Who: 23-year-old artist, vegan since the age of 13, from down under,
who uses they/them pronouns. They suffer from POTS, EDS, and autism.
Album: IN ENDLESS AWE & AGONY.
Their debut. Sounds like a modern-day Britney Spears to my ears.
NME: “Daine reintroduces themself sans-autotune, cynical yet poptimistic while on a complete sugar high from being chewed up and spat out. Confessing the neuroses of stardom, they cash in on today’s most lucrative pop culture currency: bearing all. Cynical yet poptimistic while on a complete sugar high from being chewed up and spat out.”
ARTWORK
I know it sounds silly, but the first thing that popped up in my mind when
seeing this cover was ‘Silence of the Lambs‘, the title of the 1991 psych-horror
classic movie with Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins.
Press info: “Self-produced, Mike Kerr and Ben Thatcher headed into the studio in 2025
with no deadline and no distractions. The result is raw, direct and stripped back to the essentials, with all the force and immediacy of Royal Blood at full tilt. Written with the
stage in mind, Dead Company is built to hit hard live.”
Album artwork
NME: “The duo floor the accelerator and embark on another collision course of energised and uncompromising riff-rock. Despite threatening to disrupt the evolutionary flow that ‘Typhoons’ instigated, in actuality, ‘Dead Company’ carries the hallmarks of another ground zero moment for Royal Blood.”
TUTV: Royal Blood by numbers. Fired-up riff whoppers in every corner sounding like the fired-up riff whoppers on previous albums. Their blues rock territory isn’t one where risks are taken, nor changes are made. As the cliché goes, a treat for fans only. Next, please.
Some weeks ago, AL JOURGENSEN, the general of legendary industrial metal tormentors MINISTRY, announced the final stand of the band after a smashing journey since 1981.
Jourgensen: “I’m fucking done. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished. I’m amazed at the path that it’s taken, from With Sympathy to where we’re at today, and all points in between. It’s been quite a ride, but I’m completely at peace with the fact that it’s done. It’s time to herd goats.”
As pivotal pioneers of the genre, they released 17 studio albums, 8 live releases,
8 side projects, multiple touring campaigns across 5 continents, an autobiography,
2 documentaries, the administration of last rites no less than 3 times.
Their 17th and final full-length, named HATE TO GO (TAKE OUT OR DELIVERY).
is out now. The LP is about Al Jourgensen settling scores and laying everything on
the table with one of the heaviest, angriest records of his long career.
Kerrang‘s verdict: “Packed with spoken-word samples, thrash riffs and Jourgensen
distinctive vocal bark, Hate To Go brandishes Ministry’s classic components in a convincing manner.”
TUTV: With opening shrapnel bomb Crickets, Jourgensen kicks losing moron Trump
and his orange ass-kissing troop of parrots, between the legs, hard, really hard. No
mercy for the corrupt administration and its MAGA cult.
It’s, obviously, very loud and very clear that the legendary metal roughneck wanted Ministry‘s last stand to be an earth-shattering monster that tears all his enemies to
shreds.
Crashing clobber after crashing clobber. Roasting roundhouse after roasting
roundhouse. Of course, AJ’s petrifying howls and evil-burning spit-and-sneer
assualts dominate this volcanic spectacle. I suppose he’ll retire to his favorite
place called hell where he will play cacodemonic video games with his good
pal Satan.
Info: “The album grew out of several years of collective and personal isolation, when distance gave the four members time to reconsider relationships, identity and parts of themselves that once seemed fixed. Experiences around gender and sexuality surfaced alongside the creation and loss of important relationships, while old memories began looking different from the other side of change.
Rather than turn those years into a record about despair, the band became interested in what happens afterward: the uncomfortable work of letting go of what no longer serves you without knowing exactly what will replace it.
‘In The Hollow’ takes the volatile punk Bad Waitress built their name on and stretches
it into something darker and more expansive: jagged art-punk, post-punk tension and garage-punk abrasion colliding with moments of eerie space and reflection.”
TUTV: 10 reasons why you should buy and digest
this longplayer, twice daily, for a long time.
1. These former nude dogs bark at the right rock
tree with a nirvanesque L7 gusto and fiery Hole flair.
2. They produce a lot of thunder and lightning hullabaloo forceful
enough to catapult that orange lowlife out of the White House and
into oblivion. Keep your hands off Canada, corrupt charlatan.
3. No fillers, all titanic killers motorized by 100 guitars, an octopus drummer
and Courtney Love‘s unknown young sister. BW only serve bitchy barnstormers.
The repeat button was invented for jaw-dropping records like In The Hollow.
4. You don’t need to pay a lot of money for your primal scream therapy
anymore. Bad Waitress helps you out of your straitjacket for just 26$.
Order your medication right here.
5. If you’re 45 and you want to be a better guy, there’s a
chanche the avid Amazons could give you another try.
6. If you want them to like you
buy them manyyyy drinks.
7. With last year’s freaky single video, Plan B the Canadian gang introduced Gay Jesus to
the world.
8. In The Hollow is what badass punk
is all about, sonically and lyrically.
9. They never give up. There’s always a bad waitress
light at the end of the hollow tunnel, for all of us.
NME: “Pop meets politics on their most adventurous record yet. It refracts the dystopian state of modern America through the prism of their lightest, poppiest record to date. The band lean into hooks and melody more than ever before.”
