Click HERE For Leeds Festival stage times (all times subject to change)

The band have received countless awards, including Best British Band from Kerrang! and NME, Best Live Band from NME and Q, 3 BRIT award nominations for Best British Group (including one in 2021) and a Mercury Prize nomination for Album of the Year for 2009’s ‘Only Revolutions’. Frontman Simon Neil has also received Kerrang!’s Classic Songwriter award, as well as the inaugural Fender Play Award at the 2018 Q Awards, the magazine describing him as a “frontman who possesses the perfect blend of raw emotion and rock’n’roll charisma, the sort of figurehead who inspires the next generation to pick up a guitar”.

Released in August 2020, their eighth album ‘A Celebration of Endings’ gained praise from the likes of The Independent, who branded it “an album that soothes, shakes and surprises at every turn” in their 4 star review, whilst the Sunday Times made it their album of the week, describing it as “combining feral sonic attack with an innate melodic touch and lyrics about empowerment, activism, love and connection”. The album won the award for Best Album at the Scottish Music Awards 2021.

Biffy Clyro are due to headline Glasgow Green in September this year, followed by a run of intimate shows in England in October/November labelled ‘The Fingers Crossed Tour’ and a headline set at Download Festival on Sunday 12th June 2022.

The Los Angeles Times wrote of Deftones, “Hard rock thrives on conflict and chaos, and no band has found more beauty and soaring aggression within those ingredients than Deftones.”

Deftones have released seven albums to date and have sold over 10 million albums worldwide.

Deftones hit the road in the spring, starting with a March 5th headline performance on night two at Travis Barker’s Musink Festival — a three-day tattoo convention, car show, and concert in California, followed by appearances at this year’s SXSW music festival. May and June will find Deftones appearing at major festivals in the U.S. and Europe, including Carolina Rebellion, Rock on the Range, Rock AM Ring, Rock IM Park, and Download Festival, among others as well as a solo-headline show at Wembley Arena. Please see below for upcoming tour dates.

‘The Weight Of Your Love’, Editors fourth studio album and the first to feature new members Justin Lockey and Elliott Williams is, according to lead singer and songwriter Tom Smith, ‘a band record, a musical record, a rock record with a foot in that alt-rock / americana world’. Inspired by Scott Litt’s work with REM amongst others and built around a live performance approach to recording, the album contains the most strident and direct Editors songs to date. With a lyrical fascination with love in all its myriad forms, ‘whether romantic or break-up or creepy or even stalkey love’ (Tom again) and recorded in Nashville at Blackbird Studio by producer Jacquire King (Tom Waits, etc), ‘The Weight Of Your Love’ represents a new chapter for the band in more than one way.

Cast your mind back to the close of 2010. Editors had just finished another round of touring and promotion in support of their third album, 2009’s ‘In This Light And On This Evening’. Six years on from their multi-platinum debut ‘The Back Room’, the band had seen many of their contemporaries disappear from view whilst steadily building themselves into one of Europe’s biggest bands. That third album debuted at Number One in the UK charts as had its predecessor, ‘An End Has A Start’ and spawned a continent wide hit in the form of ‘Papillon’, a thunderous electro rock tune destined to force arms into the air at festivals across the continent and the first non-domestic single to debut at Number One in the Belgian singles charts where the band are arguably the biggest name in the rock world.

Never a band to stop, the four reconvened in London to begin work with producer Flood on the songs that Tom Smith had been developing during that campaign for the next album. And then, slowly but inextricably, the wheels came off. The first week in the studio was spent fixing broken equipment, three rehearsal sessions came and went with declining results and Editors found themselves sliding from the peak of achievement into a trough of doubt:

‘It dawns on you slowly, sickeningly, that it’s not good enough. For the three of us, for me and Russ and Ed it didn’t feel like the songs were in the right place and they weren’t what we wanted to do’ TOM SMITH

Editors had been together for over a decade, first as friends at college, then Snowfield and then as Editors. The bonds between the quartet transcended the success of the band and encompassed parents and friends intermingled over that decade, their early days camping on their manager’s floors and working in call centres to keep the band solvent through to international success and two members relocating to New York. It wasn’t easy but, ultimately, as Ed Lay says ‘we were still mates but our life in the band was based on our music’. Simply put, the realisation dawned that Tom, Russ and Ed wanted to take the band in a direction that Chris didn’t want to take, and that if the next step wasn’t taken there would be no more Editors records. Chris Urbanowicz, founding member and iconic guitarist was asked to leave the band.

As if losing a founder member, Tom likens it to ‘losing a limb’, wasn’t enough, Editors were booked to headline Belgium’s Werchter Festival three months from that moment, their biggest ever show to 85,000 people. You can possibly read the beginning of the ‘new’ Editors in what happened next.

‘My gut was to cancel it’ Tom states directly, conversely Ed went the other way; ‘It was a little bit of a leap of faith but I was confident we could make it work’. Which left Russ with the casting vote and he went with Ed. Werchter was on and the challenge from here was how it would happen. But whatever happened now, Editors would continue. For now, filling a field with sound was top priority.

Enter Justin Lockey. Former guitarist with Your Code Name Is:Milo, film maker, Krautrock enthusiast and described by Flood, who suggested him to the band, as ‘a positive personality’. One email later and he was coming to London for his first rehearsal, an experience that he found somewhat odd to say the least.

