If you didn't know this was UK rock band Blanket then I think you could be forgiven for thinking that it may be some Deftones tracks left off 2025's Private Music. There's plenty of similarities on True Blue, from luxurious, layered atmospheres, the hypnotic close-up vocal approach and the shimmering guitars that echo long after the songs finish.
However Blanket fill their music with the type of introspection and depth that only bands from the UK post rock scene can, maybe it's to do with being from the UK but I find there's always a melancholy, tinged with hope, to UK post rock that many other bands try to replicate.
On this new record, they plunge deeper into the emotive side, there stories are raw and personal as the music gets more thrilling, the quiet/loud dynamics embraced by cinematic production for a record creating a very clever trick of being both enveloped by the music and being in awe of it.
It surrounds you, as if Blanket have written this for you, to be played in a quiet room, while also keeping their signature sky scraping sound that is built on textured compositions. The band say that True Blue is a journey though catharsis, with the idea of "brighter days, a bit of nostalgia, and finding beauty in the small, quiet moments" the main creative roots.
Blanket are aiming for honesty with True Blue (hence the title) and they bring it in spades, some guest appearances from emo/shoegaze duo Wayside and Lynsey Ward of Exploring Birdsong, add to these brilliant soundscapes. You need to open your heart as well as your ears for this one, a cultivated expression of nostalgia and vulnerability, let this Blanket wrap around you with musical beauty. 9/10
Sky Valley Mistress – Luna Mausoleum (New Heavy Sounds) [Spike]
I’ve spent a fair chunk of my life wondering why we still insist on calling it "Desert Rock" when the nearest thing we’ve got to a Mojave is a particularly dry patch of the Pennines during a hosepipe ban. But then Sky Valley Mistress kicks the door in with Luna Mausoleum, and suddenly, the geography is irrelevant. This Blackburn lot have been grinding away in the northern gloom for years, stubborn as a damp patch on a cellar wall and this latest slab of noise feels like they’ve finally stopped asking for permission to be the loudest thing in the room and just started taking it.
Properly, rib-cracking heavy.
The opener, An Eagles Epitaph, is a 40 second scene setter before we began the album proper. Kayley "Hell-Cat" Davies sounds like she’s gargling honey and broken glass in equal measure. Her voice? A force of nature. It reminds me of the first time I heard Janis Joplin, if Janis had been raised on a diet of Black Sabbath and particularly cheap, lukewarm cider. Feral. That’s the word.
There’s a groove here that’s wider than the M6 on a Bank Holiday Monday.
I’ve always thought that stoner rock tends to get a bit... well, stagnant, doesn't it? Everyone wants to be Kyuss, but nobody wants to actually put the work in to find their own grit. Luna Mausoleum dodges that particular trap by leaning into a sort of cinematic, gothic grime that feels uniquely British, the kind of stuff you'd listen to while walking through a Victorian cemetery in the rain.
The Exit List and Too Many Ghosts are mid-paced monoliths that have a nod to theatre of gothic rock too. It’s got that fuzzy, thick-as-clotted-cream guitar tone and it’s wonderful for that. The rhythm section is a steamroller.
Then you get No Sleep and House Of The Moon, which I’m fairly certain are direct invitations to some kind of sonic exorcism. The way Live Past Life builds, this slow, creeping dread that eventually explodes is exactly why I still bother listening to new music at my age. It’s not just about the riffs, though the riffs in White Night are massive enough to anchor a North Sea oil rig; it’s about the intent.
Perhaps the production is a bit too "pro" in places. I sometimes miss the sound of a band falling down the stairs but you can’t argue with the clarity. You can hear every desperate string bend in Thundertaker. Every thwack of the snare. Every moment of Kayley’s absolute conviction.
Is it perfect? Nothing ever is. The closer, Blue Desert II, wraps it all up in a hazy, psychedelic shroud that feels like a proper goodbye to sanity. It’s an album for the long nights. It’s for when you want to feel the floorboards groan under the weight of a band that knows exactly how to weaponize a fuzz pedal. 8/10
However Blanket fill their music with the type of introspection and depth that only bands from the UK post rock scene can, maybe it's to do with being from the UK but I find there's always a melancholy, tinged with hope, to UK post rock that many other bands try to replicate.
