Tag Archives: stream

Listen: Skye share new track ‘What Am I’

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A five piece band from the north west of England, Skye take in a wealth of hard rock, prog metal and alternative influences to create a massive hybrid sound.

On ‘What Am I’, the quiet, almost disquieting vocals and busy basslines owe a debt to the mighty Tool; a massive, relatively commercial chorus pulls influence from bands like Alter Bridge and Shinedown, and a really punchy drum sound adds something even harder. These things combined lead to a massive and genuinely impressive slide of contemporary metal that’s guaranteed to build upon the current Skye following.

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BIDDADAT – Lovesick EP

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Biddadat’s self-titled 2020 release shared some great funk oriented tunes. Tracks like ‘Outrageous’ and ‘Younger Days’ flaunted a strong influence from very commercial sounds – with the former actually veering close to something that sounds like a 90s alternative rock band playing ‘Get Lucky’ by Pharrell Williams, and the latter capturing the spirit of a ‘By The Way’ era Chili Peppers deep cut – whilst ‘Hey…I Like Your Body’ teetered a little closer to disco, but still conveyed an easy cool that suggested these musicians were more than happy in their shamelessly retro world. Not that people necessarily noticed: the album was released just weeks before the whole planet ground to a halt and the restrictions brought by Covid-19 pandemic meant that everyone had far more on their minds.

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TRAVELS WITH BRINDLE – No. 1 In Heaven

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When covering other people’s material, there’s no point in phoning it in, and creating something that’s a flat but respectable reconstruction. It’s much better to make things your own, and re-imagine everything from the ground up – as with Type O Negative’s ‘Summer Breeze’ and Lalo Schifrin’s frankly bizarre disco rehash of the ‘Jaws’ theme, just to give a couple of great examples.

This concept isn’t lost on singer songwriter Chelsea Spear and her solo ukulele pop project Travels With Brindle. Their 2025 release ‘Number One In Heaven’ takes the bulk of the Sparks 1979 LP of the same name and melds it in her own image. Taking the six songs and stripping them down to basics, Spear allows for a closer inspection of some basic melodies. But does it work?

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THE DANIEL JAMES GANG – Darkness Over This Town EP

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On one of his social media channels, near the beginning of 2025, musician Daniel James mused how he was always busy. So busy, in fact, that he barely had time to sleep. At that time, he was a member of at least four bands – including Indonesian Junk (who’d just embarked on a hiatus) and reformed punkers Chinese Telephones.

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NEGATIVE THIRTEEN – Recover What You Can

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On their full length release ‘Mourning Asteri’ from 2022, Negative Thirteen tapped into a brilliantly heavy sound. The bulk of the material fused classic doom metal riffs with a sludgy aesthetic which resulted in a well orchestrated, uncompromising record. Unlike some doom-sludge acts, though, the album flaunted a brilliant production job which placed as much interest on the bass as the sledgehammer guitar parts. It could be argued that the material often valued massive riffs over any kind of immediacy, but there was no doubt that this band meant business.

Their 2025 follow up, ‘Recover What You Can’ is often just as heavy, but with a couple of tracks favouring an epic length allowing the doomy band more room for manouevre, it sometimes feels as if Negative Thirteen haven’t so much “branched out”, but descended even more deeply into their own world of sludge derived sounds.

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