We've been pretty much there from the start with German / Finnish duo Pihka is my Name, since we covered their debut single 'Binaries' way back in the dark days of 2020. So I was delighted to spot deep in the listings for Manchester Northern Quarter gigs that are playing in Manchester (Aatma) tonight, 22nd July, as part of a UK Tour. Their music has certainly developed since those early releases, but they maintain that hypnotic dynamic electro disco style, as can be heard in

So just a quick diversion over to Finland for a new single I’ve enjoyed listening to this morning, and from a band I haven’t featured before, Pisara, a Finnish four-piece originally from the Oulu area. The new single is entitled ‘Mustaa lunta’ (Black Snow) and they describe it as a song that ‘sits between metal and pop without picking a side’. That actually grabbed my attention, along with a comment they made about releasing it on Midsummers Eve - and judging from the slight

It would be perfectly acceptable not to have time to cover any new music whilst the World Cup is on, but a new release from This Heel is always worthy of some attention, especially when it’s a curiosity such as ‘Lois Grey’. Of course the question is, who is Lois Grey? Well I've diligently spent a few hours researching this and ChatGPT suggests she’s either a famous economist or an investment banker in London, the artwork suggests Maggie Thatcher whilst the lyrics (‘every day

I’ve always liked Norwegian band Dobbeltgjenger, but I don’t quite recollect them being quite so damn loud and rocking as they are in their latest single ‘Friends (I’m There I’m Gone’, which has become an ‘instant hit’ in my house. They’ve just finished recording their 6th album (which I can’t quite believe), the follow up to their 2025 release ‘Master of Failure’. It doesn't necessarily open in blistering style, but the way it just takes off exactly one minute in elevates

We’ll finish today with a quick mention of Swedish band Kallsup, who we featured a couple of years back and have recently returned with an outstanding new song entitled ‘Kino’ (Cinema). So they’re a 6 piece band fronted by Eline Gustafsson, whose vocals again are excellent on the new track, but I just love the sound the whole band make, a swirling, melodic haze that for sure has shoegaze influences, but is far more powerful and relentlessly driven, whilst always keeping a goo

We included Finnish band Drug Store Raid in our 2024 list of Favourite Albums of the year, courtesy of their ‘Background Music For Family Arguments’ release, so it’s great to see them back with new single ‘Apple Junkie Birds’. It’s another release in the post punk space that I’ve featured a lot this week, but the Helsinki 5 piece are certainly far more complex in their musical approach than Green Tea Bitches whom we featured yesterday. ‘Apple Junkie Birds’ is a riotous 2 1/2

I can’t deny that I was slightly disappointed when I finally surfaced from anaesthetic / critical care to discover that the world had, rather selfishly, carried on much as before. I’d been quietly expecting a few developments in my absence: Trump and Farage both serving lengthy prison sentences, and more importantly I assumed that Green Tea Bitches had already been confirmed as Glastonbury headliners for 2027, and that, in a diplomatic initiative aimed at securing interplanet

Writing about 7ebra got me thinking about bands in a similar genre, and it reminded me that we hadn’t heard from Danish band Kindsight in a while. The good news is that they've just released a new single after a 2 year absence (from their outstanding album ‘No Shame No Fame’), entitled ‘The Head (This Body Deserves’), Now I try and avoid quoting band / record label notes directly, but feel I must on this occasion from Bandcamp, because any attempt to simplify the following w

So what have I been missing? As always a quick look at the PNKSLM Record Label website is a pretty good start, and it seems like the excellent indie post punk pop duo 7ebra are poised to release a new album at the end of September, which is very good news indeed. From that album they've just released 'Dinner and a Movie', a nicely balanced 2 mins 30 of chunky guitars and harmonised melodies that disappear off in a direction I wasn't quite expecting. The new album is curiou

We have a couple of Tromsø artists to feature this next week, the first of whom I’ve been meaning to write about for ages. Vilde Bye is a quietly compelling voice from northern Norway, and her track ‘Bird Up a Tree’ is a lovely introduction. Now we’ve covered a few fairly heavy lyrical ideas recently, so an acoustic indie-folk song about a bird sitting in a tree really appealed to me the first time I heard it in a very busy train station a couple of weeks ago. Except of cours

