Weezer will release their own movie next year, with Keanu Reeves starring alongside the Los Angeles geek rock kings.

The Los Angeles band referenced the film during an appearance at last year's Coachella festival, with frontman Rivers Cuomo telling the audience, "We’ve been busy making the Weezer movie in LA but when Coachella called us up and said, ‘Hey Weezer, could you guys make it out for a surprise appearance?’, we were like, Heck yeah!.”

Now, if guitarist Brian Bell is to be believed, the movie is done and dusted, but won't hit the screens until next year.

Bell was in attendance at the premiere of Green Day's Nimrods movie in Los Angeles on Wednesday (August 12) and when a reporter from Los Angeles. radio station Alt 98.7 asked the guitarist if Weezer were going to make their own movie, he replied, "We already have."

"I’m not supposed to talk about it," Bell added, according to Stereogum. "But yes, it’s in the can. It’s gonna be incredible. You’ll see it in 2027."

Last year it was revealed that that film would be a mockumentary with Keanu Reeves starring as a villain, one theory going that the premise would pitch the Point Break and John Wick star’s band Dogstar against Rivers Cuomo and co. There is some history between the two bands: Weezer played their first gig opening for Dogstar in LA in 1992, a show the two bands re-created at the city’s Lodge Room venue in 2024 to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Weezer’s Blue Album.

At one point, Rivers Cuomo. hinted that Jack Black would also appear, but that notion has since been shut down.

Weezer will release their new album, The Gold Album, next Friday, August 21. A single, C.E.O., was shared last week.

The LA quartet also recently announced further dates for their The Gathering world tour with new dates booked in the UK, Europe, and Japan.

Following on from the quartet's previously announced North American tour which begins on September 8 in Sacramento, California and closes on October 24 in the band's hometown Los Angeles, the group will play five Japanese shows in February, launching in Tokyo on February 12, then head to Europe in May.

Weezer The Gathering tour dates 2027

Feb 12: Tokyo,Garden Theater, JPN
Feb 13: Tokyo Garden Theater, JPN
Feb 15: Kyoto Roam Theater, JPN
Feb 16: Osaka Zepp Bayside, JPN
Feb 18: Nagoya Portbase, JPN

May 12: Dublin 3Arena, IRE
May 14: Newcastle Utilita Arena, UK
May 15: Manchester Co-op Live, UK
May 17: Leeds First Direct Bank Arena, UK
May 19: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
May 21: Birmingham Utilita Arena, UK
May 22: London Alexandra Palace, UK
May 23: Cardiff Utilita Arena, UK
May 25: Paris Zenith, FRA
May 26: Amsterdam AFAS Live, HOL
May 29: Oslo Spektrum, NOR
May 30: Stockholm Hovet, SWE

Jun 01: Helsinki Veikkaus, FIN

In 1979, after wrapping the recording of their fourth studio album, Eat To The Beat, Blondie signed a new management deal with Alice Cooper's manager Shep Gordon. A larger-than-life character who also handled the business affairs of comedian/actor Groucho Marx and actress Raquel Welch, Gordon's first proposal to the New York band was that they take a cameo role in a new musical comedy film, Roadie, to which he'd already signed up Alice Cooper.

Roadie was produced by Carolyn Pfeiffer, formerly a PR who worked with The Beatles, Robert Redford and Barbra Streisand among others, and more recently, a partner at Shep Gordon's management company. It was Gordon who suggested Meat Loaf to play the film's central character, Travis W. Redfish, a Texan good ol' boy who happened to possess unparalleled skills for fixing broken equipment, and who gets sucked into the rock 'n' roll world. Meat Loaf at the time was an international star thanks to the phenomenal success of 1977's Bat Out Of Hell album, but he had never taken on such a high profile acting role.

In a refreshingly honest interview conducted with Australian TV host Molly Meldrum at the film's Austin, Texas location in 1980, Meat Loaf admitted that he'd had some "emotional problems" dealing with the success of his debut album - still the biggest selling debut album of all time - admitting that he never wanted to be called a "star", and revealing that the past few years had been "mentally tough" for him. But his enthusiasm for his new project was clear.

"The idea of the movie is to create the new American hero, or the new world hero, meaning me, which is sorta humorous to me," he told Meldrum. "He [Travis W. Redfish] knows nothing about the music business at all, and he doesn't understand why anybody makes records, and why anybody did since Buddy Holly died anyway."

Giving a brief synopsis of the plot, Meatloaf revealed that his character "gets picked up by a girl named Lola Bouilliabase [actress Kaki Hunter] from Tulsa, Oklahoma, who is a groupie and a virgin... so she takes him on this adventure, and he becomes a roadie. He doesn't know what a roadie is when it first starts... They cut the power on a Blondie concert, and he uses hay wagons and horse manure and and all this stuff and puts it all together and creates this entire unit to run an entire concert...

"And I save Alice Cooper's concert," he adds. "Alice has got this brand new world famous sound equipment and nobody can fix it, nobody knows what's wrong with it... but [Redfish] wants to go home because his sister's getting married to his best friend, and Alice says, 'Well if you fix my sound system I'll get you a bus'."

Intrigued yet?

Debbie Harry, meanwhile, had a very specific memory of her band's time on set in Austin, during which the New Yorkers performed a cover of Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire.