‘It was the weirdest thing I have ever done. I’ve never played anyone else’s song in full, I never had that culture of covering songs. But, it was quite liberating. I was more concerned about the fans than the band, people waiting for you to fuck it up’.

To make things even weirder, that first rehearsal was minus Tom, absent with tonsillitis but, for Ed, that may have had its benefits, the three choosing to have a go at a new song alongside the old favourites. ‘It was a weird situation but we clicked. We worked on ‘Sugar’ that first day and Justin immediately impressed me with his ideas’.

All three were conscious of the pressure on Justin and use the phrase ‘replacement Chris’ to jokingly refer to the situation he may have found himself in. Enter Elliott Williams, member of Airship and known to Tom, Ed and Russ through their shared management. Alongside taking the pressure off Justin, adding a second multi-instrumentalist made sense as Tom explains; ‘it was big shows and big stages and it felt right to have a more traditional rock set up, a more musical environment that didn’t rely on tapes and synths’. Now Editors were five and, following an intensive period of rehearsal, ready for Werchter.

No discussion of where Editors are now can underestimate the importance of that performance on June 30th 2012. All five regard it as a pivotal point for this album, Tom can only shake his head and say it was ‘something else’ whilst Justin says ‘I came offstage at Werchter and wanted to do more shows straight away’. In many ways, ‘The Weight Of Your Love’ was born alongside a new Editors that night. The big rock record was on, the band were set.

This new Editors were fizzing with ideas, the new members were not differentiated from the old, suggestions and parts came from all members from the off. Progress from here was swift and the new band found new ways to work, as Russ explains in relation to the new guys; ‘we looked for their suggestions, there was nothing guarded about it’, whilst Justin found the immediacy of the band bonding thrilling; ‘they pushed me to play in a way that I hadn’t done before, I learnt a lot from them and I think they really enjoyed the feeling of what it’s like to be in a band.’ This bonding increased with the choice of Jacquire King as producer and was cemented when he suggested recording at Blackbird Studios in Nashville, meaning the new Editors were destined to spend six weeks sharing a house and a daily studio commute in the early months of 2013. Those journeys were soundtracked by US rock radio, what Tom describes as ‘a lot of AC/DC and Van Halen but also The Stones and Beatles’, classic bands who made classic records totally in keeping with the vibe that was gradually playing out in the studio as ‘The Weight Of Your Love’ came together in an astonishingly short time.

The experiences of Nashville go beyond a radio soundtrack in terms of influence on the record. Russ believes that ‘the space really helped with everything. As soon as you get there you realise it’s a driving city and that feeling of space really seeped into the album’ ‘, for Ed, the communality of Editors existence changed his role in the band radically:

‘Everybody felt freer to speak their mind about parts. I didn’t feel that comfortable previously but recording this album I felt a fully-fledged contributing member of the band.’

The spirit of freeness and abandon flowed from the first take to the final wrap. Across the album are a series of ‘news’ for Editors. Tom’s falsetto on ‘What Is This Thing Called Love’ is his first, reclaiming a song he wrote following a challenge from his former A & R man to make a song for an X Factor contestant. He can’t help but smile as he explains how he came to keep it, ‘my A &R got fired, the X Factor singer got dropped and we decided to keep it. I think it’s one of the best things we’ve done’. Horns make an appearance on an Editors record for the first time, Elliott’s ‘amazing´ (the other four) singing voice gave Tom a melodic counterpoint, best displayed on ‘Formaldehyde’ whilst ‘The Phone Book’ suited just an acoustic guitar so that’s what it got. As Tom notes ‘I have a deep love of those big rock records that are straightforward and we really embraced that throughout’.

Even the problems were becoming positives. ‘Nothing’, a track that the band had debuted at their Birmingham fanclub shows pre Werchter had been earmarked as a potential single but recording it was proving tricky to say the least. ‘It sounded like a bad fight in an Irish Bar’, Russ deadpans of the waltz time track. A suggestion to tap up Clint Mansell, the Grammy award winning ‘Black Swan’ soundtrack man and, co-incidentally, native Brummie, was embraced with open arms in this sense of new possibilities and his reworking of the track into a stately centrepiece for the album once again reinforces the changes that have been wrought by this band in their approach to their music in the last year. As Ed notes, previously such a thing would have ‘been done reluctantly, we’d have been uncomfortable with it’ whereas now, for the band and in Russ’s words ‘the more I listen to it the more I get out of it, it’s a brave move and this record has been all about that’.

Which pretty much sums it up. A brave move, more a succession of brave moves, the kind of moves that bands increasingly find hard to make in modern times. Editors have become five but, more than that, they have rediscovered being a band. All the members continually refer to ‘The Weight Of Your Love’ as the product of a band, as a band record. For Tom Smith ‘it feels like we’re more sure of ourselves, more muscular. The record feels untouchable at times, I’m really quite surprised at what we’ve achieved.’. In the spirit of the new Editors, the democracy of old and new let’s leave the final word on the album to the new boys though: to Justin and Elliot, who uniquely can look within and without for the time being:

‘We have definitely bonded into a band, maybe more than we expected. Recording the album there were no egos around, all we wanted to do was help Tom deliver those songs.’

ELLIOTT WILLIAMS

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been in a band that is this excited about what they have done. You start thinking, what will come from this, the progression that is possible. They lost a member who was integral to their signature sound and they’ve come back twice as big. I can’t wait to get out and play it live. We want to take the face off everyone who is watching.’

