Ten reviews you might have missed

Reviews from Tuesday 07 April 2026

LIVE: Grade 2 @ O2 Islington Academy 2

Sandwiched between a Wagamamas and a Uniqlo is a little slice of old school punk heaven. It’s Grade 2’s album launch show and we’re here to celebrate the music of 1977 with the future of the old school scene. As a crowd, we’re a tight fit into the venue,

Friday 03 April 2026

SUNN O))) – ‘SUNN O)))’

For almost three decades, SUNN O))) have consistently left listeners struggling to describe the ineffable sounds that Stephen O’Malley and Greg Anderson create. Genre-wise, most reach for terms like “doom” or “drone” metal, but those are insufficient descriptors. It’s like saying that Dick Van Dyke has a Cockney accent

Wednesday 01 April 2026

Grade 2 – ‘Talk About It’

Grade 2 are the best kind of young punk heroes. Five albums into their quest from the Isle of Wight to the glittering heights of Campbell, California, the trio have somehow managed to sound more like Rancid than Rancid ever did. It’s more than that though; the trio give

Friday 27 March 2026

Don Broco – ‘Nightmare Tripping’

Don Broco are now on the Dark Side. Gone is the whimsy that punctuated their earlier albums. They’ve kept the electronic hints, of course, but taken their sound in a distinctly heavier direction on their latest offering, ‘Nightmare Tripping’. It’s hard to believe that ’T-Shirt Song’ was only a

Thursday 26 March 2026

Winterfylleth – ‘The Unyielding Season’

There’s a cold remoteness that resonates throughout black metal’s complex and not always pleasant history. It’s often the music of isolation, and many of the genre’s most identifiable characteristics – high-pitched screams, brisk tempos and coarse recording qualities – possess an innate relationship with absence; of light, company, temperature,

Wednesday 25 March 2026

The Casualties – ‘DETONATE’

You hear it all the time. That same phrase. ‘They don’t make music like that anymore.” Honestly, they do. Whatever it is, whatever you like, there is a band out there somewhere doing your thing, you just have to look for it. The Casualties are a hardcore

Tuesday 24 March 2026

Blush Puppy– ‘HERE YOU DREAM’

Names are important. You can tell a lot from a name. Butch conjures a very different mental picture to Clive. You’d imagine a band called Cannibal Corpse sounding very different to one called Floral Tattoo. Could you imagine REM making it big if they’d stuck with one

Monday 23 March 2026

Free Throw – ‘MOMENTS BEFORE THE WIND’

Honesty is a strange thing. It isn’t the same as lying, but it’s not the same as truth either. A song doesn’t need truth to feel honest, just like how honesty isn’t always true. One of the best things about music is that it’s so conflicting, so

Friday 20 March 2026

Gaerea – ‘Loss’

Black metal is a genre that has an awful lot of stigma attached to it. Murder, arson, cults, more murder – it’s a pretty dark and dingy corner of the music world that seems perpetually incapable of detaching itself from those traits. Well, until you discover Gaerea, that is.

Thursday 19 March 2026

LIVE: Hot Mulligan, Delta Sleep @ Roundhouse

Something has quietly shifted for Hot Mulligan. The Michigan five-piece have spent the better part of a decade building one of the most devoted fanbases in modern emo, song by song and tour by tour; the kind of slow-burn ascent that tends to produce rooms that feel less like

Wednesday 18 March 2026

Poison The Well – ‘Peace In Place’

Poison The Well had a hand in establishing metalcore and its surge of popularity back in the early noughties. Though they never truly got their flowers or reached the same heights as some of their genre peers, their influence on its growth and the bands that it produced is

Tuesday 17 March 2026

Mclusky – ‘I SURE AM GETTING SICK OF THIS BOWLING ALLEY’

It’s always the same, isn’t it? You wait fifteen years for a band to release a record and then two turn up at once. After last year’s stunning comeback record, it’s time to hop aboard the Mclusky bus for their new EP – ‘I Sure Am Getting

Thursday 12 March 2026

Sweet Pill – ‘Still There’s A Glow’

Sweet Pill’s sophomore release comes four years after their debut album ‘Where the Heart Is’. These four years have seen the band tour alongside La Dispute and The Wonder Years, head out on their own headline tour, and pick up acclaim from artists across the board. The burnout

Wednesday 11 March 2026

LIVE: Less Than Jake + The Bouncing Souls @ O2 Academy Brixton

The thrill of entering Brixton Academy to the sound of The Bouncing Souls’ ‘Private Radio’ is unmatched, and that’s what Less Than Jake’s Winter Circus tour promises: iconic moments that take us right back to our punk rock past. They’re a band that mean so much to so many,

Wednesday 04 March 2026

Black Stone Cherry – ‘Celebrate’

Black Stone Cherry are determined to mark their successes in life, and the very literally named ‘Celebrate’ is seven tracks dedicated to just this. That said, don’t expect songs you can blow out your birthday candles to; ‘Celebrate’ represents just about making it through the day with your friends

Tuesday 03 March 2026

LIVE: Deftones / Denzel Curry / Drug Church @ The O2, London

Tonight marks Deftones’ second London gig in as many years, but the appetite is clearly still there — the arena is quickly filling up well before the first support slot begins. Bittersweet anticipation hangs thick inside The O2 Arena. Deftones are wrapping up their UK tour in support of

Friday 27 February 2026

The Gloom In The Corner – ‘ROYAL DISCORDANCE’

In 1976, astronomers at the Big Ear Telescope discovered a signal from space. The signal was so strong and unexpected that while reading the printout, astronomer Jerry Ehman circled it a wrote ‘Wow!’ in ballpoint pen. ‘Royal Discordance’, the third album from The Gloom In The Corner,

A Wilhelm Scream – ‘Cheap Heat’

A Wilhelm Scream have turned to the dark side, and it suits them. The Massachusetts punks’ sixth outing, ‘Cheap Heat’ sees them taking on the role of the heel, playing the villain as a foil to the John Cenas of this world, but while they’re taking a step away

Thursday 26 February 2026

Varials – ‘Where The Light Leaves’

Armed with a back catalogue of pit starters, blending hardcore energy with nu-metal groove and metalcore ferocity, Philadelphia’s Varials have been consistently, albeit tumultuously, churning out violent gems for the last decade. Even amidst changes in their personnel, their core sound has remained largely the same; spirited, venomous and

Thursday 19 February 2026

Mothica – ‘SOMEWHERE IN BETWEEN’

The darkness closes in, the world seems just too hard, you wrap yourself up in the blankets, stay in bed and hope the world will go away, and then, the season changes, you pull away the covers and emerge as a different person entirely. Mothica has battled