New Album Alert

THE SANCTITY OF CROWS Stupefy With Bloodcurdling Metal Soundscapes On New Album ‘TIME’

Posted on by JL

6 April 2026

Project: THE SANCTITY OF CROWS
Who: An award-winning solo indie music project by Ian A Napier, who lives
in Scotland. He creates mostly instrumental, often cinematic music. Distinctive
genre-agnostic flights high above the confluence of the two great rivers Prog
and Post-rock.

Album: TIME
3rd one.

Press info: “Mostly dark, sometimes menacing – even when the music is upbeat,
there is still often a mysterious undercurrent. Genre-agnostic as always, but hovering somewhere around Progressive Rock / Post-Rock territory.

It seemed like a good idea to have all the song titles on the album reference the concept of time in some way, and to call the album “Time”. When the nine titles were chronologically sequenced, they were found to manifest the endless cycle of birth, life, death and reincarnation.”


Album artwork

TUTV: Looking for a matching soundtrack that reflects the apocalyptic times we have to endure, because of the monstrous egos of narcissistic world leaders? This staggering opus is the one. It resonates like a metal Darkside Of The Moon odyssey. Otherworldly, ominous, and bone-chilling.

The overall colossal, bloodcurdling, and bombastic sonorousness evokes imagery from the Doomsday movie War Of The Worlds (2005), exploring Victorian-era fears of imperialism and technological destruction.

The album’s 14-minute centrepiece Living For Tomorrow seems to suggest that
there’s a weak light at the end of the survival tunnel. We can’t stop being hopeful.

Time is a titanic, instrumental work dominated by doom and gloom intertextures,
layers of gruesome guitars, theatrical synth waves, and at times industrial-rock shocks. This traumatic record accentuates the foreboding signs of the present times. The clock
is ticking. Armageddon is just around the corner.

SINGLE

STREAM/BUY ALBUM


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TIME on Spotify – Facebook – Bluesky

THE DANDY WARHOLS – Portland’s Manic Groove Machine Drop Best Ever Covers Album With ‘PIN UPS’

Posted on by JL

21 March 2026


📸 Nicole Nodland

Portland‘s groove junkies THE DANDY WARHOLS, finaly did
what they wanted to do for a very long time, recording/releasing
a covers album.

It’s named PIN UPS, and it’s out now.

Zia McCabe (keyboards, percussion): “We’ve been talking for years
now about getting as many of the covers we’ve done for specific territories
together and releasing them for all to hear. It’s finally happening.”

A total of 17 covers by legendary bands/solo artists.

TRACKLIST

Cherry Bomb – The Runaways
What We All Want – Gang Of Four
Primary – The Cure
Kiss Off – Violent Femmes
Goo Goo Muck – The Cramps
Rain – The Cult

Straight To Hell – The Clash
Sister Golden Hair – America
Lay Lady Lay – Bob Dylan
Ripple – The Grateful Dead
Easy Chair – The Byrds
Blackbird – The Beatles

The Beautiful People – Marilyn Manson
Love Song – The Damned
Jet Boy – New York Dolls
She Sells Sanctuary – The Cult
Inside The Outside – Love And Rockets

TUTV: Best covers album ever, to my ears. Why? Because The Dandys do a fantastic
job by revitaziling all those classic crackers, the buzzing and fuzzing Warhols way. No
lousy copy/paste performances whatsoever, what happens/happened on so many
covers records.

Pin Ups excels in sonic ingeniousness and absorbing implementation.

They speed up originals, they slow down originals, but most of all, they immerse
them all in a whirling psychedelic bath, resulting in amazeballs renditions, revved
up with a mind-blowing barrage of hefty hooks, unlimited licks, rotating riffs, and Herculean bass/drum/synth extravaganza.

If you’re not familiar with some/all of the originals (people that live on Mars), you would think that Pin Ups is the Portland‘s mean groove machine’s new original LP. For those about to rock, The Dandy Warhols pin you up. After all these years, they’re not in the slightest passé.

SINGLE

ALBUM


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PIN UPS on Spotify – Instagram – Linktree

THE DAMNED Release Covers Album ‘NOT LIKE ANYBODY ELSE’ To The Memory Of Their Late Original Guitarist BRIAN JAMES

Posted on by JL

26 January 2026

London’s punk oldtimers THE DAMNED
celebrate their 50th birthday this year.
50? Time storms forward mercilessly.

