Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 30th, 2021. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: April 30, 2021 –
Amy Shark: Cry Forever
Genre: Indie folk
Label: Wonderlick Entertainment
Ashley Monroe: Rosegold
Genre: Pop
Label: Mountainrose Sparrow
Axewitch: Out Of The Ashes Into the Fire
Genre: Heavy Metal
Label: Pure Steel Records
Beachy Head: Beachy Head
Genre: Shoegaze
Label: Graveface Records
Birdy: Young Heart
Genre: Singer Songwriter
Label: Atlantic Records
Bowerbirds: Becalmyounglovers
Genre: Indie Folk
Label: Psychic Hotline
Dawn Richard: Second Line: An Electro Revival
Genre: EDM / Dance
Label: Merge Records
Del Amitri: Fatal Mistakes
Genre: Alternative rock
Label: Cooking Vinyl
Devoured: The Curse of Sabda Palon
Genre: Death metal / Black metal
Label: Sadist Records
Domkraft: Seeds
Genre: Doom / Sludge / Kraut rock
Label: Magnetic Eye
Dropkick Murphies: Turn Up That Dial
Genre: Punk
Label: Self Released
Evile: Hell Unleashed
Genre: Thrash metal
Label: Napalm Records
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By Sowing
Thursday April 22, 2021
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I guess modern problems require modern solutions.
In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, so many bands have struggled to make ends meet. Without the ability to perform live, they’ve turned to platforms like Patreon to build a subscription-based fandom. Another more frequent occurrence is recording and streaming live shows. Even then, without the energy of the crowd, it’s nearly impossible to replicate the level of excitement that folks go into such an experience seeking. It’s not an easy time to be an artist – but in spite of the challenges, most of them are persevering. It’s a testament to the passion and dedication they pour into their work. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.
One band still finding a way is Manchester Orchestra. As one of indie-rock’s more well-known acts, they’ve released five LPs to date including the wildly popular Mean Everything to Nothing and the sleek/grandiose Simple Math – but perhaps none were better than A Black Mile to the Surface, their 2017 emotional magnum opus. Manchester Orchestra Presents: A Black Mile To The Surface (The Concert Film) serves three different purposes. The first is to provide longtime fans with a glimmer of hope during dark times through a live adaptation of Black Mile in its entirety. Secondly, it is to usher out the Black Mile era in a special, memorable way befitting of the four years that fans spent both enjoying it and healing with it. Finally, it teases the release of…
KILL or KEEP Vol.2
Nine Inch Nails – The Fragile
Welcome back to this series, where we take a classic album that everyone knows but not everyone loves, and run it through a set of users with conflicting takes. They will jam the album for public entertainment and post their hot takes for all to see.
The rules are simple: for each track, our valiant competitors must give one of two verdicts: KILL or KEEP. To give things a trademark Sputnikmusic positive spin, each user must KEEP at least two tracks. To keep things alive, they must KILL at least one.
Our competitors today are: MiloRuggles, Pheromone, DivergentThinking, johnnyoftheWell and Nocte.
That’s a lot of bois for one album, but if you’re worried that things were getting cramped, we chose thise one for legroom: our target is Nine Inch Nails’ very famous double-album statement landmark The Fragile. It came out in 1999, which is a long time ago (this year is 2021). Since then, mastermind Trent Reznor has been ripped off by a load of godawful bands and turned his primary career instincts towards OSTs for people with leather sofas. Fascinating stuff! Just what will this megascoop uncover? Let’s delve!
Starting Impressions
Each user, please briefly explain your feelings on the album going in, and what you hope to achieve here? Do you want…
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By Nocte
Tuesday April 20, 2021
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Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 23rd, 2021. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: April 23, 2021 –
Alan Vega: Mutator [Posthumous release]
Genre: Rock
Label: Sacred Bones
Alfa Mist: Bring Backs
Genre: Jazz/Hip Hop
Label: ANTI-
Altarage: Succumb
Genre: Extreme Metal
Label: Season Of Mist
Aphonic Threnody: The All Consuming Void
Genre: Funeral Doom Metal/Death
Label: Transcending Obscurity
Art d’Ecco: In Standard Definition
Genre: Rock
Label: Paper Bag Records
Blackbriar: The Cause Of Shipwreck
Genre: Metal/Gothic
Label: Independent
Bodom After Midnight: Paint The Sky With Blood
Genre: Melodic Death Metal
Label: Napalm Records
Body Void: Bury Me Beneath This Rotting Earth
Genre: Doom/Drone/Punk
Label: Prosthetic Records
Big Brave: Vital
Genre: Experimental
Label: Southern Lord
Cold Cell: The Greater Evil
Genre: Black Metal
Label: Les Acteurs de l’Ombre Productions
Crypts Of Despair: All Light Swallowed
Genre: Death Metal
Label:…
Kompys2000 is a mystery, a connoisseur, a shrewd cookie, and an always-welcome voice of reason.
