Founding member of Black Sabbath and the godfather of heavy metal guitar returns with his first new solo music in 21 years and his first full length release since Black Sabbath’s final album, ’13’. Across eight inventive, expansive and absorbing tracks, Tony and his long-term producer Mike Exeter have created one of 2026’s defining rock albums. Sonically heavy and rich in musical textures, it sees Tony bring to life a musical vision long-in-the-making, and features some of the finest guitar performances of his career.
This is vintage Iommi. He has the Norwegian vocalist Jørn Lande on the mic, whom some will know from his eponymous hard rock project, or from fronting power metallers Pentakill. Others will remember him from when he stepped in to take Ronnie James Dio’s spot to fulfil “Heaven & Hell’s” 2010 touring commitments after the death of the legendary metal frontman. Here, Iommi gives him plenty to work with.
‘World Alone’ is the first single and is fast paced, guitar driven track with Tony’s signature, monster riffs driving throughout. It’s heavy, yet catchy and is uplifting courtesy of the lyricist and vocalist, Jorn Lande. This is classic Iommi and bears all the hallmarks of his legendary guitar work combined with a contemporary twist.
Thematically, the video follows The Believer through a retro-futuristic dystopia in which, like Jeff Bridges in Tron, he is thrown into a videogame, and has to save his own life and find salvation in the process. Iommi has made mention that he has a solo album percolating in the background but he has had a full schedule. There have been his Black Sabbath commitments, with the Birmingham metal godfathers bringing down the curtain on their career at Back To The Beginning last year, the metal all-dayer to end all metal all-dayers.
Iommi had been working on perfume lines, in ballet, too, when he teamed up with the Birmingham Royal Ballet to rework Sabbath’s early work in dance. Then there was the Gibson documentary and the reissue of his signature Gibson pickups. Finally, the album is ready.
“It’s an album we’ve really enjoyed making,” says Iommi. “We’re not trying to prove anything – it’s a great album, it rocks!”
“From The Dark” was produced by Iommi with his long-standing tech, cowriter and engineering whiz Mike Exeter. Becky Baldwin of UK thrashers Fury and Mercyful Fate plays bass guitar. Karl Brazil, who played on Iommi’s 2024 single, Deified, returns on drums. Deified, however, does not. It remains a standalone single. Lande handles the album’s lyrics. Expect existentialism, “nautical metaphors” and downtuned riffola. “World Alone” is more uptempo but you can be rest assured there will be some low and slow doomy groovers. Iommi will be releasing “World Alone” on foil-sleeved 7” vinyl, with an instrumental version on Side B.
Tony Iommi announces his solo album “From The Dark“, dropping October 23rd, featuring the first single “World Alone“.
Protomartyr is an American rock band formed in 2008 in Detroit, Michigan, United States. It features Joe Casey on vocals, Greg Ahee on guitar, Alex Leonard on drums and Scott Davidson on bass guitar. Greg Ahee and Alex Leonard were performing as a duo, which was named Butt Babies. They were soon joined by Joe Casey, who started to perform on vocals at Butt Babies shows. Kevin Boyer of Tyvek joined Protomartyr on bass and second guitar for a short time before leaving the act due to the working schedules with his other band. As Scott Davidson joined the band on bass, Butt Babies transformed into Protomartyr.
A post-punk band hailing from Detroit, Michigan, USA, Protomartyr has established themselves as a force to be reckoned with in the music scene. With their unique blend of raw energy and thought-provoking lyrics, they have captivated audiences worldwide.
Protomartyr quickly gained recognition for their powerful live performances and critically acclaimed albums. Their sound is characterized by intense guitar riffs, driving rhythms, and frontman Joe Casey’s distinctive vocals.
Protomartyr’s music explores themes of societal unrest, existentialism, and the human condition. Their lyrics delve deep into introspection while offering social commentary on issues that resonate with listeners.
No Passion All Technique
The band released their debut album, “No Passion All Technique” in 2012 via Urinal Cake Records.
