Further refines their attack into a protean pre-teen metal that feels confident in itself and open to all possibilities.

Cherry Pickles invite you in to their wonky hand made universe. It’s an invitation worth accepting.

a weighty chunk of dark and swirling rock, well suited to driving into the long dark night of winter.

There’s plenty of chaos and confusion here still but it might be the brightest and breeziest Shit & Shine have ever sounded and it’s a pretty fine way to be sitting out a lockdown if nothing else.

Soaked in urban claustrophobia and a manic uncertainty Doomswayers is ambitious and accomplished, an imaginative shot in the arm.

garage punk blues in exhilarating two minute buzz saw blasts of jangling anxiety and broken distorto whine.

A pastoral calm beset by aural hallucinations The Walled Garden is a weird and hidden treasure

The energy they radiate is empowerment not grievance, a sense of strength in community. These aren’t protest songs, more songs of identification and celebration, of shared joy and pain.

Crisp and clear but charged with ‘in the moment’ energy, in a certain light it could be their best record.

Fantastic Man is nine chunks of relentless pounding drums, serrated guitar and agitated yelling. It is bracing and delightful.

The title Primal Forms suggests something irreducible, even basic, but this is music as a primordial ooze, fundamental elements stirred into a bubbling soup of possibilities.

The loose song structures are contorted by hyper charged playing, love songs played at full force and high volume to achieve an emotional frenzy.

With the stroke of a Covid-19 pen, Birmingham’s brilliant but lockdowned Supersonic festival became the virtual, Sofasonic. Jared Dix was sitting comfortably and gives us the full DFS. . .

Their knack for effortless melody is undimmed and resistance to its charms proves foolish.

What have we learnt here then? This is a pretty solid remix record… If you’ve had enough baking and jigsaw puzzles, it’s not a bad diversion.

Fresh and alive with ideas Walk It Dry finds Sly & The Family Drone really coming into their own and making their best, most ambitious statement yet.

The Bobby Lees are a very young band from Woodstock NY and they play the garage punk blues with real fire and wild animal energy like they can hardly stop themselves.

A powerhouse African drumming record offset by sci-fi atmospheres and industrial tone blasts.

Gentle but still epic, ‘Stygian Bough – Volume 1’ is not crushing so much as it is meditative. It looks to a path beyond loss, a journey to light and acceptance.

It has been most thoughtfully compiled and programmed so that its strange cargo of rejects contrast and complement one another as part of a remarkable whole. Rare is the compilation that pulls this off so effectively.

An effective blast of muscular, chaotic hardcore dragged through the noise rock mud.