Premier Jester aren’t afraid to mix genres. On their previous single ‘All I Ever Wanted’, the UK band managed to fuse metalcore riffs with R&B vocal melodies, programmed drum loops and blasts of synth drawing from a dance-oriented sound, and – latterly – some fierce hardcore breakdowns to create a truly intense experience.
Tag Archives: metal
THE REAL GONE SINGLES BAR #129
Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar, the place where we explore some of the more interesting individual tracks that have landed in our inbox over the previous couple of weeks. This selection is potentially amazing, with a track that blends a soul vibe with light psych, a very strong alt-pop number, a genre defying piece from an up and coming singer songwriter, a synth based slice of dream pop – and more besides. As always, we hope you find something new to enjoy.
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HARD TO EXPLAIN – Hell To Pay
Northern Ireland’s Hard To Explain emerged in a post-lockdown world, and before long, began what was to become a run of impressive single releases. ‘Hell To Pay’, the band’s debut album (released at the tail end of 2025) makes good on all of the band’s early promise, sharing a collection of varied and hard edged tracks that showcase strong vocals, thoughful lyrical themes, and – above all – a succession of massive riffs.
STRAENGE – Filthy Microbes
In the middle of the first pandemic lockdown of 2020, Japanese thrashers Straenge released their second demo, the ‘Thrash Medicine’ EP. Its five tracks demonstrated a brilliant, very technical approach to heaviness, often combining the speed of ‘Seasons In The Abyss’ era Slayer with the anger of early Kreator. On a musical level, the band sounded great. Vocally, things were a different matter: the material featured an ugly growl that fused the guttural edge of death metal with the power of hardcore, which, coupled with an obvious Japanese accent, made all of the lyrics inaudible. Assuming you could approach the material purely on its instrumentalists’ merits, of course, this underground band often sounded very cool.
Listen: The Last Bastion deliver a rallying cry on new single ‘Legion of The Damned’
In June 2025, Brit metallers The Last Bastion released their debut album ‘Who We Are’, a collection of songs driven by defiantly old school riffs. The songs may well have paid homage to the genre’s forefathers, and the material often sounded like something from the late 80s, but at its heart, the album had a lot of power. The ghosts of the slower, black album era Metallica cut through some of ‘Screaming In Silence’s heavier moments; a massive twin lead guitar creating a vital musical hook during ‘Medusa’ drew influence from the New Wave of British Heavy Metal but, when presented with a slower, heavier edge, also gave a nod to Slayer’s slow numbers, and that track’s featured solo showed how tight the band could be when delivering a raft of fretboard melting sounds. Perhaps most importantly, the huge crunch present during the slower parts of ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ suggested The Last Bastion would be a force of nature in a live setting.