Portland heavy metal band Stainless released their debut full-length album, Lady of Lust & Steel, earlier this spring. Formed in 2022, the Oregon-based group follows up their initial EP, Nocturnal Racer, with an eight-track record rooted firmly in traditional heavy metal and hard rock.
Musically, the album balances fast-paced metal arrangements with steadier hard rock sections. Guitarists Jamie Byrum and Eric Wallace drive the record with soulful, classic-style riffs and solos and harmonized melodies. While the music is completed with epic drums and bass, vocalist Larissa Cavacece handles the lead vocals, providing a powerful, versatile delivery.
Lady of Lust & Steel has a clean, modern production that keeps the grit of classic metal intact. It’s a solid release that puts Stainless right alongside other traditional metal acts currently making noise in the US scene, like Blood Star, Tower, and Savage Master.
Scene Queen (AKA Hannah Collins) is back and channeling pure Y2K chaos on her latest single, “Tracksuit”. Known for her signature “Bimbocore” sound, Collins is leaning further into the metal space with this release, providing a heavy-hitting anthem for anyone who has ever wanted to terrorise a cheater. You can stream the track on all … Continue reading Scene Queen unleashes her heaviest song yet with “Tracksuit”
Wesley Morris is joined by the “Popcast” hosts Jon Caramanica and Joe Coscarelli and the Times Magazine editor Sasha Weiss to reflect on the making of the “Greatest Songwriters” list.
The film follows the band on their epic 2025 reunion tour and features the first joint interviews with Noel and Liam Gallagher in over 25 years. Continue reading…
Following her eighth appearance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, Samantha Fish has released “Don’t Say It,” the latest single from her forthcoming live album Paper Doll Live, due June 12 via Rounder Records.
The album marks Fish’s first official live release and was recorded at the historic Bijou Theatre. According to the announcement, the record captures the energy of Fish’s live performances alongside backing vocals from The McCrary Sisters.
“‘Don’t Say It’ is one of those songs that builds gradually — a slow-burn reveal where one person is fighting for the validity of a relationship while the other is emotionally checked out,” says Fish. “It was incredible having the McCrary Sisters on this track. They weave in and out of the harmonies and add so much heart and depth.”
The two-time Grammy nominee has become known for her high-energy live performances, and Paper Doll Live aims to capture that atmosphere on record. The album includes live performances of songs such as “Lose You” and “Sweet Southern Sounds,” along with a rendition of “Kick Out the Jams.”
“There’s a fire that comes across in live performance that doesn’t always translate in studio albums,” Fish says. “The stage lays all of that bare.”
Originally from Kansas City, Fish has built her career through relentless touring and a live show shaped by influences ranging from Prince and Leonard Cohen to Mississippi Hill Country blues artists.
“If Paper Doll was a declaration of artistic power,” Fish says, “Paper Doll Live is the sound of that power unleashed.”
Fish will continue touring throughout the United States and Europe this year in support of the release.
