Japanese metalcore frontrunners Sable Hills return with their powerful new single ‘Homura’, featuring an electrifying guest appearance from Fuki of Unlucky Morpheus. The release also marks the start of the pre-order for the band’s new album Homura, set for release on 13th November via Arising Empire.
Blending the fire of classic metalcore with melodic death metal intensity and a distinctly Japanese atmosphere, the title track marks another bold step forward for a band that continues to carve out its own identity on the international heavy music scene.
‘Homura’ arrives at another defining moment in Sable Hills’ remarkable rise. In 2022, the band became the first Japanese act in history to win the grand prize at the Wacken Open Air Metal Battle, a milestone that led to their signing with German label Arising Empire and the international release of their third album Odyssey in 2024. Their momentum accelerated further in 2025 when ‘Namu’ became a global viral success, surpassing 3 million Spotify streams and 5.4 million YouTube views, while related live clips generated more than 30 million views across Instagram and TikTok.
It’s the kind of sonic collision you have always dreamed of – one of the heaviest metal anthems of the 1970s, reimagined in the hands of one of the mightiest metal bands of the decades that came after.
But even in those dreams, it never sounded this great!
Taken from Cleopatra’s upcoming Purple Storm – A Tribute To Deep Purple, L.A. Guns’ balls-breaking take on “Space Truckin’” was something of a career-long ambition for the band.
“Deep Purple is one of our biggest influences,” says Tracii Guns. “So any excuse to play one of their songs, we will take.” And, he continues, “Phil [Lewis] and I chose this song because we just wanted something we could blast out on.”
And they definitely do blast!
First heard back in 1972, wrapping up Purple’s seminal Machine Head album, “Space Truckin’’” was inspired, Ritchie Blackmore once remarked, by the theme to the Batman TV show. It developed, however, into one of Purple’s most dramatic showstoppers, a cavalcade of soloing that was capable, some nights, of stretching to 30 minutes in length!
Or cut to Purple’s infamous appearance at the 1974 California Jam, where Blackmore ended “Space Truckin’” by slamming his guitar into a television camera, and then lit his amplifier on fire!
There are no such shenanigans here, of course – L.A.’s finest bring the song to a halt just shy of five minutes. Nevertheless, Adam Hamilton’s production keeps everything on the edge of its seat, and Tracii’s incendiary guitar more than compensates for the absence of visuals.
Of course, there’s a multitude of further Purple classics featured on Purple Storm – 11 of them to be precise, including “Highway Star,” “Child In Time,” “Smoke On The Water,” “Woman From Tokyo,” “Black Night”… each of them paramount among the songs that truly confirmed Purple’s superstardom, both at the outset of their career (“Hush,” their debut US hit single) and into later years too (the title track from 1984’s Perfect Strangers).
The guests, meanwhile, represent several generations of rock glitterati – Chris Adler, Chris Poland and David Ellefson (Megadeth), Alan Davey (Hawkwind, Hawkestrel), Graham Bonnet, Ronnie Romero and Bob Daisley (Rainbow), Jonathan Cain (Journey), George Lynch (Lynch Mob), Pat Travers, Arthur Brown, Carmine Appice (Vanilla Fudge, Cactus, Rod Stewart), Thor, Rick Wakeman (Yes, David Bowie), Mick Box (Uriah Heep) and more.
French groove death metal force SICKMIND has unveiled the second single taken from the band’s upcoming studio album “Babel Tower”, which will see the light of day on October 9. Following the release of the first track “New God”, SICKMIND now present “Dry Earth”, offering another intense glimpse into what listeners can expect from the forthcoming full-length.
“Dry Earth” is now available on all major streaming platforms and is accompanied by an official music video, which you can watch here:
Speaking about the lyrical theme, SICKMIND comment: “‘Dry Earth’ portrays a world devastated by environmental collapse and humanity’s self-destructive choices. Its apocalyptic lyrics are driven by crushing riffs, heavy grooves and a relentless, aggressive atmosphere.”
