ALBUM REVIEWSHARD ROCKHEAVY METALREVIEWS

There are three certainties in life – death, taxes, and LUCIFER naming their albums after themselves, merely increasing the Roman numeral at the end by one. Hailing from Germany, based in Stockholm and led by the perennially charismatic Johanna Sadonis, the occult rockers have flown quite a bit under the radar in the decade they’ve been around, but they’ve built a strong following in that time regardless and this new, fifth record – out on Friday January 26th and, as alluded to earlier, titled Lucifer V – is their first on Nuclear Blast, having amicably left Century Media not long before.



For all that LUCIFER have continued to stay relatively underground despite their outputs and fanbase, it’s becoming harder and harder to stay there because they’ve improved with every studio album that has passed. Lucifer V is no exception – without doubt their best album to date, it’s a wonderful blend of throwback guitars, melancholic overtones and fresh delivery. Although not a full concept release, the theme of death is one that prevails a lot throughout the nine songs on show, but before the first of those comes into play Fallen Angel opens with a dirty blues guitar triplet that helps drive the opening track forward, Sadonis‘ enticing yet foreboding vocals shimmering over the top. At The Mortuary is a SABBATH-inspired, classic hard rock track with an ominous church bell at the beginning and a middle-eight that sees the tempo drop but the tone remain constant, and Riding Reaper is a doff of the hat to BLUE ÖYSTER CULT, another gorgeous twin lead with a hint of organ behind it to add an extra level to the song and a truly excellent solo to boot.


What follows is, arguably, the best song LUCIFER have ever penned; Slow Dance In A Crypt is a beautiful ode to the morbid, laced with romance and wonderfully paced, conjuring images of a danse macabre overflowing with genuine love. Don’t think for one moment that the rest of the album takes a nosedive, however; the likes of Maculate Heart (fully penned by the band’s multi-instrumentalist and live drummer Nicke Andersson) continue the trajectory with its acoustic, EAGLES-esque opening evolving into a groove-laden foot stomper and Strange Sister commencing with the unmistakable rattle of a vibraslap before it morphs into an arena-ready rock anthem, just begging to get bodies moving.

If there’s even a morsel of justice left in this world, LUCIFER will be a breakout band in 2024 – their sound and imagery will excite fans of GHOST just as much as the classic acts mentioned, a truly excellent showcase of making the old sound fresh and dynamic. All of their albums have been strong bodies of work, but Lucifer V has nailed it better than the rest.

Rating: 8/10



Lucifer V is set for release on January 26th via Nuclear Blast Records.

ALTERNATIVELIVE REVIEWSPHOTO GALLERIESPOP-PUNKPOP-ROCKPUNKREVIEWS

With the release of 2023’s No Joy not long behind them, it is due time for SPANISH LOVE SONGS to grace UK soil once more. This time, they come with a new attitude. No Joy has swayed from the band’s previous discography frequently drawing comparisons to JAWBREAKER and THE MENZINGERS with their self-deprecating flare, now onto a more nuanced, intricate approach with a sprinkling of more optimism. Tonight, they open the tour in Southampton, bringing along SUDS and HEART ATTACK MAN.

SUDS live @ Engine Rooms, Southampton. Photo Credit: Dev Place Photos

SUDS join the bill with a welcomed blend of indie-emo-folk. On paper, that may sound like a warped cacophony. But in practice, it’s a gracious mix with a soothing presence. The band steadily pedal through their set, with a backdrop of warm lights and a touch of fog. Even from the back of the room, the quartet have an ability to make the audience feel seen, oozing intimacy in their subtlety. Tracks from their most recent release, The Great Overgrowth, engage with bouncy drums and twiddly guitars, while vocalist Maisie Cater cuts through with her delicate vocals capable of any lullaby.

Rating: 7/10Heart Attack Man live @ Engine Rooms, Southampton. Photo Credit: Dev Place Photos

HEART ATTACK MAN waltz onto stage with all guns blazing, wasting no time in picking up the room’s energy. Their sound hails back to infectious 00s trailblazers like SUM 41, but with a new approach to crowd-pleaser hooks. Eric Egan catapults himself into the air on numerous occasions before flinging straight into one of his angsty ear-worm deliveries. The band reference their soft spot for the UK in between tracks saying how “lucky” they are to tour here regularly. While the band are from Ohio, they are right at home on British soil; with a sound that ignites any audience, lending itself well to the chaotic crowd participation the UK is often notorious for.