TOUR DATES
5.08 Kansas City, MO Ameristar Casino Hotel Kansas City 5.09 St Louis, MO Atomic 5.10 Tulsa, OK Cain’s Ballroom 5.13 Iowa City, IA The Englert Theatre 5.14 Marion, IL Marion Cultural & Civic Center 5.16 Welch, MN Treasure Island Casino** 5.17 Des Plaines, IL The Des Plaines Theatre 5.19 Warrendale, PA Jergel’s Rhythm Grille 5.20 State College, PA The State Theatre 5.21 Troy, NY Troy Savings Bank Music Hall 5.22 Ledyard, CT Foxwoods Resort Casino** 5.23 Beverly, MA The Cabot 5.24 Nashua, NH Nashua Center for the Arts 5.27 Patchogue, NJ Patchogue Theatre 5.28 Syracuse, NY Westcott Theater 5.29 Lebanon, NH Lebanon Opera House 5.30 Augusta, NJ Michael Arnone’s Crawfish Fest 5.31 Buffalo, NY Babeville
6.19 Grolloo, Netherlands Holland Intl Blues Festival 6.20 Dortmund, Germany Musiktheater Piano 6.21 Chiari, Italy Istituto Salesiano “San Bernadino” 6.23 Loceri, Italy Parco Urbano 6.25 Rubigen, Switzerland Muhle Hunziken 6.27 Vienne, France Jazz a Vienne 6.28 Erlangen, Germany E-Werk Kino 6.30 Mannheim, Germany 7er-Club 7.01 Aschaffenburg, Germany Colos-Saal 7.02 Hamburg, Germany Fabrik 7.04 Helsinki, Finland Puisto Blues 7.07 Warszawa, Poland Klub Hydrozagadka 7.08 Gdynia, Poland Podeorko Art
9.18-19 Telluride, CO Telluride Blues & Brews Fest 10.31 West Hollywood, CA Whisky A Go Go***
Album Review: Exhumed / Iron Reagan – Split [REPRESS]
Reviewed by Dan Barnes
No doubt buoyed by the success of Exhumed’s Red Asphalt record and their European shows with Gruesome, Tankcrimes have taken the opportunity to issue the Californian goregrinders’ 2014 split with Virginia hardcore punk crew, Iron Reagan. Having been out of print for some years now, it seemed like the perfect time to reacquaint fans with this perhaps forgotten gem of a collection.
Side one, or the first four tracks, are Exhumed’s contribution. Maintaining the personnel who’d recorded Necrocracy a year earlier, the grinders are to be found in something of a less brutal mood, infusing their two original tracks here with a thrashing sensibility. Gravewalker opens with a low bass rumble and plenty of cymbal action, before the appearance of chugging guitars. It’s only really at the end when a full-on filthy grind hove into view, as guttural vocals compete with cleaner ones. Dead to the World arrives already kicking and screaming, bolting along at a fast tempo from the start and finishing things with a ripping solo.
Exhumed’s other songs are covers of early hardcore punk classics. Seeing Red, from Minor Threat’s debut is rampant in its use of the rhythm section, mixing clean and guttural in the gang vocals and maintain a high energy throughout. The second cover is Ready to Fight, taken from Negative Approach’s self-titled EP, which finds Exhumed putting aside the gore and death for a more groove-oriented progression, which captures the street intensity of the original, yet is coloured by the band’s approach. That it ends with twenty seconds of a barking dog is not something that feels particularly surprising.
Side two, or the second four tracks, is Iron Reagan’s turn to rage; through sub-one minute flurries Life Beater and Holy Water Makes Me Wet as they bristle with USHC ire and fury, short, sharp shocks that fizz with energy, to the longer, though no less menacing, Mini Lights, whose blistering pace carries with it a memorable riff. Giving Up on Giving a Fuck feels more modern with a slower pace and grounding.
All tracks here are exclusive to this release and, taken as a whole, offer just-short of twelve minutes of punk-infused rampancy from two bands whose job it is to vent their wrath at the state of the world. Strange that in the dozen years since the initial release, the world seems to have become even crazier, proving Exhumed and Iron Reagan’s rage to be well placed.
Some bands carry their debut like a millstone, and some bands carry it like a torch. Hardline has spent the better part of three decades in the second camp — and with Shout, their latest album via Steamhammer/SPV, they’ve made the strongest case yet that the flame Johnny Gioeli and company lit with 1992’s Double Eclipse still has serious heat left in it.
At the center of that effort, as he has been for much of the band’s recent run, is Alessandro Del Vecchio — keyboardist, co-writer, and the kind of sonic architect who tends to shape records from the inside out rather than the top down. In a new interview, Del Vecchio laid out exactly how Shout was built, what it means for Hardline‘s legacy, and why recreating the past was never really the point.
“The key is intention and honesty,” he said. “We didn’t sit down saying, ‘Let’s recreate Double Eclipse.’ That would immediately turn into nostalgia. What we did instead was reconnect with what made that album special in the first place, which is strong songwriting, emotional delivery, and that balance between power and melody.”
