More than half a century into its life, what exactly is heavy metal? Is it a kind of belief system? Is it something to be observed as a relic, or an exhibit in a museum? Or is it, to paraphrase Christopher Lee’s Due de Richeleau in The Devil Rides Out “A living force, which can strike at any moment of the night“? For Vancouver’s SPELL, that question has never been more vital.
The latest single, “Take My Life“, offers one of the most revealing entry points into their new chapter. Released on March 27th, 2026, the track stands as perhaps the starkest embodiment of the album’s central tension – where classic heavy metal confidence collides with profound existential weight. Driven by a swaggering, mid-paced pulse and steeped in the spirit of vintage ’80s metal, the song delivers a chorus built for raised fists and midnight exorcisms alike. Yet beneath its strut lies something far more disquieting. As vocalist and bassist Cam Mesmer explains, “‘Take My Life’ is about an intimate encounter with death, and the power dynamics at play. Where I’ve had to make a decisive move, and been fearful, but others have given me confidence.”
This is a track that captures SPELL at their most direct, dynamic and disarmingly honest. As both a standalone statement and a key moment within Wretched Heart, it signals a band not only at the height of their powers but actively redefining what those powers can be. Stream a music video for “Take My Life“, directed by James Barry and Sean Edwards for Ramble Films, at this location.
Vancouver based hypnotic heavy metal outfit Spell, will release its new LP, ‘Wretched Heart‘, on May 1 via Bad Omen Records. A shadow-drenched journey through desperation, passion and defiance, ‘Wretched Heart‘ sees Spell transform heavy metal into something urgent and human – gothic, cinematic and hypnotic. Not only Spell‘s strongest record to date but also a thunderous celebration of eccentricity which stalks its nocturnal realm with both savage finesse and beguiling charm. ‘Wretched Heart‘ is the follow-up to Spell‘s 2022 LP, ‘Tragic Magic‘, an album hailed as a celebration of “the mystique and darkness within hard rock and heavy metal“.
Available on CD, Single LP (spined LP with insert) in Solid Purple, Transparent Red & Blue Marbled, and Red & Black Smoke, and digitally.
‘Wretched Heart‘, in all its gory glory, embodies a very vital paradox – a record made by true believers who yearn for catharsis beyond. The oxymoron of anthems forged from steel, yet with a very human heart. Even the most cynical bystander will likely struggle not to be bewitched.
Track listing: 01.) Dark Inertia 02.) Lilac (stream VIDEO) 03.) Take My Life (stream VIDEO) 04.) Unquiet Graces 05.) Oubliette 06.) Iron Teeth 07.) Exquisite Corpse 08.) Savage Scourge 09.) In Duress 10.) Wretched Heart
Spell is Cam Mesmer (vocals, bass, rhythm guitar, synthesizers), Al Lester, (vocals, lead guitar, rhythm guitar, drums), Jeff Black (lead guitar, backing vocals), and Gabriel Tenebrae, (lead guitar, synthesizers). Follow Spell on Facebook and Instagram.
Finnish rockers THE 69 EYES are thrilled to announce their new EP ‘I Survive,’ set for release on June 5, 2026 via BLKIIBLK. To celebrate the announcement, the band shares a cover of the timeless Thin Lizzy hit “Cold Sweat.”
After touring Europe earlier this year with D-A-D on the Cowpunks & Glampires tour and continuing with shows in Finland, the new single is a fresh-sounding and hard-rocking take on the song, originally released in 1983.
THE 69 EYES version is produced by Erno Laitinen and mixed by Barry Pointer (Ozzy Osbourne, Mötley Crüe). The video for the song was filmed in January during the band’s recent European tour. It features a cameo by Portuguese goth legend Fernando Ribeiro from Moonspell.
Vocalist Jyrki 69 comments:
“A friend of mine sent me our demo of ‘Cold Sweat’ from over ten years ago and asked why we never released it. After hearing the demo, Gabi Hakanen, head of Vallila Music House, said this is exactly THE 69 EYES at their best. Rock for the radio! Every respectable rock band also covers Thin Lizzy at some point, so now that is done as well.”
The band will continue touring in Finland until early April, after which they will return to the rest of Europe. See the updated tour dates HERE.
Once you’ve survived the 80’s rock scene, you become unstoppable – and THE 69 EYES are living proof. Formed in Helsinki in 1989 and still going strong with the same line-up some four decades later, the Helsinki Vampires have earned their legendary status.
In a world with fewer and fewer true believers in leather jackets, midnight sunglasses, and low-slung guitars, THE 69 EYES keep the Johnny Thunders flame burning like an endless sleazy club night back in the days.
Their biggest hit, “Lost Boys” from 2005, was made into an iconic music video by MTV‘s Jackass star and skater Bam Margera and remains on annual Halloween rock playlists.
