Album News – Almost Anything Music

The Amity Affliction Announce New Album & Single

Australian metalcore trailblazers THE AMITY AFFLICTION have announced their new album Not Without My Ghosts, out 12th May via Pure Noise.

With the release of their new track, ‘It’s Hell Down Here’ it takes the time to address mortality — a topic frequented several times on the album. It also boasts the vocal dynamics and pummeling breakdowns that are the band’s signatures.

“This song is a a letter from myself and Ahren, written by me, to our friends who have passed on to the other side,” Birch shares.

He continues, “I’m 41. I’m bipolar. And I’m pretty tired of it. That’s where lyrics like ‘Like a snake I tire / the cold dark clouds, they steal my light’ come from. The song is wrapping up how I feel daily, and reflecting on the time leading up to my friend killing himself. I’m sure a lot of people who have experienced that guilt at not seeing what becomes glaringly obvious after the fact.”

The album boasts multiple features — something the band has not incorporated into a release in quite some time — including late New Zealand rapper Louie Knuxx, who passed away in 2021, as well as Comeback Kid’s Andrew Neufeld, The Plot in You’s Landon Tewers, and Phem.

Check out the Cover Art, Tracklisting and pre-order options below as well as a video for their new track, ‘It’s Hell Down Here’.

“Show Me Your God”
“It’s Hell Down Here”
“Fade Away”
“Death And The Setting Sun” (Feat. Andrew Neufeld)
“I See Dead People” (Feat. Louie Knuxx)
“When It Rains It Pours” (Feat. Landon Tewers)
“The Big Sleep”
“Close To Me”
“God Voice”
“Not Without My Ghosts” (Feat. Phem)

Pre-orders for the record, ‘Not Without My Ghosts’ are available via the following link.

Silverstein Announces Misery Made Me Deluxe & Release New Track, ‘Poison Pill’

Acclaimed Canadian rock band Silverstein are thrilled to announce Misery Made Me Deluxe, an extended release of their critically acclaimed 2022 album. Misery Made Me Deluxe features new versions of songs from the original record as well as new music, including the newly released “Poison Pill”.

“Almost a year later, it’s super exciting to celebrate my favorite album we’ve ever made with some extra songs and alternate versions,” shares front man Shane Told. “‘Poison Pill’ was one of my favorite songs from the Misery Made Me sessions, but I wasn’t sure it completely fit in with the rest of the album. But, it was so catchy, and had so many cool tones and textures we wanted to save it for this moment and really show a different emotion and feel from the rest of the album. The song inspired us to throwback to some of the music videos we grew up with, and it’s one of the most fun videos we’ve ever done. I think it captures the feel of the music perfectly.“

Misery Made Me Deluxe is set to be released on 7^th April via UNFD. The album is available for pre-save now and fans can also pre-order physical bundles, including an exclusive collaboration with lifestyle brand The Pretty Cult. The two have teamed up to create a custom – and authentic – Silverstein tarot card deck, special tarot card-themed merch, a custom candle, and altar cloth.

The Pretty Cult owner / founder Arielle Salsa shares: “I’m so excited for this opportunity to team up with Silverstein on this collection. I met Silverstein at their Misery Made Me album pop-up last May and saw they had tarot-inspired art for some of their merch. After connecting with them, it was clear that The Pretty Cult was the perfect fit to expand the concept as my brand revolves around tarot, the occult, and the practice of witchcraft. I thought we could expand on the idea by creating a collection complete with a tarot deck, guidebook, altar cloth and two unique Silverstein x The Pretty Cult tarot items. When creating this tarot deck and guidebook, I wanted to make sure it was as authentic as possible, as I am a practicing witch myself. I wanted to create a deck that was as inclusive to the avid tarot user as it was to a beginner.

As Silverstein is a band that are self-managed and unafraid to constantly push boundaries and grow over their 20+ career, it was a nice fit with the practice of tarot as it’s less about a higher power and more about being your own master and creating your own path.”

Check out the Cover Art, Tracklisting and Pre-order options below for ‘Misery Made Me’ deluxe.

1. Our Song

2. Die Alone

3. Ultraviolet

4. Cold Blood

5. It’s Over

6. The Altar/Mary

7. Slow Motion

8. Don’t Wait Up

9. Bankrupt

10. Live Like This

11. Misery

12. Poison Pill

13. Stitches

14. Mary (Orchestral)

15. Don’t Wait Up (Acoustic)

16. Poison Pill (Acoustic)

17. Bankrupt (Live in Toronto)

18. It’s Over (Live in Toronto)

Eloah Release New Record, ‘Proud To Love You’

Four Piece Eloaћ have released their new record, ‘Proud To Love You’.