Tracklist: 01. While The Lights Are Still Shut (feat. Nicolas Alberny from Gorod) 02. The Chaos Beneath Our Feet (feat. Julien ‘Nutz’ Deyres from Gorod) 03. Dark Code 04. Dry Earth 05. New God 06. Shedding Skin 07. Humaless 08. Babel Tower 09. Moving Limbs 10. The Last Wandering
Hailing from Bordeaux, SICKMIND‘s current lineup has revived SILICIUM, a band originally dating back to 2008, and began its new chapter by taking the stage as the opening act for Aephanemer. A sold-out show in January 2023 marked the beginning of the new era for the band and laid the groundwork for what would become SICKMIND.
In 2024, the band recorded a new EP, released across all major streaming platforms in December, while continuing to build momentum on stage. Since 2025, the band has performed extensively across France, Spain, Portugal, and England, sharing stages at shows and festivals with acts including Eight Sins, Dagoba, Dygora, Gorod, and The Great Old Ones.
Now performing under the name SICKMIND, the four-piece is preparing to enter its next chapter with “Babel Tower”. Set for release on October 9, self-released by the band, the album expands SICKMIND’s dark and dystopian universe, drawing listeners into a world shaped by destruction, uncertainty, and the remnants of a civilization in decline. Furthermore, the album features contributions from Nicolas Alberny and Julien ‘Nutz’ Deyres of GOROD, adding their distinctive presence to the record’s dark and uncompromising sound.
SICKMIND are: Arthur Nouhaud – Vocals Maxime Roget – Guitar Thomas Darracq – Bass Antoine Fourre – Drums
Post-metal heavyweights The Ocean today reveal their newest single ‘Milk of My Dreams’, featuring Thorsten Quaeschning of the legendary Tangerine Dream.
The single is another glimpse of The Ocean‘s forthcoming Solaris record, to be released 25th September (Pelagic Records).
‘Milk of My Dreams’ is the second half of the 20-minute closing piece of The Ocean’s new and 12th studio album Solaris, inspired by Andrei Tarkovsky’s film of the same name. Entirely electronic, dark, hypnotic and danceable, it leads the Berlin-based heavy music collective into unfamiliar terrain, trading weight for pulse without losing any of its intensity. It closes the album’s 70-minute monolith on an unexpected note: alien yet coherent, disorienting yet strangely inevitable.
While most of the instrumental foundations of Solaris were written during the pandemic, ‘Milk of My Dreams’ is a much more recent piece, composed last year as the band began recording vocals for the album. New vocalist Enrico Tiberi wrote much of the track as a series of variations on musical themes introduced in the preceding song, ‘Ultima Esperanza‘.
Rearranged by Robin Staps and shaped by significant contributions from synth pioneer and Tangerine Dream bandleader Thorsten Quaeschning, the track became a distinctly collaborative and experimental undertaking – and may well mark the beginning of a broader creative relationship with Quaeschning.
The band first met Quaeschning while tracking drums at Berlin’s legendary Hansa Studios, where David Bowie recorded ‘Heroes’. They later spent a week at Quaeschning’s studio in Berlin-Rudow, working not only on ‘Milk of My Dreams’ but on the electronic dimension of the album as a whole.
The band comment: “Working with Thorsten has been an incredibly inspiring experience and with all of us being huge Tangerine Dream fans, a great honour of course. His knowledge of electronic music, synthesizers and sound design is extraordinary, and at the same time he’s an immensely talented and curious musician. His studio feels like a synthesizer museum — everything is connected, switched on and ready to play. What’s particularly remarkable is his ability to take a sound you can only describe in words and translate it almost instantly into something you can actually hear.”