One foot on glam, another one on goth, THE 69 EYES have released thirteen albums, reaching gold and platinum and a mainstream status in their native Finland, where they are signed to Gabi Hakanen’s Vallila Music House. Their previous studio album, ‘Death Of Darkness,’ was released in 2023, and they have been touring without any notable breaks all over the world for the last twenty years.
Vocals, a lead and a rhythm guitar, a bass, and drums are the classic rock band line-up. THE 69 EYES have that magic on stage that is needed for these elements to carry on beyond the rock’n’roll dreams, theirs and their cult following.
FRONTIERS RECORDS shares “Songs The Night Sings,” a new single featuring Tezzi Persson (Hell In The Club, Venus 5), as part of the upcoming ‘XXX Anniversary Compilation,’ a special project celebrating 30 years of passion, creativity, and unforgettable music. The record is set for release on May 22, 2026, and will be only available on CD, on the label’s webstore.
The track was originally released in 2019 by the Finnish symphonic metal band the Dark Element.
Tezzi Persson comments:
“It’s an honor to be a part of this anniversary album and to get to do a version of this great song from The Dark Element. Happy anniversary FRONTIERS, cheers to many more years to come.”
“Songs The Night Sings” Line Up: Tezzi Persson – vocals Alessandro Mammola – guitar Andrea Arcangeli – bass Alessio Lucatti – keyboards Alfonso Mocerino – drums
Starting from an idea of Serafino Perugino, the ‘XXX Anniversary Compilation’ brings together some of the greatest melodies and voices from the world of melodic rock. This special release celebrates the label’s rich legacy by revisiting iconic tracks from the FRONTIERS catalogue, reimagined with dynamic new performances from an extraordinary lineup of guest vocalists.
Each track has been recorded exclusively for this anniversary project and showcases the powerful reinterpretation of beloved FRONTIERS classics through the voices of today’s standout rock artists.
Aldo Lonobile, Head of A&R Europe at FRONTIERS LABEL GROUP and producer of the record, comments:
“Producing the 30th anniversary record for FRONTIERS RECORDS has been both an honor and a responsibility. This label has built a legacy on passion and vision, and, with this album, we wanted to celebrate that history in a meaningful way. Having a mix of established and new generation of FRONTIERS artists reinterpret the iconic tracks that shaped our identity is more than a tribute – it’s a bridge between eras.”
“With a tracklist discussed together with the FRONTIERS President Serafino Perugino, this record is a celebration of where we come from, and a powerful statement of where we’re headed”, he continued.
Under the expert production of Lonobile – who also performs part of the guitars on the album – the performances are backed by a stellar lineup of musicians: Alessandro Mammola (guitar), Andrea Arcangeli (bass), Cristian Timpanaro (bass), the keyboards team – Alessio Lucatti & Antonio Agate, Alfonso Mocerino, and Fortunato Grillo on drums, delivering powerful new arrangements that bring renewed energy to these fan-favorite tracks.
‘XXX Anniversary Compilation’ isn’t just a compilation – it’s a tribute to 30 years of rock excellence, a heartfelt thank you to the artists, fans, and collaborators who have been part of the FRONTIERS RECORDS story.
Whether you’re a lifelong supporter or discovering these songs for the first time, this album delivers powerful performances, soaring melodies, and the unmistakable spirit of FRONTIERS.
Over the past decade, Unverkalt have drawn closer and closer to the edge. On their new album, the post-metal luminaries pull the veil from our cursed existence in search for an answer to one pervasive questions: What do we carry that was never ours? In response, Héréditairenow stands as their heaviest and most heartfelt offering.
“[…] there’s a good chance that Unverkalt could be one of this year’s breakout bands”,No Clean Singing says about Héréditaire.
Metal Injection agrees. “It’s a combo unlike anything I’ve heard before and I’m excited about it”.
As they prepare to bring Héréditaire to the stage, today, Unverkalt are releasing a live studio performance of the song that sparked their freshly blackened vision. “Oath Ov Prometheus” sets fire to the myth of man’s creation with the band’s command of smoky atmosphere and suffocating doom.
“‘Oath Ov Prometheus” is one of the songs on our new album that we really love to perform”, Unverkalt vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou says. “It was the first song we wrote for Héréditaire and our first with extreme vocals. We are very excited to bring it to the stage this year during our upcoming shows”.
The live studio performance of “Oath Ov Prometheus” was filmed and edited by Themis Ioannou at Noir Surge Studios. The audio for the performance was engineered and produced by Andrey Letchik.
