Back catalogue: All genres

Review: RECOMMENDED
17 albums in and it feels like Napalm Death are only just hitting their stride. Well, they've been hitting their stride for roughly 17 albums, but while many bands - especially those at the more frenetic and uncompromising end of things - tend to start, err, compromising after four or five long forms, the Birmingham grindcore masters still sound fresh. Albeit fresh but covered in sweat and rage.

Following on from 2020's Throes of Joy in the Jaws of Defeatism, Resentment is a mini-LP that picks up where its predecessor left off. Among the highlights is a fantastic cover of 1980s industrial electronic outfit Slab!, but really it's nigh-on-impossible to pick specifics here - buckle up, turn it up, and let the ferocity wash over you. Suffice to say, keeping this level of intensity without winding up sounding like you're screaming into the abyss isn't easy, and Napalm Death's career should be considered a masterclass.

Review: 2024 saw the return of easily the biggest powerviolence act to ever decimate speakers and human hearing - Nails, who picked up right where they left off with their ferocious fourth full-length Every Bridge Burning, marking their first new album in almost a decade. Despite rave reviews, many of the fanbase argue that its 2016 predecessor You Will Never Be One Of Us is still the band's finest achievement of musical malevolence to date. Their final effort with the original trio line-up of bassist John Gianelli and drummer Taylor Young before both would amicably depart in 2020, these 21 minutes of sonic abrasion (still their longest LP) deliver on everything the Nails ethos stands for - frenetic riffage, crushing breakdowns, hulking grooves and a breakneck pace libel to instil panic attacks, while primary songwriter Todd Jones' nihilistic viewpoint and seemingly anti-everything attitude is barely decipherable through his mouth-full-of-broken-glass vocals. Be warned, however, each and every micro-burst of fury such as the 45-second 'Friend To All' is paid back by the end with the heinously oppressive noise-sludge-doom monolithic closer that is the 8-minute 'They Come Crawling Back'.

Review: Originally released in 1990, Extinction would serve as the sole full-length from New York crust punk pioneers Nausea. While not the first band of misfits to amplify the angst and visceral aggression of hardcore, they are often cited with being integral to the genre's expansion and incorporation of equally heinous sonics from the realms of doom and sludge metal as well as d-beat, with their Discharge influence worn proudly on their tattered sleeves. Equally inspired by the anarcho-punk messaging of Crass, their lyrics urgently represented their views on feminism, anti-racism, anti-war and class conflict, while their apocalyptic world view rivalled that of their peers in Amebix. Delivered with an unmatched vitriol indicative of the time in which they were penned and further bolstered by the now iconically chaotic push-pull of dual vocalists Al Long and Amy Miret, it's bizarre to track the career of drummer Roy Mayorga who would go on to become a mainstay in mainstream metal fulfilling tenure with the likes of Soulfly, Stone Sour, and presently Ministry. Following Svart Records' recent 12" reissue/compilation of the Cybergod and Lie Cycle EPs, the label brings this nihilistic classic home to wax after two decades of absence.

Review: Following their signing to the immensely impressive roster of pop-punk-centric label Hopeless Records, Welsh upstarts (soon to turn megastars) Neck Deep made good on all of the promise of their 2014 debut full-length Wishful Thinking with their breakout sophomore effort Life's Not Out To Get You in 2015. Linking up with A Day To Remember vocalist Jeremy McKinnon, former guitarist-turned-engineer Tom Denney and producer Andrew Wade down in Florida, the guidance and input from more seasoned veterans helped elevate the band's hardcore-adjacent blend of anthemic, saccharine pop-punk to staggering new heights, leading to somewhat of a torch-passing between bands as Neck Deep's stratospheric ascent can likely be drawn back to the success of this second LP. Now, courtesy of their ever-supportive label-home, the album lands back on wax after too long an absence.

Review: Dark Entries are back with another one of their gold standard reissues, this time focussing on the next level synth punk album Music From Hell from LA band Nervous Gender. They formed in 1978 with Phranc, Gerardo Velaquez, Edward Stapleton, and Michael Ochoa all cooking up this weird and wonderful mix of post-punk, minimal synth, and early industrial music. It has been remastered for this album, which is also expanded onto a double LP. The album kicks off with unsettling shockers then goes son to a live performance the band labelled "an electronic bruto-canto dissertation on the banality of spiritual transcendence." It's packed with occult melodies and odd bleeps and whirrs to make for a beguiling and haunting listen.

