From Norwegian hardcore royalty to one of the few flying the flag for the Alabama underground, via returning Dublin favourites and yet another essential demo from the relentless Shrewsbury scene, Noel Gardner returns once more with his guide to new punk rock

Draümar, photo by Sigrun Sæbø Åland

Hold tight for some hot new pop and metal sounds, shoehorned into this punk and hardcore column on a subcultural technicality, and because this is my little genre-slippage fiefdom. But first, some textbook Straight Hedge bangbangbang fodder: every general interest music website needs a review of Draümar by Draümar, Oslo hardcore royalty. Static Shock have foisted this LP on us, not too long after doing likewise with the debut 7” by member-related band Assistert…

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Okkyung Lee + Explore Ensemble

Signals

Commissioned by London’s Explore Ensemble, South Korean cellist, improviser, composer Okkyung Lee pulls out all the stops, building impossible architectures out of piano stabs, whistling woodwinds and electronic augmentations

Signals by okkyung lee

If you’ve recently listened to Okkyung Lee’s just like any other day (어느날), take a minute to collect yourself and reset expectations before diving into the South Korean cellist’s new record. While Lee’s 2025 collection of charming and bright-eyed, keyboard-focused ambient miniatures wouldn’t feel out of place in pastoral passages of a JRPG soundtrack, Signals, a commission by London’s Explore Ensemble, is stark, grave, and sharply abstract from first note to last.

The first sounds we hear, in fact, on the opener ‘Siwan’ (named for pianist…

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John Grindrod discovered his sexuality in the streets of Croydon, always looking up the tracks to London, and argues that no other artist articulate this tension between city, suburbia and LGBT+ lives quite so beautifully as did Messrs Tennant and Lowe. This BST comes with a Pet Shop Boys Suburbs vs City playlist exclusive to our Subscriber Plus supporters.

Pet Shop Boys’ Suburbia video, credit Eric Watson

I’m sat on the floor behind my dad’s armchair, chunky headphones on, listening to a new 12” my brother has bought. Our music centre lives in a compartment on an MFI divider unit, beside my parents’ collection of records, cassettes and videotapes. It’s December 1985, and while outside is the low-energy sprawl of a Croydon…

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New Age Doom featuring H.R.

Angels Against Angels

With Bad Brains frontman H.R. in tow, serial collaborators New Age Doom fuse metal, hardcore, punk and reggae into new forms of spiritual music

Angels Against Angels by New Age Doom featuring H.R.

For a band that has always cultivated a unique and idiosyncratic sound, New Age Doom appears to have fully mastered their craft on Angels Against Angels. The album demonstrates a confident command of arrangement and atmosphere, tactically marshalling diverse musical elements while seamlessly integrating multiple genres. At the same time, it advances a spiritual message rooted in equality, love and truth. 

Sparkling with elements of jazz, experimental, electronic, progressive rock and dub, the record is elevated further by the unmistakable vocals and lyricism of H.R….

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From working with Brian Eno to playing with The Contortions and The Bloods, Adele Bertei had a front-row seat to New York’s infamous No Wave scene. She talks to Elizabeth Wiet about noise, melody, and why the fertile ecosystem of Downtown NYC couldn’t come about today

Adele at CBGBs. Photo: Julia Gorton

As a critic, I’ve never had a particular knack for analogy. But if tasked with describing the sound of No Wave, I might liken it to a strung-out saxophonist falling down the steel steps of the Delancey-Essex subway station. Its affect I might liken to a panic attack. Whereas punk was propelled by anger, No Wave found fuel in that interstice where anxiety explodes into doom.

Often derided as noise or…

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The recordings were all later reworked for the band’s 1993 album In On The Killtaker

Fugazi have shared a collection of previously unreleased recordings that they produced alongside Steve Albini in late 1992.

Albini Sessions (Benefit For Letters Charity) collects 12 tracks that the band later re-recorded to appear on their 1993 album In On The Killtaker. The songs, engineered and mixed by Steve at Electrical, are exclusively available as downloads on Bandcamp, and can be listened to below.

Fugazi have released the recordings in aid of Letters Charity, a not-for-profit organisation that aims to support families experiencing poverty, which Albini and his wife, Heather Whinna, supported before the former’s passing in 2024. Purchase the release here.

A press release expands on how the…

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THE BLACK LIGHTS takes place in the seaside town this June

Manchester venue The White Hotel has added 30 acts to the lineup for the debut edition of its new Blackpool festival THE BLACK LIGHTS.

The weekend-long event will newly take in sets from Kali Malone, Klein, Valentina Magaletti, Russell Haswell, Lee Gamble, Jennifer Walton, Afrodeutsche and Iceboy Violet, among others.

They all join the previously announced likes of The Caretaker, Factory Floor, Moin, Joanna Robertson, Space Afrika, Blackhaine, Kode9, Evian Christ and Mica Levi on the bill for the festival.

THE BLACK LIGHTS will take place from June 26 to 28, 2026. Find more information here.
…

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Though it’s almost impossible to separate 90s Norwegian black metal from the controversies surrounding its progenitors, says Dan Franklin, a new box set offers an opportunity to reappraise Darkthrone’s superb body of work on its own terms

In his novel The Third Realm, Norwegian author Karl Ove Knausgaard writes about a fictional black metal band called Domen. The band never records and only rarely plays live – in secret, in the middle of nowhere. They create a “cacophony of the most incredible noise”. Domen song ‘And Long Was I Dead’ opens with the line “I was the cockerel that crowed in the ground”. Elsewhere in the book, another black metal band is murdered in a ritualistic killing. A new, baleful star…

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Shabaka

Of The Earth

The storied British-Barbadian multi-instrumentalist maps new musical territory on his first self-produced and -performed LP

Of The Earth by Shabaka

Sometimes, it can seem as though we’ve got this whole music thing the wrong way around. To be fair, none of us have much choice in this: we’re presented with tracks, albums and live performances, all the result of a combination of painstaking creative and technical processes, each brought to us in the wrappings and trappings of finished products, ready to be sold in the marketplace – so it’s understandable we will interpret them as the finished end point of those processes. In reality, these moments – records, digital files, gigs – are just snapshots of creativity in motion. We…

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The May festival will feature 30 hours of continuous programming

Berlin Atonal and Unsound are joining forces on a new festival, The Infinite Now, this May.

The event will take place at Berlin Atonal’s Kraftwerk Berlin home, and will feature 30 hours of continuous programming. The lineup is yet to be announced, but will cover more than 20 artists and be announced from 11 March onwards.

Organisers said The Infinite Now would provide “a sustained environment designed for sound, rest, movement and attention in equal measure,” and added thart “audiences are encouraged to sleep, eat, listen, withdraw and return.”

The Infinite Now will take the place of Berlin Atonal this year, while Unsound’s usual Kraków event is scheduled to go ahead in October.

The Infinite…

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