Anyone can make a concept album (which is not to say that it’s easy, but that it doesn’t depend on a particular musical style). That said, when it comes to the rock-opera-style concept album, the tendencies towards elaborate instrumental explorations and grand, dramatic spectacle often found in progressive rock and metal, provide particularly fertile ground. Pink Floyd, Queensryche, The Who, and many others have followed this path (coloured by their own particular musical approaches).
Symphonic thrashers Ice Giant have announced an upcoming run of tour dates in the US supporting the record. The Boston quartet will join forces with Atlanta prog-metal explorers Scorched Moon for nine shows in the month of September, beginning in their own hometown with a record release show at The Middle East on September 8th – see below for a complete list of dates! Ice Giant’s new album, Ghost of Humanity, will be released on September 8th, 2023 and is a concept album with a complex sci-fi storyline. Pre-orders are available at the link below:
UK indie trio Amber Run has a song likely everyone has heard, whether realized or not. Their saturnine piano hit ‘I Found’ from their 2015 debut album 5AM has been used in several television shows, played immeasurable times over the radio, and of course, became a viral TikTok sound. With nearly a gargantuan 325M streams on Spotify alone, the timeless hit has covered unfathomable ground. Now with their fourth full-length album How To Be Human (TRIPEL Records) Amber Run kicks off a promising album with a short yet equally captivating piano-vocal intro with ‘Flowers (Interlude I)’.
Nuclear Blast Records have had a storming year, and they continue their hot streak with the release of Hell Is Where The Heart Is by Oceans. The four piece whose members hail from Berlin and Vienna released their debut EP Into The Void in 2019 followed by Cover Me In Darkness, a second EP in the same year featuring their interpretations of tracks from the likes of Alice In Chains, Deftones and Radiohead, before dropping their debut LP The Sun And The Cold in 2020.
After a brief hiatus from the overarching conceptual narrative that their previous catalogue followed, 2018’s Vaxis- Act 1: Unheavenly Creatures saw Coheed & Cambria make a welcome return to The Armory Wars saga, commencing a new tale within the narrative, one to be told across a five-album span. A span that follows the titular and, currently, little-known character Vaxis, who at the point of Act 1 is unborn but an almost guiding hand to his parents Nia (Sister Spider) and Nostrand (Creature) in their escape. A welcome return with glorious results which means anticipation is rife again for the follow-up as the narrative continues on Vaxis II: A Window Of The Waking Mind (Roadrunner). Where Act 1 largely comprised of deceptively sprawling songs and hit a near eighty-minute mark, Vaxis II’s repertoire is generally more succinct with songs around the three-to-four-minute mark. Arguably a more commercial-friendly effort, that thought belies the still present depth within even shorter songs and the areas of innovation throughout which still feels unmistakably in character for the band, despite clear differences to its predecessor.
We recently caught up with Punk Rock Icon John Doe of X recently, to discuss his new solo album, Fables in a Foreign Land (Fat Possum Records), which was released on May 20th, 2022. John discussed his new album, the conceptual story behind the record and the tracks, how he chooses his collaborators and writes for guests, being a published author and poet, his acting career, politics, touring and working harder than ever, and reflections on 40-plus years of X.Continue reading
Something isn’t quite right here.
A Rammstein record a mere three years after the last one and preceded by no rumbling stories of friction between bandmates or nebulous warnings of permanent disbandment? The last time the Neue Deutsche Härte/industrial act had such a swift turnaround was when Reise Reise was followed by fun leftovers album Rosenrot a year later, so could this quick release (by their standards anyway) mean Rammstein are actually happy or could it be hinting at something more ominous?
The season of the witch is upon us!!!! With Halloween just days away, it seemed more than fitting to check out some new Black Metal. Why not listen to some truly “scary movie” music with my favorite holiday just at hand. With that being said, the new cut from Ghost Bath Is a musical force to be reckoned with.
There is a powerful being that has arrived with one goal in mind: wreak havoc over everyone and everything until existence itself is all but wiped out. But it’s not a pandemic, it’s Praenuntius. The South-African six-piece Vulvodynia is responsible for this entity, and they’ve told its story via Praenuntius Infiniti (Unique Leader Records) in the form of crushing Deathcore and downright nightmarish lyrics.
No matter how much you write about a record, you can never quite fully encapsulate the feelings invoked by the music. Composer and multi-instrumentalist Leila Abdul-Rauf’s (Vastum, Ionophore, Cardinal Wyrm, Fyrhtu) words about her new album, Phantasiai, go some way to explaining why this might be. She writes, by way of explanation of the record’s concept: