Kris Barras Band - Monsters We Made (Earache Records) [Matt Bladen] There has to be a one of kind career trajectory for Kris Barras, from cage fighter, to bluesman, to frontman of international blues super group and now the leader of both a hard hitting heavy rock band and a new blues rock sensation, you can't say Kris does anything by halves. After fronting Supersonic Blues Machine, his solo band…
HAAST - Dreams Of Home (Self Released/Majestic Mountain Records) [Matt Bladen] There's a real beauty to the music of HAAST, since they are no longer Eagled, it seems that they have expanded their musical palette beyond the post-metal/sludge/doom beginnings into a cinematic sound where this heavy style is manipulated though progressive atmospheres, the emotional catharsis of grunge and the…
TX2 - We're Going To Hell For This... (Self Released) TX2 are "one of the biggest success stories in alternative music in the past year" following how well their debut album has gone down. It was highly critically acclaimed, had them perform at Download Festival, support Black Veil Brides, Beartooth and Ice Nine Kills and heard on BBC Radio 1. So to capitalise this they've released their new EP,…
Ironflame - Worlds To Conquer (High Roller Records) Ohio musician Andrew Della Cagna has been a a got it name on the Ohio trad metal scene for a long time now. He's been a part of Brimstone Coven and Icarus Witch but Ironflame has always been his pet project. It's Cagna's solo outfit as he writes, plays and sings everything in true multi-instrumentalist, virtuoso fashion. Founded in 2016, Worlds…
The Hollywood Vampire & The Damned, Depot Live, Cardiff Castle, 14.08.26 There's an energy in Cardiff, it's the beginning of a huge weekend, two massive sold out gigs in the castle and a big football fixture means people are in a jovial mood. Many it seems have had a few pints on the train on the way down from The Valleys, a huge contingent have made their way to the capital as they do for every…
Bloodstock Festival Review 2026 – A Quarter Century Of Chaos Every Bloodstock Sunday carries the same bittersweet charge: bodies running on fumes, campsites in a state of glorious disrepair, and the creeping awareness that in a few hours it will all be over for another year. But the 25th-anniversary Sunday came loaded with an extra weight of occasion, because closing the whole thing out were the…
Bloodstock Festival Review 2026 – A Quarter Century Of Chaos Once more unto the breach mighty metal warriors. Saturday offered barely a moment’s respite but there were two defining moments, an opening statement from a British crossover force, a genuine reunion for the ages and an extremely long wait after things we'd rather miss for Swedish prog veterans. It was a day of discovery in the smaller…
B loodstock Festival Review 2026 – A Quarter Century Of Chaos When Bloodstock lit its first indoor fires back in 2001, with Saxon presiding over the whole thing like a set of iron-clad godparents, nobody was drawing up business plans for what a quarter-century of British metal might become. For the 25th anniversary the organizers threw the rulebook onto the barbecue (Careful now there's a drought…
Wormwood - Å (Black Lodge) [Mark Young] A two track EP from the Stockholm based melodic black metal act Wormwood. There is a subtitle, Contemporary Decay Of Stockholm , in two parts which suggests that this could be on the darker side. I’ll leave others to tell me if its darker than their other material. Their bio certainly suggests a lot, so let’s dive in. YRA|Extas starts in a way that expected;…
Repent Fest - Summer Bash: Cro-Mags, The Oppressed, Rancour, Flubber, System Slaves & Bottom Of The Barrel, Corn Exchange Newport, 08.08.26 Repent Summer Fest saw Bottom Of The Barrel, System Slaves, Flubber, Rancours, The Oppressed and Cro-Mags take over the Corn Exchange for a day of Punk/Hardcore. Presented by South Wales Collective who strive to keep hardcore, ugly, real and for the working…
Electric Callboy - Tanzneid (Century Media/Sony) [Matt Bladen] Tanzeid , which translates to 'Dance Envy' for you non German speakers, is the anticipated new record from German rave metal kings Electric Callboy. Staring back in 2010 with a chillier name, since they've added the Electric moniker they've taken the world by storm with a style of music that is almost unclassifiable but also has a…
