Nick Cave and Warren Ellis have released a new album, as promised—their first non-soundtrack full-length as a duo. Carnage was recorded during lockdown and will receive a CD and vinyl pressing for release on May 28, via Goliath Records.

Tinderbox is the most musically up-tempo of all Siouxsie and the Banshees' albums and the most stylistically consistent one since The Scream and Join Hands. Most of the selections here feature urgently rocking drumming, drivingly aggressive yet fully textured guitar playing, and masterful, gutsy singing. The songs here are intense and unfold slowly, some starting off less vigorously but becoming hard rockers further along. There is of course a fine line between consistency and lack of contrast, but this album stays firmly on the side of the former; in fact, there's a certain satisfying feel to the musically uniform wall of sound here. The arrangements are less complex than in immediately preceding albums, but there are still plenty of subtle, effective production touches to be found throughout, most notably in the song "Cannons." "Cities in the Dust," a dance-pop number with a bell-like synthesizer opening section, stretches the above-mentioned boundaries the most, though typically bleak lyrics keep this selection from any sense of vacuity. This excellent release is well worth purchasing.

Gatherers of the world, Killing Joke have announced the release of Malicious Damage - Live At The Astoria 12.10.03. Released on September 6 through Killing Joke Records / Cadiz Music, the 2003 concert will be beautifully presented as a strictly limited edition DVD / vinyl and unlimited double CD.

Reduced to a quartet for the most part, with Barry Adamson joining Nick Cave, Blixa Bargeld, Mick Harvey and Thomas Wydler on only a couple of tracks, the Bad Seeds turn from the interpretive triumph of Kicking Against the Pricks to another strong high, the mostly-original Your Funeral…My Trial. The one cover is a sharp, unsurprisingly dramatic version of Tim Rose's "Long Time Man." As for the rest of the album, Trial shows the Seeds working as, again, a remarkably accomplished and varied act, ever available and ready to explore a wide range of musics distilled into Cave's often dark, always passionate vision. Arguably Cave and company have by now so clearly established their overall style that Your Funeral…My Trial is much more a refinement of the past than anything else, but so good is their work that resistance is near impossible. If anything, the brooding power of the Seeds is more restrained than ever, suggesting destructive endings and overwhelming love without directly playing it.

Barely a year after the release of their hugely acclaimed debut album 'Dogrel', which earned a Mercury Prize nomination and Album of the Year 2019 at both BBC 6Music and Rough Trade record store, Dublin’s Fontaines D.C. have returned with an intensely confident, patient, and complex follow up album. A Hero's Death arrives battered and bruised, albeit beautiful - a heady and philosophical take on the modern world, and its great uncertainty.

The debut album from Black Country, New Road - the latest stars from the burgeoning and famed Brixton Windmill scene, which also fostered the rise of contemporaries, black midi, Squid, Fat White Family and Shame.

Earlier this year was the 40th anniversary of the White Riot tour, the anarchic, ramshackle series of gigs across the UK that launched the Clash into public consciousness (alongside their iconic first album, which moved the punk movement past the Sex Pistols’ iconoclastic entrance). The Slits were one of the tour's support acts; if anyone suited the DIY ethos of the way the music was evolving, it was this all-girl band whose take no prisoners approach (read Viv Albertine’s fabulous warts ‘n’ all autobiography) chimed with the times and attitude.

Poised to blow the cobwebs off life and unleash some much-needed wit and charm upon us, Sleaford Mods are back with their astonishing 6th studio album, entitled Spare Ribs.

Soul Jazz Records Two Synths, A Guitar (and) A Drum Machine is a new collection of current D-I-Y post-punk bands shaped by the mutant sounds of no wave, punk funk and New York Noise bands from the late 70s and early 80s that collided with the world of underground dance music found at the Paradise Garage, Mudd Club in NYC. Other influences include Manchester and Sheffield’s industrial 1980s post-punk sounds as well as 1970s German electronic experimentalism. Featured artists include LA D-I-Y band Automatic, Toronto's New Fries, German Toresch, Susumu Makai from Japan/UK, Vex Ruffin, Philippines/California, and Madmadmad, Gramme, Tom of England and other UK groups. That all these bands manage to make distinctive contemporary music out of these 80s roots is testament to the wide range of other musics that are seamlessly absorbed into a modern melting pot of sound – hip-hop, electronic European avant-garde, rave culture, and more.