ALBUM REVIEWS

Two years in the making but with an incredible 30 years of seasoned talent behind it, Sacramento band FOREIGN FILM have cultivated their debut record A Love Letter, incorporating hints of their hardcore roots with their more prevalent shoegaze influences, all melded together into a sound individual from anything they’ve tried before. The original creation of WILL HAVEN’s Jeff Irwin, through his early stages of exploring sound he gradually brought over other members of WILL H

GUILT TRIP have carved their name into the steely genre of hardcore metal and it’s not hard to see how they’ve built their fanbase and success, through tirelessly developing and polishing their sound to an endless string of tours and festival slots, as well as lifting up the local Manchester metal scene and supporting worthwhile causes. Formed from the Manchester, Northern, and Midlands scenes, GUILT TRIP have solidified their place at the top of an ever-expanding scene with

Since forming in 2018, Massachusetts band LOVEWELL have steadily dropped singles over the years as well as 2022 EP Around The Flowers, exploring a mix of genres and developing their signature sound. That sound has officially reached new heights on their debut album Everything You Ever Wanted, a collection that sees the four-piece blending their hardcore roots with alternative sounds and hypnotic vocals for an unexpected and entirely enjoyable sound. Focusing on grunge rhythms

From the very beginning, SLEEPING WITH SIRENS have built their music around connection. Their songs have always felt like a refuge for listeners navigating loneliness, frustration, heartbreak, and self-doubt. Whether through huge singalong choruses or cathartic post-hardcore breakdowns, the band have consistently created music that reminds people they are not alone. On An Ending In Itself, that sense of connection remains at the centre of everything they do. Produced by Will

Described by Tarja Turunen herself as the "heaviest record of her career", releases her tenth overall solo studio album Frisson Noir, first metal album since In The Raw back in 2019. Produced and mixed by veteran rock producer Neal Avron, known for his work with LINKIN PARK, FALL OUT BOY, and YOU ME AT SIX, helps to give the album a raw alternative rock bite within the symphonic metal landscape. This dynamic is immediate from the title track with a calming melody that gradual

Here comes a sad one. The spectacular UK screamo trio ALGAE BLOOM are done. They’ve played their last show (this writer was at the second-last one), they’ve now released their last music, and can’t be long off shipping their final bits of merch off. So, in order to give them a little more of a send-off, it’s only right to show them a little love and cover the last music that the band will be putting out. Across just thirteen minutes and three tracks, …it lasts forever, and th

FUCKED UP are back with their new album Year Of The Monkey, the second chapter in the Grass Can Move Stones trilogy, which picks up where Year Of The Goat left off in December 2025. This marks the penultimate entry in their Zodiac album series, with nine parts coming before last year’s effort from as early as 2006, and one more left to come later this year - Year Of The Rooster, currently billed to release in October. The Grass Can Move Stones trilogy tells the story of Mon

Two albums in the space of a few months? From one of the best bands to ever do it? Count us in. CONVERGE are icons, heroes in the world of uncompromisingly heavy music. Having already put out a contender for album of the year with Love Is Not Enough earlier this year, we’re now lucky enough to be treated to a double dose of the esteemed metalcore collective in Hum of Hurt, a more noise-inflected release rather than the metallic -core sound of the former. Right off the bat, we

Progressive metal legends VOIVOD are unleashing a symphony of chaos with QUEBEC SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA on this latest live release. VOIVOD are musically dense and complex, but the addition of an orchestra will make listeners truly understand how layered their music can be. As a live album it will not create any new fans, but it can give a new level of appreciation to VOIVOD's songwriting craft. The band sound as heavy as ever with a new found cinematic energy which takes them clo

Even in the bleakest scenarios, beautiful things can blossom - and it’s hard to imagine a bleaker circumstance than beginning your adulthood by being forced into isolation, whilst a deadly virus tears through the population. It’s even harder to imagine how a newly-formed band might survive such an occasion, but Norwegian noise-punk band HAMMOK did more than survive. They flourished. Originally formed by long-time friends Tobias Osland (guitar and vocals) and Ferdinand Aasheim

