Emulations is not a new Blue Heron full-length album, but stop complaining and being greedy bastards and start listening to new Blue F’ing Heron material courtesy of the eight tracks on the half live from a radio broadcast and half studio tracks/covers compilation, which is just another way for Blue Heron to destroy you.
How you ask? How about starting with a somehow heavier cover of the song Grey, from the criminally underrated Fudge Tunnel to start? This song is made for Blue Heron to cover. When you are done with this, go check out Fudge Tunnel’s record In A Word. You like Torche? Well, you should go listen to how they came to be with the band Floor. Luckily for you Blue Heron’s got you, bringing out a killer cover of their track Find Away. Jad’s voice is in top form on these songs. So, you want to hear BH cover Clutch? Cool, because we get the gift of their version of The House That Peterbilt from Clutch’s perfect self-titled record. So great.
The new track, Marigold, could be off Blue Heron’s also pretty much perfect last record, Everything Fades, but has this underlying pop sensibility underneath all of the heavy, channelling Alice In Chains more that I have heard them do before. Speaking of the amazing Everything Fades, the four live tracks include two from that masterpiece, the title track, which I cannot not hear the Tragically Hip in that opening guitar part, and the killer Swansong, to go along with Day Of The Comet from their split with High Desert Queen on Ripple Music, and their opener from their record Ephemeral, Futurola.
The band sounds amazing live, and I have to call out one of my favourite drummers, Ricardo Sanchez, for his work here. Give me all the Blue Heron possible. Covers, live songs, new tracks, doesn’t matter. New Blue Heron stuff needs to be celebrated and Emulations needs to be included in this party. Such a great band. Heavy. 9/10
Skold – Caught In The Throes (Metropolis Records) [Spike]
Tim Skold has always pushed at the edges of industrial rock, blending menace, melody, electronic grit and guitar fury. With Caught In The Throes, he steps into a space that’s both familiar and unsettling, a record that explores decay, spectacle, and the tension between what we show and what we hide. Across fourteen tracks, the album is both a confrontation and an invitation: to listen hard, to feel uncomfortable, and to recognize patterns in the collapse.
Opening with All The $ In The World, Skold gets right to the heart of its critique: capitalism, greed, excess. The track pulses with electronic undercurrents, sharp synth flourishes and a vocal delivery that snarls between disgust and resignation. From there, Cold As Ice freezes everything in place: rhythms feel mechanical but ominous, guitars searing, sometimes slicing through the cold air with precision.
=’s (Private Libertine) introduces more groove, bending rhythm and texture in ways that suggest private decadence masked by public persona. House Of A Thousand Lies builds that façade up, theatricality in every line, every shift in tone. The Great Theatricality leans into that even further: dramatic synth build-ups, distortion, a sense of looming performance art rather than just music. Skold is asking you to see the show and see the cracks in the stage.
When All Humans Must Be Destroyed kicks in, the pace shifts. It’s blunt, brutal, not subtle. There’s outrage here, a refusal to pretend anything is okay. The next few tracks, In A Grave (Specter) and Soon Enough, hover between despair and anticipation. One track feels buried, haunted; the other waiting, build-up, maybe even hope in its tension.
The middle of the album is where the contrasts sharpen. That Kind Of Magic (Confessions Of A Supermodel) juxtaposes glam and grotesque, beauty and decay. Do You Really? and The Inconsolable strip things back at moments, letting space creep in so the weight of what came before has room to sit. Then Wrong Everything and Pop The Smoke renew the assault, guitars slashing, electronics twisting, vocals shaking with something like weariness and defiance.
The closer, Digging My Own Grave, is a kind of final letting go. Not comfort, but catharsis. It feels like Skold pulling the curtain back and revealing everything: the lies, the expectations, the ruin. It doesn’t resolve, but it lands. Hard.
What I appreciate most about Caught In The Throes is its layering. It’s not just of sound, but of mood. Skold doesn’t just build walls of noise; he carves out spaces in them. Moments of fury are undercut by reflection. Spectacle meets decay. And between the aggression, you hear the vulnerability. For someone who's followed his work across decades, this record feels like a mature reckoning: knowing your influences, knowing your pain, and still choosing to create something visceral.
Caught In The Throes doesn’t let you sit comfortably. It asks questions. It shows mirrors cracked. It forces you to look. And even when the last note fades, you feel the echo. Bold, confrontational, and deeply textured. Skold has made one of his strongest works in years. 9/10
Seims - V (Birds Robe/Dunk Records) [Cherie Curtis]
Australian math rock band Seims brings us a hefty new one. Although the album itself is only 9 tracks, each contains its own soundscape of atmospheric rock that feels both retro yet futuristic and each track has its own realm of sound, they play complex riffs intuitively creating something memorable.
V, defies genre convention and sets about their own path, tracks like My Memories Contain Nothing has stunning vocalizations over brass instruments and heavy use of drums and cymbals which gives it a groovy 70s sound, and Forever The Optimist is sunny and breezy almost pop sounding with a light sounding guitar which works a ferociously complicated rhythm in the background, dynamically building up for a break down that never comes.