Review: It has been 26 years since people had their first taste of New Found Glory. Emerging from Coral Springs, Florida, in the height of the pop punk second wave (Stateside at least), back then they were hailed by many as pioneers of a re-energised sound, offering rowdy, speedy, unrelenting and immediately sing-along-worthy anthems by the bucketload, referencing alternative rock and hardcore without putting off anyone eyeing them up for chart targeting marketing campaigns.

Make the Most of It certainly clarifies that praise was not simply the dew-eyed ramblings of people caught in a moment. Having created the blueprint for their sub-genre, here they strip all that away without damaging the emotional quality, offering a rousing and - it has to be said - evocative acoustic record that lays bare their lyrical and instrumental talent.

Review: It's hard to miss the forward motion running through New Pagans' work. The Belfast group have this way of crafting sometimes jagged, sometimes rolling, but always direct and propellant riffs that cut a fine line between a kind of Neo-punk and classic indie rock. Their tracks can simultaneously sound DIY and soaring, big room but intimate, which is no mean feat at all.

Making A Circle of Our Own is a fantastic case in point - packed with energy and ideas, it hits hard. But movement runs through much more than instrumentation and arrangements. As an outfit, they're as concerned with starting conversations about some pretty big issues, for example equality and the perversion or distortion of history, alongside smaller, more personal themes. Relationships, self-identity, and belief. Quite the package, then.

Review: Ahead of their time? Ruined by excess and ego? A difficult act to market? New York Dolls are one of those stories about the fickle nature of industry and listeners, and the risks of hedonism. Emerging from The Big Apple in 1971, the group had a thoroughly modern sound for the time, combining hard and what was then a very fresh glam rock sound with early punk prototypes, years before people would learn what that means. New York Dolls was the spectacular self-titled debut from the band, put out by Mercury in 1973. Although a commercial failure, it's often cited among the greatest rock 'n' roll records of all time, but despite critical success it did little outside the US, where sales weren't great as it was, and the outfit would only last another few years - with various lineup changes - before calling time. This rare release charts what came before all that, including collector's item demos from their time playing as Actress.

Review: According to Venn, The Nightmares' Fire In Heaven is not only the band's followup to 2023's acclaimed debut album, Seance. It's also a record that "delves into the idea of love lost and the enormity of the universe at large... themes range from mythical siren songs to extraterrestrial life via the complexities of true love and an overarching question of your own existence." Hardly small themes, but certainly ones that resonate universally. A meditation, or perhaps more accurately main stage indie rock out, on the strange juxtaposition between the difficulties and problems that come with being a human forced to live on this giant rock, and the enormity of the unknown beyond its stratosphere. Far reaching and unarguably grand in sound, apart from moments such as the gentle piano sonata of 'Winterlude'.

Review: Opting to go out on their own terms, purposefully petulant, endlessly irreverent punk mainstays, NOFX, are set to graciously bow out of the race upon completing next year's tour cycle for their final swan song, the aptly - if rather literally - titled Double Album. Following on from 2021's excellent, 'Single Album', the project marks the return of Bill Stevenson of Descendents and Blasting Room's Jason Livermore on production duties, aiding Fat Mike and co to craft the most dynamic, seasoned, and entertaining material of their 21st century output. Sporting the endlessly playful and brilliantly titled lead single, 'Darby Crashing Your Party', as well as the originally penned for Blink-182 cut, 'Punk Rock Cliche', few artists, let alone those in the punkosphere, manage to stroll to the finish line on their own terms, merit and energy intact, but that's precisely what NOFX have accomplished. With a stacked 2023 promised for the band's final trot around the sun, there couldn't be a more bittersweet time to be a devotee of self-aware, cynical anthems.

Review: Originally released in 1989, Wrong was the fourth full-length from highly influential progressive punk outfit Nomeansno (or NoMeansNo or No Means No) and is often cited as not only their magnum opus, but one of the most quintessential albums of the formative punk scene and its expanded malleability throughout the nineties. Praised for being one of the most technical, progressive and avant-garde group of musicians within punk, Wrong distilled every facet of their maniacal aura; haggard spoken word-esque howlings of depraved, intellectual societal woes, frenetic jazz meanderings with utter disregard for time signatures in place of two-chord stompers, and an overwhelming sense of cathartic menace that would lay major influences at the feet of future noise-rock and post-punk experimentalists. Out of print for quite some time, rest assured this repress will dissipate in quick succession before joining highly inflated flipped copies on Discogs, so mark our words, snatch up a copy of what many deem to be the first ever "jazzcore" release before we've to have this same conversation again in another decade.