Throughout 2025, Brighton’s The Rockerati propped up the British rock underground with a couple of enjoyable singles and an EP, all of which captured a pleasingly natural, analogue inspired sound. Favouring energy over originality, volume over finesse, the band’s finest tracks played with a nostalgic bent, but at the same time, never showed The Rockerati’s approach to be in any way tired.
Category Archives: Album & EP Reviews
ASYLUM ROAD – Cerca Trova EP
Blending elements of groove metal and melodic hardcore, with influences from Machine Head and Sevendust, Irish band Asylum Road delivered some absolutely massive riffs on their brilliant EP ‘The Fear’ in 2024. A couple of the vocals might have split opinion with their genuinely abrasive approach, but from a musical standpoint – and looking at the material in terms of tightly played, classic metal, without sounding at all dated – the release was first rate.
Listen: Ocean Planet share audio for non-album track ‘Siege Machine’
Towards the end of 2025, metalcore band Ocean Planet shared a brilliantly heavy track ‘Devastate’.By coupling a lot of pneumatic rhythms with a few guitar sounds that leaned further into an old school vibe, the recording took as many cues from the prog metal of bands like Symphony X as the tougher edges of the likes of Killswitch Engage. Whatever label you’d care to pin on their work, however, the recording made it very clear that Ocean Planet meant business, and would be an act to watch out for in 2026.
JOHN MELLENCAMP – Johnny Cougar: The Mainman Recordings 1976-1977
As far as many people in the UK are concerned, John Mellencamp burst onto the music scene in 1982 with his radio hit ‘Jack & Diane’, but by the time that was loved by the masses and its parent album ‘American Fool’ was a success on both sides of the Atlantic, Bloomington’s most famous export had been building a career for several years. Previous albums ‘John Cougar’ (1979) and ‘Nothing Matters & What If It Did’ had seen some success stateside, but Mellencamp’s musical roots actually stretch back even further. In the mid 70s, he signed with the management company Mainman (a company who had David Bowie and Mick Ronson on their books) and recorded three albums’ worth of material in a very short period that, over the years, has been somewhat overlooked.
NIGHT THIEVES – Metaxis
Two years on from their acclaimed EP release ‘Polarity’, Night Thieves build upon an already solid alt-metal sound when parts of their eagerly awaited full length ‘Metaxis’ take a chunkier turn. The grooves and beat laden melodies that made the EP so appealing are still present, and Jess Moyle’s vocals retain their hugely accessible sound, but the best of this album’s songs present a more confident sounding unit.