JUSTIN LOCKEY

EDITORS ARE

Tom Smith – vocals, guitar, piano

Russell Leetch – bass, keyboards

Ed Lay – drums, percussion

Justin Lockey – guitars, keyboards, films

Elliott Williams – guitars, keyboards, vocals

These last couple years have been some of New Found Glory’s best! We released our 9th full length album “Makes Me Sick”, toured the world celebrating the 20 Year Anniversary of our band, headlined the Sick Tour across the US, and just closed out the final Warped Tour shows in our home state of Florida.

We want to thank all you die hard NFG fans and supporters. If you missed out on those final 3 Warped dates, we just put the rest of the limited edition merch we made for those shows on our web store newfoundglorystuff.com.

Unfortunately for some people we have some bad news. This party isn’t stopping. For every year that goes by, the more we value just how lucky we are to do what we do! There’s so much more fun in the works in the world of New Found Glory!

This fall we will be completing the Trilogy! We’ll be heading into the studio to record From the Screen To Your Stereo Part 3 where we cover theme songs from movies, some classic and some annoying, and make them our style! If you saw us on the Sick Tour in the spring then you already heard our cover of "Eye Of The Tiger” from Rocky 3. We aren’t going to spoil the rest just yet! But before we go off and start working on that we want to present a video for one of our most loved songs from Makes Me Sick, "Barbed Wire”! We hope you enjoy!

New Found Glory recently released a deluxe version of their recent album called Makes Me Sick Again. Featuring 3 new tracks, the album is available in exclusive vinyl variants today at http://smarturl.it/NFGmerch. Please be sure to stay tuned to www.newfoundglory.com as well as the band’s socials for more information about this next chapter of New Found Glory.

Over their span of 20 non-stop years in the music industry, New Found Glory have released 9 studio albums, 1 live album, 2 EPs and 3 cover albums. New Found Glory is Jordan Pundik (lead vocals), Chad Gilbert (guitar), Ian Grushka (bass guitar) and Cyrus Bolooki (drums).

Bristling with energy and oozing optimism, Great Divide is a rock record with widescreen ambition, inspired by the band watching their own fans and from sharing stages with the likes of Springsteen and Foo Fighters.

“Our aim was always to make songs this size,” says Twin Atlantic singer Sam McTrusty. “Coming from a punk rock background, it took a while - we like to say we went the scenic route. But it was the right route for us, full of interesting stops on which we learnt a lot – about ourselves, about each other, about how to make music that connects with fans which is always honest, never forced.”

Almost three years and over 300 gigs since the release of their silver-selling, debut album, Free, catapulted them from clubs to sold-out shows at Shepherds Bush Empire to the main stage at Reading and Leeds and this summer, Glastonbury, Twin Atlantic have made a mainstream record that marries their incredible energy live with a more mature approach to songwriting that acknowledges their long-held love of pop. Great Divide may be driven by guitars and drums, but it is also steeped in piano and strings, built on soaring melodies and littered with lyrics, sung in McTrusty’s strong Scottish accent, that express grown-up emotions as chantalong slogans.

“We’ve been through our punk rock rebellion phase and come out the other side,” laughs McTrusty. “We’ve all grown up being in this band. Dare I say it, we’re finally fully-formed adults. Since Free, some of us have got married and bought our own places and I’ve spent time in Canada because my girlfriend lives there. When the four of us got back together to work on this album, there was no bullshit. With our own lives sorted, it was easier to see the point of the songs and how we wanted them to sound. And, definitely, part of that was embracing pop.”

Pop hooks and harmonies abound on songs such as Hold On, an ode to self-belief driven by drums it’s difficult not to dance to. ‘It’s a risk worth taking/To

have a life worth living’ sings McTrusty on a huge, hooky chorus that’s a surefire summer singalong. The stunning Brothers And Sisters, set to shimmering guitars, bulked up by multi layered vocals and boasting a soft-loud dynamic is a collective call-to-arms dedicated to those who refuse to give up on their dreams.

Flamboyant first single Heart and Soul is a dirty rock stomper that sums up the shared feelings of a bouncing festival crowd, nods to both classic Bon Jovi and Queen and has already moved George Ergatoudis, Radio 1’s head of music, to tweet ‘Hyperbole alert. No joke - STUNNING does not do them justice.’ The single went in at number 17, a phenomenal achievement for a rock band in this day and age.

Twin Atlantic formed in 2007 when McTrusty and bassist Ross McNae, a friend from school, joined forces with drummer Craig Kneale and lead guitarist and occasional cello player Barry McKenna. All four had been in previous bands on the Glasgow scene. They bonded over a shared love of alternative rock, punk-pop and the city’s skate and street art scene, as well as a determination to make music their day jobs. Their ferocious shows soon saw them booked to support Smashing Pumpkins, Biffy Clyro and their teen idols Blink 182. Within two years, they had played most major UK festivals and been signed, following a tip-off from Alan McGee, to American label Red Bull Records.

“Our A&R person saw us at this strange snowboarding Channel 4 gig at Battersea Power Station,” recalls Kneale. “We pure went for it at that show, not because we knew anyone was watching, but because we were fucking freezing. We were surrounded by fake snow, our hands so cold we couldn’t hold our guitars. Either we went for it or we froze. Our A&R said it was the craziest gig he’d ever witnessed.”

