SOULS OF DIOTIMA are officially back, signaling the start of a mysterious and bold new chapter. The band is thrilled to announce the release of their brand-new single, “Run Away,” arriving on Friday, June 5th.
The single serves as the first glimpse into “Arcade,” the band’s upcoming fifth studio album, set for worldwide release on October 2nd, 2026, via Diotima Records.
As previously hinted by the band, “Arcade” marks the beginning of a “new era.” Souls of Diotima have undergone a significant directional change, a bold evolution that the members have chosen to keep under wraps. The true nature of this sonic transformation will remain a secret until the first single officially drops.
To capture this new vision, the band headed to Sweden to record at the legendary Studio Bohus in Kungälv. The album was fully produced by Oscar Nilsson, Thomas “Plec” Johansson, and Mikko Viitala.
The visual identity of “Arcade” is just as striking, featuring cover art by Rhett Padersoo, which is being unveiled today alongside the official tracklist.
Pelagic Records today unveil the second single from their new label compilation entitled The Dungeon Tapes, featuring previously unreleased music and cover songs from a variety of album artists.
Opening Side B is a unique cover of the Massive Attack classic ‘Angel’ from atmospheric doom duo The Answer Lies In The Black Void.
Multi-instrumentalist and composer Jason Köhnen states: “Choosing this song has a very strong personal story to it. ‘Angel’ is dedicated to one of my musical mentors, Carlton Franklin, an ‘old-school’ DJ who inadvertently taught me the power of musical climaxes and of the hypnotic strength of darkness. During his lengthy DJ sets in the mid 90s he would always drop ‘Angel’ in the peak of his set and was able to move the audience with his shifts of moods, playing the crowds extraordinarily and creating an amazing brooding trance. Unfortunately Carlton fell (terminally) ill and a crowdfunding was started for him named ‘Dead Man Sailing’, as a saling man and living on his boat, this would enable him to make a final sail in his yacht across the Atlantic Ocean. A powerful statement from a man who until the last day stayed true to his character and will play with death as he played the crowds, controlling the narrative until the night is over.”
Drenched in the crushing weight of doom, with elements of ambience, electronica is backed-up by the gradual rise of wailing distortion, The Answer Lies In The Black Void create a suffocating density and fragile openness that expands this slow-burning revelation outward into a vast, transcendental soundscape.
Jason continues: “The challenge was to keep the same hypnotic drive as the original, but to add our own doomy and post-rock-esque climactic explosions as the song progresses. For the videoclip we interpreted the original story to our slightly more gothic version, but with the same storyline as the original placed in our own setting. Martina stayed close to Horace Andy‘s beautiful vocal lines adapting them to her own siren’s call.”
Also appearing on The Dungeon Tapes are such esteemed groups as Psychonaut, Lost In Kiev, Pothamus, Gösta Berlings Saga, Telepathy, and Spook The Horses.
The Dungeon Tapes also will feature a stunning My Bloody Valentine cover recorded by members of Spotlights, Rosetta, Failure, Shy Low and Hiroe, appearing under the name Pelagic United.
The Dungeon Tapes will be released in physical (28th August) and digital (18th September) format.
Dokken, formed in Los Angeles in 1978, had several hit singles which charted on the Billboard Hot 100, such as “Alone Again”, “In My Dreams”, and “Burning Like a Flame”, and has sold more than 10 million albums worldwide. The classic Dokken line-up consisted of founder Don Dokken on vocals, George Lynch on lead guitar, Mick Brown on drums and Jeff Pilson on bass.
Released in 1999, Erase the Slate had marked a fresh chapter for Dokken, introducing Reb Beach (best known for Winger and later Whitesnake) as the band’s lead guitarist. Erase the Slate blends Dokken’s classic melodic metal roots with a more modern, late-’90s hard rock edge. Reb Beach brought a technically sharp yet fluid guitar style that differed from the flashier, more aggressive approach of former guitarist George Lynch. His playing added a polished, groove-oriented feel while still delivering strong solos and riffs.
Listen to “Change The World” here:
Now it is available through Deko Entertainment for the first time in the United States on 180g vinyl. Completely remastered, repackaged, and limited to only 500 copies of each variation including a beautiful Green Smoke and classic Black. Erase the Slate includes stand out tracks “Erase The Slate”, “Change the World”, as well as a cover of the Harry Nilsson song “One” made popular by the Three Dog Night. This is a must have for any Dokken fan!
The mythology is magical. On June 23, 1971, Melanie was among the headliners at the Glastonbury Fayre – an underground celebration that morphed, a decade later, into what we now know as the Glastonbury Festival.