Protomartyr can finally answer what is probably their most frequently asked question: “When are you going to reissue your first album?” “No Passion All Technique” has long been something of a mystery. Not available on streaming services; long out of print (and going for ridiculous prices on auction sites), why was this album so elusive?
When Protomartyr – vocalist Joe Casey, guitarist Greg Ahee, bassist Scott Davidson, drummer Alex Leonard – stepped into a studio together for the first time, in November of 2011, they didn’t know they were about to record an album. With only four hours of studio time booked and one case of beer between them, their plan was to walk out with enough songs for a seven-inch single. Instead, at the suggestion of engineer Chris Koltay, the newly formed Detroit outfit recorded as much as they possibly could, in what little time they had.
Sold out and out of print shortly after its original release on Urinal Cake Records in October 2012, “No Passion All Technique” is a sometimes-messy look at one of rock’s most magnetic bands – and lyricists – just as they were coming to life. Primal, cerebral, heartbreaking, funny – it’s an accidental tour de force that’s also become an unlikely collector’s item.
“My memory is shot,” Casey says, “but I appreciate now, looking back, how raw and off-the-cuff it was. There’s tons of mistakes in it and that wasn’t because we planned on it. We still can’t really admit that it’s as good as it is. You never want to say that your first is the best, but I’m happy that the first ended up not being terrible. It gave us doorway to what we’d want to do later.”
Colpi Proibiti
This was followed by “Colpi Proibiti” in the same year, via X! Records.
Under Color of Official Right
Their second studio album, “Under Color of Official Right”, was released in April 2014 via Hardly Art record label,
Protomartyr’s economical rock elicits comparisons to possible antecedents like Pere Ubu, Wire or The Fall as well as local contemporaries like Frustration or Tyvek (whose frontman Kevin Boyer played bass in an early iteration of Protomartyr). Where 2012’s “No Passion All Technique” favoured comparatively straight forward punk structures, “Under Color”, is their second full length, and debut for the label Hardly Art , takes a more exploratory approach. “Tarpeian Rock” places punk vitriol against a minimalist backing and “Scum, Rise!” casts shadows with guitars that alternately chime and clang.
The Agent Intellect
A third studio album, “The Agent Intellect”, followed in October 2015, The album was critically acclaimed, being rated 85/100 on accumulator website, Fantastic and one of the albums of 2015. “The Agent Intellect” is Protomartyr’s third and finest work to date. Named after an ancient philosophical questioning of how the mind operates in relation to the self, it’s an elegant and often devastating display of all that makes Protomartyr so vital and singularly visceral an outfit.
Over the course of several months, Greg Ahee waded through more than a hundred song fragments until he reached the bottomless melodies of “I Forgive You” and “Clandestine Time”, the inky depths of “Pontiac ’87” and titanic churn of “Why Does It Shake?”. Lyrically, Casey is at his most confident and haunting. He humanizes evil on “The Devil in His Youth“, and, amid the charred pop of “Dope Cloud“, he reassures us that nothing – not God, not money – can or will prevent our minds from unraveling until we finally fade away.
We are no one and nothing, he claims, without our thoughts. It’s a theme that echoes through the entirety of the record, but never as beautifully as it does on “Ellen“. Named after his mother and written from the perspective of his late father, it’s as romantic a song as you’re likely to hear this or any year, Casey promising to wait for her on the other side, with the memories she’s lost safely in hand. For fans of The Fall, Interpol and Total Control.
Relatives in Descent
Protomartyr signed to Domino Recording Company in 2017, and released fourth studio album,“Relatives in Descent”, on the label in September 2017.
Relatives In Descentis Protomartyr’s fourth album and Domino Recordings debut. Its 12 tracks deal with the unknowable nature of truth and the existential dread that often accompanies that unknowing.
Protomartyr return with their first album on Domino Records.