Their debut LP Damned Damned Damned from 1977
still is one of the best punk albums ever, in my book.

They now have a new one out, named NOT LIKE EVERYBODY ELSE.
Their 13th longplayer. One with nothing but covers of 60/70s pop songs.

It’s a deeply personal and celebratory record to the memory
of co-founder/guitarist and musical architect Brian James,
who passed away on 6th March of last year.

The LP closes with a powerful farewell. The Rolling Stones‘ 1965 cracker ‘The Last Time‘, featuring Brian James himself, taken from his final live performance with The Damned in 2022 in London.”


Rat Scabies & Dave Vanian – The Damned at Lokerse Feesten, Belgium – August 2025
Photo by Turn Up The Volume

TUTV: Expect covers of songs by Pink Floyd, The Stones, Lovin’ Spoonful, The Kinks,
The Creation, The Stooges, The Yardbirds, The Weeds, and a couple of others. The fact
that the record is a tribute to the late Brian Jones is the main message here. Kudos
to them for doing this. For me, after two spins, I went back to that supersonic debut LP.

– SEE EMILE PLAY –
Pink Floyd

– THERE’S A GHOST IN MY HOUSE –
R. Dean Taylor

ALBUM

Instagram – Website – All Albums

XIU XIU Released Their Droning Covers Album – From ROY ORBISON To TALKING HEADS

Posted on by JL

21 January 2026

Band: XIU XIU
Who: Seasoned Californian
art noise duo based in Berlin.

They aren’t the lazy kind of artists. In their 22-year-old career, they have
canned/released 14 LPs, with last year’s oddly titled, but very compelling
album, 13″ Frank Beltrame Italian Stiletto with Bison Horn Grips
as the most recent one.

And here’s another one.

New album: XIU MUTHA FUCKIN’ XIU Vol. 1.
A 12-track covers LP.

Tracklist

1. “Psycho Killer” – Talking Heads
2. “Warm Leatherette” – The Normal
3. “I Put a Spell on You” – Screamin’ Jay Hawkins
4. “Hamburger Lady” – Throbbing Gristle
5. “In Dreams” – Roy Orbison
6. “Sex Dwarf” – Soft Cell
7. “Dancing on My Own” – Robyn
8. “SPQR” – This Heat
9. “Lick or Sum” – GloRilla
10. “Some Things Last a Long Time”– Daniel Johnston
11. “Triple Sun” – Coil
12. “Cherry Bomb”– The Runaways

Press info: For XX covers aren’t about improvement, but reverence, aiming with each
song to be a small honorific offering to artists that have inspired them. Covers come from a broad range of inspirational touchpoints for the band that while far reaching, each feel
a fit from a band with such a varied sound, from the likes of Throbbing Gristle to GlloRilla, Robyn, Talking Heads and even Roy Orbison among others.

TUTV: To be honest, I thought XX would butcher the songs that they picked to cover. Overall, the melodies of the originals are treated with respect, but they embed them in their own characteristic noise textures of reverberating distortion and industrial rumpus. From Roy Orbison to Talking Heads. Mutha fuckin’.


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Instagram – All Albums

DZ DEATHRAYS – Robust Australian Trio Rock Their Butt Off On New Blistering Album ‘EASING OUT OF CONTROL’

Posted on by JL

New longplayers

20 January 2026

Band: DZ DEATHRAYS
Who: Disorderly punk rock trio from
Brisbane, Australia who found each
other in 2012.

New Album: EASING OUT OF CONTROL
Their 7th one.


Album artwork

Australia’s THE MUSIC website: “Mega riffs ready to send a festival crowd into raptures? Tick. A riotous celebration of the joys of getting back on the road? Sure. Rock anthems that address the weird place we find ourselves, with personal privacy and the pale blue dot we
call home under threat from dark forces? Several.”

TUTV: 31 minutes of running rock amok, producing as many licks, hooks and riffs,
possible in that short time. No arty farty baloney. No ego wanderings. No unnecessary digressions. Only combusting rock and bloody roll. They take a breather (well, sort of)
on 2 tracks, Real Love and lullaby Warped but ‘Easing Out Of Control’‘s dominating racket
is roisterous and boisterous. Hail, hail!

