Hailing from Norway, this four-piece noise/hardcore/experimental outfit are set to bring a solidly intense performance to The Black Heart on Friday. This intimate venue is perfect for a band that feeds from the energy of their audience so much during performances. Raw and violent, Daufødt is for those who like their Desertfest with a side of punk.
Cambridge post-metallers The Grey have an impressive run in their nearly 10 years of activity, including playing our own festival a few weeks ago! No strangers to playing festivals and sharing the stage with big names, they step up and play with their hearts every time. Catch them on Sunday at The Underworld.
Emerging from the bogs of sunny Stevenage, Praetorian blends an intimidating sound with a sense of humour. With songs like ‘Burly Haemorrhoid’ and ‘Battery Acid Lobotomy’, it is clear what they are all about. Live performances are not for the faint of heart, with lead vocalist Tom often walking amongst the crowd, stripped to the waist and screaming at the audience, making every show cathartic. Take part in group therapy on Friday at The Black Heart.
It’s getting increasingly difficult to remain hopeful in times like this, isn’t it? Still, a desperate sense of optimism is the only thing we seem to have right now, and such is the theme of the new single from A-Tota-So. Bound by the band’s signature bendy riffs and propelled by a sense of hope that’s seemingly at odds with our increasingly hostile world, ‘Form of Mass’ darkly captures both the desperation and dark surrealism that is trying to remain grounded in a world that’s close to spinning off its proverbial axis. “Form of Mass is about how the world feels like it’s falling apart around us right now and we’re all constantly waiting for things to change for the better but they never do, so we’re stuck in a never ending cycle of anxiety and stress because we can’t really do anything to change the way things are”, says Marty Toner. “We tried to keep this song as upbeat as possible, even with its negative connotations. Maybe someday things will get better and we’ll look back on these dark days and just think WTF was that?” – Dan Hillier
Ask yourself if you’ve ever met someone who dislikes The Menzingers; we wager you haven’t. Zingers are one of the bands that are impossible not to at least like, and ‘Chance Encounters’ only affirms this band’s ceaselessly endearing nature. The latest track from Philadelphia’s finest and taken from their freshly announced new record Everything I Ever Saw – released 17th July via Epitaph – whilst this single may not see the band altering their long-established heartland punk rock sound, it does continue to showcase The Menzingers’ ability to channel emotion via a sound that’s earnest, rugged and effortlessly lovable. Much like every Menzingers song ever, this is going to be a massive sing-along live. – Dan Hillier
Honestly, this is one of those collaborations that should have happened way sooner. Not that we’re complaining though; this collaboration is lethal. Containing the kind of pulsating synth riffs we’ve come to expect from Tayne, the uncompromising fatalism of Pupil Slicer and bound by the grim industrialism synonymous with both bands, ‘W.N’ feels like an organic and fluid amalgamation of the best qualities of both bands. Both honkin’ and lacerating in equal measure. – Dan Hillier
‘Home At Night’ finds Devin Townsend at this serious contemplative best, rounded out by an orchestral accompaniment that Hans Zimmer would be proud of. This is a bit of a strange one, as it seems like a transition song so will probably make more sense in the album as a whole. It definitely has a vibe of not being a full song, more a bridge, despite the deep theatrical background music. Still Devin rarely misses, and this track is no different, delicate guitar overlays slip in and out of existence whilst those well known vocal chops carry the rest of the song. This is masterfully put together, and shows just why he might be one of the best composer/ songwriters on the planet at the moment. – Rob Bown
Montréal’s Big|Brave have compiled quite the discography in their nearly fifteen years as a band; covering everything from film scores to neo-folk to harsh noise across an impressive nine full-length albums. Their upcoming tenth, in grief or in hope, is preceded by their latest single, of the same name. Leaning more into the sort of harsh noise heard on 2021’s collaboration with The Body, ‘in grief or in hope’ weaves sparse lyricism amidst droning electronics and a wall of distorted guitar feedback. Minimalist in form yet maximalist in execution, Big|Brave perhaps encompass the grand scope of all they’ve created before, with one eye still on the future. Ever the artisans, it’s an alluring offering from one of Canada’s most sublime bands. – Niall Creane