That balance — the thing that made Double Eclipse such a benchmark for melodic hard rock — is precisely what Shout chases on its own terms. Del Vecchio, Gioeli, and guitarist Luca Princiotta split the songwriting between them, though “split” may be too clean a word for what sounds like a genuinely fluid process. “There’s no rigid division like ‘you do this, I do that,’” Del Vecchio explained. “Usually one of us brings an idea, a riff, a chorus, sometimes even just a title, and then we build it together.”
Each brings something distinct. Gioeli sets the emotional compass — his voice is so recognizable that it functions almost as a filter, determining what fits and what doesn’t before a note is fully arranged. Princiotta supplies the modern muscle, the riffs and arrangements that keep the record from feeling like a period piece. Del Vecchio handles structure, melody, production direction, and the keyboard work that, on a record like this, can mean the difference between a great song and an anthem. “Songs like ‘Shout’ or ‘Welcome to the Thunder’ are really the result of that combination,” he said. “It’s three different perspectives working toward one goal, and that’s what gives the record its cohesion.”
The production philosophy on Shout followed a similar logic — resist the temptation to chase trends, and focus instead on impact. “Modern doesn’t mean following trends,” Del Vecchio said. “It means sounding relevant and impactful today.” Big guitars, powerful drums, and room left for the vocals and melodies to do their work. The keyboard layers and harmonies that give Hardline its signature anthemic sweep stayed intact — not as nostalgia but as architecture. “You want it to hit hard, but you also want it to lift people,” he said. “That’s always been Hardline.”
Shout also makes room for range. “Candy Love” leans into the band’s lighter, more celebratory instincts — pure 1980s melodic rock without apology — while “Glow,” a track Gioeli has described as rooted in a love of dogs and the weight of loss, operates in a completely different emotional register. Del Vecchio approached the latter less as a ballad and more as a study in restraint. “When you work on a song like that, you don’t think in terms of ‘ballad,’” he said. “You think in terms of emotion. The goal was to create space. Space for the vocals, for the words, for the listener to connect. That means not overplaying, not overproducing, and letting the dynamics breathe.”
Then there’s the album’s cover of the Scorpions‘ “When You Came Into My Life” — a deliberate left-field pick that prioritized emotional depth over the obvious classic-hit grab. “We wanted to pick something that had emotional depth, not just a classic hit,” Del Vecchio said. “That song has a very strong emotional core, and it fits Johnny‘s voice perfectly.” The arrangement was reworked to feel like a Hardline track rather than a tribute act exercise, preserving the melody while reshaping everything around it.
Keyboard-wise, Del Vecchio is characteristically measured about his own role on the record — always conscious of not crowding the guitars and vocals that form the band’s spine. But there are moments where the keys do more than decorate. “Songs like ‘Shout’ itself or ‘Rise Up’ have elements where the keyboards help define the atmosphere and support the identity of the track, not just fill the background,” he said. He also points to “Mother Love” as a track where the keyboard sits closer to the foundation — a song he said grew directly out of a keyboard riff rather than a guitar idea.
Shout arrived April 17, with a European tour following just a week later — and Del Vecchio admits the live context was never far from his mind during the writing process. “When you write songs like ‘Shout’ or ‘Welcome to the Thunder,’ you can already picture the audience reacting, singing along, feeling that energy,” he said. “That definitely influences the way you build the choruses and the arrangements.” But the live test was always secondary to the more fundamental one: does the song work on its own? If it does, the rest follows.
More than 30 years on from Double Eclipse, Del Vecchio sounds less like a man trying to honor a legacy and more like one who’s simply stopped worrying about it. “I’ve been doing this for many years, and I’m at a point where I don’t feel the need to chase anything,” he said. “I just want to make the best music I can, honestly.”
For a genre that gets written off on a near-annual basis, that kind of conviction has a way of cutting through. “If you approach it with passion, attention to detail, and respect for the songwriting,” Del Vecchio said, “it still has a lot to say.”
Shout makes that argument without breaking a sweat.
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