Music Reviews

2022 has been a year full of ups in the music industry, with many bands returning from hiatus, stacked festival line-ups and a constant supply of music being released that satisfies the ears of anyone who presses play.  Clearly wanting in on a piece of the action, Vatican decided to drop their new album 'ULTRA' - here's what we thought of the band's latest release.

It’s undeniable that nobody loves touring more than The Faim, so what better way to release an album than in the midst of a UK, Europe and Australian tour. Several songs featured on their upcoming album 'Talk Talk' have been previewed during their live performances, leaving fans restlessly counting down the days until they can hear the album in full.

Conjurer are one of the UK’s best metal outfits that you may not have heard of. Their 2018 debut 'Mire' added a sound that the extreme metal scene has never heard before. Years of touring and perfecting their craft have passed, and 'Páthos' is the result. So, has it been worth the wait?

With 'Nocturnal', Mothica continues to prove that the alt-pop and heavy music spheres shouldn’t just co-exist - they can safely bump into one another, as when they do, great results can and do come out. By taking her past and present experiences with trauma and mental illness, and coating them in poppy melodies driven by heavy guitars, she has crafted one of the finest and heaviest alt-pop albums in recent memory, if not of the whole year.

Atmospheric indie mainstays Foals have renewed a new lease of life, one which they lived out on their 2008 debut 'Antidote'. Where 'Antidote' tapped into the dancey rhythms of 'Red Socks Pugie' and the fun-filled grooves of 'Olympia Airways', Foals have dusted off their dancing shoes fourteen years later and swept the dance floor they once departed, for an album full of bliss melodies, sun-soaked vocals and clear blue waves of joyous escapism.

Though at times it seems to wander aimlessly with some less than inspired choices, 'Vaxis II: A Window of the Waking Mind' is a more than suitable follow-up to 'The Unheavenly Creatures', acting as a sonic bridge between what has been and what will be in the world of Coheed and Cambria and their music.

Paving the way for a possible future direction the band could take, 'Misery Made Me' continues Silverstein's streak of great records, while simultaneously representing all aspects of the Canadian band's sonic palette.

This is a band who has seen it all, ridden every wave and have continued to deliver a ridiculously high standard of output for almost two decades at this point. Some things are certain in life… You live, you die and Cancer Bats rock with the best of ‘em. Here's what we thought of the band's seventh album, 'Psychic Jailbreak'...

In a revival of the pop-punk scene, with the rise of Travis Barker's entourage of renaissance emos, it would be criminal for punk-rock royalty, Bowling For Soup, not to inject their comical twist on the affair. So, in keeping with true BFS fashion, the quartet lace their eleventh record, 'Pop Drunk Snot Bread', with ‘too old for this’ quips, ‘why so serious’ jibes and ‘we’re motherf*cking Bowling For Soup’ attitude. Now, screw ‘hot girl summer’ who’s ready for pop punk summer?!

When it comes to good music sometimes it really does come down to quality over quantity, and that is exactly what we get with the new extended play from Crown Magnetar. 'Alone In Death' follows on perfectly from the band’s 2021 debut full-length 'The Codex of Flesh', with another six examples of crushingly heavy, impossibly technical death metal.