Regular readers will know that we ‘discovered’ a new genre a couple of weeks ago: Pinegaze - a close musical relative of shoegaze, specifically reserved for Nordic musicians who play shimmering guitars while staring mournfully into pine forests. It’s pretty popular up there to be honest and judging by historic promo shots, Ghosts on TV may well have been involved in the movement themselves, but sonically they do remain firmly rooted in post-rock / shoegaze territory. And rec

We’re generally trying to feature new releases, but we’re going to jump back a year to one I somehow missed, courtesy of Icelandic multi-instrumentalist Gisli Gunnarsson. Regular readers will know I take particular pleasure in writing about a multi-instrumentalist, for reasons I’ve never quite worked out. ‘Árstíðir’ was released this time last year and obviously we have previously featured the Icelandic chamber folk band Árstíðir’ name meaning “Seasons”, and if you’ve somehow

So the aim this weekend is to cover four Nordic post-rock releases. Yesterday it was After-Math. Today we return to a relatively new favourite, Swedish duo ÅHM. We’ve written about them recently, but this week they’ve released ‘Eliana Never Sleeps’, which immediately grabbed me with a blistering rush and an opening guitar riff that explodes into life. But unlike ‘Broken Beams’, which was coated in melancholy (if melancholy can, in fact, be applied like varnish), Eliana Never

I was thinking about Sløtface as i travelled into work last week thanks to passing Manchester Burger joint Burger Slut (who clearly haven't felt obliged to adjust their name to Burger Slot), and it was a timely reminder to check out their new releases ahead of their UK Tour. I'm particularly enjoying their 2026 sound, which has that extra edge and rawness to it. Clearly they're just enjoying releasing whatever they feel like, as shown by latest 'Demo' releases, which include

Have you ever vibed to a song you wonder how it would sound when you listen to it whilst engulfed in a ‘shroom cloud?* I know that’s a wild intro but there’s no holding back to how I feel about Bellman’s “She’s Reading Poe”. Whilst we would obviously never encourage drugs, “She’s Reading Poe” kinda lures you into an immersive five…no, six-dimensional experience that makes you think the other way around anyway. The emergence of many new alternative bands makes shoegaze sound

Unlike my idol Andy who has an extensive knowledge of all the musicians who we feature, I don’t. And I know that breaks all the rules in every writer’s guidebook, but I’d like to use that to our advantage. It’s fun blind reviewing a new song and basing all my ‘judgment’ merely on what I hear and feel, not on what I know about the artist. So with that said, today’s drug is Swedish duo Club 8’s new single, “Echoes of our Time.” Dreamy, synth, slightly electronic, and very indi

This review holds two firsts: 1) it’s my first time reviewing for NMR in a long time and 2) it’s my first time hearing of The Dahmers. “In the Dark” is the band’s third and final single from new album “Creature Feature” which was released yesterday. Initially listening to “In The Dark" and checking out their socials, I can already pick up what the whole appeal of the band is. They (probably) love horror, the occult, and they make good music. Although one thing I do struggle

Of course, as I’ve said many times before, when I’m in charge of the Universe I will use my powers wisely to immediately legislate that any new artist / band has to name themselves in such a unique way that they’re easily found online and on Spotify - so I’m not searching through photos of hip replacement operations (Danish band Total Hip Replacement), endless pictures of fjords (Norwegian band The Fjords), and now Tax Incentivised Investment Schemes (ISA of Sweden). But I pr

There are certain phrases that immediately feel familiar round here, and “losing your grip on reality” is definitely one of them - as regular readers will testify. So it feels entirely appropriate that Misty Coast have returned with a song based around that subject: ‘Hallucinating’, focussing on that blurred space between clarity and confusion. It also arrived at the same time as Misty Coast (along with VEPS) were announced for Indiefjord Festival, pretty much our favourite i

I liked the new Rädslan track ‘Offline’ as soon as I heard it at the weekend. It’s energetic, raw, and driven with real purpose, but I also wasn't quite sure whether it belonged in our slightly skewed and weird universe. It is very focused and direct, and with the lyrics in Swedish I didn’t know if it was something which would quite resonate - lyrical content is always important to me. So, anyway, in a rare moment of actual diligence, I asked the band what the song was about