair had dreamt up and created their nightclub The Cathouse, a den of iniquity and decadence that each week drew six hundred party-hungry rockers to the corner of La Cienega and San Vicente.
In doing so, Downe and Rachtman became a platonic power couple in a Hollywood scene captured on celluloid so memorably by director Penelope Spheeris in the following year’s The Decline Of Western Civilization Part 2: The Metal Years, in which Faster Pussycat perform their songs Cathouse and Bathroom Wall at the club.
“It was an era in which anything went – and I mean anything,” the singer says now, beaming at the memory. “All of the bands were there, all of the strippers. Every night was a party. It was the place to be, just a cool hang. And I was young enough to be like…” he shrugs his shoulders. “Yeah… whatever. Bring it on.”
Faster Pussycat toured with a Who’s Who of the hard-rock world, including Alice Cooper, Kiss, Ozzy Osbourne, David Lee Roth and Motörhead. However, while Faster Pussycat’s early music was charged with a sleaze-laden simplicity, their albums gradually became darker and heavier, and it’s no surprise that Downe later became involved with industrial rockers Pigface, or that his other group The Newlydeads followed a similar path.
“I don’t like doing the same thing over and over,” Downe told Classic Rock in 2022. “To me, whether or not [a song] has a distorted vocal or banging cans in the background, it’s all catchy rock shit.”
After arriving in Hollywood, Downe’s ambitions were modest. “I wanted to put a band together and play the Troubadour,” he recalls, referencing the iconic 500-capacity club on Santa Monica Boulevard where he once worked the lights. “Or maybe the Whisky [a Go Go, of similar size, on Sunset]. I dreamt about the simple shit. And then everyone started talking about a record deal.
“Soon there were other hoops to jump through; get the record out, go on tour, get a gold disc. And then, without warning, everything collapses and you’re left wondering: ‘What do I do now?’ Before I knew it, Faster was done.”
Riki Rachtman And Taime Downe At The 1991 Video Music Awards (Image credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic)
In 2026, four decades on from those heady days, Downe continues to lead a downscaled but doggedly persistent version of Faster Pussycat. At just short of 62 years old, the man who almost killed himself in a relentless blizzard of alcohol, drugs and nicotine has been sober, clean and cigarette-free for almost a decade. This resilience withstood the sternest of tests last summer when his fiancée, Kimberly Burch, went overboard and was lost in the Caribbean Sea during an 80s-themed cruise, on which Faster Pussycat were one of the attractions.
The singer’s life and career might have been turbulent, but while talking to Classic Rock from his home studio in California he projects a zenlike mindset.
“Today it’s a whole different world,” Downe states. “Without record companies to pay for tours, and with no real money coming in, it can be a struggle.
“What I’ve learned to do,” he continues, acknowledging the wider picture, “is to enjoy the good things while they last. Life goes by pretty fast.”
Taime Downe on stage in London, 1989 (Image credit: Ian Dickson/Redferns)
Born Gustave Molvik, Downe grew up in Seattle as part of a rock-friendly family and with a father who played guitar. By the age of four the youngster had followed suit and also knew his way around a drum kit.
After relocating to California during the mid80s Gustave evolved into Taime (a name his Italian grandmother had coined). “I was twenty-one and wanted to be a rock star, so I moved to where the hot women and cool bands were from,” he says now.
Mick Cripps, later of L.A. Guns, had been involved at the start, but Downe says that those who ended up joining him – guitarists Greg Steele and Brent Muscat, bassist Kelly Nickels and drummer Mark Michaels – were hand-picked. Word on the street got around quickly. Vicky Hamilton of GN’R and Crüe fame became their manager. For Faster Pussycat, timing could not have been any better. Their debut gig at The Central (later The Viper Room), saw Axl Rose dancing enthusiastically.
The Decline Of Western Civilisation Pt 2 arrived in cinemas at an equally opportune moment for Faster Pussycat, its unintentional pathos capturing all facets of life on the Strip – the huge egos, the desperation and self-belief to the point of complete and utter denial.
“It was a good film, Penelope did a great job,” Downe acknowledges. “And it was right as our band was coming out.”
He adds: “We were a fun band, our shows were packed and we pimped ourselves out. We weren’t even that good, we were just young and hungry. And at that time all of the bands hung out together – GN’R, Jetboy, L.A. Guns, The Sea Hags and us. The great thing was that the bands helped each other out.”
Eric Stacy (left) and Greg Steele onstage with Faster Pussycat at The Station in Florida, 1992 (Image credit: Christopher Helton/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock)
With a record-label feeding frenzy going on, every major needed its own so-called ‘hair metal’ band, and within a year of Faster Pussycat’s formation Elektra Records landed theirs.
