Dylan Baldi (frontman): “The album is our attempt to pay homage to the heavy rock
music we’ve been listening to over the last few years. Some pretty direct and popular musical influences on the tracks are Queens of the Stone Age, Motorhead, Earth, and Electric Wizard.
We were feeling a little pigeonholed in the indie rock world and wanted to make a change in
our sound that revealed a different facet of our interests and abilities.”
Along with the news the Nothings serve the
lead-single, named Death Keeps Me Alive.
Today Black Sabbath‘s phenomenal guitarist TONY IOMMI (78 now) released
his 4th solo album, his first in 21 years, named FROM THE DARK (stream below).
Order info here.
Iommi: “Sabbath retired, and you think you’ll get plenty of time, but I keep
saying yes to things! It’s embedded in me. It’s just in my bones. I can’t stop
doing this stuff. I like it.”
He talked in extension with premier metal mag Kerrang about
the past, the present and his new solo exploit. Full interview HERE.
Kerrang about the LP: “Legacy offers a spellbinding conclusion that somehow encapsulates this album’s testament to its creator’s undimmed spirit, determined to move forward even as those six strings conjure inevitable nostalgia for decades of truly momentous music. All hail Iommi!”
TUTV: To be honest, I’m not a dedicated heavy metal fan, but as a music junkie
I know the classics in the genre. At first I thought I was listening here to a record
of Sabbath‘s era with Ronnie James Dio (1942-2012) as their titanic vocalist, because Iommi‘s vocal sidekick on this album, the herculean Norwegian singer Jørn Lande, has Dio‘s towering timbre. Earth-shaking. Anyways, I’ll let the fanatic Sabbath and metal
fans decide where to rank From The Dark.
Everett: “All of this will be forgotten. Every joy, accomplishment and hardship
will one day become so irrelevant it will be as if none of it occurred. But as the
great philosopher of our times, Cookie Monster once said: “Me no cry because
cookie is finished. Me smile because cookie happened.” This will all be forgotten.
But isn’t it still a beautiful thing that it happened?”
UNCUT (British magazine): “An album as light
and easy as its sentiments are droll and knotted.”
TUTV: Everett had to go through several family tragedies throughout his life, and
it seems as if he hasn’t processed them entirely yet. His records often refered/refer
to his confused state of mind, though his cynical approach to life, survival, and
the human condition seems to comfort him.
This new opus is most notable (again) for its laid-back and feel-good musings,
at least sonically. It evokes a romantic moodiness breathing through his crooner
vocals, but you’re never quite sure with Mr. E’s whimsical mind-wandering. Moony
music for cosy fall/winter ponderings about then and now.
LAMBRINI GIRLS, the two riotous razorblade girrrrlzz – vox/guitarist Phoebe Lunny and bassist Lilly Macieira – from Brighton (UK) with an insatiable appetite for mass moshpits and kicking political, right-wing asses, rose to fame like a crazed comet in the past few years.
Following, last year’s ferocious punk debut LP, Who Let The Dogs Out,
they went from dusty clubs to big venues, all over the Western world.
Now they have announced their follow-up longplayer.
It’s named NO REFUNDS and will hit the streets on
January 15, 2027.
Press info: The follow-up to their acclaimed 2025 debut Lambrini Girls return with
a darker and increasingly more urgent record for a world that, in their own words,
“got even worse”. The band are keeping up an undeniable momentum with their
potent strain of scathing social commentary and barbed humour.
‘No Refunds’ confronts a litany of modern horrors, from genocide and fascism to the rise
of AI, reproductive rights, and the descent into the grubby basement of the ‘manosphere’,
all whilst expanding the sonic world that made Lambrini Girls’ debut so memorable.
Industrial punk sits alongside moments of pop-adjacent immediacy, angular basslines
and unexpected vulnerability, with the duo pairing their most confrontational material
with the dark humour and wit that has become synonymous with the duo.”
– SPILT –
LG go acoustic and mellow.
No kidding!
– THE BASEMENT –
Industrial sledgehammer.
No kidding!
On their 9th full-length, the band operate at their most primal. Paraphrasing The Wizard of Oz, the title is a nod towards Dorothy, her dog, and the distance
they needed to travel to get back home and find some sense of normality.
Album artwork
Along with the news comes the first preview
rollout with RANDOM VIOLENCE.
Joe Goddard (HC’s co-founder) says: “Last year in September our old friend
and brilliant DJ Keith McIvor of Optimo in Glasgow passed away after a diagnosis
of an inoperable brain tumour a few months earlier. He largely inspired the words
of the song.
He was a passionate music lover and a staunch believer in socialism. Many of
the words relate directly to his death and to memories of being in Sub Club in
Glasgow where we met 20 years ago.”
Band: KIDS WITH BUNS Who: Belgian dream pop duo, featuring Marie Van Uytvanck and Amber Piddington.
“We started out with Kids With Buns at age 18 and 20 respectively, and we were
not trained musicians by any means. To be able to put that complete puzzle together.
The arrangement, the songs, the production everything contributes to the whole of
a song.
We have had the privilege of learning it by doing it, from the bedroom to the stage. And we see the potential in each other’s ideas where no one else would.”
Album: BELL JAR
Their 3rd. Recorded in Philadelphia.