Welcome to their Digbox!
As is custom for this series, list is, in fact, digs. No real theme or throughline, I don’t have the mental capacity to get cute about it right now. Tried to cover a good variety of sounds and styles so hopefully there’s something here for everyone. Also tried to keep things at least nominally “obscure”, if for no other reason than because I spend quite enough time already writing about music everyone has heard a million times. Here we go!
[“Digbox” – reimagined by SandwichBubble, 2021]
#1: Car Seat Headrest- Hey, Space Cadet (Beast Monster Thing in Space)
At this point, it seems your Dream Ons and November Rains and Champagne Supernovas are destined to become relics of a time when the music industry was willing to pour a lot more money and/or cocaine into guitar music… but that doesn’t mean there’s no one still trying. “Hey, Space Cadet” is a stadium-rock anthem for an era where bands have to record albums in their bedrooms and most of the fans will only ever hear those albums in their bedrooms. It’s a climactic, adrenaline-fueled victory lap squeezed into the confines of a shabby studio apartment, and it is glorious. As it turns out, a songwriter as erudite and discursive as Will Toledo can be…
KILL or KEEP Vol.1
Smashing Pumpkins – Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
Welcome to this series, where we take a classic album that everyone knows but not everyone loves, and run it through a set of users with conflicting takes. They will jam the album for public entertainment and post their hot takes for all to say.
The rules are simple: for each track, our valiant competitors must give one of two verdicts: KILL or KEEP. To give things a trademark Sputnikmusic positive spin, each user must KEEP at least two tracks. To keep things alive, they must KILL at least one.
Our competitors today are: Pheromone, DivergentThinking and johnnyoftheWell. The album is none other than Smashing Pumpkins megaopus ‘90s-affirming double-album Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness. How well does this album hold up? Is it a timeless classic or an overworked sack of hot air? Let’s find out!
Starting Impressions
Each user, please briefly explain your feelings on the album going in, and what you hope to achieve here? Do you want to KILL/KEEP as much as possible? Or is this just about trimming some fat?
Pheromone: Hello fan, I anticipate a more negative vibe than my rating. It’s been years since I’ve craved any Smashing Pumpkins not named “Mayonaise”. I expect to still super love some of the songs but I’d be surprised if out…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 16th, 2021. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: April 16, 2021 –
The Armed: ULTRAPOP
Genre: Punk / Post hardcore
Label: Sargent House
Autogramm: No Rules
Genre: New Wave
Label: Nevado Music
Bewitcher: Cursed Be Thy Kingdom
Genre: Black metal / Heavy metal
Label: Iron Grip Records
Bongzilla: Weedsconsin
Genre: Doom / Sludge
Label: Heavy Psych Sounds Records
Born Ruffians: PULP
Genre: Pop punk
Label: Yep Roc Records
Cannibal Corpse: Violence Unimagined
Genre: Death metal
Label: Metal Blade
Endseeker: Mount Carcass
Genre: Death metal
Label: Metal Blade
Eomac: Cracks
Genre: Electronic / Bass / Techno
Label: Planet Mu
Escape The Fate: Chemical Warfare
Genre: Metalcore
Label: Better Noise Music
Greta Van Fleet: The Battle At Garden’s Gate
Genre: Hard rock
Label: Lava / Republic Records
Hail the Sun: New Age Filth
Genre: Post…
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By Nocte
Monday April 5, 2021
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Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 9th, 2021. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: April 9, 2021 –
Arabrot: Norwegian Gothic
Genre: Alt rock / Grunge / New Wave
Label: Pelagic Records
Balmorhea: The Wind
Genre: Post rock / Modern Classical
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Brockhampton: Roadrunner: New Light New Machine
Genre: Hip Hop
Label: Question Everything / RCA Records
CFCF: Memoryland
Genre: Electronic
Label: Plancha
Cheap Trick: In Another World
Genre: Hard rock
Label: BMG
Devil Sold His Soul: Loss
Genre: Metalcore
Label: Nuclear Blast
Endgame: Surrender
Genre: Electronic
Label: Precious Metals
Flyte: This Is Really Going To Hurt
Genre: Indie Rock
Label: Island Records
Horndal: Lake Drinker
Genre: Death Metal
Label: Prosthetic Records
Kauan: Ice Fleet
Genre: Doom / Progressive Rock
Label: Artoffact Records
London Grammar: Californian Soil
Post-mortem: We Are Chaos