The band whom formed in 1993 is the bands latest release after their trilogy of ‘The Mondestein Chronicles’ from 2019-2022.

Elmar “As I have mentioned frequently in interviews, we are not a “soft rock / ballad” band per se. However, romantic love has been, is – and probably will continue to be a very important source of inspiration for me. I am a (helpless?) romantic, and I experience this emotion (which is actually more an umbrella term for a number of different emotions for me) quite strongly. So, I decided to put together an album on that topic choosing from a number of love songs that I had written over the years.

Now, usually love songs tend to be more on the sad side – because when you are happy in love, you enjoy it – why should you write a song about it? But I wanted to do something different: I wanted to create an album about love that was positive without becoming superficial or tacky. I think this is possible because of a number of reasons: First, sometimes the happiness can be the prevailing feeling in an actually bad situation – this is what the song “Proud to Love You” is about – and then what you get is a positive, hopeful song.

Then there is love that you experience to be so fulfilling that next to this fulfilment there is still some “excess” emotion asking you to be cast into song – this is what “My Heart Shall Be Your Fire”, “You Are A Diamond”, “Wonderful Beautiful” and “A Winter’s Tale” are about. Then, of course, there is the (probably) most famous type of love song where you are longing for and dreaming about someone. This can be either purely joyful as in “The Purest You” and “Caterpillar”, or a bit painful as in “Child Within” and “Tuesday Morning”.

Since emotional pain and despair normally accompany romantic love at some point, I chose to put two songs about these emotions with quite self-explanatory titles on the album as well (“How Could I Ever Have Hurt You” and “Why Can’t I Forget You”). Although these songs are about painful emotions, they are clearly a minority. Finally, there is a song I wrote for one of my sons, another kind of love thus, who provided me with most of the lyrics (“King of Winters”, he was about five years old then), and two songs that take the whole topic less seriously, more tongue-in-cheek (“Sugar Refinery” and “Time to Say Goodbye”) to end the album on a both positive and light note.”

Check out ‘Proud To Love You’ below.

Heart Attack Man Announces New Record, ‘Freak Of Nature’

Heart Attack Man have announced the brand new album ‘Freak Of Nature’ due out late spring as a self-release. The record is preceded by the title track single ‘Freak Of Nature’ as the band explains:

“Hello everyone, it’s me Heart Attack Man. Whom up freaking they nature? Haters will say it’s fake but we’re releasing our new album Freak Of Nature on May 26^th. We’ve got a music video for the title track too – you can check that out at 7pm here:
Anyway, here’s more about the new song from our overlord and saviour Eric Egan:

“‘Freak Of Nature’ is the most solidified Heart Attack Man song we’ve written to date. It cranks it all up to eleven and condenses everything we’ve done into the most potent version of our sound in the form of a true weirdo anthem. Lyrically, I really wanted to zero in on embracing feelings of abnormality and a lifelong sense of being out of place. I’ve always felt a sense of anxiety like I’m about to get yelled at or arrested, and this song is that sentiment flipped into a celebration.”

Check out the single, ‘Freak Of Nature’ below.

Check out the Cover Art, Tracklisting and Pre-order options for the upcoming record below.

1. Practiced In the Mirror
2. Freak Of Nature
3. Like A Kennedy
4. Late To The Orgy
5. Stick Up
6. God Called Off Today
7. C4
8. 9 On Your Bedside
9. Clown School
10. See You On The Other Side

Pre-orders for ‘Freak Of Nature’ are available via the following link.

Alt. Announce New Record, ‘Abeyance’

ABEYANCE: a state of temporary disuse or inactivity. More accurately, the polar opposite to Adelaide rockers alt.’s modus operandi, emerging from a turbulent few years armed with rejuvenated focus and ferocity, as well as their debut full-length album ABEYANCE ready to stupefy the senses and catapult one of the city of churches’ brightest stars further into the spotlight.

Due out on Friday 16 June via Resist Records, ABEYANCE will feature the group’s recent singles THE GREAT DEPRESSION and WRAITH, as well as a brand new track dropping today to accompany alt.‘s album announcement: enter A.D.D, a futuristic and, at times, industrial wormhole that flits between crystalline calm and stadium-ready, scathing arrangements.