TUTV: The whispery vocal tonality founder/main songwriter/guitarist Zachary Cole Smith, aligns completely with the soft tone of Jason Lylte, the frontman of electro dream-pop collective Grandaddy. They easily could switch bands without confusing your ears.
I want to add that I’m a Grandaddy fan but not a DIVV one. The Brooklyn beatniks’
multi-guitar-layered shoegaze vigor differs from Grandaddy’s magnetic, melancholic attractiveness that captivates me.
Due to DIVV’s overall monotone euphoniousness, I’m not charmed by Zirp! Except for The Crash, Trillions, and Us Against You, notable for their more-than-average vivid verve,
Unlike their numerous admirers. I will not return to this album, unlike their many admirers.
Who: Feverish Belgian 4-piece outfit built around impassioned
singer/songwriter/guitarist Ilayda Cicek. Their music is driven
by contrast: restraint against impact, melody against noise,
control against collapse.
I recall first encountering Ilayda, approximately ten years ago, alone with
an acoustic guitar, on a tiny stage. She looked shy and vulnerable, but her
set of intimate reveries and her soul-stirring voice touched my ears. Her
vocal tone, wholehearted timbre, and wide range caused goosebumps.
A few years later, she returned with a full rock band behind her; the decibel levels
went up, and their splendid 7-track mini albumFelt captured the attention of both
new fans and the media.
It featured her supreme slam dunk Leave Me Dry, still my standout favorite.
The EP was followed in 2024 by the formidable debut full-length Ayna.
Back to the present now. Early last month, the band’s
2nd LP, titled Motherland, landed on our earphones.
The record is a deeply personal one and weaves together Ilayda‘s Turkish
family roots, imagery of Turkish nature, and memories of her father, who
emigrated from Turkey to Belgium in the late 1980s.
Ilayda: “This album was born from the idea that we, as people, live with missing
pieces. Fragments of ourselves are left behind in places, people, and dreams.”
The melodically structured songs have a firm and feverish, resounding intensity, invigorated with Ilayda‘s expressive voice and amplified by her turbo sidekicks. Motherland will be here for a long time and has already drawn positive, critical
coverage from outside of Belgium.
Louder Than War (UK webzine) says: “It’s a record shaped by questions of heritage, distance and the pieces of ourselves that remain elsewhere, even as we move forward. In finding beauty within that sense of incompleteness, ILA have created an assured and emotionally resonant second album that expands their sound without losing the rawness and immediacy that made them compelling in the first place.”
You can stream the album below.
Last Friday the band had a try-out gig in Tielt (Belgium), for their upcoming
first European club tour. It had been more than a year since I saw them on
stage.
No glitches, no false starts, no hesitation. Full blast ahead with confidence and determination, although Ilayda confessed to being a bit nervous playing some of
the new songs that were integrated seamlessly into the setlist. They’re ready to go.
ILA’s new chapter, on record and on stage, has
officially started. It’s gonna be a wild ride.
The record is called Perfecth because “perfect,” as a word, has never been honest.
It doesn’t exist. So, Homme broke the word and made it “perfecth,” a more appropriate spelling for a term that never felt right to begin with.
Homme: “Nothing in this world is perfect, but everything seems to be ‘perfecth.
And that title is funny when you’re in a group, but it ain’t so funny when you’re
alone.”
Every song sounds like it’s from a different world. And that’s on purpose, because
it’s trying to stitch together all these emotions revolving around love, lust, foolishness,
and the sort of wisdom that comes as a gift from all that.”
QOTSA have always remained enduringly, singularly magnetic. It isn’t just their sound. It’s their spirit. They are provocative in the most essential sense: unafraid to explore the dark, the sexual, the surreal, the absurd.
Kintsugi — the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by filling its cracks with gold — holds that what has been shattered is made more beautiful, not less, by the act of repair. This is the spirit in which the record was conceived.
Its nine songs map different forms of love: of family, friends, and others both significant and insignificant. The loves that break you beyond survival and the loves that put you back together.
Birthed from sessions tracked everywhere from New Orleans to Los Angeles,
the music is fearless and boundless, moody and menacing, gentle and strange.
Perfecth is, as the cliché goes, grows on you. Moodiness, intimacy,
and spirituality, sonically and lyrically, dominate this new LP.
Singles.
– EASY STREET –
– INSIGNIFICANT OTHER –
– WHERE THE GOTH GIRLS AT? –
ALBUM
.
Mastermind Josh Homme sat down with KERRANG! for an in-depth Q&A
about the new album, health, the late Mark Lanegan, Iggy Pop and more.
Band: BLACK DOLDRUMS Who: Dark psychedelic outfit formed by Kevin Gibbard and Sophie Landers
in London, who produce a contemporary form of gothic post-punk.
Renowned British music monthly UNCUT described their sound
as: “A fierce combination of post-punk, reverb, drone and melody.”
The record is the final chapter of the State of Mind Trilogy. A three-album
exploration of the psychological forces that shape identity, memory and
human connection, which began with their 2022 debut Dead Awake
followed by 2024 LP In Limerence.
At the heart of it all is the creative and personal partnership between founding
members Kevin Gibbard and Sophie Landers, whose relationship forms both the
emotional foundation of the record and the lens through which its themes are
explored.
Gibbard: “The songs are either about
Sophie, for Sophie, or inspired by her.”
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.
