SAINT SENARA – I put a spell on you
The veil between worlds thins, and Saint Senara return to haunt your speakers with their bewitching take on Screamin’ Jay Hawkins’ I Put a Spell on You. Conjured and self-produced by Andrew Bate—keeper of the Gretsch and high priest of melody—this version pulses with dark allure. Gone is the ragtime swagger; in its place, a shadowed heartbeat that flirts with Nina Simone’s sultry despair, cloaked in the threads of despair.
Chloe Victoria’s voice is the incantation itself—velvet smoke, both dagger and dream. Each release deepens her mystique, marking her as one of the defining sirens of the modern alternative underworld. Live, Saint Senara are pure enchantment: part séance, part fevered dream. They draw you in, leave you trembling, and whisper promises you’ll pretend you didn’t hear.
So when midnight strikes and the vampires stir, light a candle, pour something crimson, and let this slow-burning spell wrap itself around you. Just remember—once you let them in, they never truly leave.
Available just in time for Halloween. 4/5
IRON MIND – Test of the Iron Mind
We were teased to this return of Iron Mind with the magnificently furious ‘Solitary Realm’ and this DOES NOT disappoint! These Aussie hardcore punks have been tearing up the world since 2006 creating some of the most relevant and honest music that you’re ever likely to hear. Since their conception, they have many imitators, but few equals in the world of sweat, blood and studs. Welcome back! ‘More pain’ kicks things off splendidly with a two minutes of vitriolic fury.
Flatspot records have pulled off another coup in securing the signature of these fine metal specimens (just as Scowl seem to have flown the nest). The album mixes Discharge rage with Metallica melody and scream-out-loud punk to glorious effect like tossing the best parts of everything dark and furious into a blender and adding a few screaming fiery devils just in case the blend wasn’t sinister enough. ‘How you get down’, ‘Terrified’ and ‘Dog will hunt’ scream by in flash before unleashing the fantastic ‘No fate’ with its sneering punk rock cocksure arrogance. Heavy, heavy shit indeed!
The titular ‘Test of…’ is up next and is simply glorious in its rage infected ferocity. Lyrically its en point ‘It′s always the blind who lead the blind. Too many brothers are left behind. Hell has arrived and no one gets out alive’. This’ll be screamed in every mosh put all over the world in the coming months.
‘Paid in full’ and ‘Eye to eye’ give way to a Sabbath-esque riffing with the magnificent ‘The Crucible” before we’re back to the ‘Solitary realm.’
If you buy one hardcore punk album (excepting the Life’s Question’s EP), buy this. It’s energy is addictive, uplifting and personal. You will want to party hard after listening to this and there’e no other better recommendation than that. Turn this up until your fucking ears bleed!
5/5
LYDIA REDDY – Turn This Town Around
If, in an alternate universe, Tom Grennan woke up tomorrow morning lying in a deep quilt of pink feathers and fluffy pillows and fidgeting around to (surprisingly) feel his new female body beneath the sheets, then Lydia Reddy might just be that body. This is full on power pop glory from beginning to end – laced with catchy lyrics, bounce-a-long choruses and an uplifting and ‘fun’ vibe throughout its meagre two and half minutes. (Remember when music was fun?) Reddy’s voice is a fusion of pop princess and dnb diva with a maturity way beyond her years and this Lancashire lass is destined for British festival stages everywhere. She’s summer with blue skies and candyfloss. She’s escapism with a hint of reality. She’s just gonna be massive!
4/5
RUFUS SIMS x ILL CITY – Rucker
Rufus Sims returns with another Hip Hop banger straight from the Dre stable of hard knocks. This is accomplished, polished stuff the likes of which float on the air in the ‘hood on a summer’s day while the boys get high and the girls flick their heads in that ‘what the fuck you doing boy?’ kinda way. ‘So simple’ drops in next with a sultry backing vocal floating on a gossamer cloud as our boy (ably assisted by Chris Crack) hits with a beat so urgent that it drags you along by the balls and doesn’t let you go for five blocks until dropping you off in a heap on Maple and Vine. Rufus has raised his game. You need to pay attention! ‘Fill in the blank’ featuring Dialect MC and IAMGAWD concludes this fantastic three tracker and is destined to shoot our boi to the sky. This is music from the streets for the kids on the street. No frills, no fancy jacket, just honest, well produced hip hop of the highest quality. Go buy it now!
