12/09/2019 – The Black Heart – Camden Town, London (w/Oak)
10/10/2019 – 229 The Venue – London (w/Morag Tong & Gevaudan)

This past year has been an exciting time for the UK-based Doom Metal band. After releasing their debut album, ‘A Crypt In The Stars’ in July 2018, they spent this summer playing Sludgefest in Reading for the first time. Despite their smaller fan base, this band have been gaining lots of recognition amongst the Doom/Stoner scene in the UK. With clear influences from the musics of Sleep and Mastodon, Lowen have woven in their own unique blend of Ancient, Middle Eastern-inspired vocal melodies, with fantastic doses of grunge-y noise.

‘A Crypt In The Stars’, self-released via Bandcamp, is a wonderfully progressive doom record and evokes similar energies to Italian metal band, Messa, who also played The Black Heart in London back in 2017. Heavy, slow and distortion-driven guitars, paired with the spine-chilling melodies and cries from singer, Nina Saeidi, makes this album a truly mystical listen. A track that stands out to me is their final piece, ‘In Perpetual Bloom’, a very standard progressive length of 11 minutes, the listener is guided through lo-fi drones, wonderfully steady and heavy drums, overlapping thick, distorted guitars and bass, and lyrics that haunt – “And so I follow you, my last believer.” The band are relatively small at this point, only having formed in 2017, but they’re proving to be on the rise with their powerful and swirling sound and fans of Doom should be excited about what this band will go on to achieve from now.

The group are yet to post any more dates about gigs for the last few months of 2019, but they have been playing quite regularly this year, so it can be expected that they will add some more shows soon. They update their Facebook page often, so this will be a place to find out about future dates.

However, rather than taking a standard approach to this very over-generated theme of love and breakups, Hackman has used this as a self-exploration into her own sexuality and well-being. With the release of her first single [I’m Not Where You Are] from this album back in April, the songstress said she thinks people will be “shocked by the language I’m using and how direct I’m being about sex and women,” further explaining, “but we hear lyrics in music all the time that are about fucking women and bitches and all this stuff that’s disempowering for the woman and very much objectifying her. So I’m here writing music about fucking, and it’s in a much more unifying and sexy way.”

This approach has come as a surprise to some of her fans and critics, as Marika is most well-known for her softer, more folky way of writing songs. However, it could be argued here that Hackman had been already planning this new emergence of intimate work dating back to her previous body of music in 2017, “I’m Not Your Man”, where she began opening up lyrically about her queer identity for the first time and hinting at her relationship with musician, Amber Bain [The Japanese House].

Reviews from Pitchfork have claimed that this new album has some “dull moments” that “draw some laughs and eye rolls” based on lyrics that are “less cutting” and perhaps immature or cliche. But, this is definitely an album to be appreciated. Exploring vulnerability, female sexuality, politics and identity in a way that isn’t currently being discussed, alongside some really wonderful, mucky pop sonic worlds – Marika Hackman is coming into her own with this exciting record.

“Any Human Friend” can be purchased here.

RB’s first album, self-titled, was released in 2014 and their follow up in 2017, “How Did We Get So Dark?” proved to be successful in the winning of four music awards.

In discussions about the making of a new record this year, Mike told The Courier that “the standard has raised and we hit upon a couple of tunes that were better than anything we’d ever done before.”

Vocalist and Bassist, Mike Kerr, uses a notably unique and interesting set up via various effects pedals as a way of creating a fuzzy and distorted standard guitar sound. He has stated in an interview with Bass Player last year that when he began playing, he “never thought about the guitar” because the sound he got from the bass was already interesting enough and added, “everybody plays guitar, so what’s new about that?”.

The UK Tour consists of only the one Scottish date, however the band haven’t played the island for almost two years and so it will definitely be an exciting show to see. This particularly, as most of their recent shows have been sold out arena venues and so these smaller and more personal set of shows will allow for audiences to experience the band in a new light.

Tickets for this show are still available.

The t-shirt reads, “One T-shirt is the equivalent to 5000 streams on Spotify. 76% of all music in 2019 is streamed and not bought physically or digitally. Band merchandise is the most direct way of supporting an artist.”

The group have made it very clear that this is not a campaign against streaming services, but an attempt to bring to light the effects of these services if people rely solely on them as a way of supporting musicians.

Formed in 2006, the metalcore punk band have released four studio albums, with their most recent, ‘So What?’ in March of this year. The album has been received well on the whole, with positive reviews from Kerrang and Louder Sound, describing it as “more alternative, electronic”. It is clear that the group have taken a different angle in their production with this release than their previous work, “there are plenty of riff heavy body slams, but this is a shinier, polished and melodic finish.” As with most long time rock bands that decide to go down this route, of course the record has face some backlash. Max Morin called it “a transparent attempt at marketability than genuine musical vision.”

On twitter, WSS explained the reasons behind why they have launched this t-shirt and why it is important for this message to be shared further than just their own fanbase. “If bands and artists are to survive and win the battle of art vs money, we need to find new income to keep afloat…this t-shirt isn’t just for our band, it’s for all bands and we want it to become a staple in the positive change needed in the music industry.”

This is about how you can support the music you love.
Not just our band and our music – this is aimed at every working band trying to make music and get it out there. We are launching a free-to-use design to highlight the realities of being a band today.https://t.co/84LyW9LCyZ pic.twitter.com/HEB082D6JX

— WHILE SHE SLEEPS (@whileshesleeps) August 7, 2019

In addition, the 5-piece metal core band have made this t-shirt design available to use for free, so that the message can be heard in further realms of the industry and in popular culture as a whole.

Cardiff – #Rammstein kommt!
Tickets available now: https://t.co/9htrxJe4TA pic.twitter.com/mFD9iPxiEm

— Rammstein (@RSprachrohr) July 31, 2019

Despite forming in 1994, this will be the band’s first ever stadium tour and the band’s line up remains as it was 25 years ago. They have been teasing their European tour via clips on their Facebook page since last year and now on their Youtube channel.

Rammstein are best known for their elaborate and expansive live shows, with lead singer Till Lindemann enduring life-long burns after parts of the stage and various props fell on the band during a show, back in 1996.

This hasn’t stopped the six-piece metal group from planning their biggest and most hideously beautiful tour to date, and video clips show fiery angel wings, cauldrons and various members of the group dressed as frenzied psychopaths. It has been described as a “hellish inferno cathedral” and their fans are absolutely ready for it. The band took a hiatus in 2013 and returned for a summer festival tour in 2016, but since then, have been focused on their most recent album, released in May of this year.

Tickets are still available to purchase for all UK dates* and it has been reported that they will be performing well-known hits, such as “Du Hast” and “Sonne”, as well as new material from their most recent album, “Untitled”. The band still have tour dates to unleash on fans and it can be assumed that they will announce these in the coming weeks, as well as more teasers. Fans should be prepared to buckle up and get ready for a most epic performance.

UK DATES ARE:

14/06/2019 – Principality Stadium – Cardiff
17/06 – Boucher Road Playing Fields – Belfast
20/06 – Ricoh Arena – Coventry