Unknown Pleasures · 23.04.2026
Yes, I have a weakness for that kind of female voice that sounds like witches' spells, both seductive and menacing, in a song made incredibly catchy by its poppy instrumentation. A.A. Williams' voice practically begs for a collaboration with the Sisters of Mercy or Fields of the Nephilim, if those bands were seriously interested in new music. The song "Poison" is far from being mere background music, and far from being just pop; its lightness propels it into a realm where there are no...
Unknown Pleasures · 30.01.2026
Every now and then, musical projects land in my inbox that I, as a rock 'n' roller, should really delete because they're simply not rock 'n' roll. But what they are—and this is where they share the similarity with rock 'n' roll—is emotional. It clicks like the first time I heard "Ace of Spades" in November 1980, even though it isn't "Ace of Spades." Actually, for me, "Ace of Spades" is synonymous with the perfect song that every band has. Really good bands have several "Ace of Spades" in...
Heavystoned Albums · 18.12.2025
These days I switched from Safari to Brave and get ad-free music on YouTube. And also such impressive music from Obsidian Sands from Edinburgh. A lot fits into my rather extreme patterns of music; In the doomy and heavier passages it sounds very much like Morne, only to fly over the ruins of the previous soundscape with an almost jazzy lightness in the next moment. The opener "Deep Hollow Country" feels more like a longer version of Karma to Burn compared to the following songs. However, it...
Daily Peaks · 06.12.2025
At first, I was curious because I wasn't familiar with SYBERIA from Barcelona. The press release linked to a YouTube video for their new song "llampecs d’oblit d’uns records en vida," (flashes of oblivion of memories in life) so I clicked on it and was greeted by a scene I know well from our travels through Catalonia: Cercs on the Llobregat River, the Via Verde road running alongside the river, and the former Cercs power plant. The video's narrative takes us through the Llobregat Valley,...
Unknown Pleasures · 19.10.2025
After receiving the promotion for this album, I had to promise Luca I wouldn't write a review until around October 17th. It took me several times to place this band; somehow, I'd heard this sound and the extremely understated male vocals before. Anathema came to mind, around the "The Optimist," time. But Karma Voyage clearly have a grander plan, both in their composition and in the order of the songs. Everything the band presented in the preceding tracks—post-rock, ambient, experimental, with...
Concerts & Tours · 03.08.2025
We actually meet always a bunch of friends and mates when we go to a concert in our beloved Backstage. We actually also know the bands and their members when we go to a concert. So we actually are at least 60% into social things before, during and after a concert. This time we met none of our friends and we were full into the wide spread musical diversity which offered us three fantastic bands on a rainy Sunday evening.
Daily Peaks · 27.02.2025
When a band manages to express great emotions with few chords, and when a band manages to switch from progressive and jazzy start to an epic song, and only two minutes have passed, then we know that a top-class album is coming our way in April. The seven-minute appetizer "The Third Sleep" is a compact mixtape whose vocals swing back and forth between Marko Saaresto from "Poets of the Fall" and Feargal Sharkey and which ends with a nearly three-minute instrumental part that would be just as...
Unknown Pleasures · 06.02.2025
We Germans now have a relatively large and diverse underground scene encompassing numerous musical genres. And I'm always amazed at who starts extremely interesting projects somewhere in the German provinces. This is what's happening with the duo "Sounds of New Soma" from Krefeld, which one would normally associate with the soccer club KFC Bayer Uerdingen. The two sound wizards Alexander Djelassi and Dirk Raupach have released numerous albums since 2013, and I discovered their project through a...
Unknown Pleasures · 30.01.2025
Berlin is a country for itself in Germany. 80 millions of us hate Berlin because it´s the only capital in Europe that is financed by the rest of the country. Germany is affording Berlin. Few people with a more open mind are proud on every bands and artists who came out from Berlin, started with Bowie, Iggy Pop, Einstürzende Neubauten, Techno or Rammstein. Brueder Selke & Midori Hirano has a huge potential to set art into music, no matter if it´s movie ore paintings or even sculptures. A...
Daily Peaks · 28.10.2024
I was already stoked by their first single "End of the World" which was released around August 2024. And after receiving other parts of the puzzle, "The Spiral" finally could be listen in its entirety. What was already apparent back in August is now apparent as a whole; the EP is a coherent acoustic concept album. While the opener "In the Beginning" is a straight and pleasant semi-acoustic song with a huge epic dimension, which is ideal for setting equally epic landscapes to music. This song...