KEY SINGLE

ALBUM


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Instagram – Linktree

NICK CAVE & WARREN ELLIS Score ‘THE DEATH OF BUNNY MUNRO SOUNDTRACK’

Posted on by JL

26 December 2025

Back in 2009, NICK CAVE published a darkly comic novel about a sex-addicted salesman, titled The Death of Bunny Munro. When it came out, Cave and his longtime sidekick and bad seed WARREN ELLIS scored an audiobook.

Now, The Death Of Bunny Munro has been adapted
into a TV show, and Cave and Ellis wrote a completely
different soundtrack for it.

It’s a compelling, goosebumps and gloomy score, with Cave‘s intimate piano play,
Ellis‘ sinister violin pieces and shadowy synth textures are prominent in the middle.
It’s 99,99 % instrumental, a sombre and darksome symphony.

I’m not really into soundtracks (without seeing the movie, that is).
But the masterly duo have created a chilling opus that spellbinds
all the way.

Fascinating.


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AFI – Californian Gothwave Celebs Go Nuclear On New Album ‘SILVER BLEEDS THE BLACK SUN…’

Posted on by JL

4 October 2025

Band: AFI (abbreviation for A Fire Inside)

Who: Weathered high-volume veteran goth rockers
from Ukiah, California who started to turn up the
darkwave decibels in 1991.

Album: SILVER BLEEDS THE BLACK SUN…
Their 12th one.


Album artwork

Press info: “For more than three decades, AFI has been a band in a constant state
of reinvention. No album they’ve released has sounded much like the one before it, sometimes dramatically so. The band has never gotten too comfortable in one genre
or allowed themselves to coast on any successes.

It’s an approach that has regularly challenged their audience, as their sonic identity has shifted in wild, unexpected directions every few years. But on their twelfth album, Silver Bleeds the Black Sun…, the members of AFI managed to surprise even themselves.”

Davey Havok (frontman): “I realize this is something we’ve said about our records
for years, but this record is starkly different from what we’ve done in the past. In our
33 years together, we’ve covered so much, musically, that I found myself daunted at
the prospect of doing something different, and questioning what that would be.”

TUTV: AFI display the same Goth grandeur and darkwave bombast Bauhaus were
so famous for. But they even take it a level higher with their galactic, bass-motorized tunes, supercharged with sky-scraping, nuclear choruses.

It all feels like watching a Götterdämmerung opera with vivacious vox Havok as the
star in the middle, surrounded by a full hellacious orchestra. Raise the stage curtain.
Aplause! Aplause!

SINGLE

ALBUM


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Instagram – Facebook – All Albums

PÔT-POT – Indie Psych Quartet Explored The Past And Returned With Their Magnetizing Debut Album ‘WARSAW 480 KM’

Posted on by JL

25 September 2025


Photo credit: Celeste Burdon

Band: PÔT-POT
Who: Irish/Portuguese quintet who infuse the propulsive grooves of krautrock
with a phosphorescent psych-rock radiance, all underscored by harmonium drones, hypnotic male-female vocal harmonies, and deep layers of rough-hewn texture.

Album: WARSAW 480 KM
Their debut.

Press info: “Evolved primarily from demos by multi-instrumentalist and lead vocalist Mark Waldron-Hyden during a period of grief and personal upheaval, the album came to life through a series of live, full-band studio sessions that document an exceptional array of talents, unified in an embrace of raw catharsis with a sweetly sinister edge. A defining element of ‘Warsaw 480km’ is its impressive range of influences and atmospheric topographies.

Waldron-Hyden about the record: “I wrote the first batch of songs while not really living in one place, so I think they have a kind of transient feel to them – developing them with the band helped me process an era in which I was emotionally freewheeling, so they remind me equally of the beautiful experience we shared as a creative unit and the difficult times that inspired them.”

“Ollie [Oliver Smith] and Sara [Sara Leslie] are experts at getting the most out of one pedal, a shitty amp, and a guitar they borrowed, a result of innate talent and years of experience; they use some modulation for dronier passages, but it’s their playing styles and understanding of ‘the vibe’ that are the secret ingredients.” This kind of intuitive connection and collaboration is incredibly rare, and with these ten pieces, pôt-pot accomplish something truly rapturous as they alchemize deep pain into a luminous reverie.”

TUTV: PÔT-POT are definitely psych rock fanatics. They explored the past, took notes and shaped a debut record that interprets their vision on the timeless genre. No, it’s certainly not a copy/paste job.