On this new record, they plunge deeper into the emotive side, there stories are raw and personal as the music gets more thrilling, the quiet/loud dynamics embraced by cinematic production for a record creating a very clever trick of being both enveloped by the music and being in awe of it.
It surrounds you, as if Blanket have written this for you, to be played in a quiet room, while also keeping their signature sky scraping sound that is built on textured compositions. The band say that True Blue is a journey though catharsis, with the idea of "brighter days, a bit of nostalgia, and finding beauty in the small, quiet moments" the main creative roots.
Blanket are aiming for honesty with True Blue (hence the title) and they bring it in spades, some guest appearances from emo/shoegaze duo Wayside and Lynsey Ward of Exploring Birdsong, add to these brilliant soundscapes. You need to open your heart as well as your ears for this one, a cultivated expression of nostalgia and vulnerability, let this Blanket wrap around you with musical beauty. 9/10
Sky Valley Mistress – Luna Mausoleum (New Heavy Sounds) [Spike]
I’ve spent a fair chunk of my life wondering why we still insist on calling it "Desert Rock" when the nearest thing we’ve got to a Mojave is a particularly dry patch of the Pennines during a hosepipe ban. But then Sky Valley Mistress kicks the door in with Luna Mausoleum, and suddenly, the geography is irrelevant. This Blackburn lot have been grinding away in the northern gloom for years, stubborn as a damp patch on a cellar wall and this latest slab of noise feels like they’ve finally stopped asking for permission to be the loudest thing in the room and just started taking it.
Properly, rib-cracking heavy.
The opener, An Eagles Epitaph, is a 40 second scene setter before we began the album proper. Kayley "Hell-Cat" Davies sounds like she’s gargling honey and broken glass in equal measure. Her voice? A force of nature. It reminds me of the first time I heard Janis Joplin, if Janis had been raised on a diet of Black Sabbath and particularly cheap, lukewarm cider. Feral. That’s the word.
There’s a groove here that’s wider than the M6 on a Bank Holiday Monday.
I’ve always thought that stoner rock tends to get a bit... well, stagnant, doesn't it? Everyone wants to be Kyuss, but nobody wants to actually put the work in to find their own grit. Luna Mausoleum dodges that particular trap by leaning into a sort of cinematic, gothic grime that feels uniquely British, the kind of stuff you'd listen to while walking through a Victorian cemetery in the rain.
The Exit List and Too Many Ghosts are mid-paced monoliths that have a nod to theatre of gothic rock too. It’s got that fuzzy, thick-as-clotted-cream guitar tone and it’s wonderful for that. The rhythm section is a steamroller.
Then you get No Sleep and House Of The Moon, which I’m fairly certain are direct invitations to some kind of sonic exorcism. The way Live Past Life builds, this slow, creeping dread that eventually explodes is exactly why I still bother listening to new music at my age. It’s not just about the riffs, though the riffs in White Night are massive enough to anchor a North Sea oil rig; it’s about the intent.
Perhaps the production is a bit too "pro" in places. I sometimes miss the sound of a band falling down the stairs but you can’t argue with the clarity. You can hear every desperate string bend in Thundertaker. Every thwack of the snare. Every moment of Kayley’s absolute conviction.
Is it perfect? Nothing ever is. The closer, Blue Desert II, wraps it all up in a hazy, psychedelic shroud that feels like a proper goodbye to sanity. It’s an album for the long nights. It’s for when you want to feel the floorboards groan under the weight of a band that knows exactly how to weaponize a fuzz pedal. 8/10
Backengrillen – Backengrillen (Svart Records) [Spike]
I was just sat here thinking about how most bands spend eighteen months "finding their sound" in a studio that costs more than my first house, only to produce something that sounds like tepid tap water. Backengrillen wrote this record on a Thursday. They played it live on the Friday. They recorded it on the Saturday. That’s not a recording schedule; that’s an act of public defiance. It shows, too, it’s raw, it’s stupid in the best possible way, and it possesses that gut-instinct filth that you just can't manufacture with a ProTools plugin and a "vision board."
