With Closed City out soon, Michael Cloud Duguay unpacks the three influences behind their low-brass-laced blend of avant-metal, drone, and orchestral folk world-building.

‘Is anybody’, I ask, ‘going to do a STRANGEFORMS 2026 preview’? ‘That’ll be you, then’ comes the reply. Oh. Well, I DID ask.

With Blood & Honey out now, Summer of Hate unpack the 3 influences behind their lush, noise-drenched take on global shoegaze and post-punk.

Trip-tastic Radio-length single from the loudest space-rockers in the universe and some intergalactic cephalopods. Taken from forthcoming LP Beyond The Beyond via Heavy Psych Sounds.

With Super Sonic Rock Saga landing today, Sick Shooters’ Laurens den Haan breaks down the key influences behind the band’s bass-less, hook-loaded garage punk attack.

The Temple of the King isn’t just an incredible box set, it’s a journey to the myths and wonders of how this band were revolutionary, amazing, and having the balls to bring their story-telling arrangements to fans in its true metallic foundation.

Built upon looping, intertwining rhythms and heavily processed instruments and samples, ‘Luxury’ distils the band’s unmistakable sonic identity into one focused strike. It’s a precise yet overwhelming construction – mechanical, hypnotic, and abrasive – and a perfect example of what we’ve come to expect from the proprietors of the “total harmful sound.”

After so many iterations of heavy, desert-inspired doom rock over past decades, it seems the essence of purely driving riffs, earworm harmonies and strong songwriting that defined a genre has been forsaken. Bronco Forte are a return to the stark blast that made bands like Kyuss, Alice In Chains and Soundgarden legends. 

Bursting onto the European scene with their debut Panorama EP in 2022, French instrumental quintet Hanry quickly established themselves as something altogether different; fusing soaring post-rock with acoustic warmth and the fragile intimacy of ambient electronica.

This is Hawkwind at the peak of the beginning in the 1970s showing how much this band were ready for lift-off and preparing to hurl through the cosmos 56 years later.

The power of those three individuals, it is one of those albums that stays with you, becoming the soundtrack of your life, and is the masterpiece of all of the electronic sound Tangerine Dream has given to us.

Haunted Lives provides the first retrospective for enigmatic Scottish artist Grey Malkin – a “gathering of works” from 2009–2025.

Montreal-based quartet Bellbird play modern jazz, incorporating stylistic influences including atonal counterpoint, rock grooves, folk melodies, Minimalism, and a reigning (post)punk spirit.

A slow, surreal descent through emptiness and decay. Built on suffocating tension and bleak atmospheres, the song evokes a world where life has become mechanical – a theatre of dead marionettes staring with hollow eyes. . .  a reflection on numbness, loss, and the quiet horror of simply existing.

This Lonesome Paradise Unveils Death Motels: A Gothic Desert Odyssey of music and cinema.

The Scars is a new musical collaboration between Swedish musicians Daniel Badeie and Martin Sandström, and they recently released their debut single Home. Found out mroe about their main musical influences.

Fresh from their successful vinyl release, Hollow Cells, in the summer, February sees Belonging teaming up with fellow Portlanders, Inny, for a split EP entitled The Dog. Today we premiere the title track.

London-based metal act Human Crushing Machine, the solo project of multi-instrumentalist Nick Schlesinger, released their debut single ‘Tunnel Vision’ last month. We asked Nick about his main musical influences.

All in all, it is great to see these two Crimson albums come back with vengeance, and come back with more fury and more vibrant imaginations to see what other adventures will lay ahead in the Crimson catalog in 2026.

At last, a brand new album from the legendary The Heads. yourprettyplaceisgoingtohell is their first new material for 20 years. It will be released almost 30 years on from their seminal debut Relaxing With, this will be their fifth studio album proper.

Journey to the Centre of the Eye and A Tab in the Ocean are worth exploring if you’re stepping in to the band’s music for the first time.