After a year of extensive touring in support of 2015’s “The Agent Intellect”, Protomartyr returned to their practice space in a former optician’s office in Southwest Detroit. Guitarist Greg Ahee – inspired by The Raincoats’ Odyshape, Mica Levi’s orchestral compositions, and Protomartyr’s recent collaboration with post-punk legends The Pop Group, for Rough Trade’s 40th anniversary—began writing new music that artfully expanded on everything they’d recorded up until that point. The result is “Relativesin Descent”, their fourth full-length and Domino debut. Though not a concept album, it presents twelve variations on a theme: the unknowable nature of truth, and the existential dread that often accompanies that unknowing. This, at a moment when disinformation and garbled newspeak have become a daily reality.
Since their 2012 debut, Protomartyr have mastered the art of evoking place: the grinding Midwest humility of their hometown, as well as the x-rayed elucidation of America that comes with their vantage. The group’s sixth album was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, TX with producer Jake Aron. “The desert is more of a metaphor or symbol,” singer Joe Casey says, “of emotional deserts, or a place or time that seems to lack life.” The “growth” came from a period of colossal transition for Casey, including the death of his mother. But life does go on, and Casey describes the great theme of “Formal Growth In The Desert” as an embrace and acknowledgment of that fact: a 12-song testament to “getting on with life,” even when it feels impossibly hard.
Ultimate Success Today,
The group’s fifth album, “Ultimate Success Today“, was originally scheduled to follow in May 2020, but was subsequently postponed to that July. Following the release of Relatives In Descent, the band’s critically acclaimed headlong dive into the morass of American life in 2017,
Protomartyr release their fifth album, “Ultimate Success Today”, on Domino. Following the release of “Relatives In Descent“, the band’s critically acclaimed headlong dive into the morass of American life in 2017, “Ultimate Success Today” continues to further expand the possibilities of what a Protomartyr album can sound like.
“Ultimate Success Today” was recorded at Dreamland Recording Studios, a late 19th century church, in upstate New York and co-produced by the band and David Tolomei (Dirty Projectors, Beach House) with mixing by Tolomei. Featured guest musicians on the album include Nandi Rose (vocals) a.k.a. Half Waif, jazz legend Jemeel Moondoc (alto sax), Izaak Mills (bass clarinet, sax, flute), and FredLonberg-Holm (cello).
“Michigan Hammers” is fierce with staccato guitar and thrashing percussion. Singer Joe Casey ’s voice is forceful and insist:“ The Michigan Hammers are on their way // A chant from the end of the bar, not all of them on pills // Break apart the surface lot // What’s been torn down can be rebuilt // What has been rebuilt can be destroyed . ”
The accompanying video was directed by Yoonha Park, who was responsible for the band’s “ Wheel of Fortune ” and “ Don’t Go To Anacita ” videos, and was built entirely of found stock footage. “This video is a retelling of a well-known Michigan folk tale that describes timeless themes of greed, power, death and rebirth and nothing short of the conflict of good and evil,” says Park.
Joe Casey further explains:”Couldn’t make a ‘proper’ video due to the miasma. So why not make one using what tools remain? That’s sort of what “Michigan Hammers” is about I think – building with rubble. It’s probably about that and mules, syndicates, too many parking lots, camaraderie, the ideal happy hour, failure, and takin ‘what they’re givin’ ’cause we’re workin’ for a livin ‘until we start takin’ it to the streets. Or something like that. “
“Ultimate Success Today” continues to further expand the possibilities of what a Protomartyr album can sound like.
‘Formal Growth In The Desert’
Since their 2012 debut, Protomartyr have mastered the art of evoking place: the grinding Midwest humility of their hometown, as well as the x-rayed elucidation of America that comes with their vantage.
The group’s sixth album was recorded at Sonic Ranch in Tornillo, TX with producer Jake Aron.