A mini album, Vivarium, released in 2009, found Twin Atlantic fans in Kerrang!, saw them tour Europe and the States, play festivals including Download and Sonisphere and support My Chemical Romance. Free, their debut proper, followed two years later, boasting three singles playlisted by Radio 1, including the title track, which soundtracked Felix Baumgartner’s historic space jump in 2012.

“We were told Felix himself chose it,” says Kneale, “because he liked the lyric ‘Set my body on fire so I can be free’.” I guess he knew something could go horribly wrong. Thank God it didn’t! It wouldn’t have been a good epitaph for us.”

Most of Great Divide was written last year, while Twin Atlantic were still touring Free. “90% of it was written in the back of the tour bus, or a sweltering van in America,” says McTrusty. “Our adrenaline was through the roof because, for the first time, thousands of people had come to see us. I’d be in the lounge, unable to sleep, recording ideas on my phone, trying to make sense of the reaction we’d had to our songs. You can’t hear 10,000 people singing a chorus back at you and not be changed by it.

“I’d sit there thinking ‘I wish I’d had this type of song’ or been able to make people feel a certain way. I tried to write for people who don’t dance, and

didn’t intend to, but couldn’t help it cos the energy of the song meant they couldn’t stand still.

“I was definitely inspired by playing with Bruce Springsteen, who we supported at Hard Rock Calling last year. Every song of his is an anthem, even if it’s weird and complicated. You can’t see Springsteen and not remember it the next time you write.”

The bulk of Great Divide was recorded in Rockfield in Wales with producer Gil Norton (Foo Fighters, Pixies), who also helmed Free. Additional songs were recorded in the States with Jacknife Lee (Snow Patrol, U2, R.E.M.). The Rockfield sessions lasted much longer than had been planned and almost broke the band.

“We were there, between festivals, for most of last summer,” recalls McTrusty. “Remember how good the weather was? We were ridiculously decadent, lying in the sun, bringing back loads of alcohol. We bought a big projector screen, played FIFA and watched nearly every James Bond film.

“At the start it was amazing. We were inspired by stories of the bands who had been there before us. We used the piano that’s on Bohemian Rhapsody. But by the end, when the album still wasn’t finished, the place started to feel too isolated. Silence to me is terrifying – I’m from inner city Glasgow, I’ve always lived on a main road.”

One of the results of the extended Rockfield sessions was the song Oceans, Twin Atlantic’s favourite on the album. “Oceans could only have been written somewhere like that,” says McTrusty. “It sounds like a cry from an unhinged, isolated person, which is what I became there.”

Hold On also took on new meaning, becoming a metaphor for a band at breaking point. “There were a lot of frayed ends and decisions to make,” says McTrusty. “Hold On was us telling ourselves to not give up, that we’d get there in the end. Did we ever think the end was nigh? I’m not sure, but we did hold on and we made it and that’s what matters.”

But the level of their modesty is no match for the scale of the achievement. Purveyors of infectiously crunchy, melodic and spring-loaded hardcore, their rise to the status of UK rock’s most-likely-to has been steady and, with hindsight, inevitable. It might look like that now, but they couldn’t have planned any of this that way. The four members fell together in the late-2000s, uniting as they realised that each other were all the most impressive members of their scene. With a DIY ethic that was honourable, but also borne from necessity, everything they have done until now has been written in Mike’s kitchen. Their story has been proof that the good will usually out.

Since releasing their debut EP ‘Bretton’ in 2008, through two more self-funded albums (2010’s ‘Far Q’ and 2011’s ‘World Record’) and a Biffyesque commitment to touring, they earned a fearsome reputation on the underground circuit, fast rising to prominence, media acclaim and with an often-terrifyingly devoted fanbase. Now, having attracted the attention of Island Records, they’re all set to release their ‘Changing Tune’, the album that looks set to turn them into British rock’s next great crossover act.

As is always the case with self-motivated rock bands who do it the old-fashioned way, they let ‘the industry’ find them rather than seeking anyone out, and after a whispering campaign led them gaining a buzz, they were sought out and seduced. One night in early 2012, in London on the final day of their sold out UK tour, they signed a record deal with a major label and then went off and played the biggest headline show of their careers. Life was going well. The journey then took them and producer John Mitchell to Rockfield Studios in Wales, a place steeped in rock history. Each day they would walk out past the weathervane that inspired the “any way the wind blows” line in Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’. They would sit underneath the same stars that were shining on Chris Martin when he wrote ‘Yellow’. “And there we are,” says Mike, “getting pissed and lighting our farts on the sofa. It was mental!” Clearly, you can take the boy out of Watford…

‘Changing Tune’, the album that transpired, from the frenetic buzz of lead single ‘Love Someone Else’, retains the snarl that made their name, but moves them onto a place that, while not exactly more adult (who would want that?) then certainly more sure of itself. “We released a really hardcore metal album,” says Ben, “the second was a fast aggressive punk album, the third one was kind of your skeleton of a basic rock album, a skeleton of what this is. This’s a big, muscly dude complete with skin and organs.”