Goth rock songstress A.A Williams is back with the latest serving from her forthcoming third album, Solstice. ‘Poison’ is a mesmeric tincture of doomy cinematic rock and it is oozing with moody atmosphere. Soporific pianos and glacial guitars provide the darkened backdrop for Williams‘ soaring vocals and the arrangement feels sharpened and honed to a deadly point. Fear is the overarching theme but it feels like Williams is ready to take on the future, free from its chains. Having garnered widespread acclaim for both her musical output and her spellbinding live shows and drawn the admiration of Robert Smith and Billy Corgan, 2026 looks set to be a blockbuster year for A.A. Williams. – Niall Creane
Last year’s Noizzefest headliners unpeople are back with their first single since 2024, but it’s safe to say that ‘clouds’ is another banger that’s perfect for uplifting summer evenings. The London quartet do a stellar job at blending their signature stomping riffs with effective multi-part harmonies and a surprisingly aggressive breakdown with beautifully executed blastbeats as a treat. With a summer jam-packed full of festival appearances including Slam Dunk, Download’s main stage, and Radar Festival (amongst others throughout Europe) the future is incredibly bright for unpeople, and watching them blossom has been a pleasure to see. – Ez Luscombe
New Genghis Tron is never a bad thing, the experimental cybergrind weirdos are back at it with ‘I Am All’ the first single of their upcoming album Signal Fire. This one starts out very much picking up from where Dream Weapon left off, until a couple of minutes in where they bring back that old sound from the earlier records, the abrasive, grinding, digitised onslaught of guitars backed up with winding electronica synths and some really dutty vocals courtesy of Tony Wolski of The Armed (yes they bought him back, because isn’t it just a match made in heaven?). Whilst the track definitely takes notes from Dream Weapon there is a harsher edge to it, with the last section going full old skool Genghis Tron. It makes for a really interesting introduction to the new record, here’s hoping they keep the harsh dirty vibes going, it’ll make a nice contrast to the dreamy monolith of their previous release. – Rob Bown
Happy-go-lucky Montreal band Truck Violence are back with the first cut from their sophomore album, The Weathervane Is My Body, having now signed to The Flenser, a move that makes a lot of sense given their sonic proximity to their new stablemates Chat Pile and Crippling Alcoholism. This first cut is a sludgy, harrowing howl of anti-fascist noise that calls to mind their fellow Canadians KEN mode at the start, before exploding into a flurry of blackened blasts and howling guitars, then folding back into a final raging, misanthropic wail. It’s every bit as bleak as its subject matter, and a great warning shot of what’s to come on 26th June. – Paul Stephenson
Hardcore icons and pillars of the modern LA scene Terror prove that unbridled anger, unity, and riffs that are brutal yet memorable in equal parts are still the way forward. Teaming up with 90s punk icons Hot Water Music on their latest single ‘Fear The Panic’ taken from Still Suffer, which is set to release 24th April via Flatspot Records, this track merges vital socio-political lyricism with rightful, uncompromising aggression, and a breakdown that would make even a casual listener refuse to stand still-definitely a worthy homage to hardcore’s dynamic past and experimental future.-Ez Luscombe
False Advertising have long held the blessing of a curse that is being known as a ‘best kept secret’. It remains to be seen if the ‘Next Big Thing’ will change the status quo, but either way, it’s a total rager. Taken from the band’s upcoming record The Sorry Window – released May 1st – ‘Next Big Thing’ see’s the Manchester group furthering their once grungy sound by infusing it with a sense of primordial punk rage that’s almost reminiscent of the likes of Lambrini Girls and Die Spitz. It’s a certainly a bit of a departure from the sound of their last full length, but if this and the singles that came before it are anything to go by, False Advertising may be on the road of becoming the name of this song with The Sorry Window. – Dan Hillier
Sounding somewhat like Ronker bench-pressing mclusky whilst Pissed Jeans spots approvingly, Man Band’s debut LP – suitably titled Strong Man – releases at a pivotal time during the culture-wide conversation regarding masculinity. As we all discuss the public dawn of the manosphere and how the stereotypical connotations of masculinity are both outdated and changing with our modern world, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to gauge just what masculinity entails in our current Western culture.