Fortune was less kind to Kelly Nickels, who was involved in a motorcycle accident just before the group entered the studio with Poison producer Ric Browde, so Eric Stacy took over on bass (Nickels subsequently joined L.A. Guns). In vogue for his work on Poison’s debut Look What The Cat Dragged In, and having helped grease the wheels of the Elektra deal, Browde brought valuable additional skills as an arranger.
Banged out largely in one take for an extremely modest $35,000, Faster Pussycat proved to be a functional-sounding debut of above-average songs, and where else but The Cathouse to throw its record release party, attended by Gene Simmons of Kiss?
The band had taken their name from the 1975 film Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!, so they were thrilled when its director Russ Meyer, known for his series of ‘sexploitation’ films, agreed to produce a bump-and-grind video to promote one of the album’s three singles, Don’t Change That Song. Sharing a love of well-proportioned women, Downe bonded with the filmmaker.
“It was fucking cool that Russ made a three-minute movie for us,” he recalls fondly. “Russ used to call me Tammy. He brought in some of his girls for the shoot. I got given a couple of Kitten Natividad’s bras as a souvenir.”
Brett Bradshaw and Brent Muscat at The Station in Florida, 1992 (Image credit: Christopher Helton/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock)
But Don’t Change That Song might never have been recorded. The band had been planning to record their own rendition of Shocking Blue’s much-covered 60s hit Venus, until the British trio Bananarama beat them to it, and with the album coming up short, DCTS was written in the studio in “around an hour”.
Among the band’s first overseas tours was one in Europe with their pals Guns N’ Roses, whose own debut was by now gaining traction. Many who attended the last show of the five-date UK leg, which also featured The Quireboys, at London’s Hammersmith Odeon, reckoned Faster Pussycat were the best band of the night. Responding to such a suggestion in a previous dialogue with Classic Rock, Downe theatrically placed a finger to his lips, grinned and said: “When the reviews came out we had to tiptoe around Axl. He would get angry about that shit.”
Today Downe is more diplomatic: “Those guys were our buddies. Being twenty-two years old and in Europe for the first time was an incredible experience. We had half an hour on stage and we fucked shit up,” he relates proudly.
The Faster Pussycat debut album went on to sell half a million copies in the US, and soon the band were heading out in promotion of a second record. Overseen by the experienced John Jansen, Wake Me When It’s Over revealed a more musically adventurous side to the band and, fuelled by three singles, including House Of Pain and Where There’s A Whip There’s A Way, it became their biggest seller.
“The bottom line is that we were trying to do better,” Downe explains. “If the music got darker, we were still learning our shit.”
Reminded that the band’s sound was memorably once described as: “Not glam, not punk, but somewhere in between”, he says with a smirk: “It’s glunk. Naah. We’re just trashy rock’n’roll. We’ve been labelled so many times, I don’t know what we are. We’re just old. Or maybe we’re classic. Don’t ask me.”
In January 1990, three years after that first European tour with Guns N’ Roses, Faster Pussycat returned to the UK to headline Hammersmith Odeon as part of a package with The Almighty and Dangerous Toys. “I’ve got a plaque – ‘Faster Pussycat at Hammersmith, sold out!’” he announces with pride.
A third album, 1992’s Whipped!, Downe recalls, was created “a little more under John Jansen’s control”. With hindsight, he regrets writing thirty songs and discarding twenty, instead of “ten that were killer”.
With the grunge revolution on the horizon and a whole host of record label issues Faster Pussycat needed to overcome, it mattered little anyway.
“For us, Elektra just fell apart. And once we lost our record deal the [booking] agency dropped us, so there were no more tours. Without another record deal your band dies. That’s just how the music business works. When Seattle came in, it was all over for the LA bands – even Mötley Crüe. So I stopped doing Faster Pussycat until 2000. I just experimented with other shit and had some fun.”
That involved relocating to Chicago, where Pigface’s Martin Atkins and Bill Rifelin were based. After returning to California he formed The Newlydeads, whose line-up also included former Bang Tango bassist Kyle Kyle.
When the Faster Pussycat reunion came it was with a mix of originals (Downe, Greg Steele and Brent Muscat) and members of The Newlydeads, and the remix collection Between The Valley Of The Ultra Pussy that gave an industrial twist to the band’s best-known songs.
In 2006, the long-awaited fourth studio album, The Power And The Glory Hole, walked the thin line between glam and mechanical sounds.
“To me, industrial music is cool,” Downe insists. “When it’s done well – like by Nine Inch Nails, Wednesday 13 [former Murderdolls frontman] or Marilyn Manson – it’s fucking amazing. I like to do a bit of this and a bit of that. At sixty-one years old I’m glad I haven’t spent my life doing just one thing.”