This is Umeå’s finest*,members of Refused, TEXT, The Thing, and The International Noise Conspiracy deciding that what the world really needs is "antifascist, antiracists free form death-jazz." Sounds like a bit of a mouthful, doesn't it? Perhaps. But when the needle drops on A Hate Inferior, you realize the "jazz" part isn't about wearing a turtleneck and nodding along to a syncopated hi-hat. It’s about the total annihilation of structure.
Mats Gustafsson’s saxophone doesn't just play melodies; it screams, it honks, and it tries to eat the rest of the band. It’s glorious.
The opener hits like a sack of spanners dropped from a great height. Lyxzén’s vocals are drenched in effects, distorted, desperate, and sounding like he’s trying to communicate through a broken intercom during a riot. Then you get Dör för långsamt (dying too slowly, for those of us whose Swedish is limited to IKEA furniture names), which is a mid-paced crawl that feels like a death/doom riff being chewed on by a ravenous cat. It’s dense. Claustrophobic. The kind of thing that makes you want to draw the curtains and hide the sharp objects.
I’ve always reckoned that the best noise rock should feel like it’s falling apart while you listen to it. Repeater II does exactly that, it’s a revolving door of abrasive textures and Sandström’s drums, which move with the frantic energy of someone who’s just realized they’ve left the iron on. It’s "in-your-face" HC jazz that owes as much to Albert Ayler as it does to Entombed.
The title track, Backengrillen, is where the "death-jazz" tag really earns its keep. Magnus Flagge’s bass is a tectonic plate shift, providing a thick, fuzzy foundation for Gustafsson to absolutely lose his mind over. It’s a fourteen-minute behemoth (I believe, my watch stopped out of sheer fright halfway through) that breaks down riffs until they lose all meaning. It’s hypnotic. Properly, unpleasantly brilliant.
Then you close with Socialism Or Barbarism. Bit of a pointed title, isn't it? But in 2026, it feels less like a political slogan and more like a weather report. The track is a final, feedback-saturated shrug of the shoulders, a chaotic, brilliant mess that refuses to resolve into anything comfortable.
Is it "ugly"? Yes. They even said record number two will be "more ugly," which is a terrifying prospect. Is it "stupid"? Only if you think gut-level honesty is a lack of intelligence. Personally? I think it’s the most vital thing I’ve heard in a while. It’s the sound of four blokes who have seen it all and decided to set fire to the rulebook one last time. It’s a masterclass in the beauty of the collision. 9/10
* I’ve spent a fair bit of time pondering the Umeå water supply. Honestly, there must be something in it, probably some radioactive runoff from a discarded punk demo because that tiny Swedish outpost keeps vomiting up the most vital, stubborn music on the planet.
HamaSaari - Pictures (Klonosphere Records) [Matt Bladen]
When I saw that Pictures, the new record from HamaSaari was FFO Earthside, Porcupine Tree and Karnivool, it had my attention. I love all three bands but PT are very special to me in lots of ways, then in the accompanying blurb goes on to cite Pink Floyd another of my favourites and I have very high hopes for this record.
With Below The Lightenings they start off with the forward marching acoustics, unravelling their progressive, atmospheric sound so it latches on to you, it reminds me of the band 3 however but with The Wild Ones, the lean towards Mr Wilson and co is very prominent here. Although that can be said about both tracks as there's a massive Porcupine Tree influence in the way the guitars sound and are arranged especially.
The is music that is crafted, not just written, pieces together with emotions and dynamics as the dreamy wanderings are pulled towards earth with metallic heaviness on Our Heads Spinning. It's prog rock but more than that, HamaSaari started life as a totally different band, in a totally different genre but they transformed into their current from a few years ago, embracing classic prog rock, but also the experimental nature of post-rock, ambient and more like the musical alchemists they have been compared to.
With Pictures that alchemy continues where their debut Ineffable left off, a vibrant collision of floaty, reverbed guitars, emotive vocal phrasing, polyrhythmic grooves (Frames) and acoustic moments of introspection that make this a thrilling listen for prog fans who are fans of any of the bands referenced here. 8/10
I was just sat here thinking about how most bands spend eighteen months "finding their sound" in a studio that costs more than my first house, only to produce something that sounds like tepid tap water. Backengrillen wrote this record on a Thursday. They played it live on the Friday. They recorded it on the Saturday. That’s not a recording schedule; that’s an act of public defiance. It shows, too, it’s raw, it’s stupid in the best possible way, and it possesses that gut-instinct filth that you just can't manufacture with a ProTools plugin and a "vision board."
