Wrapping up all the business of 2024 with some fun End of Year Guest Posts from bands, friends, music industry pals, label types, and assorted good fiends! Check out this list from McKeever of Heavy Halo to discuss the top hot sauces of 2024, a topic we know a bit about!
Celebrating 40 years – Rock Am Ring and Rock Im Park festivals lineups have been revealed featuring Slipknot, Bring Me The Horizon, In Flames, Spiritbox, Lorna Shore, and more. Additional bands will be announced at a later date. Both festivals, which share artists throughout their runtime, will feature these acts across the same dates. Rock im Park is set for June 6th-8th at the Zeppelinfeld in Nuremberg, Germany, while Rock am Ring will take place at the Nürburgring in Nürburg, Germany, on the same dates. Tickets are on sale at the links below.Continue reading
Hellfest, held every year just outside of Paris, in Clisson, France, continues to up the ante every year with forever growing and impressive lineups! Taking place from June 27 to June 30, 2024, Hellfest will once again be four days long and over 200 bands appearing on six stages. For 2024, the headliners for each night will be Avenged Sevenfold, Machine Head, Metallica, and Foo Fighters. The full daily lineups, including one more major band tba, and the ticket link are coming soon!
Weaponised Youth is the new self-released EP from Brighton-based two-piece Snayx, a band who are fully engaging the cheepy- chappie Electro-Pop-Rock sound that fits right in with the weekend vibe of their seaside hometown. The idea for Snayx was initially bubbling away in conversation between friends Charlie Herridge and Ollie Corner, when the opportunity arose for them to support local south-coast punks Kid Kapichi and the two decided they’d better get some songs together.
Considering many people’s initial exposure to German act Electric Callboy was down to the unforgettably bonkers video to 2020’s breakthrough hit ‘Hypa Hypa’, it might come as a surprise to some that the electronicore/metalcore act from Castrop-Rauxel has been around for twelve years and that latest album TEKKNO (Century Media) is actually their sixth full length studio release.
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?
DJ Matt Stocks is the opening act for the upcoming Fireball sponsored Fuelling The Fire Tour with Less Than Jake, Goldfinger, and Save Ferris next month. In addition, opening support in each city will come from the contest winners of Fireball’s Hottest Band Competition for each city the tour hits. DJ Matt shares his Favorite Concert Memory ever with Ghost Cult, his time well spent at Leeds 2002! Continue reading
Time for one of the highlights of my year, the rather excellent SOS festival. A festival envisioned 12 years ago by Lynne Hampson of Rocksector Records as an antidote to the plethora of family un-friendly festivals around at the time. Continue reading
The rain. It’s been a thing this festival season, hasn’t it? But even with that said, Chicago Open Air Presents, which hasn’t seen a line up since 2017, pushed on through for their long awaiting festival fans who came to rock – rain or shine! And I’ll tell you: even with the rain, loyal fans pushed through those gates once those doors opened and ran towards that one main stage at the Seat Geek Stadium like it was the most anticipated event of their year. It was sad to see early bands like Vein and Code Orange get canceled by rain and the later start, but the safety of the fans has to come first. It was awesome to see the stage relive its previous year’s glory with the sound of pure rock that could only come from some of the heaviest hitting metal/rock bands around. And the music did fly high above those storm clouds when Beartooth hit the stage that first day. Well-known Swedish bands like Meshuggah and a very artistic and melodic metal performance by Ghost was next, followed by long-awaited headliners System of A Down. SOAD had everyone, myself included, singing along to classics like ‘Aerials’, ‘B.Y.O.B’ amongst their thirty song setlist, and I’m pretty sure that by when they closed out with ‘Toxicity’ we were all out of breath and losing our vocal cords. Eh, it was worth it.
Papa Roach performed at Sonic Temple Festival last night, as the replacement for The Prodigy. The band canceled their US tour after the death of frontman Keith Flint. Papa Roach frontman Jacoby Shaddix sent the song ‘Firestarter’ out to Flint’s memory. Watch it now!Continue reading