You will hear magnetizing echoes from legendary luminaries such as The Velvet Underground, Can and Love and modern era bands such as Black Angels, The Brian Jonestown Massacre and The Dandy Warhols.

Warsaw 480km is stuffed with far-out Krautrock-like jams, hypnotizing riffs, kinetic rhythms, multi-layered jangly guitar layers, hallucinatory wanderings and psyched-out grooves. It’s an overall extravagant piece of trance-inducing work. Not many debut
albums have that mind-bending impact. Top-tier accomplishment.

KEY TRACKS: 22° Halo / WRSW / I AM! / The Lights Are On

STREAM ALBUM


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BUY ALBUM


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DAVID BYRNE Takes You On A Merry-Go-Round With New Solo Album ‘WHO IS THE SKY?’

Posted on by JL

8 September 2025

Former chief talking head DAVID BYRNE
has his 9th solo LP, titled Who Is The Sly?
out.

Byrne: “Someone I know said, ‘David, you use the word ‘everybody’ a lot.’ I suppose
I do that to give an anthropological view of life in New York as we know it.Everybody
lives, dies, laughs, cries, sleeps and stares at the ceiling. Everybody’s wearing everybody
else’s shoes, which not everybody does, but I have done.

I tried to sing about these things that could be seen as negative in a way balanced
by an uplifting feeling from the groove and the melody, especially at the end, when
St. Vincent and I are doing a lot of hollering and singing together. Music can do that,
hold opposites simultaneously. I realized that when singing with Robyn earlier this
year. Her songs are often sad, but the music is joyous.”


Photo by: Ahmed Klink / Costume by: Tom Van der Borght

“At my age, at least for me, there’s a ‘don’t give a shit about what people think’ attitude
that kicks in. ”I can step outside my comfort zone with the knowledge that I kind of know
who I am by now and sort of know what I’m doing. That said, every new set of songs, every song even, is a new adventure. There’s always a bit of, ‘how do I work this?’ I’ve found that not every collaboration works, but often when they do, it’s because I’m able to clearly impart what it is I’m trying to do. They hopefully get that, and as a result, we’re now joined together heading to the same unknown place.”

TUTV: Well, I can’t add much to what the man said. He takes us on his merry-go-round. Probably his most upbeat longplayer ever. Lots of groovin’ and movin’, flamenco echoes and Mexican trumpets. Sonically, he entertains with frisky tunes and melancholic lullabies.

Lyrically, as usual, he comes up bizarre stories and bizarre song titles such as
My Appartment Is My Friend, A Door Called No and I Hear The Buddha At A Cocktail Party.
My fav tracks: Everybody Laughs, When We Are Singing, that Buddha Song and The Avant Garde.”

SINGLES

ALBUM


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Instagram – All Albums

THE BEACHES – Canadian Indie Pop Outfit Repeat Themselves Too Much On New Album ‘NO HARD FEELINGS’

Posted on by JL

3 September 2025


Album artwork

Band: THE BEACHES
Who: Zappy Canadian indie
guitar pop combo.

Album: NO HARD FEELINGS.
Their 3rd one.

Press info: “The Beaches have spent the past decade building something unstoppable. Their third album No Hard Feelings finds the band blaming themselves (rather than their exes), embracing their partying ways and accepting the occasional semi-self destructive thoughts and actions.”

Clash Magazine says: “Thanks to the quartet’s desire to intertwine their stories into one solid narrative, we now have to deal with even more exes… Along with personal transformations, the girls have undergone very noticeable sonic metamorphoses, giving up the mid-to-late 2000s raw indie sound.

They have taken a hard left from garage-indebted indie rock into a more poppy and
danceable surf-pop version of Haim, with euphoric choruses and a pinch of post-punk.”


Photo Credit: Meg Moon

TUTV: The album’s closer Last Girls At The Party is their best tune. A bright-eyed and
bushy-tailed guitar pop earworm that sticks on the spot. Effervescent, hepped up and hung go. The band liked it so much they tried to copy it 9 times, but never matched it
fully.

It causes an ongoing déja entendu experience, which reduces the record to an average level. But let’s end with good news. Lesbian Of The Year is one of the best ballads I heard all year long. Its 60s romantic resonance and its emotive, vocal thrill makes it the best track of the album.

KEY SINGLES

ALBUM


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Instagram – Tour Dates