Some 12,000 people attended the week long event, there to witness now-legendary sets by David Bowie, Hawkwind, the Pink Fairies, the Edgar Broughton Band, Quintessence, Traffic, Fairport Convention, Arthur Brown and more, all performing from the now-iconic pyramid stage.
But, Hawkwind co-founder Nik Turner recalled, it was Melanie who a lot of people were waiting for, as she climbed onto the stage from the front row of the audience, where she’d been sharing home-made beer with a party of bikers.
“There was a real buzz about Melanie being there,” Turner recalled. “Everyone adored her, and the whole site fell silent while she was on. Even the drummers stopped playing to listen.”
Melanie at Glastonbury Fayre, 1971
Indeed, in the years that followed her death in January 2024, several veterans of the festival have stepped up to pay their respects by recording fresh elements to the songs she left behind – Paul Rudolph of the Fairies, for example, and the great Terry Reid.
“Lay Down (Candles In The Rain),” however, is extra special, not only because it is one of Melanie’s best loved songs and biggest hit records, but also because she is joined by Nik Turner (flute) and Hawkwind bandmate Del Dettmar (audio generator) – both of whom witnessed her Glastonbury performance; and Alan Davey, a key member of the band through the 1980s and beyond.
Even more intriguingly, it is a version of the song as Melanie originally wrote it, before she added the “Lay Down” chorus that eventually titled the song and which, in the hands of the Edwin Hawkins Singers, stripped away the foreboding darkness that clung to Melanie’s original composition.
There are few pop songs, after all, which open with a line like “we bled inside each other’s wounds”, and even Melanie admitted such a lyric was an unlikely candidate for the Top 10. Yet still “Lay Down (Candles In The Rain)” reached #6 on the Billboard chart, while covers have come from as musically far afield as Mott The Hoople and Meredith Brooks, Emilia Torrini and Australian star Max Sharan.
In the hands of Davey, Turner and Dettmar, however, the song is drawn even further from its “hit” incarnation, not only capturing the energies of Melanie’s original solo performance, but driving, also, into pure Hawkwind In Search Of Space territory. If they’d dropped this into the set, maybe at the end of side two, nobody would have batted an eyelid.
Listen to it HERE, and it could easily have been taped 55 years ago, and it is so easy to imagine Nik, Del and Melanie, plus a passing rhythm section, sneaking into the on-site mobile studio, after the evening’s festivities were over, switching on the tapes and letting rip.
They only had time to record one song. But what a performance it is!
With “Blanche réalité,” post-hardcore vets IMPURE WILHELMINA offer the second glimpse into Le sanglot, their upcoming new album and first entirely in French.
“Blanche réalité” (White Reality) maps a state of persistent, low-grade alienation: a person going through the motions of daily existence, disoriented at the center of a world from which all warmth has been subtracted. The song finds its biographical root in a winter hike Impure Wilhelmina vocalist and guitarist Michael Schindl took, during which he nearly lost himself in the fog. That real, physical experience of erasure sits at the core of the song’s emotional logic, grounding an otherwise interior state in something concrete and felt.
Watch the official music video for “Blanche réalité”:
The video for “Blanche réalité” extends the song’s territory rather than illustrating it. Shot entirely on location in fog-bound natural landscapes with no band performance, the video follows a solitary figure moving through mist-consumed fields and bare woodland without ever arriving anywhere. The palette is almost entirely de-saturated, with animals functioning as the visual counterpart to the lyrics: present, unreachable, moving through the fog with a purposefulness the human figure lacks. Only in the final seconds does color return, a handful of amber leaves around water, an image that offers no clear resolution.
À Jamais radieuse (5:52) Full runtime: 50:287. Frelon ivre (4:40)
Born from Geneva, Switzerland’s thriving alternative music scene, IMPURE WILHELMINA has been developing a truly unique blend of sound over the years, somewhere in between metal and progressive-tinged dark rock. The band’s distinctive style is dense, melodic and deeply melancholic, brought to life by introspective lyrics both profoundly humane and chilling, infused with raw emotion.
Impure Wilhelmina was founded in 1996 and made a name for itself in the early 2000s, with a series of iconic albums – I Can’t Believe I was Born in July (2003) and L’amour, la mort, l’enfance perdue (2005) along with several European tours. Little by little, the quartet led by guitarist and vocalist Michael Schindl won over the hearts of a now loyal fan base, who appreciate how the band turns dark themes into a universe of healing sound.
