Ten reviews you might have missed

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1 Story Of The Year – ‘A.R.S.O.N.’

2 LIVE: Marmozets / Goo @ Dingwalls

3 Joyce Manor – ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’

4 LIVE: The Wonder Years / Free Throw @ O2 Forum Kentish Town

5 LIVE: Sabaton / The Legendary Orchestra @ The O2 Arena

6 HEALTH – CONFLICT DLC

7 Harpy – ‘VII’

8 LIVE: Electric Callboy @ Alexandra Palace

9 Vower – ‘A Storm Lined With Silver’

10 Pupil Slicer – Fleshwork

Reviews from Thursday 12 February 2026

Mariachi El Bronx – ‘Mariachi El Bronx IV’

The absolutely beautiful thing about Mariachi El Bronx is that they were never a one-trick pony. For a band that could easily have fallen into parody, they’ve consistently been able to rise above their detractors with smart, sharp melodies that are practically scented with their love of mariachi culture,

Wednesday 11 February 2026

Story Of The Year – ‘A.R.S.O.N.’

Great art should speak for itself. There’s a good reason for this. Listening to an artist describe their work can be absolutely excruciating. Either you’re subjected to a sales pitch, or they describe something that bears no resemblance to the finished project or, worse still, they fail

Tuesday 10 February 2026

LIVE: Marmozets / Goo @ Dingwalls

Seven years is a long time to hold your breath. Dingwalls is packed to its sweat-slicked rafters with fans clutching £8 pints who’ve been waiting since 2018 for Marmozets to return, and the air crackles with the kind of nervous excitement that only comes when a beloved

YAKKIE – ‘Kill The Cop Inside Your Head’

It’s no surprise that DIY punk supergroup YAKKIE’s debut offering, ‘Kill The Cop Inside Your Head’, is a political, feminist melting pot of anti-capitalist rage. The band is fronted by Dream Nails founder Janey Starling, who returns to the stage after stepping away from making music to focus on

Monday 09 February 2026

Gogol Bordello – ‘We Mean It, Man!’

It’s a truth universally acknowledged that when Eugene Hutz of Gogol Bordello is angry, he makes his best music. See; 2022’s ‘Solidaritine’, released the same year as Hutt’s homeland of Ukraine was invaded by Russia, which saw Gogol Bordello wrestling with loss and rage. Four years later, and they’re

Friday 30 January 2026

Joyce Manor – ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’

Joyce Manor have distilled the sound of watching gentrification happen to your favourite grimy neighbourhood into Californian punk gold. Their sixth album, ‘I Used To Go To This Bar’ drips with nostalgia and lo-fi sincerity, and at around twenty minutes long, it speeds past, offering a grainy window into

LIVE: Kid Kapichi @ Headrow House, Leeds

If memory serves me right, I don’t think I’ve ever been to a Kid Kapichi show in Leeds that hasn’t been a sell out. Tonight is no exception. With the release of their latest album ‘Fearless Nature’, they’re back up north again for a very intimate show at Headrow

Wednesday 28 January 2026

Jagged City – ‘THERE ARE MORE OF US, ALWAYS’

Baking a cake is a simple thing. Two eggs, two hundred grams of flour, sugar and margarine, all mixed together and gently cooked for thirty minutes. An easy recipe. The results are fairly consistent, you know what you’ll get, but if you change those ingredients things become

Tuesday 27 January 2026

LIVE: The Wonder Years / Free Throw @ O2 Forum Kentish Town

Delayed mourning hangs in the atmosphere at O2 Forum Kentish Town. The Wonder Years are at the end of their four date run of the UK to celebrate the re-issue of ‘No Closer To Heaven’, and after their spring US tour they’ll be going on an indefinite hiatus. Of

Monday 26 January 2026

Sick Joy – ‘MORE FOREVER’

Anticipation is a terrible thing. Anticipation breeds disappointment. So, when Sick Joy announced their first album in three years, it would make sense not to be excited. It would be a bad idea to listen to their incredible ‘Them Days’ EP – or to their debut album

Shields – ‘DEATH & CONNECTION’

If you listen to a lot of contemporary metalcore records, you develop a certain weariness; a low tolerance for trends, copying, spot-the-difference and heard-it-before sounds that leave you wishing for something different. Shields then send you their new record and, well, you asked for it. Shields

Friday 23 January 2026

The Hara – ‘The Fallout’

The Hara are back with their sophomore studio record, and they’re funnelling their fire into personal resistance. Well, “back” is a bit of a stretch as they’ve been releasing a steady string of singles since they dropped ‘Survival Mode’ back in 2023, constantly delivering high energy live shows in

Friday 16 January 2026

Kid Kapichi – ‘Fearless Nature’

It feels like we’re all Kid Kapichi. Roaring out of the pandemic years with their 2021 debut through their political disillusionment and galvanisation of their next two releases, Jack Wilson and Eddie Lewis have channelled our zeitgeist into jagged, quick-witted tunes. ‘Fearless Nature’ sees the duo turning a corner,

Wednesday 14 January 2026

I Promised The World – ‘I PROMISED THE WORLD’

Okay –I Promise The World are a young, upcoming metalcore band, freshly signed to Rise Records and they’re are starting 2026 with a new self-titled EP. So far, so good, but what makes them unusual is that their sound is heavily indebted to 2006 – like, everything

Friday 12 December 2025

LIVE: Sabaton / The Legendary Orchestra @ The O2 Arena

With Sabaton’s “The Legendary Tour” taking them to some of the biggest arenas they’ve ever played on these shores, there was one question that needed answering heading into the first night of the UK leg in London – how many tanks would they manage to squeeze onto the O2

Wednesday 10 December 2025

HEALTH – CONFLICT DLC

“No, it’s not just your imagination,” claim HEALTH. “The future is shit and the phone you are reading this on is making it worse.” It’s a suitable epigram for the twelve industrially-tinged and rather downtrodden compositions held within ‘CONFLICT DLC’. The Californian band are an industrious trio, with a

Tuesday 09 December 2025

LIVE: Halestorm, Bloodywood & Kelsy Karter @ The O2, London

There’s no big pre-show drama at The O2 tonight; just a steady stream of people arriving early and settling in. The mix is wide: long-term fans in band tees, younger gig-goers clearly here for the full bill, and the usual London crowd who treat arena shows as

Friday 05 December 2025

Profiler – ‘MASQUERADING SELF’

Temperatures are falling, the nights are drawing in, it’s the season for hibernation, but something is stirring. Profiler are back with ‘Masquerading Self’, an EP that they’re describing as a ‘Nu-metal reawakening’ – thankfully it’s so much more than a reheated corpse. You know the drill;

Tuesday 02 December 2025

LIVE: PENGSHUi @ The Black Heart

The Black Heart is already close to boiling point by the time doors properly open. Camden on a Friday night is chaotic enough, but inside the venue there’s a different kind of anticipation: the sort that comes from a line-up built for noise, sweat and very little standing still.

Thursday 27 November 2025

Harpy – ‘VII’

Harpy’s already taken on festival fields and pushed the limits of experimental goth-industrial-power-electronica, but now? Goth Metal Mommy’s embodying all seven sins in style. ‘VII’ takes in a sin with each track, and fans of blasphemy should get on their knees and rejoice; danceable electro-obscenity has never sounded quite