The “Polacrilex Kid” video harkens back to the heydays of television and previews Protomartyr’s appearance on The Marty Singer Telethon, Featuring in-studio performances of “Polacrilex Kid” alongside debuts of “Formal Growth In The Desert” standouts “Fun In Hi Skool” and “3800 Tigers,” the telethon is hosted by the inimitable Marty Singer (who Protomartyr fans may recognize from their “Processed By The Boys” video) and Sarah McMahon, The song derives its title from the chemical name for nicotine gum, something singer Joe Casey refers to as an “unwanted friend I’ve become acquainted with since getting on the quit smoking/start smoking again tilt-a-whirl.” At the song’s core, it delves into thematic material that is not unfamiliar in the Protomartyr canon: can you hate yourself and still deserve love?
“The desert is more of a metaphor or symbol,” singer Joe Casey says, “of emotional deserts, or a place or time that seems to lack life.” The “growth” came from a period of colossal transition for Casey, including the death of his mother.
The moody lead single/video, “Make Way,” doubles as “Formal Growth In The Desert’s” opening track, with Casey beginning the record by facing tragedy head-on: “Welcome to the haunted earth // The living after life // Where we chose to forget // the years of the Hungry Knife.” The accompanying video, directed by Trevor Naud, is a striking cinematic feat. Of the video, Naud says: “There’s a deliberate through-line between the videos for “Make Way” and 2020’s Worm In Heaven.
The two songs feel partnered with each other. So I wanted the videos to feel like they exist in the same world. There are layers of experiments happening–all within a closed environment. We don’t know what’s happened to the world outside, but there’s an undertone that things maybe aren’t quite right.”
But life does go on, and Casey describes the great theme of “Formal Growth In The Desert” as an embrace and acknowledgment of that fact: a 12-song testament to “getting on with life,” even when it feels impossibly hard.
Casey and his bandmates regrouped with a sense of uncertainty, questioning if and how to continue after the turbulence of the pandemic years. They found themselves using that ambivalence to hone a song they named after a chapter from a 1950’s teen dance manual. “Elimination Dances” refers to a game where “you get tapped out when you lose the dance,” and that felt an apt metaphor for just surviving. Life is a struggle, but “you might as well keep dancing until the tap comes,” Casey says.
“Elimination Dances” is presented alongside a video directed by Yoonha Park, and features dancer Kota Yamazaki. “My dad once told me ‘Life is like a roll of toilet paper. The closer it gets to the end the faster it goes,’” explains Park. “That idea along with the lyrics led to the idea of a choreographic pattern that repeats as it grows outward in an expanding spiral. The choreography repeats with each cycle but has to be danced faster and faster to keep pace with the ‘pale youth’ until eventually devolving into chaos. I recently learned that the toilet paper quote was actually by Andy Rooney.”
‘Formal Growth In The Desert’ out on Domino.
Consolation E.P.
Consolation E.P. is a four-track EP by Protomartyr. Two of the four songs feature Kelley Deal, a friend of the band, on vocals alongside singer Joe Casey.
The EP was recorded by Deal’s R.Ring bandmate Mike Montgomery and expands Protomartyr‘s arrangements with strings and woodwinds. A fantastic EP from one of the best guitar band’s around. Combining elements of The Fall, The Smiths, Gang of Four into four powerful new tracks. The addition of Kelley Deal on backing vocals really works, making “Wheel of Fortune” one of their best songs so far.
Protomartyr released a new EP “Consolation”,
Hotel Usona
Recorded with legendary producer Dave Fridmann (Nick Cave, MGMT, The Flaming Lips) at his own Tarbox Road Studios in western New York, Hotel Usona—Protomartyr’s seventh full-length studio album—is an effort that finds the Detroit post-punk outfit reckoning with the horrors of our current moment. It is not easy listening. It’s essential.
Over the last two decades, Protomartyr – vocalist Joe Casey, drummer Alex Leonard, bassist ScottDavidson, guitarist-multi-instrumentalist and co-producer Greg Ahee – have built one of the most rewarding and often exhilarating bodies of work in recent memory by veering in and out of darkness, grappling with what most frightens us, saddens us, disgusts us, embarrasses and enrages us. The stuff that makes us human. Casey has imagined his country as an aging hotel here, each song a room haunted by its own troublesome guest: the slow paralysis of modern life, AI, deportation, warped patriotism, violence, JD Vance and the often unbearable weight of becoming a father. It’s a hard look at a nation in free fall, gripped by fascism. You can feel the stakes in every song, feel the band levitating to meet them. They’ve never sounded more powerful.