Marilyn Manson’s career has been an eventful one, there’s no denying that, but what I find particularly interesting is how he manages to find reinvention at the most crucial moments – to the point where it’s as if he knows his relevance is on the guillotine. It’s no secret that he’s had a lot of ups and downs in his three decades of making music. The man fluctuates between two personas: a profound prophet, and a lowbrow, brainless jester – admittedly donning the latter more than the former – and I’m convinced he’s completely self-aware of these two personalities. The bit that makes him so fascinating and by association enduring, is that just when you’re about to write him off for good, slipping on the banana peel for the umpteenth time, landing firmly on his face and writhing around on the floor with a pathetic desperation, he somehow manages to bounce back stronger than before. At this point I just account this rare pattern of events to be Manson’s Thing. Seldom do you see an artist rebound like this guy does.
By the turn of the ‘10s, I had at this point long accepted that Marilyn Manson was over the hill – he wrote a timeless and classic trilogy of albums and proceeded those works with a decade of solid-to-average follow-ups for the LOLs. To be honest, this story is an age-old one for a vast majority of bands, but then…
Arab Strap – As Days Get Dark
Rarely in Sput’s illustrious history has the Album of the Month been this closely contested. While some recent favourites such as Krallice’s supposedly “listenable” Demonic Wealth were blown aside with the weight of a brief fart, albums such as Dvne’s Etemen Ænka stood strong, beat only by the sheer magnitude of quality on this album of the decade contender. Okay…
“Meanwhile, at a bar, a Drunkard muses“ is a Strap song penned on 2003’s A Monday at the Hug & Pint – it’s a cracking song, on one of their best albums, but it’s also a powerfully symbolic title representative of that confessional blend of post-rock and slowcore that is so uniquely theirs. Over the course of their career, frontman Aidan Moffat has mastered the art of such musings, forming a collection of legitimate poetry like a laureate of Sunday’s spent hungover reminiscing of the night before in brief flashes. Tales of lost-love, shags, infidelity, booze, boredom and the mundane beauty of a head in the gutter – at times these are hilarious, at times they’re jarringly honest in recollection. Eighteen years separate As Days Grow Dark from that one, sixteen since the last Arab Strap release. Make no mistake, their return was never a given. It was evident that the duo had grown unsure in their output. Making a step braver than many artists unfortunately take, the duo placed their art on hold, taking…
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By Sowing
Friday April 2, 2021
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Sputnikmusic Staff’s Q1 Playlist 2021
Welcome to the first installment of our 2021 quarterly playlist/mixtape! Feel free to jam the playlist below while reading what our writers had to say about each selection. Tell us what your favorites are in the comments, as well as any new artists you may have discovered here – or, alternatively, tell us what we missed! Thanks for reading/listening.
Revisit our complete 100+ song 2020 staff playlist here!
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Tracklist:
Arab Strap – Sleeper
In over a decade backing and forthing across the Scottish border, I never once had the notoriously grimy pleasure of taking the overnight ‘sleeper’ train, but Arab Strap’s stunning account matches up to every testimony I’ve heard. The restlessness, cheapness and discomfort are all there, but there’s an edge to it, an eeriness drawn out almost to the point of magical realism by some of the most riveting storytelling you’ll hear from anyone this year. Goodness there’s more where that came from on their knockout of a comeback record. — Johnnyofthewell
Big Red Machine – A Crime
The return of indie darling duo Justin Vernon and Aaron Dessner’s Big Red Machine is something to celebrate, with “A Crime” marking their first release since the debut barring
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By Nocte
Friday April 2, 2021
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I want to talk about Isgherurd Morth foremost and specifically. Mostly, the naming of the band, because I’m not a Siberian national, nor am I French. How does a group of musicians dream up a name like this, especially after forming groups like “Stench Price” which would make slightly more sense to those more English only readers?