Thorsten Quaeschning says about his collaboration with The Ocean: “It was a real pleasure to work on the new album by The Ocean Collective. At the same time, it was an interesting challenge for me, because I had to adjust some of my usual working methods and leave the safe harbour of familiar procedures. From my own musical microcosm, The Ocean Collective’s music moves through a wide range of shifting time signatures, which meant that most hardware step sequencers no longer worked in the conventional way. Of course, I could have programmed and recorded individual sections of two, three or sometimes eight bars, but I decided to play many of the sequences by hand. This made it possible to react more quickly to the time signature changes, while also giving the sequences a more organic feel through dynamics, touch and subtle timing differences. I’m very happy to be part of this album and I’m looking forward to seeing where this new collaboration may lead.”
Solaris is an album that tells a story of cosmic escapism: a journey on that ship, which is essentially a celestial rescue boat escaping from a metaphorically sinking Mother Earth. The rescue boat can be imagined as a historic naval vessel, and the lyrics and episodes of the album make reference to the real-life explorers of the past who set out to discover (back then) unknown continents and uncharted territories: Da Gama, Magellan, Sir Frances Drake, as well as the Polar explorers Amundsen, Scott, Rasmussen etc.
The Solaris album artwork is a collaborative effort by German artist Phillip Janta (Metallica, Queens Of the Stone Age, Envy) whose distinctive, highly detailed line work is instantly recognisable, and Norwegian artist Martin Kvamme who is the graphic designer behind most of Mike Patton‘s numerous projects. The deluxe version of the album will be accompanied by a hardcover, fabric-wrapped book with copper hot foil print, printed inner sleeves, a 32 pages book, seven art prints by Phillip Janta as well as a customised, retro-futuristic star constellation finder.
Solaris will be released via Pelagic Records on 25th September.
The Ocean Line-up: Robin Staps – guitar, vocals Mattias Hägerstrand – bass Jordi Farré – drums, percussion Enrico Tiberi – vocals, keys Lane Shi – vocals Emmanuel Jessua – guitar Marco Gennaro – guitar
In addition, the following musicians performed on this record: Thorsten Quaeschning – keys Orestis Zafiriou – keys Simen Eifring – trombone Jiawei Zhang – vibraphone
DESERTFEST BERLIN is coming back heavy as ever in May 2027! After an absolutely packed edition in 2026 with a monstrous lineup and two of three days entirely sold-out, the legendary festival comes back with an equally heavy and versatile first wave of bands: Lead by experimental stoner masters MELVINS the lineup highlights Oli Ackermann’s modern noise-renegades A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS, the epic Swedish adventure rockers HÄLLAS, the colossal riff machinery of BONGRIPPER, VILLAGERS OF IOANNINA CITY, GNOME and many more including the new heavy garage punk supergroup PRIMITIVE RING and scene-favorite newcomers SPOOKY EYES from Tasmania, playing one of their very first EU shows ever at Desertfest Berlin in 2027!
With 15 years of relentless affords under the belt to push the Berlin, German and European heavy music scene alongside other great festivals, promoters, labels, media outlets and bands to live vibrantly as it does today – with an ecstatic festival atmosphere, a sweet community, cheering crowds in front of stage and amazing young bands sharing stages with absolute legends, it looks like our scene shines brighter than the seemingly dark times around and this is the DESERTFEST BERLIN energy to go for 2027, pushing this unique scene celebration even further at Columbia Venues from May 14th to 16th!
Lineup: MELVINS / HÄLLAS A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS BONGRIPPER / SMOKE BLOW VILLAGERS OF IOANNINA CITY / GNOME INTER ARMA / PRIMITIVE RING / CARDIEL SPOOKY EYES / PINK FUZZ / SPECK / VINNUM SABBATHI And dozens more to come!
Desertfest is an international beacon of heavy music for over a decade now, since the foundation of an collaborate idea in 2012 by STEAKguitarist Reece Tee, starting DESERTFEST LONDON and by Matte Vandeven – bassist of My Sleeping Karma and founder of Sound of Liberation – promoting the first DESERTFEST BERLIN. Since then the festivals grew in scale and so did the Desertfest family, with independent festivals rising from the stoner underground all over the world in Norway, Belgium and the USA. Not as affiliated sub-festivals, just established by like-minded people, who’d give blood to push the heavy underground music scene just like Matte and Reece have all those years.