“We didn’t really know what Abeyance was going to sound like initially,” vocalist Dan Richards reveals of the album’s early days. “The first two songs that we had for ABEYANCE were polar opposites from each other, they were WRAITH and BETTER OFF LEAVING, the former being pretty much the first proper track and the latter being the last song on the album. We started off trying to fill in the gaps between those at first, but a few songs after that we really found what we wanted the sound to be – and it all really started with A.D.D, that was the first song we wrote that we were like: ‘Yep, this is the sound of ABEYANCE!’”.

Check out the video for ‘A.D.D’ below.

Therapy? Announce New Record, ‘Hard Cold Fire’

Northern Irish rock outfit, THERAPY? have announced their colossal new studio album ‘Hard Cold Fire’, a spiralling, hypnotic melange of grunge-rock and towering melody that sees the trio steadfast and reinvigorated. ‘Hard Cold Fire’ is set for release 5th May 2023 via Marshall Records.

Accompanying the announcement, the band also shares their first offering in the form the riotous new single ‘Joy,’ and details on a run of intimate UK in-store dates coinciding with the album’s release.

As Therapy?’s fourth decade finally gets underway in earnest, sixteenth album ‘Hard Cold Fire’, written and pre-produced during an unprecedented time for music, is hefty, compact, and accessible, a distillation of everything that has made them what they are – hewn from County Antrim basalt, still possessed of their stoicism, but casting a renewed focus on catharsis and healing.

“One thing we did decide when we were eventually able to rehearse, was that we didn’t want to make a lockdown record,” says vocalist and guitarist Andy Cairns,“because people have been through enough.

“When we began to rehearse the songs, we realised there was an empathetic quality to them. We wanted to make something that was a bit more relatable, and less standoffish and claustrophobic – which we have a history of, and it stands in places – but we wanted to make something more approachable and open.”

“We wanted this album to be one that felt good to play live, almost a release after this period of stasis, but then also not dwelling on the whole situation – we’re moving forward, and we wanted that energy to be there,” adds bassist Michael McKeegan.

The serrated, chugging riffage, churning low-end and propulsive rhythms that are hallmarks of the band’s sound are all present and correct, but met with a new-found sense of resolution and release, as most readily displayed on the one-two punch of their first single, ‘Joy’.

“Well, ‘Joy’ started with a term from ‘Waiting for Godot’, by Samuel Beckett,” confesses Cairns“this wonderful line: ‘habit is a great deadener’. I just love that word, ‘dead-en-er’. It’s an amazing word. People get themselves into these habits, and the next thing you know, their life is over and they’ve only lived in a very small circle of experience, often through choice, which is scary.”

Check out the Cover Art for ‘Hard Cold Fire’, track listing and the music video for the track, ‘Joy’ below.

1. They Shoot the Terrible Master
2. Woe
3. Joy
4. Bewildered Herd
5. Two Wounded Animals
6. To Disappear
7. Mongrel
8. Poundland of Hope and Glory
9. Ugly
10. Days Kollaps

French Symphonic Prog-Metakl Trio Oïkoumeno Release New Record, ‘Dystopia’

2 years and a half after its debut and self-titled EP, French symphonic prog-metal trio Oïkoumen self-released a first full-length record called ‘Dystopia’ on CD & digital through the main legal platforms.

This concept album is about the anxiety generated by receiving all day long (bad) news from all around the world (from ecological and economic to human issues)

First influenced by big names of the symhonic metal scene such as Epica, Nightwish and Within Temptation, the band released its debut and self-titled EP (2020) with the aim to tell about historical subjects in their works and share epic vibes.

However, with the single “The Green Queen” and then the album ‘Dystopia’ (fall 2022), the band heads towards a more brutal and incisive aesthetic with the harmony and rythmics but still with symphonic vibes thanks to the orchestras.

Check out Merch and Physical editions of the record via the following link.