The more bizarre and weirder the name is, the more true black metal it will be! I’m kidding, of course! My idea was to indicate our origins in the possibly strangest way. Considering the large amount of new and existing black metal bands with names difficult to pronounce, I got an idea to play with the native language and found a solution in the Tatar language. Our native Russian language is replete with many words from Tatar dialects. So, ISGHERURD MORTH pronounces as |<Iz-ge-rur Mort>|.
We, the Siberians are descendants of ancient tribes also in our veins is the blood of Tatar Hordes. So we have the real Tatar name “Iske-ur”, which is the olden name of our hometown – “Krasnoyarsk” and re-arranged in a distinctive way with authentic linguistic hissing consonants. “Morth” is “dead”. Thus, the literal name of the project is “Krasnoyarsk is Dead”. The title of the album – “Hellrduk” means “Hell” with the same twist in Tatar-like pronunciation. Therefore the same vibe connects to the song titles.
Stench Pride is definitely a different animal to Isgherurd Morth. What drove the change from the more grinding ferocity, into the…
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By Nocte
Tuesday March 30, 2021
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First up, what’s the weather like in New Zealand at the moment? You guys had a bit of an earthquake/tsunami incident a couple weeks back, how did you and your fellow Christchurch-ian’s hold up?
The weather is fine, thank you. Christchurch is the most southern large city in New Zealand and subsequently we managed to avoid the tsunami warning that the northern island was given. That said, we are no stranger to earth quakes and tsunami warnings.
Tell us how New Zealanders, particularly the music scene is holding up. The world has seen its share of adversity lately (there’s some virus floating around apparently – it’s been just over a year now) Are live shows coming back? Any talk of touring – maybe an East Coast of Australia “across the ditch” list of dates?
The music scene, and specifically the metal scene, in New Zealand is healthy and thriving. The Pandemic brought a stand still to live music last year, but due to New Zealand’s approach to lockdowns and border security, we currently have no community cases of Covid, and so live shows and festivals can continue without restriction. We feel very fortunate for this and are not taking it for granted, so we are in the process of piecing together our national tour. If the borders open to Australia and beyond, that will be our our focus for touring next year.
We’re a little over a week away from the release of your third album. How has the…
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of April 2nd, 2021. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: April 2, 2021 –
Amulets: Blooming
Genre: Electronic / Experimental
Label: The Flenser
Bryce Dessner, Australian String Quartet, Sydney Dance Company: Impermanence/Disintegration
Genre: Classical/Dance
Label: 37d03d
Cactus: Tightrope
Genre: Jazz/Blues/Rock
Label: Cleopatra Records
Demi Lovato: Dancing with the Devil. . . The Art of Starting Over
Genre: Pop
Label: Island Records
Dry Cleaning: New Long Leg
Genre: Post Punk
Label: 4AD
Du Blonde: Homecoming
Genre: Indie Rock
Label: Independent
Facta: Blush
Genre: Electronic/House
Label: Wisdom Teeth
Flock of Dimes: Head Of Roses
Genre: Indie Pop
Label: Sub Pop Records
Foxes: Friends in the Corner
Genre: Singer/Songwriter
Label: PIAS Recordings
Fuoco Fatuo: Obsidian Katabasis
Genre: Doom Metal
Label: Profound Lore
Here’s a list of major new releases for the week of March 26th, 2021. Please feel free to request reviews for any of the following albums from staff and/or contributors.
– List of Releases: March 26, 2021 –
’68: Give One Take One
Genre: Punk / Noise Rock
Label: Chariot Music/Cooking Vinyl
As Everything Unfolds: Within Each Lies the Other
Genre: Post Hardcore / Alternative Metal
Label: Long Branch
Band Of Spice: By The Corner Of Tomorrow
Genre: Stoner Rock / Heavy Metal
Label: Scarlet Records
Ben Howard: Collections From the Whiteout
Genre: Singer Songwriter
Label: Island
Blindfolded and Led To The Woods: Nightmare Withdrawals
Genre: Technical Death Metal
Label: Earsplit
Carrie Underwood: My Saviour
Genre: Gospel
Label: Capitol Records
Citizen: Life in Your Glass World
Genre: Pop Punk
Label: Run For Cover Records
Clark: Playground In A Lake
Genre: Electronic / Experimental
Label: Warp
Cryptosis: Bionic Swarm
Genre: Thrash Metal
Label: Century Media
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