AUGUST BURNS RED. That’s it, that’s all we need to say to call to mind one of the most well-known, hard-grafting metalcore bands of the last 20 years, a band that have continued to expand the horizons of heavy metal and continuously see how much farther they can grow. They’ve returned to once again shatter their own limitations with their new album Season of Surrender, a ferocious onslaught of sound with instrumental intricacies and deep-rooted lyrics that awaken something in

For the better part of a decade, TURNOVER have occupied a unique position within alternative music. Ever since the release of Peripheral Vision, the Virginia band have found themselves constantly measured against one of the most influential emo records of the 2010s. Rather than attempting to recreate that success, the band have spent subsequent releases exploring dream-pop, indie rock and psychedelic textures, steadily moving further away from their roots. Down On Earth, the

A.A. WILLIAMS has steadily and successfully conquered the uncharted space between dramatic metal and conceptual sound, laying the foundations of her empire with her self-titled EP in 2019 and building with visionary collaborations, boundary-breaking sounds, and relentless support and headline touring. She now adds another level to her solid monument with new album Solstice, an album that defies limitations, blends genres and concepts, and leaves you channelling the soul-searc

The old-school death metallers in ANCIENT RIVALRY are ready to unleash hell on their debut LP WHAT LIVES BENEATH. Having relocated to Nottingham since forming in London five years ago, the five-piece have developed a reputation for groove-laden death metal that harks back to the 90’s, and they very much back themselves up on a record that screams for bloody gore. Opening on the title track, it’s obvious that their reputation is by no means overstated or undeserved - there’s d

Newly 4-piece, prior duo act LOVELOST are a noisy alt-rock band spawned only a couple of years ago within the quiet depths of South West UK, but the traction and quality tied to the group would easily have one think they’ve been kicking for plenty longer. Earning support from numerous radios and magazines, plus spots in official playlists from major music platforms such as Spotify, Apple Music and TIDAL, the collective demonstrate thorough determination when it comes to sprea

There is a sense of repetition running through DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE's I Built You A Tower. Not repetition in a negative sense, but repetition as a reflection of memory itself. The thoughts that keep returning. The conversations replayed long after they have ended. The people who continue to occupy space in your mind long after they have left your life. Across eleven tracks, DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE explore heartbreak, self reflection and acceptance, creating one of their most emoti

With HOUNDSTOOTH, SIIICKBRAIN builds a record that feels like stepping into a dark, sweat-soaked room and letting the walls close around you. It is abrasive, hazy, clubby, vulnerable, and strange in all the right ways, pulling from industrial grit, electronic production, hip-hop beats, alternative pop structures, and something far more instinctive. It never feels interested in sitting neatly within one sound, and that restlessness becomes part of its identity. The album opens

If you’ve been mourning the absence of 90s grunge like we have, mourn no longer - VIOLET GROHL is hauling the fuzzed movement into the modern era, with bold, hefty riffs, cutting vocals, and a flair inspired by visual cinema and 40 years worth of music, packaged beautifully into her debut album Be Sweet To Me. Sweet the title, gritty and bitter the sound, Grohl captures the essence of 90s grunge rock and peppers through modern elements that shape her album into something that

Silence is never really silent. It hangs in the corners of rooms after arguments have finished, the hollow quiet after they’ve left and the air still feels shaped like their bodies. It settles into empty train stations at midnight and breathes out a heavy sigh under a starless night sky. It creaks, not in the claustrophobic loneliness of crowded rooms or on the floorboards of dead-end conversations, but in the gravity of the world suddenly opening itself too wide and swallowi

When covering a remaster of an album that’s already so utterly brilliant as Rheia, what can be said? OATHBREAKER have long been known to be a stunningly good band, even if they did decide to leave us without new shows or music for a decade. Ten years on from the release of the original version of Rheia and it is as highly appreciated as an album in that scene can get, quite frankly bordering on legendary status - if not already firmly in that top echelon of the blackgaze and