Casey has imagined his country as an aging hotel here, each song a room haunted by its own troublesome guest: the slow paralysis of modern life (“Sounds We Cannot Hear”), AI (“Feed the Sewer”), deportation (“Third Country”), warped patriotism (“Exalted Eagles”), violence (“The KnifeDream”), JD Vance (“Converts”), and the often unbearable weight of becoming a father anyway (“Checking Out”). It’s a hard look at a nation in free fall, gripped by fascism.
Musically, Ahee has built worlds within a world, drawing new influence from the Middle East and ‘50s exotica, finding common ground between dread and joy, a speciality. All of it—Leonard’s drumming in particular—is rendered more tangible and terrifying by Fridmann, whose son, Jon, contributes horns. You can feel the stakes in every song, feel the band levitating to meet them. They’ve never sounded more powerful.
the album ‘Hotel Usona’ out on 25th September on Domino Recordings
Hailing from what could be regarded as the archetypal city in the throes of the 2010’s post-industrial economic depression, Protomartyr’s work is a testament to the power of music to expose and interpret the darkest undercurrents of a society trapped in a seemingly endless and ill-defined malaise.
Their angular guitar work burrows in the flesh of our bodies, both political and physical, opening and suturing wounds through riffs operating with scalpel-like precision and searing hot textures. Depending on the song, Joe Casey swaps his baritone Sprechgesang with lightning-fast punk invectives as he posits himself as Detroit’s own unheeded doomsayer, grappling with his and our physical and moral decay through oblique and erudite allegories.
Amidst relentless sonic assaults driven by thunderous drumming and pounding basslines, owing an outstanding debt to the Motor City punk scene and British post-punk at its most neurotic, the band are able to construct genuine melodies and catchy refrains piercing the underlying tension and extend unexpected sympathy for our shared wretched condition to the listener. Therein lies Protomartyr’s final statement: there is fragility and rigorous self-analysis beyond the wall of noise and the snarling contempt.”
Tour Dates
Thu. February 11 – Leeds, UK @ Irish Center Fri. February 12 – Glasgow, UK @ The Garage Sat. February 13 – Manchester, UK @ Band on the Wall Mon. February 15 – Bristol, UK @ The Lantern Tue. February 16 – London, UK @ Electric Brixton
On the surface, Bristol three-piece Mould present as a new band: a rapidly-rising name on the UK alternative circuit who, in just two EPs – 2024’s self-titled debut offering and 2025’s ‘Almost Feels LikePurpose’ – have already racked up support from the likes of So Young, DIY and Dork, received extensive plays across BBC 6 Music including a recent playlisting for antsy earworm ‘Float’, and made their live debut in cities from Europe to New York.
But bubbling underneath the impressive inroads that the band – formed of vocalist and guitarist Joe Sherrin, vocalist and bassist Kane Eagle, and drummer James Luxton – have made within their current guise sits a long and storied history of playing, writing and gigging together for a full decade. Mould – despite their name – might be fresh, but their eclectically-interwoven, exploratory music comes from years of learning exactly how they tick as a trio. And now, with debut LP ‘Hoping as a Coping Mechanism’, Joe, Kane and James have crafted a record filled with the idiosyncrasies that can only come from having spent time creating a strange, symbiotic musical world to play within.
“We’ve all played in each others’ previous bands, spent time crammed into a tour van for months and we hang out all the time outside of that anyway, so that closeness definitely helps,” Joe says. “We’re all the same person, basically,” Kane shrugs as James laughs: “Same brain, baby!”
