GALLERY: LIVE: Download Festival 2026 – Friday

Nothing holds Download back. Not the mud that covers our boots long before the arena opens, not the 100-metre-long queue for the merch superstore, and definitely not our heavy heads the morning after 5ive’s completely unironic cameo at District X. Download XXIII kicks off with a Friday of wildcards →

GALLERY: Download Festival 2026 – Friday

GALLERY: Exploring Birdsong – ‘EVERY HOUSE WE BUILT’

The comedian Nick Revell once performed a show based on the premise of exploring birdsong. It was hilarious, funny enough to remember decades later. The premise was that beneath the beautiful songs were base emotions. If you understood what the songs were about you would be driven →

GALLERY: Warning – ‘Rituals Of Shame’

Arriving twenty years after 2006’s seminal, genre-defining ‘Watching From A Distance’, to describe ‘Rituals Of Shame’ as “much anticipated” would be the understatement of the century. As one of doom metal’s most emotionally affecting and resonant records, ‘Watching From A Distance’ was always going to be a →

GALLERY: INTERVIEW: Motion City Soundtrack

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GALLERY: Prince Of Failure – ‘PRINCE OF FAILURE’

Music is basically mathematics, and there is a rule. A simple one. One that is always correct. Two plus two equals four. When people start talking about supergroups, they seem to think this doesn’t apply. Prince Of Failure are a new project consisting of the instrumental virtuoso →

GALLERY: INTERVIEW: The Menzingers

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GALLERY: Des Rocs – ‘To Hell And Back’

With hindsight, the collaboration between Des Rocs and the Borderlands franchise feels so obvious. Both the artist and the looter-shooter game series channel a renegade energy, whether you’re fighting off maniacs on an alien planet or singing about New York bikers with a heavy old-school rock influence. Both draw →

GALLERY: INTERVIEW: Des Rocs

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GALLERY: BIG|BRAVE – ‘in grief or in hope’

It’s amazing to think there was a time when BIG|BRAVE performed as an acoustic project. During the early 2010s, the then-nascent band were a folk duo. Their evolution since – from duo to trio – has dramatically broadened the band’s scope. During this time, the Canadians have traversed most →

GALLERY: Sleeping With Sirens – ‘An Ending In Itself’

Sometimes you just need a little pick-me-up from the stresses of daily life from someone who gets it. That’s what the new Sleeping With Sirens album is; a friend when you’re in need of a helping hand. The arc that they’ve followed over the last two records is completed →

GALLERY: Death Cab For Cutie – ‘I Built You A Tower’

Let’s say you’ve just had a fight with a loved one: heated emotions, hasty phrases thrown and muscles locked with stress. Then you take a break and really think about what they mean to you, and which path you want to take next. That exact sensation of walking through →

GALLERY: Guilt Trip – ‘Armour Of Angels’

Every now and then, a band will release an album that takes them from being mere contenders to cementing them as genre heavyweights; for Manchester’s metallic-hardcore five-piece Guilt Trip, ‘Armour Of Angels’ is one such LP. Whilst only being the band’s third full length release, ‘Armour Of Angels’ finds →

GALLERY: Evanescence – ‘Sanctuary’

Evanescence are rock survivors. Despite the internet rumour that the entire band died years ago, they are very much alive, and after five years of soul-searching, have emerged from the studio with a stronger, bolder sound in the form of their sixth album, ‘Sanctuary’. It’s a record that firmly feels →

GALLERY: Converge – ‘HUM OF HURT’

In 2024, the BBC aired a four-part series called The Listeners. Based on the Jordan Tannahill novel, the drama follows Claire, an English teacher driven to insanity by a continuous and inexplicable ambient sound. While the story is fictional, the phenomenon, known as “the hum”, is well-documented. Instances of →

GALLERY: LIVE: Slam Dunk South 2026

What’s rarer than a Bank Holiday heatwave? A Slam Dunk lineup this scorching. Slam Dunk South might have seen temperatures high enough to make us regret wearing our black scene gear for our day out, but it would turn into a day of revelations: acts we’d relegated to the →

GALLERY: Slam Dunk South 2026

GALLERY: Retrospective: Metallica – ‘Load’

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GALLERY: Sparta – ‘CUT A SILHOUETTE’

Imagine the scene, if you haven’t already experienced it. You’re sitting in a dentist’s chair. You’re nervous, you don’t know what’s going to happen. Your wandering eyes settle on a humorous sign that reads: “Dentists don’t die, they just lose their pull”. You’re unsure if it’s a →

GALLERY: LIVE: Desertfest Sunday

It’s the final day of Desertfest and the skies over Camden are decidedly greyer than they have been for the preceding days. With less draw to mingle outside, this does mean that the smaller venues are once again full from the moment they open. It’s obviously fantastic for bands →