The album title is a direct reference to the famous semi-autobiographical
novel by American author Sylvia Plath (1932-1963).
KWB: “The theme of The Bell Jar is how every process in your life is actually circular,
regarding the healing from mental health issues. When things get better, they will also
get worse, and at some point, that becomes a very present theme in our lives. We felt
that we kept falling into certain patterns.”
Pukkelpop Festival, 22 August 26, photo by Turn Up The Volume
TUTV: Once again, we can hear/experience how heartfelt music can generate
a healing force after a break-up and hurting lovesickness. These two wonderful
buns also channel their crestfallen feelings through their singer-songwriters skills
in the hope of a cathartic recovery.
Marie and Amber enchant with guitar-sparkled musings, with warm vocals and
breezy harmonies. Dream-pop tranquillity with a rehabilitating outcome. Enlivening
tunes and ambivalent lullabies alternate throughout this falling down, standing up
record. Bittersweet symphonies for twilight moments.
Band: INSPIRAL CARPETS Who: Brit rock vets who have enjoyed their
peak moments in the late 80s and early 90s. Active: 1983–1995, 2003–2016, 2022–present
Album: BURN LIKE THE SUN
Their 6th and first in 12 years. Out January 29th.
Tracklist and pre-order info here.
The album marks a major new chapter for Inspiral Carpets following a period shaped
by loss, reflection and renewal. An extended hiatus left the future of the band uncertain, and the return to writing and recording became something deeper than simply making another record.
The record marks the return of original frontman Stephen Holt, whose rejoining
of the band reconnect the band with their earliest creative identity while opening
the door to an entirely new era.
The Carpets approached Burn Like The Sun determined to create something fresh, relevant and emotionally honest – a record that acknowledges their history without being defined by it.”
TUTV: Another example of a band that doesn’t want to spend their days on the couch yet, looking to the telly all the time. Nope, forward is the direction with renewned energy and inspiral tunes.
Grian Chatten (frontman/songwriter) who spent time among the faded grandeur
of Venice, Vienna and Sicily in search of lyrical inspiration: “I think Romance was maybe
60 per cent human and 40 per cent corrupted by automation, and a loss of feeling.
This one feels more like 60 per cent corrupted — the mask is wearing the face a little
more. I felt it would be more powerful to leave the hope out and reflect the ugliness
honestly. This one needed to feel more like a catastrophic warning.”
NME says: “A doom-ridden escape from the band of the decade. The gothy tones of
The Cure linger and ‘Dopamine Chamber’ would sit comfortably alongside the melancholy moodpieces of ‘Disintegration’ and ‘Pornography’, as well as the future-proof genre-clash
and dislocation of Massive Attack’s ‘Mezzanine’.”
TUTV: Their first 2 LPs were afire ones, the ones young gunslingers make, full of vim
and vigour and stuffed with muscular barnstormers. With their third album Skinty Fia
the growing-up Irishmen showed signs of change of course, sonically and lyrically.
The 4th full-lengthRomance confirmed their new direction completely
and now with Dopamine Chamber they created/crafted a masterpiece.
A strings sweeping, orchestral, gloom/doom triumph. More cinematic, designed synth arrangements, less youthful guitar upheaval, more in-depth reflections about what worried Chatten sees and hears around him in this dark era.
His ruminative tonality and affecting storytelling timbre are on his most entrancing button. This sign of the times exploit will spin on my headphones for a long time. One
of the most fulfilling accomplishments of 2026.
BLONDIE are one of those iconic star bands that have been around for ages,
actually since 1974. Yep, 52 years, and still fronted by the now 81-year-old
legend Debbie Harry and her former husband Chris Stein (76) as guitarist
and co-songwriter.
They just announced the upcoming birth of their 12th full-length, their
first in 9 years. It’s baptized HIGH NOON and will see the day of light
on 26 February 2027.
The record features the final recordings of co-founder
and drummer Clem Burke, who passed away last year
in April.
Across the 13 songs, Harry and Chris Stein are joined by special guests including Johnny Marr, Glen Matlock, Zach Condon of Beirut, and Jess Wolfe and Holly Laessig
of Lucius.
Debbie: “This album is classic Blondie. An amalgamation of all our different
influences and eras into something new. This music feels grounded in the present,
shaped by who we are and how we’re living now.”
Press info: “‘All Inside Aquarium’ sees the band expanding far beyond their minimalist post-punk origins towards soaring anthemic rock, sans the ‘indie’. Sonically, the band aimed for “this late ’80’s/early 90’s Stone Roses-meets-Janes Addiction thing, with more riffing and guitar solos.”
Where the band’s earlier material took a more explicitly sociopolitical bent, Hozie and Belfilgio’s writing on All Inside Aquarium is deliberately more concerned with the personal, poetics, and play.
Album artwork
TUTV: Bodega never made world-shattering records, and All Inside Aquarium isn’t world-shattering. Bodega always made uncomplicated and galvanizing records, and this one is their most uncomplicated and galvanizing one. A let’s have fun album. And fun we have, folks.
They jump from funky crackerjack rockers (the title track / Weather Me / Pick Up The Check / Slow Train) to easygoing, poppy guitar tunes (Literary World / Oxygen / Olivia) without trying to overdo it in any way whatsoever. Straightforward and simple. Paul Weller would say “that’s entertainment“.