Tracklist: 1. Die Auslöschung (6:06) [WATCH] 2. Oath Ov Prometheus (5:40) [WATCH] 3. Ænæ Lithi (5:34) 4. A Lullaby for the Descent (5:11) 5. Penumbrian Lament (6:02) 6. Introjects (5:25) [WATCH] 7. I, The Deceit (feat. Sakis Tolis) (5:47) [WATCH] 8. Death is Forever (4:50) 9. Maladie de l’Esprit (5:34) Full runtime: 50:11
UNVERKALT are drawn to the edge. Since emerging from the underground, the Germany by way of Greece post-metal band have balanced boundless atmosphere with suffocating heaviness. Their third album and first since signing with Season of Mist doesn’t continue in that direction so much as it plunges into the darkness that’s always been waiting below. Héréditaire lifts the veil from our cursed existence. What emerges is Unverkalt’s heaviest and most heartfelt offering.
“Our aim has always been to blend softer, more romantic elements with extreme chaos. With Héréditaire that time has now come”, says the band’s guitarist and chief composer Themis Ioannou. “This album is a lament for what is far older than our very existence. It speaks of what seeps through generations, searching for an answer to one pervasive question: What do we carry that was never ours?”
From the beginning, Unverkalt was born from an urge to give life to grief. In 2017, Ioannou started the band with vocalist Dimitra Kalavrezou in hopes of creating something that was slow-burning and visceral, crushing yet delicate. Their debut made good on that promise: “…so rivetingly beautiful that you will have to deepen to digest it”, Metal Hammer Greece wrote in awe of L’Origine du Monde. “Easily on the top-10 of 2020”.
The band’s second album followed three years later to further acclaim. While swooning between obsession and annihilation, A Lump of Death: A Chaos of Dead Lovers sharpened Unverkalt’s vision by pushing their avant-garde streak with more force. “Beyond being able to point roughly towards a couple of different genres, it is utterly impossible to compare them to any other artist out there making music in the same vein”, The Sleeping Shaman admired. Echoes and Dust agreed: “It stands in its own right as a beautiful slice of filmic post-rock, a soundtrack without a movie beyond the one playing in your head”.
Héréditaire is still possessed by cinematic visions. Like a camera coming into focus, lead single “Die Auslöschung” appears through a thickening haze before it’s snapped out of a trance by drummer Christian Eggers’ fiery blast beats. The album shifts between colors, textures, even languages. Stirred by a mournful saw of strings, “Ænae Lithi” raises memories of the Great Fire of Smyrna that were handed down by Themis’ grandmother. But where previous albums took cues from French painting and European film noir, this one throws back the velvet curtain in favor a veil. “Oath Ov Prometheus” dismantles the myth of man as god’s perfect creation with Kalavrezou’s freshly blackened vocals.
“We love to experiment with every album”, Ioannou says. “With Héréditaire, we wanted to introduce extreme vocals because they bring out all these heavy feelings. It’s like they’re shaking you awake”.
While Héréditaire is a pulse-pounding new direction for Unverkalt, the album’s arc traces back to our deepest and darkest origins. Amidst the tremolo-picked wreckage of “Penumbrian Lament”, long-held beliefs are swallowed into the void of guitarist Eli Mavrychev’s death growls. “It’s all sorts of dead ideas / They cling to us all the same”, Kalavrezou whispers, only to break into screams on “Introjects” beneath Joscha Hoyer’s throbbing bass line. “The concept behind the record is tied in with the album’s overall heaviness”, she says. “Each song peels back another blackened layer of memory, trauma and suffering, which linger over us like ghosts: invisible, yet endlessly present”.
Kalavrezou’s mystifying cleans remain one of Unverkalt’s defining traits. Even when trembling beneath the monolithic riff of “I, The Deceit”, her contempt for those who stand by as the world burns is heated when forged alongside her Athenian brother-in-arms Sakis Tolis from Rotting Christ. But as the album draws to a close, Héréditaire ends shadowed in doubt for the future. “Bathed in lies / Can we make it better” she wonders before disappearing into the shivering wake left by “Maladie de ‘Esprit”.
“This album is not meant to resolve”, the band says, “but to dissolve patterns from those who came before, faceless yet familiar. The colors have drained. What remains is veiled in black, not as a symbol, but as a truth that covers everything”.
On Héréditaire, Unverkalt lift the veil on our cursed existence with their heaviest and most heartfelt offering.
Guest Musicians: Sakis Tolis — Vocals on “I, The Deceit”
Songwriting Credits: Comped by Themis Ioannou. Lyrics by Dimitra Kalavrezou & Eli Mavrychev. Lyrics for “I, The Deceit” by Dimitra Kalavrezou & Joscha Hoyer.
Recording Credits: Recorded & Engineered by Unverkalt. Drums Recorded & Engineered by Christian Eggers at Noir Surge Sound, Berlin, Germany.
Production Credits: Produced by Themis Ioannou. Vocals produced by Dimitra Kalavrezou & Eli Mavrychev. Mixed by Joshua Barber. Mastered by Lasse Lammert at LSD Studios, Lübeck, Germany.
