A Night In Texas Drag Deathcore Into Its Bleakest Territory Yet

There are few bands in modern deathcore who seem quite as comfortable staring directly into the abyss as A Night In Texas. On The Darkest Side Of Humanity, the Australian outfit don't simply turn up the distortion and start swinging the breakdown hammer. They go looking for the uglier corners of the human experience — mortality, suffering, instinct, exploitation and the darker impulses that sit beneath civilisation — and build a suitably monstrous soundtrack around them.

Due for release on September 4, 2026 through Unique Leader Records, the album is the band's fifth full-length and follows 2024's Digital Apocalypse. The record also marks the first A Night In Texas album to feature drummer Chris Whitbread, who joined the lineup during 2026. The current quartet is completed by vocalist Sam Cameron, guitarist Cory Judd and guitarist Thomas (Tommy) Williams, with David Finlay also credited in recent band lineups.

If the title sounds like a warning, the music backs it up.

From the opening moments of “Oblivion's Dominion”, A Night In Texas establish a world where atmosphere matters almost as much as sheer violence. The technical guitar work is fast, intricate and punishing, but it is the contrast between claustrophobic atmosphere and sudden eruptions of brutality that gives the record much of its character. MetalTalk described the album as a return to the ferocity of the band's earlier work, while retaining the technical precision that has become central to their identity.

Then comes “Rot From Within”, and the gloves are very firmly off.

This is where the band's technical deathcore credentials really come to the foreground. Rapid-fire guitars, hyperactive drumming and Cameron's extreme vocal range collide with the kind of breakdown that sounds engineered specifically to turn a pit into a demolition site. It is intricate without becoming sterile, and brutally physical without reducing everything to a sequence of predictable chugs.

That balance has been an important part of A Night In Texas since the band's early records. Formed in Cairns in 2009 before relocating to Brisbane, the group built its reputation through a particularly technical strain of deathcore, with The God Delusionand Global Slaughter establishing a taste for blistering tempos, intricate riffing, savage vocals and bleak subject matter. Their 2021 double album The Divine Dichotomyexpanded that approach before Digital Apocalypse pushed into a more futuristic, cybernetic world.

The Darkest Side Of Humanity feels like a different kind of darkness.

Take “Metastatic Misery”, the album's first single. Beneath the relentless blast beats and suffocating guitars is a genuinely grim concept: the song examines the commercialisation of disease and the way human suffering can become entangled with profit. Rather than using darkness merely as an aesthetic, A Night In Texas are aiming their brutality at something recognisably human.

That idea appears to permeate the album. The ten-track sequence moves through themes of death, suffering, mortality, deception and primal human behaviour, giving the record a conceptual weight that goes beyond simply being another exercise in extreme-metal excess. The track list runs from “Oblivion's Dominion” through “Rot From Within”, “Fed To Death”, “Metastatic Misery”, “Evolved From Hate”, “When The Sun Burns Out” and “A Primal Conditioning”, before closing with “The Chronicles Of Nihilism”, “The Infinite Maw” and the title track.

And there are some particularly interesting names lurking in the credits.

Former A Night In Texas vocalist Rheese Peters returns for “The Chronicles Of Nihilism”, while Ryan Vail of Synestia/Larcenia Roe appears on “The Infinite Maw”. Those guest appearances add another layer to a record already designed to sound cinematic and enormous.

Behind the desk, guitarist Cory Judd takes production duties, while Christian Donaldson handles the mix and mastering. Donaldson's work with extreme-metal heavyweights including Cryptopsy, Ingested and Despised Icon makes him a particularly appropriate choice for a record that needs to retain both microscopic technical detail and devastating low-end impact.

Early reviews suggest the gamble has paid off. MetalTalk praised the record's technical musicianship, symphonic touches and relentless aggression, highlighting tracks including “Rot From Within”, “Fed To Death”, “When The Sun Burns Out” and the title track. Another review noted the way the band combines precision with an oppressive, contemporary deathcore sound rather than relying purely on breakdowns.