Rating: 8/10Spanish Love Songs live @ Engine Rooms, Southampton. Photo Credit: Dev Place Photos

SPANISH LOVE SONGS need no bells or whistles to command tonight’s crowd. Since 2013, they’ve gained a following of dedicated fans, sure to passionately sing back just as loudly as the band to any of the choruses in their discography. They open the set with I’m Gonna Miss Everything under a cloud of blue wash lights; the band are barely visible but the devastating lyrics of the opening verse pierce through until the they appear just in time for the pre-chorus. From the first note, it’s clear that this is a cathartic band for most of the 600 people in the Engine Rooms tonight.

The instruments that create the canvas for these shaking vocal deliveries run in parallel in their gut-wrenching sensibilities. The band is tight, with not a note out of place. It’s obvious that all SPANISH LOVE SONGS do comes from a sincere place of care, transparency and feeling. A standout moment from the set is Kick from 2020’s Brave Faces Everyone. The song dances between melodic guitar drills and guttural pauses before launching right back into the signature SPANISH LOVE SONGS hook of “the world’s gonna kick you either way”.

During older material such as Routine Pain and Losers 2, the crowd swells as several dozens of hands raise in the air, dictating the painful words right back at Dylan Slocum. There’s a shared experience between the band and the audience, each exchange of wailing shouts is matched in energy and passion; proving that SPANISH LOVE SONGS make this ilk of emotional music still very much alive and relevant.

Rating: 8/10

Check out our photo gallery of the night’s action in Southampton from Dev Place Photos here:

WARBRINGER TO REISSUE THREE ALBUMS ON VINYL

M-Theory Audio in cooperation with thrash metal force Warbringer and Century Media Records is pleased to announce the upcoming vinyl reissues of three of the band’s iconic albums on March 8, 2024.

Limited to 500 copies each these three albums follow a similar format Century Media presented in 2018 when they reissued the debut War Without End with each title being presented in a gatefold jacket format with colored vinyl including all bonus tracks from each cycle and a poster, but we’ve gone one step further and included extensive liner notes from Warbringer vocalist John Kevill on an insert with added pics.

JOE SATRIANI - "I ALWAYS THINK THE NEXT PIECE OF MUSIC IS GOING TO BE THE MOST IMPORTANT ONE" (VIDEO)

Guitar legend Joe Satriani is featured ina new interview with Ultimate Guitar. Following is an excerpt from the Q&A.

UG: What song are you most proud of creating?

Satriani: "I always think the next piece of music is going to be the most important one. I like all of them. I feel sorry for all of them that I couldn't make them better, couldn't express the reasons of why I wrote them better. That's a difficult one to answer."

ALBUM NEWSHARD ROCKMUSIC VIDEONEW SONGNEWSPUNK

ALBUM NEWSHARD ROCKMUSIC VIDEONEW SONGNEWSPUNK



C.O.F.F.I.N have announced a new album!



Titled Australia Stop, the fifth studio album from the Sydney rock ‘n’ roll band follows their 2020 effort Children In Finland Fighting In Norway and is scheduled to be released in September this year via Bad Vibrations. The album was recorded in January 2023 at The Pet Food Factory studio with producer Jason Whalley (FRENZAL RHOMB) behind the desk.

Alongside the announcement of the album, the band have released a music video for its latest single Give Me A Bite, which follows previous single Cut You Off.

Speaking about the track, vocalist and drummer Ben Portnoy comments, “Throughout a chunk of the Covid lockdowns I was still working full time on construction sites and in the art department of film sets. For weeks my Friday routine was to come home and blast this bootlegged STOOGES LP from France. It was recommended and sold to me by Ray Ahn of the HARD-ONS who works at Utopia Records. It’s made up of piecemeal demos and blown-out jams by the band, all of which are bursting with amplified energy. I was really missing jamming with my friends and showing up to our sweaty storage unit/jam space in Brookvale with new inspiration from the week’s listening. Trying to resolve this, I got on the video chat with Aaron one Friday night and we did our best to nut something out that had a sense of that sound we love so much. What’s it saying? Well, you can only get for so long without giving …without giving me a bite.”