DESERTFEST BERLIN had it’s own journey, starting in 2012 with the first edition’s opening night at the legendary old Festsaal Kreuzberg, which tragically burned down about a year later as well as Astra Kulturhaus, which has opened the festival doors until 2017. Before a mandatory break during the epidemic the festival sized up to the larger Arena in Treptow in 2018 and 2019 with two absolute massive festival editions, before finding it’s new home in 2022 at Columbia Venues, where the festival grew to the legendary scene gathering we know today.
For many years the festival is promoted in collaboration with the local agency Greyzone Concerts. But already since it’s inception DESERTFEST BERLIN is a dark sanctuary to heavy music fanatics coming to Berlin from all over Europe with the most sought after bands of the entire heavy music spectrum blessing the DESERTFEST BERLIN stage each year, like SLEEP, ELECTRIC WIZARD, SAINT VITUS, PENTAGRAM, FU MANCHU, YOB, UNCLE ACID & THE DEADBEATS, ORANGE GOBLIN, RUSSIAN CIRCLES and BRANT BJÖRK, just to name a few.
Besides the legends, DESERTFEST BERLIN always highlights a wide range of bands from the genres stoner, doom, sludge, desert rock, heavy blues, psychedelic, progressive as well as heavy rock and always shines a spotlight on the heaviest scene favorites and hottest newcomer bands in the scene, because it’s all about keeping the scene alive! To many more years of Desertfests around the world: See you at Columbia Venues Berlin from May 14th to 16th 2027!
For more than 20 years, Nytt Land have followed their living, breathing connection with ancient traditions and beliefs. Earlier this year, on March 22nd, the dark folk family duo of Natalia and Anatoly Pakhalenko welcomed the spring equinox with a career-spanning live performance in Moscow. Now, fans around the world can partake in this shamanic ritual with their new live album Ritual of Stone Sun (Live 2026).
“Nytt Land have created an album that feels less like a performance and more like opening a door into another world”, Jace Media Music writes about Ritual of Stone Sun. “Close your eyes and let the ritual begin”.
“For fans, this is more than a document of a live show”, The Razors Edge writes about the album. “For newcomers, it offers a striking entry point into the world Nytt Land have built”.
Ritual of Stone Sun (Live 2026)is now released on all digital platforms on Season of Mist, and you can experience the entire performance by watching the full concert video on the Season of Mist YouTube channel.
“Ritual of Stone Sun is dedicated to the spring transition and the awakening of nature”, Nytt Land vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Anatoly Pakhalenko says. “Many of the songs from the album are performed today by the nomadic people of Siberia during ceremonies, shamanic rituals and folk festivals”.
Catch Nytt Land this November on their first Australian tour with co-headliners Mortiis and special guest TiR.
Nytt Land Southern Ritual Australian Tour 2026 with co-headliner Mortiis and special guest TiR
November 19 – Sydney @ Factory Floor [TICKETS] November 20 – Brisbane @ Crowbar [TICKETS] November 21 – Melbourne @ Croxton [TICKETS] November 22 – Adelaide @ Ed Castle [TICKETS]
Much like the symbol of the sun itself, Ritual of Stone Sun traces back through Nytt Land’s history. The dark folk family duo’s new live album spans from the throat singing and shamanic drums of their early Nordic cycle to their most recent explorations of the ancient percussion and vocal traditions that are performed by Siberian shamans to this day.
Lead single “Ragnarök” remains a core pillar for Nytt Land’s live ritual since first appearing on the duo’s 2018 album, Oðal. Anatolly’s throat singing and mystical talharpa recall scenes from a Nordic epic. “U-Gra”, a more recent fan favorite, calls out in dedication to ancient Siberia with pounding drums and Natalie’s hypnotic chanting. In the five years since the song was released off the 2021 album Ritual, it has been played more than 3 million times on YouTube and Spotify.
