Ten reviews you might have missed

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

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

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

4 HEALTH – CONFLICT DLC

5 Harpy – ‘VII’

6 LIVE: Electric Callboy @ Alexandra Palace

7 Vower – ‘A Storm Lined With Silver’

8 Pupil Slicer – Fleshwork

9 LIVE: Common Threads Tour, London

10 Creeper – ‘Sanguivore II: Mistress of Death’

Reviews from 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

Tuesday 25 November 2025

LIVE: Malevolence / SPEED / Dying Wish / PSYCHOFRAME @ O2 Academy, Brixton

Watching Sheffield’s Malevolence close out their European tour at Brixton’s O2 Academy is something else entirely. The atmosphere builds from the moment the doors swing open, as bodies press towards the barrier, filling the venue with that particular brand of anticipation that only comes with a tour closer. The

LIVE: Hot Milk / Cassyette @ the Roundhouse

We experienced the first pathetic snowfall of the year in the capital this morning, so naturally it felt apropos to round off the day with something fiery – the kind of music to make you emphatically aware of the blood coursing through your veins. Since Hot Milk entered their

Friday 21 November 2025

Downcast – ‘Nothing Left To Give’ EP

Downcast’s ‘Nothing Left To Give’ is a confident and compelling four-track statement from the Bristol emo up-and-comers, showcasing not only their growth as songwriters but also their willingness to push boundaries. Blending punchy originals with bold re-imaginings of well-loved tracks, the EP feels like a band joyfully stretching their

Thursday 20 November 2025

LIVE: The Offspring @ the O2, London

From starting our as falsetto firebrands exposing social wrongs, the Offspring have settled into their niche as punk rock’s jolly uncles, cranking out jokes as readily as they drop an MTV era riff. Their staying power has resulted in possibly their most family-friendly incarnation yet, judging by the number

Wednesday 19 November 2025

Knives – ‘Reglitter I’

Bristol noise punks Knives have had a killer year. Their debut LP ‘Glitter’, released in April, is a churning powerhouse of nightmare rhythms; a personal favourite of 2025. They’ve taken their blistering live set on the road alongside noise rock icons Ditz, as well as bands like The