And while they’ve hardly ‘gone pop’, they do acknowledge a determination to use the bigger platform now that they’ve earned it. “I think our band has a message,” says Mike, “and if you want your message to get across, why wouldn't you make your music that little bit more palatable so that it reaches a wider audience? We feel we can pull that off without losing integrity”

And that message? “We’re four normal working class guys, who had shit jobs and no decent qualifications or anything like that. We’re just normal people. Our message now is that if you want something bad enough and really work hard - it will happen. We’re proof of that” The experience is affecting them more than they might have expected. Of the significance of the title, Mike only half-jokes, “originally there were a couple of positive songs on the album lyrically, which we’d never had before. We used to be so broke, we’d had the worst luck, and everything was kind of downtrodden, bummed out and whinging. But our band became our career, how can you moan when you’re having the time of your life? We've definitely changed our tune.” Although, keen not to throw the baby out with the bathwater, he smirks, “I'll always find something to moan about”

In fact, that attitude, and the wealth of new experiences (from getting a Fender Rhodes and a theremin to “using the studio as an instrument,”) inspires the album in unexpected and colourful ways. This is the message that burns through the whole of ‘Changing Tune’. And the band are primed to expect to expect the unexpected. For a band who named themselves after a place so deep, Lower Than Atlantis are getting themselves ready for the heights.

It’s a moment of gut-wrenching melancholy that not only plucks the heartstrings, but destroys them. This is Balthazar going all the way, with no boundaries. This, fellow travellers, is ‘Rats’.

“It’s become quite a romantic record”, Jinte Deprez says “You have to be in that special kind of mood”. Maarten Devoldere, Jinte’s songwriting partner in crime, nods and whispers reassuring: “Just take your time with it. It’s an album to soundtrack your everyday pleasures and your everyday pains.”

Maarten and Jinte go way back. They used to be teenage buskers, competing with each other, until they realized that sometimes one and one make three. Their newfound alliance led them into a vortex of musical adventures. They studied music production together and discovered the beauty and the power of string and brass arrangements.

“It’s what we do”, Maarten says “It’s a piece of cake to write a fancy big band arrangement. Some people may find it exotic. But once you learn the math, anything’s possible. Funnily enough, nowadays we’re more interested in writing simple pop music”.

In their quest for the perfect pop song, the duo founded Balthazar, a mean groove machine that released a fine debut album in 2010, chock-full of catchy, wiry indie pop.

The band earned their stripes while touring Europe: they toured the UK and France supporting dEUS and they played their hearts out in Germany, Swiss, Italy, Sweden, Norway and Denmark.

Now there’s ‘Rats’, a record that emphasizes Balthazar’s love for classic pop productions. “Most of contemporary pop productions sound too ‘noughties’”, Maarten shrugs; “There’s no depth. We’ve tried a different approach”. Maarten en Jinte cherish their love for masterful songwriters such as Leonard Cohen. They dived headfirst into Serge Gainsbourg’s sixties output: it made them think differently about rhythm, about orchestration and mixing.

“In the past we just wanted to write cool arrangements. Not this time. We wanted the emotions to surface.”

Mission accomplished. ‘The Oldest of Sisters’ works its mojo thanks to an irresistible Gainsbourg-ish rhythm section, yet, it’s the vocal harmony and the stark horn section that’ll move you to tears. Do check out the diabolically frivolous ‘Joker’s Son’ where Balthazar’s colourful, slightly tipsy chants hold up a flame to set the night on fire. ‘Listen Up’ marries a comfy jazz vibe and Bollywood-strings beautifully, leaving room for a sparkling chorus. A sunny singalong for rainy days.

Lest not forget, U.S. mixer Noah Georgeson (Joanna Newsom, The Strokes, Devendra Banhart) was behind the desk, keeping Balthazar’s sound on a tight leash. “The first album was about making a statement. This new one is about getting carte blanche, about doing what we want and what we love”, Jinte tells us, proud.

You may wonder: if ‘Rats’ feels like a clean slate to the band, does the album reveal Balthazar’s look on life and love? “Our personal crises are quite shallow”, Maarten says. “We’re still young. And we’re not fond of self-dramatizing.”

“Or self-analyzing, for that matter”, Jinte adds with a smile. On the other hand, he admits the new songs can’t shake of a certain kind of sadness.

Apparently ‘Rats’ touches on the small dramas in life. “Having to walk home alone after the party. Yeah, that can be tough. I like that kind of melancholy.”

Truth is, the boys can’t wait to play these new songs in front of an audience, together with the other Balthazar members: Patricia Vanneste, Simon Casier and Christophe Claeys.

“Every night we’ll play our best show ever. Just watch us.”

No worries. They’ll take us out of that dark, cold forest. A little less weary than before.

To give you an idea of Dinosaur Pile-Up’s definition of ‘hard and fast’ just glance at what they achieved on the live circuit last year alone. The States three times, Japan twice, Europe, India and their native UK. That’s a hell of an itinerary for a live show as notoriously savage as theirs.

And now it’s time to add the heavy. Wielding their third album, ELEVEN ELEVEN, Dinosaur Pile-Up are reborn – ravenous for bigger crowds, broader stages and the fresh blood of fans’ ears.

Sculpted by the expert hands of producer Tom Dalgety (Royal Blood) the crushing, jagged riffs of this third monster are the meat on the Dinosaur’s bones. If their career was a B-movie, then they just hit the scene where everyone starts running scared. Cities from here to the States are about to take a proper kicking.

Parking the monster metaphors for a moment, though – it’s striking that ELEVEN ELEVEN is the first album to be recorded by more members than just Matt. From day one the band has been Matt’s vision, leading him to fill the roles of songwriter, guitarist, singer, bassist and drummer singlehandedly. But now, in this new era of Dinosaur Pile-Up, he’s handed drum duty over to Mike (a member since 2010) and bass over to Jim (who joined in 2014), allowing Matt to focus on crafting bigger, more brutish hooks than their previous two outings.