Impure Wilhelmina’s story is also one of perpetual renewal. The band’s sound has evolved from its gritty beginnings to more mature, melodic productions driven by clear magnetic vocals. Black Honey (2014), Radiation (2017) and Antidote (2021), widely appraised by critics, pushed horizons further yet for the band, signed to the label Season of Mist since 2015.
Throughout the years, Impure Wilhelmina has played hundreds of shows across Europe, performing at underground venues and large festivals alike, including opening for icons such as Gojira, Baroness, Amenra, Sólstafir and Crippled Black Phoenix.
Since 2023, the band has been working on its next album to follow Antidote. The process is enriched by the arrival of new guitarist Edouard Nicod, joining Sébastien Dutruel (bass), Mario Togni (drums) and Michael Schindl (guitar and vocals). Their new album entitled Le sanglot, set to be released by Season of Mist in 2026, will showcase the band’s next radical yet organically logical transformation: lyrics entirely in French, unleashing dimensions of sound you wouldn’t expect, with renewed creative energy.
« Rescapé de l’ancien monde, touché par la grâce »
Line-up: Michael Schindl — Vocals, Guitar Mario Togni — Drums Sébastien Dutruel — Bass Edouard Nicod — Guitar
Production Credits: Recorded at Kitchen Studio, Geneva, Switzerland. Produced, engineered & mixed by Yvan Bing at Kitchen Studio, except for track 9, recorded by Serge Morattel at Rec Studio. Mastered by Magnus Lindberg at Redmount Studio, Stockholm, Sweden.
Recording Line-up: Michael Schindl Mario Togni Sébastien Dutruel Edouard Nicod
Guest Musician: Marion Leclercq (Mütterlein) on the track 6, ‘Train Mort’.
Acclaimed South African singer-songwriter Steve Louw returns with a powerful new single, “Across The River,” offering listeners a deeply evocative preview of his forthcoming album, Traces of the Flood, set for release on May 15, 2026.
Released Friday, April 10, the new single is available on all streaming platforms HERE. Watch the music video on YouTube HERE. Pre-order the new album HERE.
“Across The River” is a slow-burning, emotionally resonant track that blends Louw’s signature storytelling with stripped-back instrumentation and atmospheric depth. The song explores themes of longing, separation, and transcendence, anchored by imagery that is both intimate and expansive.
With its recurring motif of crossing over, physical, emotional, and perhaps even spiritual, the single captures a sense of inevitability and enduring connection.
Driven by poetic lyricism, the track unfolds like a quiet reckoning. Lines such as “These four walls all I see / And I think of you” and “We’ll meet across the riverside” suggest both confinement and hope, while the refrain, “I’ll be with you, my love,” lingers as a promise that transcends circumstance. The narrative is deeply personal yet universally accessible, allowing listeners to project their own interpretations onto its layered meaning.
Musically, “Across The River” leans into a minimalist arrangement, allowing Louw’s voice and lyrics to take centre stage. Subtle textures and a measured pace create a sense of tension and release, mirroring the emotional arc of the song itself. The result is a track that feels timeless, rooted in classic songwriting traditions while remaining distinctly contemporary.
The single serves as a compelling introduction to Traces of the Flood, an album that promises to further explore themes of memory, resilience, and the passage of time. While full details of the album remain under wraps, “Across The River” hints at a body of work that is both reflective and sonically rich, marking a significant chapter in Louw’s ongoing artistic evolution.
Speaking about the release, Louw notes that the song emerged from a place of introspection: a meditation on connection in moments of uncertainty, and the enduring pull of love across distance and adversity.
Cut live in the studio with a full-tilt, rocking band, “Across the River” delivers a high-octane cry out to the ghosts that haunt us, to lost love, and to redemption. We all carry spirits with us, converse with them and wait to meet them all again, “Across the River”.
With “Across The River,” Steve Louw once again demonstrates his ability to craft music that resonates on a deeply human level, understated yet profound, intimate yet far-reaching.
“Across The River” is available now on all major streaming platforms. Traces of the Flood will be released on 15 May 2026.
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s ASA unveil the long-overdue release of "Collective Failure" + first music video for title-track! Check it out and stay tuned for more news! Click image to watch the video
Kimmo Kuusniemi’s SARCOFAGUS return with a Historic 2010 Concert Video Premiere on YouTube! Click image to watch the video
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Visionary artist KIMMO KUUSNIEMI's ANCIENT STREAMING ASSEMBLY (ASA) have released “Aurora Nuclearis”, a powerful 12-minute audiovisual experience, dedicated to the Late Keyboardist Esa Kotilainen. - Click image to watch the video
Click image to watch the video
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