The seeds of Mould, in fact, came as a direct response to one of these previous ventures. Heavily involved in the interconnected Bristol scene that featured lynchpin label Breakfast Records and venues such as The White Rabbit and the sadly now-defunct Roll For The Soul where James would put on his own gigs, the trio had been dipping in and out of each others’ projects for a long time. However when they were all enlisted as the backing band for folk singer Fenne Lily, the three musicians found themselves with the urge to then create something directly opposite. “We’d soundcheck a bit and then we’d start just making horrible little rackets and it was brilliant,” recalls Kane. “Off the back of that, we decided that we wanted to do a big, noisy band together.”
Oftentimes Mould are big and noisy – on propulsive, almost mathy previous single ‘FRANCES’, or the motorik rhythms of early track ‘Birdsong’ (which began life during those first soundchecks). But there are also pop sensibilities and a knack for hooks that run rife throughout; the product, Mould explain, of all their previous endeavours coalescing into one supercharged, hybrid whole. “If you know all of our projects, it feels like a blend of all those things,” Joe suggests. “I have a band called Milo’s Planes which is more of a screaming, post-hardcore thing. And me and Kane have got a poppier project called Jumbo. James had a band called Cagework which is somewhere in between, so it’s about finding a nice mix of being poppy and catchy but with a bit of weirdness and heaviness as well.”
Written in snatches of time in hometown Bristol, recorded in London’s 5dB Studios and produced by Sean Oakley (Georgia, Scaler, Sorry), who flew in from LA especially for the project, ‘Hoping as a Coping Mechanism’ is the strongest display of their talents yet. In their own words, it’s “more focussed, paced and thought-out”, but over 13 tracks that explore the horrors of the outside world and the internal minefield of the brain, Mould’s debut also hits with the thrills of a brilliant live band who’ve distilled that energy to tape.
The title comes from a line taken from the time signature-warping ‘Emotive Language’ that distills what it means to be a band in 2026 down to one concise sentiment. “This has always been the dream, playing with your mates and making good songs and getting to tour and make records,” says Kane. “But the realities of trying to start a band now, when you’re 30 and also have other goals at the same time are hard. We’d be doing it regardless, but you have to learn a lot.”
This duality runs throughout the record, where tracks like lead single ‘Float’ speak of “strolling through hellscapes” of social media yet surround their frustrations with the sort of barbed, visceral musicality that sounds like if Interpol had grown up in gloomy, rain-soaked Britain. “You’re endlessly doom scrolling, past a funny video of a sausage, and then there’s Farage and then there’s an ad for something,” Joe says of the track. “That mindnumbing flashy distraction turns you into idiots.”
‘Falling Posture’ begins with a cacophonous blast of noise before turning into a rattling punk number that started life “sounding a bit like The Cribs”, and then drops out into an unexpected slacker final third. Like many of Mould’s wares, they call it a “Frankenstein song” – one made of seemingly disparate ingredients bolted together into one exciting and surprising whole. The same goes for ‘Hatching’: “We like it when a song is a bit more riffy or mathy and then it builds up to a really simple, straight poppy chorus,” says Joe. “It’s a tension builder. We like jumping around the page and not staying in one place.”
Elsewhere, ‘Lists’ underpins a gloriously anthemic, fists aloft chorus with a curious little electronic motif that twinkles underneath as its lyrics paint surreal yet specific pictures amongst it all (“Meet me at the unobtainable end of a roll of a tape / With nothing to stick…”). ‘Lucid’ leans into punchy, grizzled riffs and some of the album’s heaviest yet catchiest moments, while ‘Humm’ ends the record with the melancholy grandiosity of orchestral strings.
A debut packed with ideas, and realised by a trio with the experience and super-solid foundations to execute them, ‘Hoping as a Coping Mechanism’ is as strong an advert as any for the importance of creating brilliant things with your mates, no matter what adversity surrounds you. In Mould, there’s a hell of a lot of hope to be found.