The album takes a turn with Preoccupations; this one is raw and rushed and leans heavily into the Sci – Fi vibe. The track is electric with synthesizers and heavy drums, and the atmosphere is dark and brooding and would be perfect as a score in films like The Matrix or The Crow.
This album as a whole blends old-school sounds and gives it a futuristic spin making it something unique. It’s well produced and feels more like a composition than your typical album. It's not something I would usually put on, and it gets a little long for me personally however, I recognize the creativity of Seims, and I know a few people who would love this album. 7/10
Hell Ever After – Act I (Self Released) [Simon Black]
Hell Ever After hail from the Buffalo district of New York state and can best be described as a rather mixed bag. With only an EP back in 2021 to date, this underground act are nothing if not ambitious. Fusing some deeply progressive grooves and adopting a complex storytelling in the Metal Opera style that takes a fair bit of unpicking. Coming across as a fusion of a doomier sounding Dream Theater that’s been caught mainlining Avantasia this is actually a piece of music that forces one to listen.
The opening Overture is a Progressive masterpiece, that without being showy or unsubtle highlights that there are clearly some hugely competent musicians in the mix here. When things start vocally, the depth of their ambition becomes clear with a whole series of character voices stepping up to draw you in to the story. Sadly, it’s the overall mix in the studio that lets this ambition down…
This type of music demands a top-notch studio and engineer, because when you are competing with the best, you need to sound like them, and although both instrumentally and vocally there’s some serious skill going in here, the end effect does not quite gel. The moment the vocals commence, the instrumentation gets pushed way back in the mix. I get that you need to focus on the individual voices to achieve the complex multi-singer harmonics they are aiming for here, but they are too sharp and front loaded in the mix, with the more low-end focussed instrumentation dropped too far back in the mix.
Skold – Caught In The Throes (Metropolis Records) [Spike]
Tim Skold has always pushed at the edges of industrial rock, blending menace, melody, electronic grit and guitar fury. With Caught In The Throes, he steps into a space that’s both familiar and unsettling, a record that explores decay, spectacle, and the tension between what we show and what we hide. Across fourteen tracks, the album is both a confrontation and an invitation: to listen hard, to feel uncomfortable, and to recognize patterns in the collapse.
Opening with All The $ In The World, Skold gets right to the heart of its critique: capitalism, greed, excess. The track pulses with electronic undercurrents, sharp synth flourishes and a vocal delivery that snarls between disgust and resignation. From there, Cold As Ice freezes everything in place: rhythms feel mechanical but ominous, guitars searing, sometimes slicing through the cold air with precision.
=’s (Private Libertine) introduces more groove, bending rhythm and texture in ways that suggest private decadence masked by public persona. House Of A Thousand Lies builds that façade up, theatricality in every line, every shift in tone. The Great Theatricality leans into that even further: dramatic synth build-ups, distortion, a sense of looming performance art rather than just music. Skold is asking you to see the show and see the cracks in the stage.
When All Humans Must Be Destroyed kicks in, the pace shifts. It’s blunt, brutal, not subtle. There’s outrage here, a refusal to pretend anything is okay. The next few tracks, In A Grave (Specter) and Soon Enough, hover between despair and anticipation. One track feels buried, haunted; the other waiting, build-up, maybe even hope in its tension.
The middle of the album is where the contrasts sharpen. That Kind Of Magic (Confessions Of A Supermodel) juxtaposes glam and grotesque, beauty and decay. Do You Really? and The Inconsolable strip things back at moments, letting space creep in so the weight of what came before has room to sit. Then Wrong Everything and Pop The Smoke renew the assault, guitars slashing, electronics twisting, vocals shaking with something like weariness and defiance.
The closer, Digging My Own Grave, is a kind of final letting go. Not comfort, but catharsis. It feels like Skold pulling the curtain back and revealing everything: the lies, the expectations, the ruin. It doesn’t resolve, but it lands. Hard.
What I appreciate most about Caught In The Throes is its layering. It’s not just of sound, but of mood. Skold doesn’t just build walls of noise; he carves out spaces in them. Moments of fury are undercut by reflection. Spectacle meets decay. And between the aggression, you hear the vulnerability. For someone who's followed his work across decades, this record feels like a mature reckoning: knowing your influences, knowing your pain, and still choosing to create something visceral.
Caught In The Throes doesn’t let you sit comfortably. It asks questions. It shows mirrors cracked. It forces you to look. And even when the last note fades, you feel the echo. Bold, confrontational, and deeply textured. Skold has made one of his strongest works in years. 9/10
Seims - V (Birds Robe/Dunk Records) [Cherie Curtis]
Australian math rock band Seims brings us a hefty new one. Although the album itself is only 9 tracks, each contains its own soundscape of atmospheric rock that feels both retro yet futuristic and each track has its own realm of sound, they play complex riffs intuitively creating something memorable.