The result is an album that understands something fundamental about extreme metal: heaviness isn't always about playing faster or tuning lower. Sometimes it is about creating an atmosphere so bleak that the listener feels trapped inside it.

A Night In Texas have spent more than a decade sharpening that weapon. With The Darkest Side Of Humanity, they appear to have found an especially vicious target — humanity itself.

And judging by the evidence so far, they aren't interested in looking away.

On "Achilles" Audrey Horne Sharpen Their Sound

Audrey Horne have never sounded particularly interested in standing still. There is a restless energy running through Achilles, their eighth studio album, as though the Norwegian rockers have walked back into the studio with something to prove — not to anyone else, but perhaps to themselves.

Four years after Devil’s Bell, the Bergen five-piece return with a record that feels seasoned without sounding tired. The riffs are big, the twin-guitar work remains a major attraction, and the choruses still have the kind of lift that makes you instinctively reach for the volume control. Yet there is also more room here for atmosphere, groove and unexpected turns.

Audrey Horne performing live at Sauna Open Air 2010, Tampere, Finland. Photo: Fileri. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Due for release on September 4, 2026 through Napalm Records, Achilles arrives with 11 tracks that draw freely from the classic hard-rock tradition while giving Audrey Horne plenty of space to put their own stamp on it.

The title track wastes little time establishing the mood. “Achilles” crashes in with weight and purpose before opening out into more expansive territory, with Toschie’s vocals riding over the band's muscular rhythm section. Its lyrics take inspiration from an increasingly polarised world, giving the song a contemporary edge beneath its classic-rock foundations.

Then comes “God Damn Beautiful”, which pulls the listener somewhere altogether different. With its swaggering groove and Thin Lizzy-inspired guitar work, the track has an easy confidence about it — made even more distinctive by bassist Espen Lien taking over lead-vocal duties.

“Insanity” pushes further into the band's more dramatic side. The first song written for the album, it combines twin guitars, a huge chorus and a striking middle section, while its narrative is imagined as a kind of prequel to Iron Maiden's “Hallowed Be Thy Name”. It's a suitably grand piece of storytelling for a band whose music has always had an eye for the theatrical.

Elsewhere, Achilles knows when to slow down. “Pretty Little Lies” brings a darker, more melancholic character to the record, while “New Star Falling” provides a melodic finale. Those changes of pace give the album breathing room and prevent its heavier moments from blurring together.

The appeal of Audrey Horne has always been rooted in their ability to make familiar ingredients feel freshly assembled. Their affection for the great hard-rock records of the 1970s and 1980s is hardly hidden, but Achilles doesn't come across as an exercise in nostalgia. The band's influences are there in the riffs, harmonies and arrangements, yet the performances have enough personality to make the material unmistakably theirs.

Audrey Horne live at Quart Festival 05, Kristiansand, July 2005. Photo: Mike Rophone. Released into the public domain by the author.

Formed in Bergen in 2002, Audrey Horne have now spent more than two decades refining that identity. From their early records through Youngblood, Pure Heavy, Blackout and Devil's Bell, they've built a reputation for combining muscular rock songwriting with melody and an obvious love of playing live.

Achilles feels like another confident step in that ongoing journey. There are huge riffs here, memorable choruses, moments of genuine atmosphere and just enough left turns to keep the listener guessing. Audrey Horne aren't trying to disguise where they came from — they're simply showing that there is still plenty they can do with it.

And after eight albums, that might be the most convincing argument for Achilles: it sounds like a band that still has somewhere to go.

Orchestra Baobab Bring Dakar’s Golden Groove to Life at Snape Maltings

Senegal’s legendary Afro-Cuban ensemble turned Snape Maltings into a dancefloor on a high-energy night of irresistible rhythms, timeless songs and seriously infectious grooves.

There are concerts where you sit back and listen. And then there are concerts where the music seems to make the decision for you.

When Orchestra Baobab arrived at Snape Maltings on 22 August, the latter was very much the order of the night. The Senegalese institution brought the 2026 Summer at Snape series to an exuberant close, delivering the kind of performance that makes the phrase “world music” feel far too small for what is actually happening on stage.