In case you were sleeping, debut album Growing Pains (2010) rudely introduced a vivid and chaotic band, built on a turbo-charged bedrock of Foo Fighters, Weezer and Nirvana. Second outing Nature Nurture (2013) saw the band’s sound develop a near-split personality, with calmer surf-rock riffs lulling listeners into a safe place before revving their menacing motor back up and ramming audiences straight back into the pit.

Now though, with their third album heralding darker, more intense vibes – as well as invoking comparisons to Deftones, Smashing Pumpkins and Nirvana – there’ll be no more sleeping for you. That’s a threat and a promise. Dinosaur Pile-Up are a band – and they’re about to go harder, faster and terrifyingly heavier than ever before.

Their debut album is an immersive experience intended to be absorbed and cherished with repeated listens, not to be heard once on laptop speakers and disregarded. Much like a great novel, this one is hard to put down and will stay with you forever.

The London five-piece are a product of the modern world and its easy access to music. Bonding over a mixture of the best in electronica and guitar-based music, they’ve fused this eclecticism into a truly inimitable sound of their own. “You could pick some songs and we’d be likened to a folk act, another few and we’d be called dubstep,” explains front man Tim Digby-Bell. How many bands can you say that about? Their cerebral experimentation may not be mainstream, but it’s fast becoming a favourite among the cognoscenti.

The journey began with two original members – Tim Digby-Bell and Toby Leeming (vocals/live programming and beats) – producing on a computer whilst at Edinburgh University. Both realised what they were creating was too big for just a couple of people to play. Seb Dilleyston was brought in to add emotive atmospheres on violin having previously trained with world renowned violinist Maria Eitler. Toby Lee was next on guitar, and then bassist Ross Stone completed the line-up.

Early gigs in their nascent career were explosive in more ways than one. Aside from gaining a scintillating live reputation they were also becoming known for having things blow up onstage. A show at London’s Shepherd’s Bush saw the lights shatter above their heads as soon as the set began, and at The Barfly in Camden Town there was an electrical fire halfway through their performance. Whether or not the crowd thought these mishaps were all part of a unique live show will remain a mystery but one thing is for certain, their status on the road grew exponentially and support slots for everyone from Matthew Dear to Clock Opera have followed.

What makes the band so compelling is that they are just that, a band. Refusing to rely too heavily on programmed elements, each layer comes to life in the live arena. “We wanted to have moments where we can strip it down to the bare essentials, really intimate moments, and then to build up to these epic electronic parts too. It needs to feel like a real journey,” says Tim.

The debut album is the culmination of a year’s preparation honing and self editing their eclectic sound and huge catalog of demos in preparation to record. Having already self-produced and released two EP’s showcasing their ability to encompass a wide range of sounds and references the final piece of the puzzle came with the introduction of producer Jim Abbiss (Adele, Arctic Monkeys, Ladytron). In March 2012 the band and Jim holed up in a Chatham studio and began work – with many of the parts already formed and recorded, Jim took on a co-production role, intuitively helping them further enhance their sonic make-up.

Digital synths were replaced by richer analogue gear, real strings replaced programmed ones, and even the inclusion of a church organ. “The church was really chilled. I slightly lied. I said we’d dropped ?15 in the collection box,” laughs Toby. Nonetheless they’ve been blessed with a great collection of songs from the process.

‘Push It’ is the lynchpin. A four-four dance beat gives structure to a hauntingly atmospheric six minute epic of lyrical self-doubt. Soaring strings and guitar melodies combine in the pinnacle which sees the guys playing to the limit, giving their all in a song replete with daedal rhythms. ‘Escape Artist’ shows they’re equally adept at the other end of the scale. At their most stripped back, this one is rooted in simple harmonies combining live vocals and looped brass samples, yet carries as much emotive weight as the more layered moments. ‘Gift Horse’ is a beautiful lullaby mixing swooning strings with electronic glitches in a contrasting way that will leave audiences rapt. It’s a debut showing courage, refusing to take one path or another, daring to avoid being pigeon-holed yet cohesive enough to stand firmly as an impressive body of work.

Tim’s powerful voice ties all the diversity together, a rich falsetto, he floats effortlessly amid an ever changing backdrop of beats, synths, and strings, molding his own melodies on a patchwork sound-mosaic already replete with creativity. ‘Constant’ sees his melismatic vocal style delicately accompanied by lilting guitar picking in a real highlight.

Meeting up to help finish off each other’s songs, sometimes they would become cavernous rhythms and more than often the pair would record just for the hell of it. (On one occasion the two were purported to have stayed up recording the sound of hair swishing across a microphone).

Fusing the elements of disparate musics, the vocal sweetness of Laurel Canyon, Carl Wilson and Bruce Johnston and the modern electronic space of the past 40 years, in their first recording ‘Come Save Me’ they created a contemporary psychedelia, with the beauty and simplicity of classic sun-soaked beach pop.

Just weeks after putting it online, it had heavy airplay on Australian radio and a seven inch release on new label The Blue Rider, receiving a positive reaction to the mix of old & new, the uninhibited rhythm and a song rooted in celebrating sadness, its heavenly harmonies jilted by a lyric informing how leaving a loved one can really expose how lonely love really is.

“You can’t trick people in to liking a song” says Gab “We knew we liked it and that we had a really good time making it”.