5/5
CIRCLE RED – One Way
You never quite know what to expect from a Circle Red track. One minute they’re banging out neuro DNB, the next sultry euro pop. Eclectic, yes, but some people may find their mix of soundscapes a little confusing. This, however, is straight up rap jungle banger and punches in at just under two and half minutes. Urban rap vocals hover over a shimmering snare and reese bass that radiates poor adrenaline. This is probably where they should focus their attention and stay clear of the sickly sweet liquid of more recent tracks. The boys are well and truly back in town!
4/5
JIVEBOMB – Ethereal
With an average track length of one minute, twenty seconds, Jivebomb don’t hang around in delivering their aural onslaught on your senses. Rising out of Baltimore’s groundbreaking hardcore scene in 2021, JIVEBOMB’S ruthless blend of hardcore punk and intense live shows quickly separated them from the pack. They have quickly become one of Flatspot Records killer artists – always reliable, always en point and always in demand. They take their riffage seriously and they are a sonic force to be reckoned with. If you took Discharge, Napalm Death and the Dead Kennedys and tossed them into a blender with some rat spleen, a shit load of toxins and three litres of neat vodka, you’d get something like Jivebomb – incendiary, urgent and real.
The ten tracks here literally scream by with all the finesse of a buffalo anally raping a butterfly, they are that penetrative, that hard and that surreal. From opening track The Impact through to Disfigured Identify, this album oozes pure class, titanic levels of testosterone and is filled with brain pounding melodies of the highest order. Make ‘The Wise Choice’ and buy this motherfuckers!
5/5
AC13 – Blood Moon
Blood Moon starts off like a Delta Heavy/Wilkinson/Sub Focus affair – all so familiar, so safe, but quickly (and thankfully) transcends into something a little more urgent and original by dropping in a jungle vocal and some pumping reese bass riffage. We’re quickly carried away to the back streets of London on a smoke filled summer’s night where anything can, and will, happen in the seedy backstreets of Soho. Slasher McFee is hanging out on the corner pumping his chest out and combing his slicked back hair. He watches you malignantly, waiting for you to pass and then pounces as he sees your teary, frightened eyes and you are no more. Boombastic!
4/5
BLACK SUN EMPIRE x MAKSIM MC x DISPHONIA – Walk The Line/Mysterion
The Eatbrain masters are back with a distinctly latter day Chase and Status kinda vibe with a menacing vocal, snapping snares and dirty, dirty bass. Of course, they take it to their own world full of demonic spirits and satanic sprites that will eat your soul rather than look at you, but what were you expecting? There’s no selling out for these guys, they mean it man! They will NEVER let you down, and over the course of these four minutes they absolutely do not. Mysterion is a delicious slab of their trademark bouncing neuro dnb that features the requisite pounding bass, multiple rises and falls replete with risers and downlifters aplenty. Like a good cold lager on a hot sunny day. Reassuringly expensive!
4/6
SCOWL – Are we all angels
This Santa Cruz four piece have smashed their way onto the hardcore punk scene with their excellent releases on Flatspot Records since 2021’s How Flowers Grow. Since then they have honed their craft to almost perfection. They’re not afraid to experiment and this collection of eleven songs runs through a veritable gamete of punk musings that encompass everything from the Ramones to Rancid. From The Dead Kennedys to, er, Miley Cyrus.
Vocalist Kat Moss plays psycho hardcore queen spitting venom one minute and transcends into some of the most haunting vocal deliveries more akin to Belly and a number of other 90’s noodling indie bands. The effect is dramatic on ‘Special’ and ‘B.A.B.E.’ which kick off this album in fine fettle. ‘Fantasy’ follows with a deliciously 90’s fuzzbox driven vibe. Moss questions ‘is there anybody out there’ over a distinctly Hole sounding riff. From here on in it just gets better and better. The frenzied ‘No heaven, not hell’ tears along at breakneck speed with more pop sensibilities that search and soar into the wide blue yonder. Mesmeric stuff.