There’s no denying that toxic masculinity is rampant, but simultaneously, its non-toxic aspects are becoming flexible with the public understanding that gender binaries are outdated and unfit for purpose. It’s arguable that the notion of masculinity has been warped to become something no longer related to gender, but ideology. What Man Band provide with Strong Man are personal experiences with such masculinity.
With the band featuring Chainy Rabbit and Daniel Sargent of OHHMS as well as members Aaron Jaygo, Dan Bigwood, and Jim Davies, here, Man Band offer six songs that detail lived-in experiences of grappling with masculinity. There are moments of grief, shame, violence and humour. But perhaps the most encompassing aspects of Strong Man are feelings of self-awareness and vulnerability.
This is an unflinching, darkly sardonic record, one that’s delivered via a fluid sound that takes cues from everything from post-punk to doom in order to truly detail the mercurial and personal nature of the stories that bind it. If anything, it feels like a lyrical outpouring of emotion that the music itself adapts and flows with, ultimately becoming something as weighty, malleable and chaotic as the central topic that binds it. It doesn’t conclude that aforementioned conversation regarding masculinity, but instead offers a lived-in voice that adds to it.
With that in mind, and with Strong Man released tomorrow via Faith Healer Records, stream the record exclusively early and dig into the track-by-track below.
Chainy: ‘Dane Valley’ was the first song written for Man Band. Our first practice was myself, Daniel and Joe (original drummer, we’ve had a few now, 4 I think, we are good at losing them). We wrote a song at that practice that felt very emo, which I didn’t really want to be the direction of the band, So I recorded a demo of the kind of music I was thinking of looking back we should have talked about it before we started. Dan and Aaron had already written a lot of riffs that were later used throughout the album, but Dane Valley was specifically written for this project.
For legal reasons, I can’t go into the details of the lyrics in much depth, but in short, I had £50 stolen from me in Dane Valley, which, growing up, was considered a rough area of Margate. I later returned to the same park, hoping to find the guy and politely ask for it back, but he sadly wasn’t there. I have heard that he’s in prison, so I guess that’s karma in some kind of way.
I wrote Dane Valley with the intentions of our own introduction to the band as well as an opening track for an album. I wanted each member to come in at a different times to each other, slowly building to a heavy chorus. I’d always felt in our previous band, OHHMS, our full dynamics were loud, very loud and far too loud, so it was important for me to introduce quiet parts to this new project. Recording the music video was very embarrassing, in the middle of winter, topless in a very public area, screaming about how great I am was probably karma for starting a band called Man Band.
Daniel: I enjoyed watching you freeze. The rest of us were laughing at you.
Chainy: Probably my favourite song on the album, and goes down well at gigs. The song is the reality of fighting. People either fear it or get excited by it. You need arrogance to walk into a fight believing you’ll win, and even if you do win, you will get hurt as well. When I was a kid, I was scared of fighting and would lose fights, but my dad apparently hasn’t ever lost a fight, and both he and my grandad got into a lot of fights with people in Margate in the 80s. There is a sense of pride of even if I lose, my dad will still beat your dad which is what influenced the song, though the song goes deeper into my own modern confidence I’ve grown about fighting. My personal idea of fighting is focused more on self-defence, but still with the arrogance a bully would have while searching for a fight. An ex UFC fighter was threatened with getting jumped at a hotel, and his response was, “if you and your guys jumped me at my hotel, you’ll quickly find out you didn’t bring enough friends”, which I used for the end line of the song.
Daniel: Defo one of my fave songs to play live, has a savage chorus but with weird groovy bits slotted around it. I don’t know if Chainy knows, but I met his Dad in a corner shop in Margate and I only found out it was his Dad because a picture of Chainy fell out of his wallet, and I picked it up and gave it back to him. Our Dads did actually have a fight once, it was a draw.