Understanding that what they had was important and needed to be documented, they decamped to a friend’s studio in France in the summer of 2012 to record their debut album - just the two of them in an empty farm two hours south of Paris, with an 808, a Fender jaguar, a laptop & a pair of vintage Neve console channels.

Their time at La Briche echoes like a strange psychedelic film: cycling in fields of sunflowers, copious amounts of cheese, growing caveman beards and going crazy in the studio. While working they listened to twisted electronica from Liars, Aphex Twin and Autechre. “And when we sat down to dinner we’d listen to Sinatra and Nat King Cole" says Gab.

Meanwhile next door lived a convoy of tradesmen with a thing for hardcore dub…“They were from a scene which is based around homemade soundsystems” says Jono “they take them out in to the middle of nowhere and play literally the hardest most sinister kind of music I’ve ever experienced. It is the weirdest thing in the world”.

The long ways from home helped them to bond and cement their sound and at the same time absorb some of Europe’s cultural and artistic influences from the fierce beats of Berlin’s Berghain to London’s most interesting corners. A mission to re-create a two man wall of sound ensued and with help from friends, locals and a pre-historic desk once used by Conny Plank, the pair set about re-inventing the warmth, harmony and audio sunshine they’d hatched back in Australia.

Their collaborators along the way included long-time friend & Warpaint drummer, Stella Mozgawa and renowned producer/mixer, Ewan Pearson, a friend from Berlin, and they love that the songs have travelled (“they followed us around the world” says Jono) and their balance between old and new, the discovery of something vintage alongside future-looking experiments.

“Finding great music from the past is a way of being adventurous” says Jono " It’s that sense of finding something that you feel belongs to just you”

By the dying days of 2012 their time in France had not been ill-spent and a debut album Howlin was recorded and ready to be mixed.

Their first release from these sessions, The Throw, saw them occupying a space where Screamadelica and its wayward children used to live. A joyful seven minutes weaving melodies & beats with the sole purpose of making people move, of throwing caution to the wind & reaching a higher level with a greater purpose, or maybe without one at all, it touched a nerve & helped soundtrack the last few months.

Next single, ‘The Man I Need’ is more introspective, beats minimal and Gab crying “all you say to me, is all you want to see, you’re not the man I need, that’s what you said to me”. Its ten-minute version climaxes with a voodoo drum-breakdown and the instruction “exercise your chemistry”, and was picked up & played in full by Zane Lowe on BBC R1.

Across the album, Howlin's songs are full of classic hooks but often end in dirty clanking breakdowns. Pop songwriting is buried in layers of crunching synths and pedal effects. “How can you look gloomy? When you look so good to me” wonders Gab in 'Uncertainty', repeating “be my light” over Jono’s techno-inspired beat.

Having played a couple of festivals last summer, adding Jack Freeman on bass, they kicked 2013 off back in Australia on the Big Day Out before playing a packed breathless NME show in London, Gab ending up topless, the audience lost in sound & strobes.

Since then they've toured Europe with Foals, and Australia with the xx and will be back in Europe to play more headline dates and festivals across the summer.

The explosion of colour and sound will echo throughout the year, Jagwar Ma is written on the wind, painted on the stars (as someone else once wrote…)

After the departure of co-founder and vocalist David Jakes earlier this year due to health reasons, Lonely The Brave stood together, supporting their friend but adamant that as one door was closing, they would very soon be opening a new one. They never stopped writing, never stopped creating, and instead started the search for a vocal talent that they could stand side by side with in their march toward album number three.

A short search led them to the door of Jack Bennett, and an instant connection was made as they traded stories, ideas and inspirations. He is noted for his strong and emotionally wrought vocal performances - qualities that have come to define the band’s live show - so it is with some excitement that their first live outing together is announced to take place at Omeara, London, on October 13th. Tickets will be available here - http://smarturl.it/LTB_Omeara - and go on general sale from 9am this Friday, August 17th. This will be a special headline show with no support act and an early 10pm curfew, so be sure to get down early to avoid disappointment.

The band had this to say about Jack’s arrival;

We don’t know where to start with everything that has happened over the last 12 Months or so, so first of all we all want to say thank you to every single one of you that has messaged us with your support during this period. Nothing worth doing is ever easy and your continued words of encouragement really have helped galvanise our belief that this band has so much more to give. It fills us with pride to say that this new chapter of our history will begin in earnest on the 13th October. The show is our way of thanking every single one of you for standing by us and understanding that this is a continuation; that the songs really are the most important part.

Until her recent signing to Columbia Records, Lucy Rose had none of this, but her heart-stoppingly poignant songs and cracked porcelain voice saw her enter 2012 with YouTube hits, radio plays and crowds like nobody else out there. Such is her fan-base, she now sells out 500-capacity venues with ease, and at the tender age of 23, Lucy is being tipped by the great and the good as the one New British Artist who may stick around longer than any of the other fly-by-night contenders.

“Gentle, folky, confidential tone, undershot by a coolness of intelligence and self possession” 4/5 The Daily Telegraph

(Pop CD of the Week)

“A bewitching one-off talent” Daily Star

“Dark-hearted pop songs that strive for the epic” Q Magazine

“A resounding affirmation of a consummate talent” 4/5 Daily Mirror

“A beautiful voice” The Sun

“Miss Rose’s unassuming charm ticks off everything on the How To Make Your Fans Adore You checklist” 7/10 NME

“Each song is a confessional of her most tightly clasped secrets” The Fly

“One of the country’s most promising new voices” “Utterly beautiful” Sunday Times (Culture)

“It was only a matter of time before the second wave of British nu-folk pioneers made it to the U.S, and Lucy Rose is sure to be among its first breakout stars” Vogue.com

.