Credit: Neodop / Wikimedia Commons
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-SA 4.0).

Founded in Dakar in 1970 as the house band of the Baobab Club, Orchestra Baobab became one of the defining ensembles of Senegal’s post-independence musical culture. Their secret has never been a single genre, but the way they make seemingly distant traditions lock together: Afro-Cuban rhythms, Senegalese styles, Wolof vocals, jazz-inflected guitar and an unmistakable love of the dancefloor.

That mixture was everywhere at Snape.

The evening opened at an easy, spacious pace before the percussion began tightening the screws. Congas, timbales and drums supplied a rolling rhythmic engine, while the horns and guitars floated above it. Contemporary coverage of the concert singled out percussionist Taga Koité, who has been with the group since the 1970s, alongside musical director and saxophonist Thierno Koité.

The result was music that could be sophisticated without ever becoming stiff. One moment the band was threading intricate cross-rhythms through sharply executed stops; the next, it was gliding into a slow, romantic ballad before switching gears again for a dance number. The repertoire moved between languages including Wolof, French, Spanish and Portuguese Creole, reinforcing the cosmopolitan character that has always been central to Baobab's identity.

A sound built for movement

Guitarist René Sowatche proved another standout, his semi-acoustic playing providing melodic flourishes that cut elegantly through the rhythm section. Meanwhile, the audience increasingly became part of the performance itself.

By the middle of the first set, dancing had spilled into the aisles, with people moving towards the front of the hall. It was a fitting response to a band whose music has always treated rhythm not as decoration, but as the main event.

The second half pushed the temperature still higher, opening with a salsa-inflected number and a particularly striking interplay between the percussion and saxophones. The band seemed to encourage the crowd as much as entertain it, with the musicians visibly responding to the dancers gathered in front of the stage.

It is perhaps the greatest compliment that can be paid to Orchestra Baobab: despite the musical detail beneath the surface, nothing felt academic. The rhythms could be intricate, the arrangements multi-layered and the instrumental interplay remarkably tight, but the groove was never sacrificed.

That balance has been part of Baobab's appeal since their remarkable revival at the beginning of the 2000s. After a long hiatus, the group returned to prominence with Specialist in All Styles in 2002, an album that The Guardian described at the time as a major comeback and praised for bringing together Cuban dance influences, Senegalese musical traditions and pop melodies.

More than two decades later, the band is still evolving.

Credit: Bunks / Wikimedia Commons
Licence: Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported (CC BY 3.0).

The Baobab tree keeps growing

Snape's concert arrived just weeks before the release of Made in Senegal, Orchestra Baobab's first new studio album since 2017's Tribute to Ndiouga Dieng. Recorded entirely in Dakar and due on Strut Records on 23 October 2026, the album brings together veteran musicians and a younger generation of players, with new material sitting alongside reworked pieces from the group's extraordinary catalogue.

Among the album's tracks is “Baobab 50 Ans”, marking the group's half-century legacy, while “Casamance” looks towards the culturally rich region of southern Senegal associated with several members of the Orchestra Baobab story.

There is something especially appropriate about Orchestra Baobab playing at Snape Maltings. This is music with history in its bones, but it is not museum music. It still moves, still surprises and, judging by the reaction in the hall, still gets people out of their seats.

For a band approaching its sixth decade, that is no small achievement.

Orchestra Baobab's great trick is to make longevity sound like freedom rather than nostalgia. The old rhythms remain, the songs retain their character, but the musicians keep finding new space inside them.

At Snape, the result was a glorious reminder that some grooves don't age. They simply grow deeper roots.

On "The Montreux Years", Roberta Flack’s Montreux Legacy Comes Alive

Roberta Flack never needed to overpower a room to hold it. There was a quiet authority in her performances — the kind that drew people in rather than demanded their attention. Her voice could be intimate without ever becoming fragile, sophisticated without losing its soul — a quality that made her one of the defining recording artists of the 1970s.

