Consistently staying on the grind in both their home country of Australia and on tour in the UK and Europe, Melbourne based four-piece Press Club have been making waves since their debut album Late Teens back in 2019. Now the quartet, led by frontwoman Natalie Foster, hone their sound with both breezy pop sensibilities and ripping punk energy on their latest album To All The Ones That I Love.
From the first notes of the album Press Club show a clear understanding of which strings they have to pull to create an instant emotional bond with the listener. The one-two punch of opening tracks ‘I Am Everything’ and ‘Wilt’ sets the album up as a memorable and emotionally resonant experience with the former’s gentle acoustic guitar led instrumental and swirling vocals with authentic and gripping lyrics documenting the pain that goes into the band’s songwriting which is immediately pushed aside by the equally passionate yet far more upbeat ‘Wilt’ and its earworm lead guitar line. Press Club’s ability to write a powerful and moving track in multiple contexts is quickly apparent with their candid lyrics coming across equally well in a gentle acoustic track as in a stomping punk banger.
Thornhill have been cementing themselves as a band in the wider alternative scene for the best part of a decade. EPs 13, Butterfly and their debut album The Dark Pool proved themselves to be forced to be reckoned with, with their superhero levels of power behind their riffs and their introspective storytelling marking chapters in a promising career in metalcore.
However no two chapters should be the same, but an expansion on a style and a continuation of a theme. In 2025 Thornhill’s brand new album BODIES perhaps commences their biggest and boldest chapter in their story so far. Whilst predecessor HEROINE was defined by its tightly woven concept set in the glitz and the glamour of Hollywood, BODIES is an album that thrives on youthful spontaneity, sensuality and pure and unfiltered sexy vibes dialled up to the max that HEROINE only dared to flaunt ever so slightly.
The chunky, opening ‘Diesel’ opens up the club’s dance floor meets mosh pit vibes that ultimately this album achieves to the most stylish of standards. Its crushingly distinctive guitar tones make for one of the most memorable riffs on BODIES, alongside that of follow up ‘Revolver’ and ‘CRUSH’, tracks that at least get you hot and bothered under the collar due to their inherently sultry nature.
Back in April of 2021 when French atmospheric ensemble Bruit ≤ released their first full-length record, The Machine is Burning and Now Everyone Knows It Could Happen Again as the follow-up to their elegant two-track EP Monolith, the world remained in the grip of an epoch-defining health crisis. While self-serving free market champions fell over themselves to maximise profit margins amid the panic and uncertainty, Bruit ≤ raised more than a few eyebrows when they steadfastly refused to make their music available on any of the major streaming platforms. Citing the exploitation of art and the systematic devaluing of creativity, the band have no intention of backing down from their stance. Despite, or perhaps as a result of, their refusal to conform, Bruit ≤ have built a passionate and fully-engaged following and they’ve done so on their own terms.
Composed of two classically-trained musicians and two autodidacts, Bruit ≤ draw inspiration from a broad church of artists. Although they’ve certainly found favour among the post-rock crowd, their sound defies easy pigeonholing. The blending of studied musicality and self-taught experimentation is the backbone of this new release, The Age of Ephemerality. It’s an urgent treatise that wrestles with what it is to be alive in an ocean of digitised information. The album spans five tracks that function as movements with each one contorting and evolving, disintegrating and rebuilding.
The swell and pummel of album opener ‘Ephemeral’ gives way to a delicate acoustic interlude leading directly to towering lead single ‘Data’. With the disembodied voice of notionally-human technocrat Mark Zuckerberg punctuating swirling percussion and soaring strings, the track climbs skywards like vines reclaiming an abandoned data centre. This rousing sense of reclamation is underscored by the electronic motif that springs up towards the end of the track, bringing the digital and the analog into a beautiful unison.
Keeping the thrash flame alive is a duty we should all be upholding. While dragging it kicking and screaming into the modern age is essential to keeping it alive and relevant, we can’t forget the gritty, unrelenting power that built its foundation. Cue crossover giants Inhuman Nature, sending us hurling back us back to genre’s haydays, but with a renewed sense of urgency and attitude that hits like a sledgehammer.
Following a solid run of releases that have firmly stapled them into the scene, latest cut Greater than Death is another firm nailing of crossover thrash. The record drags the grit and fury of ‘80s trash into the modern day, keeping the old-school elements alive but slamming it with a fresh, snarling edge. Jammed full of filthy riffs, infectious grooves and face-melting solos, this latest cut is pulverising from start to finish. The drums are relentlessly intense, kicking the tempo into overdrive, while Chris Barling’s vocals are just as venomous and snarly as ever, tearing through the mix.
However, even the most dyed-in-the-wool fanatics of their early blend of chaotic hardcore would not have seen them becoming the heavy metal juggernaut they are today. Granted, they aren’t quite yet at the venue levels of the likes of your Triviums or Lamb of Gods, but if Fallen Star is anything to go by, it isn’t long.
It feels like that has been written about the Woking metallers for years. Firstly with their breakthrough hit, The Warmth of a Dying Sun, it felt like they were on the cusp of breaking through in record fashion. They did gain a lot of traction, but maybe not at the same pace as some of their American counterparts. Then again on 2021’s Conquering, their most critically lauded album to date took them to further heights, but it has taken them a further few years to maybe reach where they ought to be. Fallen Star however, a full-on love letter to heavy metal and everything it stands for, is surely when they break another glass ceiling.
From the ‘Angel of Death’ scream in ‘Treachery’ and its flashes of the New Wave of American Heavy metal riffing, or the best version of modern metalcore without all of the sickly tropes and trappings of the genre in the title track, Employed To Serve are wearing their hearts very firmly on their sleeves.
Sammy Urwin feels like he’s been saving all the best riffs for this release his whole life, whether it’s the thrashing drive of ‘The Renegades’, or the tremolo shrillness of ‘Familiar Pain’, Fallen Star sees the guitarist at his razor sharp best. Justine Jones turns in her finest vocal performance to date, sounding more focused, possessed, and powerful than ever which, for a vocalist of her calibre, is frightening that she has found another level entirely.
In the midst of modern metalcore and soulless attempts to recreate the sound of bands that nobody even liked in the first place, there are bands who’s influences extend to good bands, bands who’s sound touched the edge of extreme metal while still remaining in metallic hardcore. Bands like Nails, Cursed and Trap Them imprinted their nihilistic, blistering style of music onto so many and to see it rear it’s fearsome head in newer bands is truly heartwarming. Formed during that ever so uplifting and hopeful of years in 2020, Higher Walls came out of the gate with a sound that took the ferocious, often surprisingly technical blasts of the aforementioned bands and blended it with the style and swagger of more straightforward propositions like Madball and Terror.The bands early releases were promising, with neck-vein bulging vocal performances from Jordan Kaad and riffs that threatened to imprint their way onto your bones with a chisel. Judging from their newest effort, they’ve only got more intense on No End.
Kicking off with ‘History’s Eyes’, it’s all guns blazing from the off. Blending sheer chaos with a lumbering, almost evil undercurrent, it’s a wild introduction to things but you get almost all of the bands elements in one blast. Violent, emotive and the on edge intensity of spilling someone’s pint in a flatroof pub all rolled into one auditory experience. The riff of ‘Cloak and Dagger’ has more than a touch of Gojira about it, with a groove and stomp that is incredibly satisfying, before the eyeball melting blastbeats and addictive two stepping of ‘Thorns’ comes into play.