V, defies genre convention and sets about their own path, tracks like My Memories Contain Nothing has stunning vocalizations over brass instruments and heavy use of drums and cymbals which gives it a groovy 70s sound, and Forever The Optimist is sunny and breezy almost pop sounding with a light sounding guitar which works a ferociously complicated rhythm in the background, dynamically building up for a break down that never comes.
The album takes a turn with Preoccupations; this one is raw and rushed and leans heavily into the Sci – Fi vibe. The track is electric with synthesizers and heavy drums, and the atmosphere is dark and brooding and would be perfect as a score in films like The Matrix or The Crow.
This album as a whole blends old-school sounds and gives it a futuristic spin making it something unique. It’s well produced and feels more like a composition than your typical album. It's not something I would usually put on, and it gets a little long for me personally however, I recognize the creativity of Seims, and I know a few people who would love this album. 7/10
Hell Ever After – Act I (Self Released) [Simon Black]
Hell Ever After hail from the Buffalo district of New York state and can best be described as a rather mixed bag. With only an EP back in 2021 to date, this underground act are nothing if not ambitious. Fusing some deeply progressive grooves and adopting a complex storytelling in the Metal Opera style that takes a fair bit of unpicking. Coming across as a fusion of a doomier sounding Dream Theater that’s been caught mainlining Avantasia this is actually a piece of music that forces one to listen.
The opening Overture is a Progressive masterpiece, that without being showy or unsubtle highlights that there are clearly some hugely competent musicians in the mix here. When things start vocally, the depth of their ambition becomes clear with a whole series of character voices stepping up to draw you in to the story. Sadly, it’s the overall mix in the studio that lets this ambition down…
This type of music demands a top-notch studio and engineer, because when you are competing with the best, you need to sound like them, and although both instrumentally and vocally there’s some serious skill going in here, the end effect does not quite gel. The moment the vocals commence, the instrumentation gets pushed way back in the mix. I get that you need to focus on the individual voices to achieve the complex multi-singer harmonics they are aiming for here, but they are too sharp and front loaded in the mix, with the more low-end focussed instrumentation dropped too far back in the mix.
It’s like there were two separate recording sessions that were spliced together after the event, or like finding yourself positioned to close to the vocal PA at the front of a live stage and unable to hear what the man on the mixing desk can. I suspect it is because there was a concern that people needed to clearly hear and understand the story arc, but it really does jar somewhat.
This is a shame because this is musically a breath of fresh air, and that down and dirty fat guitar and rhythm section needs to be balanced more equally with the brighter sounds coming from the singers and cleaner instruments (notably the keys and acoustic guitar sounds). It’s the kind of contrast that they would benefit from live delivery, where those very sounds are the ones most often drowned out in a live mix, but we’ve lost half of the sound here.
That said, there are moments when they turn the heaviness up vocally, and the problem goes away. The more extreme vocals and deeply Thrashy tone on Casket force a change in the mix, and suddenly this sounds like a complete band. I can also see from a hunt round online that this is an act that really like to throw in the theatrics live, and they’ve worked their arses off to craft clever and intense stories into these songs, with fantastically well arranged and written music to underpin them, and it’s such a shame that the production kicks this back.
It took me a few spins before I wanted to write anything here, because I wanted to be fair to the huge amount of work that has clearly gone into this album, and musically I have to point out that I really like what they are doing here. A lot.
This is exactly the kind of music that I like to spin and spin to deconstruct and unpick what has been so carefully packed in, but that’s only possible if the overall net sound pulls you in. I suspect if some of the vocal contributors dialled their content in remotely this may be part of the problem, but investing in a production team that can really lift the sound to where the music is reaching for is what’s needed here.
This is a shame because this is musically a breath of fresh air, and that down and dirty fat guitar and rhythm section needs to be balanced more equally with the brighter sounds coming from the singers and cleaner instruments (notably the keys and acoustic guitar sounds). It’s the kind of contrast that they would benefit from live delivery, where those very sounds are the ones most often drowned out in a live mix, but we’ve lost half of the sound here.
That said, there are moments when they turn the heaviness up vocally, and the problem goes away. The more extreme vocals and deeply Thrashy tone on Casket force a change in the mix, and suddenly this sounds like a complete band. I can also see from a hunt round online that this is an act that really like to throw in the theatrics live, and they’ve worked their arses off to craft clever and intense stories into these songs, with fantastically well arranged and written music to underpin them, and it’s such a shame that the production kicks this back.
It took me a few spins before I wanted to write anything here, because I wanted to be fair to the huge amount of work that has clearly gone into this album, and musically I have to point out that I really like what they are doing here. A lot.
This is exactly the kind of music that I like to spin and spin to deconstruct and unpick what has been so carefully packed in, but that’s only possible if the overall net sound pulls you in. I suspect if some of the vocal contributors dialled their content in remotely this may be part of the problem, but investing in a production team that can really lift the sound to where the music is reaching for is what’s needed here.
Manage that, and aiming punching above their weight turns a blow into a sucker punch of knock out proportions. 7/10
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