Now, that quietly formidable live presence gets a fresh showcase with Roberta Flack: The Montreux Years, a 13-track collection drawn from five of her appearances at the legendary Montreux Jazz Festival. Released by BMG and the Montreux Jazz Festival on June 26, 2026, the set brings together performances recorded in 1971, 1972, 1990, 2005 and 2008, creating a remarkably broad portrait of Flack as a live performer.

Image: Roberta Flack at Baltimore’s M.D. Meyerhoff Theater in 1995. Photo by John Mathew Smith, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

From the early ’70s to the final Montreux appearance

The real attraction here is the timespan. Flack first appeared at Montreux in June 1971, when she was still in the early stages of the career that would soon make her a household name. The collection then jumps forward through 1972, 1990, 2005 and finally 2008.

That makes The Montreux Years more than a straightforward greatest-hits package. It is effectively a live career snapshot, showing how Flack’s interpretation of a song could evolve across decades while retaining the qualities that made her performances so distinctive.

The tracklist moves between familiar classics and less obvious choices. There is the hushed grandeur of “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face”, captured at the Auditorium Stravinski in 2005, alongside “Killing Me Softly With His Song”, “Feel Like Makin’ Love” and “Mercy Mercy Me.” Earlier Montreux recordings include “To Love Somebody” from 1971 and “Suzanne” and “Somewhere” from 1972.

And then there is the 1990 material: “I’d Like To Be Baby To You,” “More Than You’ll Ever Know” and “Always.” The first of those has been singled out as an early taste of the collection, offering a glimpse of Flack in a different era but still operating with that trademark control and warmth.

A voice built for the live setting

Flack’s reputation was never based simply on vocal fireworks. Classically trained as a pianist and educated at Howard University, she developed a style in which restraint became a form of power. The Smithsonian has described her music as embracing blues, folk, R&B, jazz, classical and pop influences — a useful description of why her records have always resisted being neatly filed under one genre.

That versatility is particularly revealing on The Montreux Years. Rather than presenting Flack as a museum piece frozen in the early 1970s, the collection allows the listener to hear an artist continuing to reinterpret her musical world well into the 21st century.

The performances were also fully restored and newly mastered by Tony Cousins at London’s Metropolis Studios, with the release accompanied by liner notes from Flack’s longtime manager Suzanne Koga and rare and previously unseen photographs.

Image: Roberta Flack performing in Deauville, France, July 1992. Photo by Roland Godefroy, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

A fitting addition to Flack’s legacy

Flack died on February 24, 2025, aged 88, leaving behind a catalogue that included four Grammy wins and the distinction of becoming the only solo artist to win consecutive Grammy Awards for Record of the Year — for “The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face” in 1973 and “Killing Me Softly With His Song” in 1974. She was also honoured with the Recording Academy’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 2020.

That makes the arrival of The Montreux Years especially poignant. It isn't simply another archival release designed to fill a gap in a catalogue. Heard together, these recordings trace nearly four decades of an artist who never needed to shout to make an impact.

Montreux gave Roberta Flack a stage; these recordings give listeners the chance to step back into that stage with her. And for anyone who has ever been drawn to the exquisite calm, emotional precision and understated drama of Flack’s music, The Montreux Yearsis a particularly welcome reminder of just how extraordinary that voice could be when the lights went down and the music began.

On "YDOS", Black Spikes Turn The Extreme Metal Rulebook To Ashes

Lithuania’s modern-metal outsiders collide blast beats, progressive metal, electronics, trap and theatrical storytelling on a dark fairytale about the vices lurking inside us.

There are plenty of ways for a metal band to announce that it intends to do things differently. Black Spikes have apparently decided that the best approach is to throw the entire rulebook into the fire.

The Lithuanian quintet return on 28 August with Ydos, their second full-length album and their first release through Austrian heavy-music institution Napalm Records. If the early material is anything to go by, this is a band with absolutely no interest in staying obediently inside one particular corner of the metal spectrum.