Watch the official video for Give Me A Bite here:


Also, you can view the track list and artwork for the upcoming album below.

Track List:Give Me A Bite
Cut You Off
City Sun
Keep It Dark
Lover’s Leash
Beasts
Australia Stops
Factory Man
Night Breaker
Through The Sewer
Faceless



Australia Stops is set for release on September 15th via Bad Vibrations. Pre-orders are available now and can be purchased here.

For more information on C.O.F.F.I.N like their official page on Facebook.

BAND FEATURESFEATURESHARD ROCK

Glam metal doesn’t have the best reputation. Sure, the likes of MÖTLEY CRÜE, TWISTED SISTER and POISON have legions of devoted fans, but they’re the exceptions rather than the rule. Other popular trends from that era like thrash and Goth have all had resurgences over the years but glam is a more niche market. STEEL PANTHER are the only act to have made a significant career out of it post-1991 and they had the get-out-of-jail-free-card of being a parody. Their rampant misogyny was a front, and it always felt like they had one foot out of the door. But newcomers COBRA SPELL aren’t joking.



At first glance, they certainly resemble a female equivalent of STEEL PANTHER; they clearly love glam metal and have firmly embraced the aesthetic. They look like they drink Jack Daniels more than water and live to hoover cocaine off the sweaty bodies of groupies whose names they’ll never remember. But there’s more to these ladies than a gender-flipped equivalent of Michael Starr and friends; COBRA SPELL are not a knowing satire, they mean it! 666 isn’t a knowing wink and nudge, it’s a legitimate glam metal record.

So, it’s a bit of a surprise when singer Kristina Vega joins us for a Zoom call and turns out to be far more down-to-earth than her stage presence would suggest. We were half expecting a sex-obsessed devil-worshipper drinking from a chalice of blood and vodka, but instead she’s laidback, humble and never stops smiling. She comes across as a musician who really loves heavy metal and alongside the rest of the band, she’s on a mission to return glam to the spotlight.

“In the record you’ll find a lot of different styles. Something heavy, something groovy, you’ll find ballads, romantic songs, happy tracks about love,” she explains. “We have a song called You’re A Cheater which is really happy. You know when you listen to QUEEN songs and you can feel a certain darkness but the songs are super happy? That’s the vibe we wanted with 666. With some songs we go heavier, but we wanted to catch different aspects from the eighties and try to connect everything.”

Kristina’s enthusiasm is infectious and you can hear it in the album. 666 is a big, upbeat shot of retro fun and every single track could have been on the soundtrack to your favourite eighties movie. COBRA SPELL evoke a very particular vibe, that being ‘riding down a California highway in a Mustang while Tom Cruise flies past in a fighter jet.’ And if you want a good example of this, go on YouTube and check out the video for S.E.X.. It’s got over 170,000 views so far and the feedback has been largely positive.


“In the beginning, we were trying to connect what does sex mean for everyone in the band,” she explains. “For me, I had in my mind, this image of a girl surrounded by guys, but we switched it. I was centred but I wanted to be surrounded by girls. The band is formed by all girls and I feel empowered when I’m surrounded by girls. I think female power is really strong when women are together and I was super focused on that. This is what pleasure means to me, not sex as in actual sex, just the image of ‘yeah, this is cool’.”

The mere fact COBRA SPELL consists of five women and Kristina used the word ‘empowered’ is likely to have certain corners of the internet turning purple with rage. However, while they might be an all-female band, that wasn’t the original goal. Formed by up and coming guitar demon Sonia Anubis (formerly of CRYPTA and BURNING WITCHES), the first version of the band was an inter-gender affair, but things changed in 2022. Singer Alexx Panza and drummer Léonard Cakolli both decided to leave and commit to their other projects, and with the three remaining members all being women, Anubis pursued the idea of an all-female band.

