Ten reviews you might have missed

Reviews from Saturday 13 July 2024

Graphic Nature – ‘Who Are You When No One Is Watching?’

When life gives you lemons, you make lemonade, as the old adage goes. When Harvey Freeman, frontman for hardcore heroes Graphic Nature, was assaulted on a train in London last year, he was left with both physical injuries and more lasting damage to his mental health. What emerged from

Friday 12 July 2024

Northbound – ‘Juniper’

“I wanna play a big tune in a little room, I wanna fuck things up and kill the moon,” says Jonathon Fraser – AKA Northbound – on ‘Big Tune (Fuck Off Forever)’, and with a goal like that, you have to appreciate his ambition. He’s shared bills with Simple

LIVE: Download Festival 2024 – Sunday

As the final day of Download dawns, we remind ourselves that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and we’re on the home stretch. With an abundance of tremendous music ahead of us and brightening skies above our heads, let’s celebrate the finest of the worlds rock and metal scene

Thursday 11 July 2024

VOWER – ‘Apricity’

VOWER’s EP ‘Apricity’ is an interesting prospect, a debut release that’s attracting considerable hype among some while barely registering among others. That’s because it is the new project by members of some of the most criminally underrated bands the UK has produced in recent years; Black Peaks, Palm Reader,

LIVE: Crosses ††† / VOWWS @ O2 Forum Kentish Town

After what was frankly a pretty miserable start to June, the season seemed to change rather suddenly with a mini-heatwave thrusting London into the familiar stickiness of British summertime in the city. Thankfully the notoriously hot O2 Forum Kentish Town feels just about bearable as the house lights dim

Tuesday 02 July 2024

Terminals – ‘BAPTISE’

The name Terminals implies a group reaching their end, but this is the beginning. After giving us a taste with last year’s ‘Capsize/Exist’ single, they are launching themselves properly with a debut EP. Fittingly, they’ve called it ‘Baptise’ because it really is an immersive experience. The

Monday 01 July 2024

Mt. Onsra – ‘SACRED TIME’

Lockdown was a strange time. A double-edged sword. Distress and isolation on the one side, connection and creativity on the other. Unable to go about their lives, two friends found themselves reconnecting. They found a spark. They founded Mt. Onsra. Multi-instrumentalists Simon Allen and Russell Cleave

LIVE: Download Festival 2024 – Saturday

Day Two of Download is the one you’ve probably heard most about by now from your mates; the endless downpours, fans face-planting into the mud outside the Avalanche Stage, and enough technical disruptions to make you grind your teeth in despair. But with a day jam-packed with acts as

Wednesday 26 June 2024

Scene Queen – ‘Hot Singles In Your Area’

We’ve had ‘don’t judge by appearances’ drilled into us since birth, and no one proves that to be true more aptly than Scene Queen. Maybe you caught her set at Download, saw the blonde with pigtails gyrating to songs about oral sex and thought you’d accidentally shown up to

LIVE: Download Festival 2024 – Friday

Download XXI, followup to last year’s anniversary spectacular, aims high. With Pantera’s return and Sum 41’s graceful exit on the cards, there’s plenty of huge names to make this a weekend for the history books, but the real action’s on the smaller stages. Download always manages to cram in

Saturday 22 June 2024

Other Half – ‘Dark Ageism’

Norwich’s Other Half are, like all of us, aging. Having spent the last decade making “little-to-no progression” (their words, not ours) in a punk band now gets raised eyebrows and the question of “what are you going to do with your life?” This same question is asked to the

Tether. – ‘Mirror Work’

As the saying goes; it’s all about chemistry. A band is a collaborative project. It has moving parts like a machine and in order to function, each member has to interact with the other. That means they have ties, if you will, they have a Tether. Listening

Thursday 13 June 2024

LIVE: Slam Dunk Festival @ Hatfield Park, UK

It’s that time of year again. Festival Season is upon us, and what better way to start the period than with a sunny day in Hatfield. This years Slam Dunk lineup is by no means shabby, featuring some of our faves to serenade us as we get sloppily sentimental

Tuesday 11 June 2024

Perennial – ‘Art History’

Bands who claim to be high art or channel the greatness of the finest visual artists tend to be viewed with trepidation. Lady Gaga did it with class, Bob Dylan won a Nobel prize for literature, but when a band claims to be trying to turn Pop Art into

Slow Joy – ‘Mi Amigo Slow Joy’

Some people get flowers or chocolates as an apology from their partner, but Esteban Flores goes one step further. Better known as Slow Joy, he describes his latest single, ‘Pulling Teeth’ as “basically an apology to my wife for me not being the easiest person to deal with all

Friday 31 May 2024

HRTLSS – ‘BLOOD MOON’

Vowels aren’t cool. At one time you could replace them with a ‘V’ and be down with the kids, but even that’s become passé. Now you have to drop any sounds you can make with your tongue and capitalise what’s left. Now you have to be block

Gaffa Tape Sandy – ‘Hold My Hand, God Damn It’

We’ve said it before, we’ll say it again – The Brighton music scene thrives like bees around honey. Included within that musical hive are three-piece Gaffa Tape Sandy. Another band who’s first proper headline tour was cut short by that ‘P’ word we’ve all tried to forget,

Thursday 30 May 2024

Eat Your Own Head – ‘The Trawler’

There’s a good reason why fishermen wear bright yellow waders. Equally, there’s a reason most bands do not. Eat Your Own Head are not most bands. For their new, ‘The Trawler’, the four-piece pulled on their bright rubber breeches and snapped a photograph that perfectly sums up

NESTOR – Teenage Rebel

It’s a rare situation when you can refer to a band who formed in 1989 as ‘the hot new guys’, but that’s part of the joy of NESTOR. They exist in their own timeless Swedish bubble, slightly out of sync with our own timeline, frozen in the era of

Friday 17 May 2024

One Step Closer – ‘All You Embrace’

The “sophomore slump”, or whatever you choose to call the difficult followup to a strong debut album, is a real and present danger. When One Step Closer launched with ‘This Place You Know’ back in 2021, their short and dirty first album caught the attention of all the right