Don’t mention the war. Faster Pussycat in 2002: (l-r) Brent Muscat, Taime Downe, Chad Stewart, Danny Nordahl, Xristian Simon. (Image credit: Larry Marano/Shutterstock)
For a while there was not one but two versions of Faster Pussycat doing the rounds, with Brent Muscat having left and put together a rival line-up with Eric Stacy and Brett Bradshaw.
“All of that only lasted for, like, a minute – I killed it quickly,” Downe reveals. “I started this fucking band. It’s my band.”
When the mood takes them, Faster Pussycat continue to release new music, although just like more contemporary acts they now do so in dripfeed mode, a few songs at a time.
“Yeah,” he says. “But when we have a whole batch of songs we put them all together. I still believe in albums. It helps that I have a studio right here in my house.”
Even without the ‘fringe benefits’ of the old days, Downe professes to taking genuine enjoyment from touring. “Oh yeah, that’s why I still do rock’n’roll,” he says enthusiastically. “I don’t go out in a fucking van, not unless we’re in the UK. In America we’re on a bus and I have my own place to chill out. I take my dog. We play clubs and I’m cool with that.”
When asked about the possibility of the original Pussycat playing together again, it’s clear that those doors are firmly closed: “It’ll never happen. I hear occasionally from Greg [Steele], but [Brett] Bradshaw is dead and Mark [Michals, the original drummer] is missing. He’s probably dead too.”
Faster Pussycat at the Monsters Of Rock Cruise 2015 on board the MSC Divina (Image credit: Igor Vidyashev/ZUMA Wire/Shutterstock)
Taime Downe found sobriety almost a decade ago because he had to. “I had been a chain smoker since the age of fifteen, and alcohol and cocaine went along with smoking, so I had to quit everything,” he says. “My whole life had been cigarettes, shots and a bump. I didn’t do a whole lot of drugs back in the day, though I used them socially, so in later life I figured I should catch up.
“At fifty-two I walked away from all of those things at the same time, so that was tough,” he continues. “Even when got sober I had to stay away from Alcoholics Anonymous meetings because everyone there was smoking.”
Besides being hangover-free, the change has massively improved Downe’s health and overall quality of life. For quite a while he has been working on a memoir with Leif Eriksson and Martin Svensson, the Swedish ghostwriters involved in books on Matt Sorum (former GN’R drummer) and Poison’s Rikki Rockett.
“It’s going to be a very, very bad book,” he says, laughing at the prospect of having a book about him. “Will it tell the complete truth? Of course. But dude…” [there’s a pause] “why the fuck would anyone want to read about me? All the same, it does give cause for contemplation.”
Without fail, each day Downe takes time to go for a long walk. He talks excitedly about an upcoming motorcycle trip to Mexico with a gang of friends including former GN’R guitarist Gilby Clarke, plus a road trip back to Seattle to see his mum. He’s still the best of friends with his former Cathouse co-host Riki Rachtman, who refers to him as him as T-Dog.
“Riki and I talked on the phone, like, half an hour ago,” he says. Although Downe hasn’t spoken to Axl in a while he remains in regular contact with Slash, and former Quireboy Spike.
Taime Downe onstage at Marathon Music Works, Nashville, Tennessee, US – 29 Jul 2022 (Image credit: Johnny Giles/Shutterstock)
All things considered, Taime Downe is in a pretty good place these days. More than a year has passed since the crushing loss of his fiancée at sea, but such an experience isn’t something that one is ever likely to recover from.
“I’m doing okay, dude,” he insists. “What happened to Kimberly was tough. But you rebuild. Like I said, I’m gonna take a motorcycle trip with my buddies, and you do your best to move on.
“Slash was one of the first to reach out. His girlfriend Meegan [Hodges] lost her daughter in another tragic situation [in 2024, 25-year-old Lucy-Bleu Knight took her own life]. Those guys offered a lot of great advice.”
He shrugs and breaks into a smile: “A lot of good friends have helped me through – Riki [Rachtman] and Fred Coury [former Cinderella drummer] among them. I’ve got to try to keep on living my life.”
Faster Pussycat play the Whisky a Go Go in West Hollywood on December 30.
Opening the September 26th, 2026 show is Nate Amos, known as This Is Lorelei. A keyboardist, bassist and drummer accompany Amos on stage to kick things off with a rock-pop start. The group reminds me of a more refined Dandy Warhols sound, specifically from the New Bohemian era, while Amos himself looks like a young Ben Gibbard. I welcome both of these aspects as they play song after song, some of my favorite moments involving atmospheric swells that took over the space in waves. Though I wish they had spent some time to talk about the songs or group, it didn’t detract from their presence. Before their final act, Amos did briefly announce the group This Is Lorelei, and made mention of the names playing tonight, however it was brief and a bit mumbled.
It’s clear that Amos and This Is Lorelei is a band that’ll only be more familiar in the years to come. I’d recommend seeing them with Bleachers or on their own in the future without hesitation.