‘Fleshed out’ plunders more classic punk rock riffage and is layered with a delicious vocal borrowed from L7. ‘Let you down’ certainly does not before the band return to familiar territory with ‘Cellophane’. ‘Suffer the fool’ is American bubblegum punk rock the likes of which Beavis and Butthead would snigger and headband to in front of their TV set all those years ago. ‘Haunted’ chugs along breathlessly before exploding into another masterpiece of modern punk rock. The self titled track closes with a Muse-esque baseline before exploding into a cacophony of sound, noise and distorted guitars in the most glorious way.
They’re on tour for what looks like the whole year. They’re gonna be massive. Get on the ride now. This will leave your wonderfully breathless.
4/5
CREATURES – Decriminalisation/Sweet and Gentle
Summer is approaching and the ne’er-do-wells are planning to take over the raves and tear up the dance floor with a regular flow of heaters that you’ll be rinsing through your speakers until he early, sultry hours. Creatures hit you with a couple of gentle rollers with pulsing bass lines, gentle snares and the requisite number of war horns to remind you that they mean it man. This is off your tits on acid, swaying in the breeze, smiling at anyone and everyone in a deep transcendental state that’ll carry you through the weekend and back to the office desk on Monday. Sweet and Gentle is a counter weight with a soothing male vocal that holds your hand and guides you to inner peace. This is lit man, like well lit!
4/5
Dinosaur Pile-Up -My Way
Dinosaur Pile-Up are an English alternative rock band who formed in late 2007. Hailing from Leeds, West Yorkshire their current members are lead singer and guitarist Matt Bigland, drummer Mike Sheils and bassist Johnny Seymour. They wear their 90’s grunge influences tattooed on every arm and consistently churn out rock stompers of the highest order. My Way has (thankfully) nothin to do with Frank Sinatra, Limp Bizkit or any other droning wannabes. This is fresh, urgent and fuzz-filled mayhem with a catchy sing-a-long chorus and everything else required to catapult them to the upper echelons of the indie world. If you like your all male bands dressed in denim, plaid shirts and slightly unwashed, then this is for you. They hit the tour circuit in the UK again in the Autumn, but, until then, this’ll do nicely!
4/5
GREEN DAY – Smash It Like Belushi
Green Day have obviously been scratching their heads and thinking about the days when they ruled the punk pop world and everything in life was well ‘dandy’. So, then, this American Idiot lite piece of puerile rock surfaces in a desperate attempt to reclaim their former glories. One hopes its about the excesses of dead man John and not the over-stuffed third degree actor, James. There’s lines about ‘dead men’ and ‘running’ and ‘pockets’ that has been shown together in their usual Mary of the sixth form manner. Disappointing!
2/5
CAUSE OF DEATH – Crack and Roll
Industrial hardcore music has its detractors and (it has to be said) hasn’t done an awful lot for global peace and love. This starts off like Nine Inch Nails doodling around on a Sunday afternoon, but wait for it…at 56 seconds your ears will explode, they will bleed, parts of your brain will seep on the floor and you’ll slip on your own squelching juices. As you fall in slow motion, you desperately try to latch onto any semblance of humanity, but you’re doomed motherfucker! This hardcore carnage will leave wanting to fist the air, fist your own face and scrambling out of the door towards the nearest mosh pit. It’s ferocity is unrelenting, which, I guess, is it’s charm! Just go and check it out….you won’t hear anything like this on the radio this side of an apocalypse. Angerfist eat your heart out!
This is truly Mind Altering Fungus!
4/5
NAKED WITHOUT IT – Girl at the bar
NWI are back with the brand new single ‘Girl At The Bar’ taken from the new EP ‘25-8 Ringlet Curls’ released 25.4.25. This is honest working mens country with heartfelt lyrics and the simple jingly-jangly guitars that we’ve come to expect from Tony and Martin. The lyrics maybe a little cringe-worthy times, but the intent is there. It’s not aimed at 16 year Drill kids, it’s for the older, wiser, still chasing pussy on a Saturday geezers and their girls and you can’t argue with that. One of these band boys plays in the Chesney Hawkes band too!
3/5