“We have a penchant for great pop music and we’re partial to experimentalism, so we sit somewhere in the middle,” says Henry Riggs (vocals and guitar). Take last December’s knockout single, “All Eyes” (released on new independent label Labour of Love), which featured big bad drums and a memorable synth line, offset by Tobias Stretch’s otherworldly video that starred a fearful alien called Gorky.

It’s a long way from the days of playing “standard garage rock” in Royal Leamington Spa, where they started. The four-piece have all known each other since they were kids. They did the obliging unsigned band thing, sending demos off in vain, playing circuit venues, before relocating to London, all moving into the same East-London warehouse. “It was the dream really,” says Henry. “We learned how to produce and record our own music there, just bought some equipment and ploughed ahead. You’d have Tom knocking on all of our doors in the morning telling us to get out of bed and get to work. It was a really cheap way of doing it but it did get a bit claustrophobic. We had all of our girlfriends living there as well.”

“It was quite an amazing period of time,” says Simon. “We’d often stay up until four in the morning recording, or we’d just wander around getting to know London. I’m not sure that many people in Leamington completely understood what we were trying to do, so it felt like starting again.”

Chess Club Records pulled them out of obscurity after checking them out at the End of the Road Festival. When the DIY label released the house-inspired track “Black Morning”, the press started to stir and the band soon self-released their first album The Greats and the Happenings.

Listening back to their debut now stirs up mixed emotions for the band. “It sounds like what it is – a lo-fi album that we recorded and produced ourselves,” says Simon. “We were only just beginning to learn how to use our instruments at that time and were recording in a small box room in the warehouse. It was an interesting period of time. We weren’t earning any money and we all started to fall out. Relationships started to fracture.”

Did the band think about splitting up? “There were a few depressing moments. I’d never physically hit anyone in my entire life, but I hit Fred around that time. When things like that happen you suddenly realise the desperate nature of the situation, it was quite horrible actually. But you fall out with the people who are closest to you, don’t you?”

Out of the blue during the summer of 2009, European promoters started getting in touch after the band had – unbeknownst to them – been getting a lot of radio play across the continent. Playing the resulting shows in Europe was the game-changer for the band’s future. “Suddenly we were playing in bigger venues, and festivals with really good audiences,” says Simon. “We were used to basement venues and small clubs at that time, so it just flipped everything around, and it felt like a worth-while project again.”

The most influential stop-off in terms of the band’s new direction was Germany. “We started getting into German electronic music like Modeselektor and Pantha Du Prince,” says Henry. “Doing things like Sonar in Barcelona opened our eyes to the fact that there was all this incredible electronic music around that was distinctly European sounding,” Simon adds. “We came back and started the new record. It was like a new beginning.”

To bolster the confident new direction, the band enlisted the talents of Philadelphia’s far out animator and filmmaker, Tobias Stretch. “We’ve been big fans of his work since we saw an Efterklang video that he created a few years ago – he’s a really talented artist” says Simon. “At first, I sent him a really self-deprecating email about our first album, he didn’t get back in touch. A few months later we sent him our new songs, and he did.”

Tobias has duly bestowed his brand of dream-logic surreality upon the band. On top of making the video for “All Eyes”, he has designed striking cover art for the “Glass House” EP and the forthcoming “The Bell” EP and will be involved with the band’s videos and artwork for the foreseeable future.

Over the last year and a half the band have been working with producer James Rutledge on the material for the second album, creating songs bursting with an explosive sense of sonic freedom, yet tied together by a strong pop sensibility. “With this record we wanted our songs to sound more immediate and urgent, so James was perfect,” says bassist Tom. “He’s interested in soundscapes, synthesized textures, and sampling, but he is also quite pop-minded. The four of us created lots of ideas and noises that maybe didn’t sit together at first, but he instinctively knew which ideas to run with. He’s really good at knowing when to keep certain things really simple.”

For these four old friends, the next 12 months look set to be as mind-bendingly bright as the colourful music they make. So just how far can take their free-flowing electronic prog-dance party? “To be able to do it for as long as possible without ever repeating ourselves is the ideal,” says Henry. “We’re older now, and perhaps we lost that romantic idea of what being in a band is about. Now we’re closer to understanding the reality of it, it feels more real…” says Simon. “...we started making this record because we felt we had to create something, not because we want people to be screaming our names.” That might be the case, but armed with tunes like these, it’s an outcome that feels inevitable.

Produced by Charlie Hugall (Florence and The Machine, Ed Sheeran), Paul Savage (Mogwai, Franz Ferdinand) and Peter Miles (We Are The Ocean, Futures, The King Blues) and with arrangements and strings from Valgeir Sigurðsson (Sigur Rós, Björk), the resulting 10-track album is bold, expansive, confident and cohesive - an undeniable step up in both diversity and volume from their critically acclaimed debut, Shallow Bed (March 2012).

Dry the River have announced a UK headline tour in October. The dates follow a number of festival shows over the summer, including appearances at Glastonbury and the Main Stage at Reading and Leeds.

They ended their last run of UK dates with a euphoric sold-out show at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire in November 2012, a year which began with them appearing in the BBC ‘Sound of 2012’ poll. This tour will see them play their biggest headline show yet, at The Forum in Kentish Town, London.