Today, GLU, the genre-blending solo project of Michael Shuman(Queens of the Stone Age, Mini Mansions), returns with an infectious, hook-laden new single, “Pony Boy.” This release marks the next instalment of a year of exciting activity, released on FLG(Skunk Anansie, Corella, As It Is).
The new track blends punchy riffs with infectious, synth-leaning melodies, striking a balance that has made GLU’s sound so synonymous. Beneath its melodic surface is a story of being thrust prematurely into the spotlight, as a once carefree life gives way to pressure, scrutiny, and a growing need for distance.
“I am a pretty private person”, Shuman explains. “This song discusses the ways in which that privacy has been attempted to be broken and infiltrated. Living in Los Angeles and growing up here has made it somewhat difficult to navigate them. Especially being in this business, people want to know everything about you. Where you went last night, what you had for breakfast, who you’re dating. I think it’s really important to keep some sort of anonymity. I’m not a big fan of putting myself out there on social media, yet I know that it’s part of the modern music business promotion. I’ve seen this with other people in my life, and it can quickly steal away a piece of your identity.”
GLU first emerged in early 2023 with debut EP ‘MY DEMONS,’ a raw and revealing release exploring struggle, loss, addiction, and childhood trauma. In 2025, GLU hit a new high point with the single“BOOGIE MAN,” an infectious, dance-forward track about losing yourself in the moment and letting go of self-consciousness. Drawing comparisons to Jamiroquai, Gorillaz, and Mac Miller, the song secured a major sync placement in MLB The Show ‘25 alongside Kendrick Lamar & De La Soul. The track pushed GLU past 3 million global streams.
That momentum has also translated directly to the stage, with tours and headline dates across the UK, Europe, and the US. GLU has toured with The Kills, Blood Red Shoes, Miles Kane & more, alongside UK headline shows of its own. Kicking off tonight in Glasgow, GLU will support The Blue Stones across three big UK shows (see dates below).
Radio support from BBC Radio 1 and 6 Music, as well as glowing press from the likes of the NME, Rolling Stone & more, has further established GLU as a project operating well beyond “side project” territory.
With its fearless approach to reinvention and emotional honesty, GLU’s take on “Crush” signals the start of a year of exciting activity, whilst blurring genres, stripping away pretence, and creating music that feels both personal and relatable.
Hot on the heels of “Live And Die For You,” the first single from their upcoming new album, Serpent Lip Service, New Jersey’s MOURNING NOISE today uncage the album’s title track, another thrilling slice of what drummer and founder member Steve Zing describes as “dark…, melodic music shaped by experience, attitude, and a relentless forward vision.”
It’s close to 45 years since Mourning Noise first came screaming out of suburban Lodi, New Jersey, but while they left precious little behind them at the time, few people forgot them and the self-titled journey through their early 80s back catalog that materialized back in 2021 was surely one of the most incandescent hardcore releases of the recent past.
Neither was it left to stand alone. 2024’s Screams/Dreams was a fearless flash of high driven music, and now they’re back with more, following up acclaimed shows with Fear, Prong, The Misfits and Cro-Mags, and Zing’s role behind the drums with Samhain/Danzig, with Serpent Lip Service, a 12 track Behemoth that will begin coiling itself around your ears on April 17.
“Serpent Lip Service” itself is a magnificent trailer for the main attraction, as Steve explains.
“Serpent Lip Service, a story that shows how quick fire can be blown out and turnt to ice. A song that shows the influence others have on one another. A song that most can take to heart at some point in their lives.
“The lyrics reek the tension of late-night thoughts, in the push and pull of desire and distrust The music comes in waves with the verses crashing darkness over your head and the choruses drifting you into the tide of another place in time.”
The accompanying video, too, grabs the attention. Filmed in lower Manhattan during a photo shoot for the upcoming album, and “shot through a psychotic lens, it’s a story that shows how quickly fire can be blown out and turned to ice.”
As for the album itself, Serpent Lip Service “signals a powerful new chapter for Mourning Noise, reintroducing the band with a fearless departure from its earliest incarnation.
Zing continues, “Driven by themes of loss, reflection, and resilience, the album channels the individual identities and musical diversity of its members into a sound that feels both raw and evolved.
“Rooted firmly in the band’s original punk ethos, the record pushes beyond tradition, blending dark intensity with a broad spectrum of influences to create a gripping, unpredictable journey from start to finish.”
It’s easy, sometimes, looking around at the state of the modern world, to wonder what the days of old would have to say about it. Serpent Lip Service is the answer to that question – and it tells you exactly what you’d want to hear.
Think of “Serpent Lip Service” as an early taste of a truly remarkable reckoning.
THE ROCK ALCHEMIST – Italian Rock Band from Turin with a strong sonic identity that blends modern rock with progressive, hard, alternative, and pop elements!
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
Metal Shock Finland (World Assault ) 