Band Interview Of The Day – Fake News

If could introduce yourselves for us, who are you?
We are Fake News, a melodic punk rock band from Queensland, Australia.
We are a 5piece band made up of Tim on vocals, Mick on guitar, Darren on 2 nd guitar, Nick on Bass, Nat on drums.
How did you all meet?
The band first formed in late 2017 when Mick put out the word he was looking to start a punk rock band. None of us had ever really met before & I heard about it through a friend. I turned up to the first practice & met Darren there as well. We seemed to instantly click & were pumping out new songs every week. We changed a few drummers & singers along the way. We had been talking to Tim for a while & knew of his band from up the sunshine coast. When it came time to lay down vocals for Everyday Warrior we put it out to him & he jumped on board & smashed it out. Around the same time we were also looking for another drummer & I had known Nat for years through playing gigs in other bands over the years & Tim knew him as well through the sunshine coast connection. We asked him to come play for us & that is how we stay to this day.
How long have you been playing?
We have been Fake news for over 5 years now. 2 ½ with the current lineup. All of us have been playing music for over 20 years through a range of different bands.
What three words would you use to describe the music you play?
Melodic. Punk. Rock.
What are your musical influences?
90’s punk is where it mainly stems from for all of us. Think Pennywise, Strung Out, Bad Religion,
NOFX, Pulley, Lagwagon, Millencolin, Bigwig, Good Riddance, Rise Against. You get the idea.
What’s the weirdest thing you’ve seen during a show?
Marilyn Manson fucked a pigeon on stage at the Big Day Out in 2002. That was pretty weird.
Being away from the stages in the last few years, where was the first place you visited when the restrictions were lifted?
It wasn’t that bad down here. There were still some shows going ahead. Although some of them had to be seated gigs which just doesn’t work for a punk show. For the band we played a great show up at Solbar on the sunny coast once things freed up a bit more. It was good to see crowds out & about again & getting amongst it that’s for sure. For myself personally the first big show I went & saw was probably pennywise last year when they toured. We certainly missed a lot of touring bands in that time but its all coming back now which is good

What’s the one record you own but wouldn’t ever admit to owning?
I can honestly say I don’t think there is 1 that I am ashamed of. I’ve got about 600 albums, pretty much all punk & metal, I would be happy to walk anyone through them all.
What have you been listening in the last few weeks?
Theres a lot of good stuff out lately. One Of Us have a great new album. Loving those guys. They remind me of Propagandhi a bit. Twenty2’s latest album is killer as well. Sic Waiting have been
getting a good run lately too. Mix that all in with the usual punk rock diet I’m on & it’s a great mix.
Are there any releases you have planned in the near future?
We have our new EP “Take Me Away” being released on March 16 everywhere on all platforms. We have already released a couple of singles from this EP being “Nothing Town” & “Rise & Fall”. There is a film clip out for Rise & fall as well which is good for a laugh. After that we are getting back in the studio to record our next single we aim to release later this year.

Check out Fake News via:

Psychotic Apes Release New Music Video For ‘Stab’

“A New Lifetime” is the second studio album by the band Psychotic Apes. The album features the songs from the “Lifetime” EP, remixed and remastered, and four new tracks. The album was preceded by the singles “Under the Dusk” and “Stab”, each accompanied by a music video directed by Thales Victor and Ayrthon Medeiros, respectively. The material has just been released by the Latin American label Electric Funeral Records.

“Under the Dusk” brings a sound between grunge and hard rock, very characteristic of the band. The lyrics deal with dreams, redemption and the inevitable encounter with the beast that exists within us. “Stab” is certainly one of the band’s most direct and heaviest songs, with metal influences being more present. The lyrics are a catharsis of symbolic brutality against the tyranny that plagues the present day.

In addition to them, the disc also features a hard rock version of “Lovely Dirty Words” (recorded on the first album in acoustic format), “Foot Wound”, “Lifetime”, “Lighthouse”, “The Day When the Beast Returned” and “Modern Primate”.

Check out the video for ‘Stab’ below and stream the record, ‘A New Lifetime’ via the following link.

Crown The Empire Announce New Record & Single, ‘Dogma’

Post-metalcore quartet, Crown The Empire have announced their fifth studio album DOGMA, set to be released 28th April via Rise Records.

DOGMA, produced and mixed by Zach Jones (Fever 333, Poorstacy, Scene Queen, Nova Twins), is a diverse album fueled by angst, existential identity, isolation, and determination. Over the last three years, the band took time to reflect on personal and collective priorities. This introspection is reflected lyrically in DOGMA. “The lyrics are less wordy and lofty. It’s more honest and direct,” shares vocalist Andy Leo who offers a candid perspective on paranormal encounters, manic dreams, and the depths of quarantine.

“We brought back the classic elements of Crown without taking anything away from what we’ve done more recently,” shares longtime bassist and screamer Hayden Tree on the band’s new era. “The high-energy, fast-paced, hard-hitting riffs, with the band’s more melodic side, mashed together into an updated sound.”

Alongside the announcement, the band offers another glimpse at their forthcoming record with the title track, “DOGMA.”

In addition, check out the Cover Art, Tracklisting and Pre-order options below.

1. DOGMA

2. Black Sheep

3. Modified

4. Paranoid

5. In Another Life (feat. Courtney LaPlante)

6. Superstar (feat. Remington Leith)

7. Dancing with the Dead

8. Immortalize

9. Someone Else

10. Labyrinth

Pre-orders for DOGMA are available via the following link.