Ten reviews you might have missed

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1 LIVE: Bloodywood @ O2 Forum Kentish Town

2 LIVE: Knocked Loose / Basement / Harm’s Way / Pest Control @ O2 Academy Brixton

3 Bloodywood – ‘Nu Delhi’

4 LIVE: Touché Amoré @ Electric Ballroom, London

5 Spiritbox – ‘Tsunami Sea’

6 LIVE: Spiritbox / Periphery / Stray From The Path @ Alexandra Palace, London

7 LIVE: Better Lovers / Frontierer / Greyhaven @ Electric Brixton, London

8 Vukovi – ‘MY GOD HAS A GUN’

9 LIVE: Slipknot / Bleed From Within @ The O2

10 Hidden Mothers – ‘Erosion / Avulsion’

Reviews from Wednesday 16 April 2025

Newshapes – ‘A CONVERSATION WITH MYSELF’

Self-awareness is important. The ability to talk to yourself, to assess your actions and improve is vital. Scottish upstarts Newshapes know this. In fact, their new EP is called ‘A Conversation With Myself’ making it explicit; they know what they have made, they know what works, they

Tuesday 15 April 2025

King Kraken – ‘MARCH OF THE GODS’

In Norse mythology, the Kraken was a sea monster. A mega-sized octopus that would terrorise sailors and imperil ships. Kings are of course powerful and majestic, they have an air of regal grace. This makes King Kraken the ideal name for a band stepping into the Viking

Monday 14 April 2025

LIVE: DITZ, Knives, Staff Party @ Chalk, Brighton

Since their sophomore album, ‘Never Exhale’, released at the end of January, Brighton noise rockers DITZ have been touring non-stop. DITZ themselves describe the record as “the sound of a band that hasn’t stopped for a breath”. Tonight marks the end of the first leg of a UK/EU

Friday 11 April 2025

Teen Mortgage – ‘Devil Ultrasonic Dream’

There’s no point at which Teen Mortgage’s debut LP ‘Devil Ultrasonic Dream’ doesn’t feel like being inside a sweaty mosh pit. It’s an album that holds you in its embrace even as it kicks you in the face. This is pure punk from start to finish, distilled from garage

Tuesday 08 April 2025

Those Damn Crows – ‘God Shaped Hole’

Those Damn Crows, AKA Welsh Black Stone Cherry, are moving on through the music galaxy, paying tribute to the experiences they leave in the dust. While the comparison to Chris Robertson’s band is intended in jest, the boys from Bridgend’s experiences stateside supporting the likes of Queens of the

Magnolia Park – ‘Vamp’

Magnolia Park have gone full Coheed and Cambria – a sentence which has probably never been written before, and no one ever expected to be written. Rather than stick to their skate punk roots or dip their toes back into the world of nu-metal, they’ve decided to write an

Monday 07 April 2025

LIVE: Bloodywood @ O2 Forum Kentish Town

“There’s fuck all seats,” screams a redhead from across the bar, “it’s divide and conquer to even get in!” She’s spot on. There’s sold out shows, and then there’s the final date of Bloodywood’s spectacularly successful European run. The Forum has opened up areas previously unseen to cram in

Friday 04 April 2025

Scowl – ‘Are We All Angels’

Unless you’ve been chronically offline or living under a rock, the name Scowl is likely very familiar to you if you’re a hardcore fan. Over the last few years, the California quintet have shot through the ranks at lightning speed, carving out a space for

Thursday 03 April 2025

Thornhill – ‘BODIES’

Melbourne four-piece Thornhill are back with their explosive new offering, ‘BODIES’. In their own words, its “immediate, unfiltered approach … feels like a lightning bolt.” It’s hard to argue with this description. ‘BODIES’ powers through its runtime with an intensity that is rarely let up. ‘DIESEL’ rips into us

Wednesday 02 April 2025

BRKN LOVE – ‘The Program’

Canadian hard rock trio BRKN LOVE burst onto the scene in 2020 with a debut album that netted them viral success through TikTok. Now they’re back with their third effort, ‘The Program’, filled with heavy riffs and fuzzy bass, and oozing grooves from every pore. Opening track and the

Tuesday 01 April 2025

The Bottom Line – ‘Life Lately’

From their humble beginnings in 2011 to sets at Download Festival, 2000 Trees and Teddy Rocks, this South Coast outfit has always had a knack for writing songs that just click. They’ve been delivering catchy pop-punk anthems for a while now, but with ‘Life Lately’, it feels like they’ve

Friday 28 March 2025

UNDEROATH – ‘The Place After This One’

If there’s one thing Underoath are known for, it’s their unpredictability. After 27 years as a band, they could easily take the safe route, coast on their past successes, or even step away from making new music for a while. But that’s just not who they are. Instead, they’ve

Deafheaven – ‘Lonely People With Power’

What exactly do Deafheaven sound like? In 2020, this was a pretty easy question to answer. Back then, you could fairly describe them as a band that mixes elements of post-rock and shoegaze with black metal, often labelled as ‘blackgaze’. More specifically, the band created lush, sprawling soundscapes that

Thursday 27 March 2025

LIVE: Knocked Loose / Basement / Harm’s Way / Pest Control @ O2 Academy Brixton

If ever there was a way to get fans excited for your biggest UK show to date, Knocked Loose announcing a surprise gig taking place three days beforehand was one way to do it! 500 lucky souls got to pack out a sweaty Underworld to join the Kentucky hardcore

Monday 24 March 2025

Sicksense – ‘CROSS ME TWICE’

First time around, the Nu-metal era was all a bit embarrassing. Old music was dead, the weird kids were cool and there was a frenzied embrace of something new. Everyone wanted a piece of the pie, the scene was flooded and, once respectable bands started debasing themselves,

Friday 21 March 2025

A Day To Remember – ‘Big Ole Album, Vol. 1’

‘Big Ole Album, Vol. 1′ not only marks twenty years since A Day To Remember’s debut LP, ‘And Their Name Was Treason’ – it also marks a stylistic return to the blend of metalcore and pop-punk that defined the band until 2021’s ‘You’re Welcome’. Their second record put

Tuesday 18 March 2025

Imperial Triumphant – ‘Goldstar’

With extreme metal, theres a tendency to think that the apex of heaviness has been reached some time ago. After all, once you’ve got brain rattling blast beats, riffs that sound like they’ve been passed through a blender, and shrieked vocals that may as well have been laid down

Monday 17 March 2025

Bloodywood – ‘Nu Delhi’

Every part of the metal scene plays with the idea of being an outsider, so when we’re confronted with a voice that comes from a different race, continent and culture than we’re accustomed to, we embrace it into a bear hug. New Delhi’s own Bloodywood have taken on the

Friday 14 March 2025

Coheed and Cambria – ‘The Father Of Make Believe’

Examining a Coheed and Cambria album in isolation used to be the last thing that frontman Claudio Sanchez wanted. We were always supposed to take the music and lyrics he produced as one part of the increasingly-complex ‘Amory Wars’ saga, and by reading the comic books at the same

Wednesday 12 March 2025

LIVE: Touché Amoré @ Electric Ballroom, London

We might call Touché Amoré ‘hardcore’, but that’s only because a better word for their sound hasn’t been coined yet. They’ve only been in the UK for a week as part of one of their brief and sporadic appearances outside the US, and while seeing them headline is enough