Album Reviews

Make a brew. Stick on Myles Kennedy’s new album ‘The Art Of Letting Go’ and crank the volume up. Take a sip of said brew just as the opening track (and title track) explodes to life, spit said brew out all over the computer screen. Dayum! This one slaps and …

“2001 was the year that we incorporated more electric guitar into the songs alongside more organic instruments” – Blackmore’s Night, 2024 Never in the history of rock music has an established artist done such an almighty 180 as Ritchie Blackmore did when he packed away his famous white Fender Stratocaster …

A few bands may come to mind when you think about the current British metal scene. Perhaps you think of the melodically crushing Sleep Token? Or the technical mastery of Architects? Maybe even the boundary-smashing mammoths Bring Me the Horizon. If you thought of every or any of those bands, …

The debut album from UK power-pop outfit The Hot Damn! has been a long time coming. Formed out of the ashes of Scottish rabble-rousers The Amorettes and Aussie/English party-byrds Tequila Mockingbyrd the quartet has added a much-needed explosion of colour onto an otherwise monochrome-filled music scene. But rather than rush …

It’s not often that a review starts at the end. But with Charlotte Wessels’ hard-hitting new album ‘The Obsession’ the end is the only place to start. In 2021 Wessels created a song for her Patreon community called ‘Soft Revolution’; calling it special would be a huge understatement. Self-written/performed/and produced …

Nick Cave is a musician who simply never rests. Since the release of ‘Ghosteen’, the previous Bad Seeds album from 2019, he has (deep breath) released a collaborative album with bandmate Warren Ellis named ‘Carnage’, released 2 live albums, published 2 children’s books, published a book of interviews with journalist …

“Greatness is not born. Greatness is developed.” – Steven Van Zandt. Development from one album to the next is crucial in the growth of a band pushing through the ceiling to find a much larger audience than before. Repeat what has gone before and there is the risk of standing …

Blame Spotify and the rest of the faceless streaming sites. Bloody algorithms. The need to push an artist in one particular direction to find the playlist that best suits them can prove tricky for someone who defies pigeonholing. Someone like Elles Bailey. Is there simply a singer-songwriter category? Or is …

How to begin a review of Lodestar’s new album ‘Zonen’? Mention what has happened worldwide in the 27 years since the band last released an album? No, too easy. Plus, let’s be honest, half of the shit that has happened since the 1996 self-titled debut was released is hard to …

I think a lot of people have misgivings about Scene Queen (AKA Hannah Collins), given that her career can be attributed to starting on TikTok, and the fact that she’s a bright pink sore thumb in the world of metalcore, but you’d be dumb to discount her as an artist. …