The full video of Nytt Land’s March 2026 performance in Moscow includes three songs that do not appear on Ritual of Stone Sun. “Taiga”, “Totem” and “Tygir Tayii (Heavenly Sacrifice)” are all featured on the duo’s latest studio album, Aba Khan, which was released this February by Prophecy Productions.
The live video of “Ragnarök” was filmed by Sergei Kaputanuk.
Additional video credits Sound Engineer – Sergei “Lazar” Video Editor – Natalia Pakhalenko Video Color Grading and Post-Production – Anatoly Pakhalenko Sound Edition and Post-Production – Anatoly Pakhalenko, Natalia Pakhalenko
Nytt Land is a Siberian ritual / dark folk family duo founded in August 2013 by Natalia and Anatoly Pakhlaenko in the town of Kalachinsk, Western Siberia, on the banks of the Om River. Natalia and Anatoly author its music, visual language, philosophy and spiritual direction. Their art was born from life in Siberia and speaks in the voice of this ancient land: harsh, mystical, living and infinitely deep.
From the very beginning, Nytt Land developed as a family creative union in which music was perceived not simply as concert or studio art, but as a ritual path expressed through voice, breath, rhythm, silence and a living connection with the ancient traditions and beliefs of Siberia. The official description of the project defines Nytt Land as a “ritual path expressed through sound,” inspired by the traditional spiritual practices of the indigenous peoples of Siberia.
The early period of Nytt Land was closely connected with northern mythology, ancient texts, archaic folk and world music aesthetics. During its first years, the band independently released the albums Nytt Land (2013), Hávamál (2015), and Sköpun: Songs from the Elder Edda (2016), followed by Fimbulvinter (2017) and Oðal (2018). These releases established the duo’s recognizable sound: deep vocal techniques, throat singing, shamanic drums, tagelharpa, jaw harp, flutes, natural field recordings and hypnotic rhythms.
Over time, Nytt Land gradually shifted the center of its creativity away from purely Northern European sources toward the band’s own Siberian homeland, languages and indigenous spiritual traditions. An important milestone became the album Ritual (2021) through Napalm Records. The album was presented as a deep immersion into ancient percussion and vocal traditions, while the band itself described its music as Shamanic Dark Folk.
In 2023, Nytt Land released Torem, continuing their exploration of archaic texts, ritual atmosphere and organic soundscapes. In 2025, the band released Songs of the Shaman through Prophecy Productions — a work dedicated to traditional shamanic songs and incantations of the Manchu-Tungusic peoples of Siberia. This album became one of the band’s most significant steps toward the direct exploration and musical reinterpretation of Siberian shamanic heritage.
The culmination of this creative direction is Nytt Land’s new tenth full-length album Aba Khan, released on February 20, 2026 through Prophecy Productions. The material for the album was inspired by a year of traveling across Siberia, where they encountered new landscapes, people and the real spiritual traditions of indigenous culture of their homeland. While echoes of ancient mythological sources remain present in the music, the focus increasingly shifts toward the languages, imagery and ritual worldview of Siberia itself. The band dedicated Aba Khan to the ancient, beautiful and immense land of Siberia.
After signing with Season of Mist in May of 2026, Nytt Land announced Ritual of Stone Sun(Live 2026). Recorded and filmed in Moscow on March 22, 2026, the live album is dedicated to the beginning of spring and the awakening of nature. The tracklist spans from their 2026 single “Equinox” to “Ragnarök” and other songs from their early Nordic cycle.
Production credits Producer & Sound Engineer – Sergei “Lazar”, Anatoly Pakhalenko Mixing Studio – Nytt Land Studio Mixing Engineer – Anatoly Pakhalenko, Natalia Pakhalenko
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