Chainy: This song is about an embarrassing time in my life. I once started seeing a girl a few years back, who had lied to me about her current relationship status. I was led to believe her ex wouldn’t leave her alone, and they had broken up a few months before. I found out, far too late, that they were still together and he was trying to save their relationship. I found out by him phoning me up and threatened to stab me in the face. This went on for a few days and I spoke to the girl’s friends to find out more details about the situation I had gotten into.
Eventually, I agreed to meet up with this “nutter” for drinks and to talk it out. I assumed it was walking into a trap, but he showed up by himself, gave me a hug and got me a drink. We talked for a few hours, and the more I heard his side of the story, the worse I felt. At the end of the conversation, I promised to leave both of them alone. A few months later, the girl had lied about me getting back with her, which I never did, and he was threatening me down the phone again. I learnt through mutual friends, they were both as bad as each other. So even though “The Nutter” was originally a reference to him, it summed up both their behaviours, and I’m still ashamed that I was involved with either of them. The outro riff, which is as long as the song itself, came from the drummer not stopping playing it once at practice, and we all joked that we should keep it that length. It’s fun live because I have 3/4 minutes to climb on things as I don’t have a mic holding me back.
Daniel: Chainy, your whole life is like this story.
Vana‘s latest single ‘In Your Name’ leans into tension without rushing to resolve it, mirroring the track’s focus on toxic attachments and emotional conflicts. The track starts almost patiently, with clean vocals and restrained instrumentation carrying that uneasy push-and-pull. However, the second half opens into something heavier without fully letting go of that control. Structurally, it echoes the slow, atmospheric climbs of Sleep Token, while the production sits comfortably alongside the polished, modern metalcore feel of bands like Bad Omens and Bring Me the Horizon. What stands out most is the writing; it’s sharper, more focused, and more refined than we’ve seen in the past from Vana, a sure sign that she’s settling into her sound as opposed to still trying to find it. – Vee Richardson
Like perennial blooms, post-rock heavyweights MONO have returned. Following the devastating loss of close friend and longtime collaborator Steve Albini, ‘Winter Daphne’ is the lead single from their forthcoming studio album, Snowdrop. The band explain: “The language of flowers for the Winter Daphne is ‘the final surge of life’, ‘glory’ and ‘eternity’. Our hope is that this album serves as a source of light and hope for those who have lost someone dear.” Marching morosely along, a reverb-soaked wall of sound is accompanied by hammering drums and hefty guitars. Characteristically simple themes build to an early crescendo before lapsing into heartachingly beautiful guitars. Renowned for cultivating beautiful atmospheres and sprawling dynamics, ‘Winter Daphne’ breathes new life into a sound MONO have honed for over two decades. Like its namesake, ‘Winter Daphne’ arrives like a tonic, a reminder to take in the beauty, even in the darkest moments. – Niall Creane
The second single to be taken from American Football’s fourth LP, ‘No Feeling’ sees the midwest emo pioneers collaborating with Turnstile’s Brendan Yates to offer something truly wonderful. Bound by frosted synths, melodic riffs and a blanketing air of ethereal inevitability, whilst the core structure of ‘No Feeling’ is a wonderful exercise in tender bleakness, the crowning jewel of this song is the duet between Mike Kinsella and Yates. It’s genuinely surprising to hear Yates on a song as spacious as this, and should this and previous single ‘Bad Moon’ be anything to go by, LP4 could well be American Football’s best work in decades. – Dan Hillier
Having already toured in support of post-rock trailblazers Godspeed You! Black Emperor and released a critically acclaimed debut album back in 2022, One Leg One Eye, the moniker of Lankum’s Ian Lynch should need no introduction to those in the know. Managing to combine the aesthetics and sensibilities of black metal and drone with Irish folk traditions for an experience that’s just as immersive as it is abrasive, the project’s latest single ‘Many Are My Names Besides’ feels less like a swift kick to the chest and more like slowly being drowned in some strange ritual through the track’s seven minutes of bizarre chanting and steady drones. While his more well known work in Lankum could hardly be compared to The Spice Girls, One Leg One Eye takes Lynch’s harsh, experimental folk sound to darker, far less accessible places. – Rowan Bruce
