In 2025, Canadian hard rock/metal veteran Ian Blurton released ‘Crimes of The City’, the second album to credit his band Future Now. With nods to Black Sabbath, Blue Oyster Cult and 70s era Judas Priest, the album pitched itself very squarely in the direction of the older melodic metal fan, but with ten solid sounding tracks and no obvious filler, it was the kind of record that proved that old school sounds can still be very effective.
Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews
THE DANIEL JAMES GANG – Ghosts Of The Past EP
Having put Indonesian Junk on hold, Daniel James resurrected his old punk band Chinese Telephones in 2024. At the point where it seemed that might be his main focus for a while, the ever restless musician appeared with a new band The Daniel James Gang at the beginning of 2025. Their debut EP mixed garage rock with power pop and a pinch of proto-punk to deliver something high on energy, and occasionally even bigger on grit. The material didn’t all work to the musicians’ best advantage – ‘Misery’ (written before the Gang were in place) – felt as if James were just marking time, looking for new inspiration, but the title cut ‘Darkness Over This Town’ introduced far more of a power pop influence than James had explored before, and this lean towards broader melodies really helped most of the new material to stand out.
GOAT MAJOR – Death Comes Twice
Goat Major’s debut album (‘Ritual’, released in 2024) was one of the best stoner/doom releases of the year. The still-new Welsh act mixed a classic Sabbath and Kyuss infused heaviness with an occult leaning and a pinch of dark psychedelia to create an album that sounded like something you’d always known, yet still wielded a world of huge sounding doomy metal riffs in such a way that the material still felt genuinely thrilling. Rather wisely, the band have largely chosen to stick to a similar formula for their 2026 follow up, ‘Death Comes Twice’, a collection of intense and heavy bangers that reinforces the idea that Goat Major are one of the UK’s best up-and-coming metal acts at the time of release.
THE SEAN COLEMAN PROJECT – Apropos Of Nothing
‘Apropos of Nothing’, the debut album from the Sean Coleman Project, has been pitched as “a throwback of sorts”, and it isn’t always hard to work out why. Coleman’s music takes in a wealth of classic influences, and his approach to recording – collaborating with as many folks as possible – has their mood of a latter day Santana project, if not the sound. ‘Apropos of Nothing’ is a celebration of old school album making in the truest sense; it isn’t really about the quick hits, or the effectiveness of streaming individual tracks. To get the best out of this record, the listener should sit back, make time, and digest everything as a whole, in the same way vinyl buyers did back in the 70s and 80s.
THE FALL – Post Script
The Cog Sinister label has been responsible for a huge number of Fall products over the decades. The label, founded by Mark E. Smith in 1987, was dissolved a few years later and the name was subsequently adopted by the Voiceprint group in 1997 for the purpose of reissuing various Fall items and sharing official bootlegs. These have ranged from the terrible (‘Live 1977’) to the average (the lop-sided sounding ‘Band On The Wall, 1982’), to the absolutely essential (gigs recorded at Cedar Ballroom, Birmingham in 1980 and Derby Assembly Rooms in 1994).