The house lights are off, and sodium vapor lights began to glow in the fog that had been slowly filling the Armory between acts. The neon-orange glow that once lined streets now lit the crowd in a monochromatic light, a nostalgic feeling from a time not so long ago. On the speakers, Frank Sanatra’s “My Way” had started to take hold. The audience began to sing along part way through. Then it happened — Bleachers came onto the stage to finish out “My Way,” seamlessly with Sinatra’s recording and the crowd.
The September 26th, 2026, concert transitioned right into Bleacher’s “sideways,” and Antonoff’s appearance was a smidge off. With a quick lean back from the mic, he wobbled slightly. Antonoff’s face looked surprised as the mic nearly fell into him. This happened several times over the course of the first song, and it was apparent that this was a different Jack Antonoff than I’d seen perform previously. Lyrics were somewhat slurred, though understandable, and the sound of the band was perfection. Maybe a little too much celebration before the show? Whatever Antonoff’s state, he continued to give it his all, dancing around the stage, even playing on top of the speakers. I for one am glad to know we have humans performing human-made music in this era.
This level of excitement continued through the van, and again and again to “Modern Girl,” “Jesus is Dead,” and “Wild Heart.” The audience clearly remained engaged with songs new and old, enjoying Antonoff’s wild dancing around the stage. “Everybody Lost Somebody” had the saxophones out again, Zem Audu and Evan Smith may be some of the best players touring period — both delivering incredible saxophone performances, song after song, let alone all the other instruments they were playing throughout the concert. Mikey Freedom Hart, Sean Hutchinson and Mike Riddleberger also ever-present, their sounds and variety of positions (backing vocals, drums, synthesizers, keyboards, bass guitar) seamlessly build the tapestry of the Bleachers sound. Like a well-oiled machine, players were constantly rotating between instruments and sounds without any friction, save for some of Antonoff’s blurry lead vocals. I hope for the band’s sake (and Antonoff) that this was a one-off in their performances.
The 21-song long setlist included a snippet version of “Dream of Mickey Mantle” I didn’t see present on other recent set lists. Perhaps this explains why Antonoff seemed to be missing some of the lyrics, though I still found it surprising for a performer of his caliber to present such a way. Things picked up pace again with “Merry Christmas, Please Don’t Call,” and Antonoff made an attempt to talk about some of his time recording at Paisley Park the last time he’d been to Minnesota. I found it hard to understand what he explained, but alas, it was back in 2021 when Bleachers last hit Minnesota. The performance of “How Dare You Want More” was honestly fantastic, and for a minute here, I started to wonder if Antonoff was starting to come back towards his intended state for performing. Time for another quick story, the Bleachers Sound as Antonoff refers to it, about the note played on a Juno-6 synthesizer that started the Bleachers project. That sounds, played loud and clear for the audience, lead us into the original single “Rollercoaster,” which had the audience dancing and even people riding on shoulders. “Tiny Moves” kept the dancing going — and the whole show rocked to the end with “Don’t Take the Money” into a full-band version of “I Wanna Get Better” (earlier Antonoff sang it acoustic, before Dream of Mickey Mantle) with a little crowd surfing, and finally, “Stop Making This Hurt”.
Having experienced multiple performances of Jack Antonoff’s Bleachers in Minneapolis over the years, each show has been memorable. Bleachers consistently brings great showmanship on stage, gorgeous production quality and authentic energy from the presence Antonoff brings to town.
This year’s performance in Minneapolis hits near the end of the Bleachers Forever USA tour. Antonoff announced the band would leave them playing their absolute best, and that “there was blood on the stage and (he) didn’t even know who’s it was”, that’s how he wanted to leave us. The saxophonists kept playing as they walked off the stage, the crowed continued to cheer. Then, the house lights came up — Bleachers doesn’t do encores. They give the best show they can, front to end. If your city is one of the few remaining stops, hear this: Bleachers delivers a memorable show, and I continue to personally adore them for all they are; but Jack Antonoff’s unusually sloppy vocal performance tonight was a distraction when enjoying the rest of the magic happening.
In 2027, SLEEPING WITH SIRENS will return to Australia for their biggest headline tour to date, set to bring their An Ending In Itself Tour down under next April, joined by special guests STATE CHAMPS (USA) and BOSTON MANOR (UK). Commencing on Saturday 3 April in Brisbane, SLEEPING WITH SIRENS will journey through Sydney, Melbourne […]
In 2027, SLEEPING WITH SIRENS will return to Australia for their biggest headline tour to date, set to bring their An Ending In Itself Tour down under next April, joined by special guests STATE CHAMPS (USA) and BOSTON MANOR (UK). Commencing on Saturday 3 April in Brisbane, SLEEPING WITH SIRENS will journey through Sydney, Melbourne […]