Glaswegians Dead Pony are gearing up for the release of their brand new EP, Eat My Dust!, their first new music since the excellent Ignore This introduced them to the world. It’s preceded by two singles including latest release ‘Freak Like Me’, which vocalist Anna Shields describes as “a love letter to the outsiders in society – the ones who never quite fit the mould and stopped trying to. It’s about owning every bizarre, messy, sexy, beautiful part of who you are, and finding your people in that chaos.” Tying into their 2000s rock and nu metal influences, it updates that MTV-era sound for 2026, not just a fresh lick of paint, for a high-energy banger about celebrating who you are unashamedly. It’s also got a great music video that harkens back to that era too, and it’s sure to be a live favourite as soon as the band hit the road again this summer. – Will Marshall
Now, with this new single, it’s inevitable that many will be querying if Jamie Lenman will be coming back out of retirement; you can read the song title again for the answer to that question. But nevertheless, it’s nothing but a joy to hear new material. Released exclusively via Bandcamp, ‘Not Likely’ is full of a scrappy, snarky, and downright snotty swagger that’s completed with the attitude associated with his more confrontational work. It’s no nonsense, but in true Lenman fashion, full of character. “I never intended to retire from music itself, just the machine that surrounds it. I’m always writing and recording, and this new tune is one of my favorites from over the last couple of years,” states Lenman on the track. “Lyrically, it’s a very pessimistic piece, similar to my tune ‘The Future Is Dead.’ I don’t usually like to put negative vibes into the air like this, but sometimes that’s just how you feel, and that’s OK.” – Dan Hillier
The French psych rockers are back and they return doing what they do best, riffs, riffs and riffs with a heavy helping of psychedelics and wah. Once again we are taken on a journey through space, the expansive sound still clearly at the centre of their thoughts, but there is a tension, a pervasive darkness that sits below the surface of the whole track, it’ll be interesting to see how this fits into the album as a whole. The darkness comes more to the forefront as the track continues, like a ticking time bomb at the end of its fuse. Slift still maintains that Clutch-like big sound, the riffs don’t plod despite their slower tempo, and the vocals carry that American rasp that has become so associated with this sort of music. – Rob Bown
Wait, what? More Converge, two lots in one year, is this a turning point for the healing of humanity? You’d be remiss to think not as the metalcore gods come stomping back through with a raw blistering hardcore inspired track. They have such a well defined sound that just never seems to miss, the lead parts are like a well worn slipper that you absolutely can’t part with, that classic Kurt Ballou sound in fact this just goes to reinforce the idea that Converge can do no wrong, this song sounds like it could fit into any of their albums and still be perfectly at home. – Rob Bown
Don’t cry because it’s over, celebrate because ‘68 were a true joy. Going out the way they came in, ‘Always Love’ is nothing short of an adrenaline charged bundle of groove and noise that the Atlanta two-piece have become synonymous with in their short existence. That signature ‘68 grinding guitar tone that only Josh Scogin is capable of is at the front and centre of the track, while Nikko Yamada adds that extra swagger underneath. It’s a brash, beautiful swansong for a unique band that will be heavily missed once they wrap up all the loose ends. They were ‘68, and they ruled. – Kevin Ashburn
It would be oh so easily to say how this single is the shape of punk of come or something of the sort. But let’s face it, Shooting Daggers and the queer hardcore scene they belong to inherently are and ‘Glow’ fundamentally proves this. Taken from their upcoming record The Real Life Thing and featuring the legend that is Refused’s Dennis Lyxzén, this new single sees the gang tackling gender norms and highlighting how femininity and masculinity aren’t synonymous with dated and false perceptions of weakness and strength. The video, directly inspired by the Netflix show exploring the inner workings of an all-women’s wrestling company, highlights this message and enlivens this absolute piledriver of a track. – Dan Hillier