Debut album ‘Hoping as a Coping Mechanism’ arriving 24th July
Sixty years into a career that began with Fairport Convention and has spanned decades as one of rock’s most acclaimed singer-songwriters, Richard Thompson is still chasing surprise. On “Hippies, Thugs and Heroes“, he lets his subconscious take the wheel, pulling from a cast of old friends, false gurus, former selves, and invented characters who insisted on having their stories told. The result is an album that refuses to sit still. It opens with the bright, Byrds-inspired jangle of “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” — a song rooted in Thompson’s own history with 1970s spiritual movements and the complicated pull of charismatic leaders — before swinging into the rowdy “Everybody’s Stealing” and landing on the bluesy closer “Stringer.”
Along the way, “Cocaine Walking, Booze Talking” delivers some of his most inventive guitar work yet, a raw-nerve build into a splintered, psychedelic solo that captures a hardscrabble cast of London strivers and connivers. Recorded live with his longtime band — Taras Prodaniuk on bass, Michael Jerome on drums, David Mansfield on guitar and fiddle, and wife Zara Phillips on backing vocals — at Hobosound Studio in Weehawken, NJ, the sessions moved fast, often in just two to four takes. But the songwriting itself runs deep: more elaborate home demos gave Thompson’s own musical identity a stronger hold on the final record, resulting in an album he describes as “less them and more me.”
What emerges is a spiritual inquiry disguised as a rock record — a meditation on the towers we build and the ruin that follows when we invest in them too completely. Thompson doesn’t fully understand every song here, and that’s exactly the point. “Hippies, Thugs and Heroes” is proof that after sixty years, the joy of not knowing where a song will take you hasn’t faded one bit.
After the one-two punch of “The Messenger” and “Playland” early in the 2010s, Johnny Marr has been consistent in dropping a guitar-heavy solo album every four years since. Following 2022’s expansive “Fever Dreams Pts 1-4″, he recently revealed another new LP right on cue, with “The Age of Everything” set to drop on October 2nd. Following lead single “Spin,” he’s sharing another track called “Ophelia” which possesses a sense of yearning rooted in his work way back when with The Smiths.
“The Age Of Everything” is Johnny Marr’s fifth full length studio record. Written in London, developed live on the road across the East Coast of North America and recorded in Manchester, “The Age Of Everything” captures the energy and tensions of the city. Sharp, fast and dynamic, filled with ideas and possibilities.
“This is the record that’s been the most cathartic. The title came to me early in the process and became an inescapable idea. It seemed to sum up the way I think a lot of people are feeling. It’s all encompassing, but it’s not necessarily a negative statement. There’s a sense of overwhelm in the culture brought about by technology, but looking at it with a different light, there could also be a sense of possibility.” Johnny Marr
“The character of “Ophelia” is confounding but there’s a real nobility and strength which reminds me of someone in my life,” he shared of the tune. “So the name just stuck and sounded like a song. I thought about the character and I saw quite a few similarities with the “Ophelia“. As a songwriter, sometimes these things happen where it just sings really well over the track and you go with it. It turned out right.”
Since his last album, Marr released a best-of compilation of his solo work, as well a book about guitarsboth of which he spoke with us about a few years back. He also materialized earlier this year to contribute to the latest War Child comp, “HELP(2)“.
Taken from the new album ‘The Age Of Everything’, out 2nd October.
“With their ever-mutating brand of jazz-and-country-laced punk, Opus Kink have always cut a singular figure in a saturated landscape. Making their name with incendiary, cult-like live shows, the band — formed in Brighton in 2017 — have developed a sound as elusive as it is recognizable. Underscored by a formidable horn section and ragged, sardonic delivery, the band bear passing resemblance to post-punk and no-wave acts like The Pop Group, Birthday Party and Lounge Lizards, but it’s the weaving of older, more traditional influences — choral, folk, country, Latin, Weimar cabaret, cruise-ship-crooning — into the fabric of their music that sets them apart.
Their highly anticipated debut album “The Sweet Goodbye” is released via So Recordings and follows a series of EPs and singles.
The album is produced by Grammy award-winning producer and mixer Craig Silvey (Arcade Fire, Florence and The Machine, Baxter Dury, REM, Kronos Quartet, Sam Fender), with album track ‘The Head Tree’ featuring The New Eves (No.1 Independent album in 2025).