Soon, the current line-up came together and it’s a genuinely international group. COBRA SPELL has members from Venezuela, Spain, The Netherlands and Brazil and while this has no doubt caused a logistical issue or two, they’re already making waves. Signing to Napalm Records has opened a lot of doors and they’ll be taking 666 on the road throughout 2024.

But while they might sing about devil worship, it’s more because it’s cool than out of any genuine desire to worship at the feet of Lucifer. Kristina was raised in a Catholic household and for her, performing this kind of music was inevitable. “It’s about being treated like the black sheep. The idea of rebellion if you’re in a Catholic family and you don’t fit, you want to escape from that. Sometimes we have to put up with certain things from our family that we don’t like. ‘Oh, you’re dressed all in black, this is weird, what are you listening to…’ that makes you want it more! It makes you want to put on spikes and leather and big boots and listen to loads of black metal.”

In other words, no it’s not genuine Satanism but everything else about COBRA SPELL is the real deal. 666 exists because they adore this genre and because being provocative is fun. That’s how they’ve wound up with a song called Satan Is A Woman, which is in the rare position of annoying Christian fundamentalists and Incels alike. But Christianity has painted women as the villains ever since Eve took a bite out of an apple, so why not go all the way?

“I was asked ‘do you think that Satan really is a woman?’ I said of course. Satan is a woman, Santa is a woman. And so is the tooth fairy. Why not? Let’s give the creativity free reign.”

666 is out now via Napalm Records.

Like COBRA SPELL on Facebook.

OLDLANDS: Vote AGORA em “Oldmaster” para os “Melhores de 2023” da Roadie Crew

OLDLANDS: Vote AGORA em “Oldmaster” para os “Melhores de 2023” da Roadie Crew – CLIQUE AQUI


O atual trabalho do OLDLANDS, intitulado “Oldmaster”, trouxe mais uma importante conquista para o ‘one-man-band’ paranaense neste ano de 2024. O álbum ingressou na tradicional lista dos “Melhores de 2023 segundo os leitores” da revista Roadie Crew, que colocou a banda para concorrer em votação popular em 2 diferentes categorias, são elas:Melhor álbum Nacional: “Oldmaster”
Melhor vocalista nacional: Vox Morbidus

NECROUNDERGROUND NO TOPO! Vote agora e coloque o OLDLANDS em sua merecida posição nos melhores de 2023. Para isso basta acessar o link a seguir colocar seu nome e e-mail e dar início a votação, mas não se esqueça, antes dos nacionais é necessário escolher os nomes internacionais e também terminar 100% para validá-la: https://roadiecrew.com/quiz/melhores-de-2023/

“Oldmaster” foi lançado oficialmente em março de 2023 pelo renomado selo underground brasileiro Diabo Records, com 8 músicas inéditas, o trabalho pode ser adquirido por apenas R$ 22,00 (+ frete) CLICANDO AQUI: https://diaborecords.loja2.com.br/10129889-Oldlands-Oldmaster

Confira abaixo tracklist completo:
01 – Death Valey Gate
02 – Lost Life
03 – Everlasting Be Last Day
04 – Save My Words
05 – Master Goat
06 – Ancient Black Metal
07 – Walking Alone
08 – Wastedland

Encontre, salve e ouça “Oldmaster” em TODAS as principais plataformas de streamig e download do mundo AQUI: https://li.sten.to/Oldmaster

Em paralelo, o OLDLANDS segue promovendo seu recém-lançado “Live Studio Permormance”, que conta com 8 faixas ao vivo, sendo 4 delas do álbum supracitado. Assista AGORA:


ATENÇÃO PRODUTORES: O OLDLANDS confirmou que está com sua agenda de shows aberta para 2024. Produtores interessados em levar um dos principais ‘one-man-bands’ do Black Metal nacional para seus eventos, escrevam para voxmorbidus@hotmail.com ou diretamente no WhatsApp/Telegram pelo número (46) 98838-7204 — Sangue Frio Produções — e solicitem mais informações.

ASSESSORIA DE IMPRENSA: SANGUE FRIO PRODUÇÕES
Contato: www.sanguefrioproducoes.com/contato

Sites relacionados:
https://www.facebook.com/oldlandshorde
https://www.instagram.com/oldlandshorde/
https://li.sten.to/OLDLANDS