And that is precisely what makes Ydos so intriguing.

Black Spikes have built their sound around collision rather than convention. Progressive metal, electronic textures, crushing riffs, blast beats, breakdowns, atmospheric passages and even trap and rap elements are all allowed into the same room. Metal Hammer's assessment of the record highlights that restless mixture, pointing to progressive passages and blasts on “MOTINA”, rap and trap beats on “MELAS”, and pulsing electronics and punishing low-end on “ZELVAR”.

The result isn't simply genre soup, either. There is a deliberate narrative holding the whole thing together.

Welcome to the world of Ydos

The Lithuanian word ydos refers to vices or flaws, and Black Spikes have turned that idea into a dark musical fairytale. Rather than simply writing a collection of heavy songs and attaching a concept afterwards, the band say the story came first and guided the songwriting process. Each track explores a different human vice, giving the album a structure that is closer to a nightmare fable than a conventional collection of singles.

Opening track “PASAKA” — meaning “fairy tale” — establishes that atmosphere with ticking sounds and orchestral textures before vocalist Agni enters with high vocals and screams. “MOTINA”, translated as “mother”, then begins the story of the birth of the vices, expanding into growls, blast beats and elaborate guitar work.

From there, the album gets considerably stranger.

“MELAS” explores lies while bringing trap and rap into the band's modern-metal framework. “MARA” tackles excessive curiosity through sharp contrasts between serenity and violence, while “ZELVAR” represents greed and is notable for containing the album's only English lyrics. “REVANA” turns its attention to revenge, before “APATIJA” explores apathy and “AUREA” examines pride.

It is an ambitious idea — and, crucially, one that seems to have been allowed to influence the music rather than merely decorate it.

Heavy enough to crush, strange enough to linger

At the centre of all this is Agni's remarkably flexible vocal performance. The band's music can move from atmospheric and almost hypnotic passages into shrieks, screams and deep guttural growls without seeming to lose its sense of identity. Metal Hammer likewise singled out her range, describing a voice that moves between whispers, screams and growls in her native Lithuanian.

That use of Lithuanian is another part of what makes Black Spikes stand apart. Rather than abandoning their native language in pursuit of an international metal audience, the band have made it an integral part of their identity. Even when you cannot understand the words, the theatrical delivery makes the songs feel less like straightforward verse-chorus compositions and more like scenes from some beautifully sinister film.

That cinematic quality has already been noticed by critics. MetalTalk praised the album's combination of orchestration, blast beats, progressive and djent-influenced rhythms, electronic textures and changes in tempo and dynamics, while other coverage has highlighted the way Black Spikes combine darkness with unexpectedly graceful or atmospheric passages.

A band suddenly stepping onto a bigger stage

Ydos also arrives at an important moment for Black Spikes.

The band have recently signed with Napalm Records — a significant step for a group emerging from Lithuania's metal scene — and the album follows increased attention at home, including a double nomination at Lithuania's M.A.M.A. Music Awards. They also spent 2026 on the road with Infected Rain and Butcher Babies, giving audiences outside Lithuania a chance to experience the band's theatrical approach in the flesh.

That live identity matters. Reports from the tour describe Black Spikes as a visually striking act as well as an intensely heavy one, with costumed musicians, atmospheric staging and contemporary dance adding another layer to the performance.

In other words, the band aren't simply making unusual records. They appear to be building an entire world around them.

The rulebook was never going to survive

There is something refreshingly fearless about Ydos. Black Spikes aren't attempting to reinvent every component of heavy music individually; instead, they are asking what happens when you stop worrying about which components are supposed to belong together.

The answer, judging from the material already released, is a record where blast beats can collide with electronic bass, progressive arrangements can give way to trap rhythms, ethereal vocals can suddenly become monstrous screams, and a song about an abstract human vice can still hit with the physical force expected from modern extreme metal.

That makes Ydos less a rejection of extreme metal than an expansion of its borders.

The rulebook, then, hasn't merely been bent.

Black Spikes have set fire to it — and are dancing in the flames.