This is just boggling. The Japanese rock trio Boris have been together in the same lineup for over a quarter of a century – and it’s longer still since their original formation – but they’re outdoing themselves record by record. Their last record, NO, was the most energetic record they’ve ever made.
It has never been an exact science understanding when something will capture lightning in a bottle and go viral. Even less expected is for an anonymous metal band to become a social media sensation, but in early 2023 that's exactly what happened for Sleep Token.
In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken place in his Michigan home city of Detroit that July. “Oh, the motor city's burnin',” sang Hooker. “My home town burnin' down to the ground, Worser than Vietnam, Well, it started on 12th and Clairmont, this mornin'.”
Langenu are a black metal band. On stage at Estonia’s Tallinn Music Week, they are fearsome. Blood-vessel-burstingly intense. Tempering their force with twists into progressive, psychedelic-adjacent territory, they are a band any rock fan would dig.
Pigsx7 have hardly got a reputation for penning tender and soulful ballads, but Death Hilarious is a particularly aggressive and punishing album even by their standards. Taking cues from Black Sabbath’s heft, Motorhead’s “bend not stab” sound and soul shaking noise rock, their new album is the aural equivalent of being mugged by a gang of feral kids and being left feeling particularly battered by the experience.
The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.
Within the loud realm of metal, it often exists happily unbothered by the mainstream. And although a metal band going mainstream isn't always well received in the subculture, it is still exciting when a band feels on the cusp of shattering through to something bigger. Spiritbox, the Canadian metalcore band hailing from Victoria, British Columbia, are one of those bands who feel inevitable and that momentum is behind them.
Brighton metallers Architects have weathered various tribulations in their almost 20-year career. Formed by twins Dan and Tom Searle, after various line-up changes and a devasting, personal loss, the band now consist of long-time vocalist Sam Carter, Dan on drums, rounded out by Ali Dean on bass and Adam Christianson on guitar.
The utopian messiness of 1990s dance music culture is now so far back in time that what remains, for those under 40, is an idea, a meta myth. It is one that ALT BLK ERA embrace. Where the Nineties was a smorgasbord of futurism, vanguard electronic exploration and hedonic madness, the excellently titled debut album Rave Immortal reimagines it through the prism of catchy TikTok snippets and rampant rock punch.