The debut album ‘The Sweet Goodbye’ released 31st of July. New single ‘Come Over, Do Me Wrong’ out now.
“Foundlings” is a seven-track collection that digs deep into Dead Meadow’s archives, spanning over two decades of sessions, tributes and unreleased gems. Known for their hypnotic blend of heavy riffage, dreamy atmospherics, and mesmerising grooves, Dead Meadow have been delivering their organic, masterful and utterly transportive sonic recipe for nearly thirty years now. The “Foundlings” rarities collection promises to illuminate the band’s evolution, featuring previously unheard material that showcases their unique ability to channel classic influences — from Sabbath-inspired heaviness to shimmering Cure-like textures — through their own hazy lens, while also serving as a tribute to bassist and founding member Steve Kille, who passed away two years ago after a long battle against cancer.
“Lost To Light” is Dead Meadow‘s brand new single, taken from the upcoming new album “Foundlings”. The release will see the light 31st July via Heavy Psych Sounds.
Militarie Gun have shared that a deluxe version of “God Save the Gun” will arrive on August 7th via Loma Vista Recordings. The new iteration of their 2025 LP features three new tracks, including “World’s Always Burning” featuring the band Mannequin Pussy, which is out now. “I can’t say whether or not the world is actually ending but it certainly feels like the sense of community in the world is all but dead,” MG’s Ian Shelton shared. “I wanted to write about all the things we’re tricked into arguing about so politicians and technocratic fascists can get away with whatever they want. My neighbor and I might not agree on everything but at least I know they’re not the one taking people’s rights away and destroying the world.”
Regarding the deluxe edition’s full slate of bonus tracks, Shelton added: “Everything in “God Save the Gun” became so focused on the internal, that when it came to fitting these songs in, it felt like they had stepped outside of that perspective. In my head these songs started to form into the feeling of finally coming to after being so caught up in your own head, and then realizing the rest of the world is still out there and you haven’t been actively participating.”
Militarie Gun’s “God Save The Gun” starts with a confession: “I’ve been slipping up” frontman IanShelton roars. This isn’t just a sonically daring swing of a rock album, it’s a very human document of being at your worst when you should be on top – an absurdist guide to the intersection of self-destruction and self-belief. “I’m well aware that being this vulnerable turns my personal trauma into a marketing hook for this album,” Shelton says. “But I’m fine with it, if not provoking it.”
Teenage Fanclub have announced new album ‘Do Not Dare To Dream’. Check out the laid-back single ‘Day In The Sun’
The new record marks the 13th from the indie giants, and the first from them since 2023’s ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’. It is set for release on October 9th via Merge Records, Arriving decades on from their formation in 1989, the new album sees the band work to push their style of melodic guitars, eye-catching harmonies, and introspective song writing into new directions.
As well as announcing the LP, the band have also dropped a taster in the form of new single ‘Day In The Sun’ – a relaxed track that centres on themes of renewal and embracing a new outlook.
For the album as a whole, Teenage Fanclub explores how hollow optimism feels “ridiculous”, and retaliates against empty words of encouragement.
“Those ‘dare to dream’ sentiments are kind of ridiculous,” singer Norman Blake said, “I don’t think the world works that way.” “We can still be cheerful and optimistic in the face of things not being great,” added Raymond McGinley.
The album sees them joined by longtime members Euros Childs, Francis Macdonald and David McGowan, and was written as the musicians all embraced being in the studio together, without obsessively perfecting arrangements ahead of time.
“I think what happens is you just move from one thing into the next and before you know it, 30 years have passed,” Blake shared.
McGinley added: “Yeah, it’s been a while since we started doing this thing we do, but to us it feels like no time at all. In the place where we made the record people would have been singing thousands of years ago. Life is short, but music is eternal.”
As well as releasing new music, the indie band are heading out on tour later this year,
The Fat Angel Sings 