This is Umeå’s finest*,members of Refused, TEXT, The Thing, and The International Noise Conspiracy deciding that what the world really needs is "antifascist, antiracists free form death-jazz." Sounds like a bit of a mouthful, doesn't it? Perhaps. But when the needle drops on A Hate Inferior, you realize the "jazz" part isn't about wearing a turtleneck and nodding along to a syncopated hi-hat. It’s about the total annihilation of structure.
Mats Gustafsson’s saxophone doesn't just play melodies; it screams, it honks, and it tries to eat the rest of the band. It’s glorious.
The opener hits like a sack of spanners dropped from a great height. Lyxzén’s vocals are drenched in effects, distorted, desperate, and sounding like he’s trying to communicate through a broken intercom during a riot. Then you get Dör för långsamt (dying too slowly, for those of us whose Swedish is limited to IKEA furniture names), which is a mid-paced crawl that feels like a death/doom riff being chewed on by a ravenous cat. It’s dense. Claustrophobic. The kind of thing that makes you want to draw the curtains and hide the sharp objects.
I’ve always reckoned that the best noise rock should feel like it’s falling apart while you listen to it. Repeater II does exactly that, it’s a revolving door of abrasive textures and Sandström’s drums, which move with the frantic energy of someone who’s just realized they’ve left the iron on. It’s "in-your-face" HC jazz that owes as much to Albert Ayler as it does to Entombed.
The title track, Backengrillen, is where the "death-jazz" tag really earns its keep. Magnus Flagge’s bass is a tectonic plate shift, providing a thick, fuzzy foundation for Gustafsson to absolutely lose his mind over. It’s a fourteen-minute behemoth (I believe, my watch stopped out of sheer fright halfway through) that breaks down riffs until they lose all meaning. It’s hypnotic. Properly, unpleasantly brilliant.
Then you close with Socialism Or Barbarism. Bit of a pointed title, isn't it? But in 2026, it feels less like a political slogan and more like a weather report. The track is a final, feedback-saturated shrug of the shoulders, a chaotic, brilliant mess that refuses to resolve into anything comfortable.
Is it "ugly"? Yes. They even said record number two will be "more ugly," which is a terrifying prospect. Is it "stupid"? Only if you think gut-level honesty is a lack of intelligence. Personally? I think it’s the most vital thing I’ve heard in a while. It’s the sound of four blokes who have seen it all and decided to set fire to the rulebook one last time. It’s a masterclass in the beauty of the collision. 9/10
* I’ve spent a fair bit of time pondering the Umeå water supply. Honestly, there must be something in it, probably some radioactive runoff from a discarded punk demo because that tiny Swedish outpost keeps vomiting up the most vital, stubborn music on the planet.
HamaSaari - Pictures (Klonosphere Records) [Matt Bladen]
When I saw that Pictures, the new record from HamaSaari was FFO Earthside, Porcupine Tree and Karnivool, it had my attention. I love all three bands but PT are very special to me in lots of ways, then in the accompanying blurb goes on to cite Pink Floyd another of my favourites and I have very high hopes for this record.
With Below The Lightenings they start off with the forward marching acoustics, unravelling their progressive, atmospheric sound so it latches on to you, it reminds me of the band 3 however but with The Wild Ones, the lean towards Mr Wilson and co is very prominent here. Although that can be said about both tracks as there's a massive Porcupine Tree influence in the way the guitars sound and are arranged especially.
The is music that is crafted, not just written, pieces together with emotions and dynamics as the dreamy wanderings are pulled towards earth with metallic heaviness on Our Heads Spinning. It's prog rock but more than that, HamaSaari started life as a totally different band, in a totally different genre but they transformed into their current from a few years ago, embracing classic prog rock, but also the experimental nature of post-rock, ambient and more like the musical alchemists they have been compared to.
With Pictures that alchemy continues where their debut Ineffable left off, a vibrant collision of floaty, reverbed guitars, emotive vocal phrasing, polyrhythmic grooves (Frames) and acoustic moments of introspection that make this a thrilling listen for prog fans who are fans of any of the bands referenced here. 8/10
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