"The film had a number of dwarf actors," she recalled in her excellent 2019 memoir Face It. "There was one scene in a café where a fight broke out with the dwarves and a few of us actually got roughed up, because those little guys were very active and very, very strong. It was chaotic and a lot of fun... Chris [Stein's] hearing was never the same after he got squirted in the ear during the fight scene."

Meat Loaf and Blondie share some on-screen time in the film, including a sequence where the band bundle a confused Redfish into their car after their show, and start spouting random lines such as "I love guns" and "Sometimes I travel 3000 miles just to spit on people!"

No doubt it all made sense at the time.

We'll refrain from any more spoilers. Except to note that Roadie was not a commercial or critical success. It failed to recoup its reputed $5 million budget, and while critics heaped praise on Meat Loaf - "in his first starring role he doesn’t sing a note and still steals the movie" wrote People magazine - most found the film's storyline weak, confusing and un-engaging.

Awarding the film one and a half stars out of a possible five, legendary US film critic Roger Ebert wrote: "If the movie had given us more of their songs, this could have qualified as a concert movie. If it had given us more of Meatloaf it might have developed into a character study. But Roadie never makes up its mind. The movie's so genial, disorganized and episodic that we never really care about the characters, and yet whenever someone starts to sing the performance is interrupted for more meaningless plot development."

But critics be damned, why not watch the film below and decide for yourself?

A new documentary about late, legendary Rush drummer Neil Peart is to receive its world premiere next month at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Directed by Scot McFadyen and Sam Dunn, the team behind 2010's acclaimed Rush documentary Beyond The Lighted Stage, as well as Iron Maiden: Flight 666 and the Metal Evolution documentary series, Neil Peart: No One's Disciple, will premiere on September 16, with a subsequent public screening on September 19.

The 96-minute film will also air on Canada's CBC network on September 23 as part of the series The Passionate Eye.

According to a press release, Neil Peart: No One's Disciple "documents the late Canadian musician's tough start as a young artist, followed by his meteoric rise", with the film-makers promising "an exhilarating and poignant tribute" to the late drummer.

The film includes interviews with Rush vocalist/bassist Geddy Lee and guitarist Alex Lifeson, alongside reflections from other acclaimed drummers. It also features Lee and Lifeson performing Rush classics with the likes of Chad Smith (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Stewart Copeland (The Police), Danny Carey (Tool) and Gavin Harrison (King Crimson, Porcupine Tree) filling Peart's seat at the drum kit.

In an archival interview used in the documentary, Peart states, "I think it matters for me to play better all the time, and to play my best all the time, to keep it fresh and changing. It’s kind of my responsibility, I see it, as a drummer."

Peart, 67, passed away on January 7, 2020, in Santa Monica, California after a three-year battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. Announcing his death, Geddy Lee and Alex Lifeson called the drummer "our friend, soul brother and band mate".

Stevie Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen's faithful brother-in-arms in The E Street Band, says that he has written scripts for no fewer than six TV series, and that his number one ambition right now is to have a TV network or major streaming platform commission at least one of the six.

In 1999, having had no previous acting experience, Van Zandt was cast in New Jersey Mafia drama The Sopranos, and proved a revelation in his role as mobster and strip club owner Silvio Dante. Twenty years on he was cast as a singer in Martin Scorsese's gangster movie The Irishman.

In 2011, the guitarist co-wrote, starred in, and was an executive producer on Netflix comedy-drama Lilyhammer, and in a new interview with Vulture, the 75-year-old star says that he would relish being given another television project.

"It doesn’t have to be one of my scripts," he says, "but that would be nice."

"My favorite script is called Nobody Loves and Leaves Alive," he reveals. "As all my stuff is, it’s a little bit of a dramedy. It’s about three brothers. And actually, I’m going to be playing two of them.

"The first brother is a gangster, which I’m going to play. People love me as a gangster. The second brother is a rock-and-roll guy, a real hippie type of rock-and-roll guy, which I can fake. And a third brother is an FBI guy, a role that I’m offering to Johnny Depp. I’m hoping he reads it. The show is about how they interact with each other — those three lives of the mob world, the rock-and-roll world, and the FBI world.... I already have the soundtrack done and the script done. So it’s a matter of somebody saying, 'Let’s go'."

Earlier this year, Van Zandt revealed that Bruce Springsteen, and his band members, had received death threats while on their Land of Hope and Dreams tour in the US.

"This tour has been a little bit different because of the high security," he told UK tabloid newspaper The Daily Mail. "It's a very specific political theme to this tour and there's been a lot of threats, death threats. Usually there's always some, but this time it's been increasing."

Revealing that Springsteen has had to "beef up security", Van Zandt added, "it's mostly just talk. And it's not like we're saying something that's not true or we're saying something that's so really particularly controversial, but it's specifically political."

"So the FBI and others have been really watching things and been overly concerned about it, as they should be," he continued. "We want the fans to be safe and feel safe. So we really go the extra mile with extra security for that reason alone."

Tim Pope, The Cure's long-time video director, has revealed that working with disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein on gothic horror film The Crow: City of Angels left him with "mental scars I bear to this day".

Pope, who shot 37 videos for The Cure, in addition to working with David Bowie, Paul McCartney, Queen, Rush, Neil Young, The Bangles, The The and more, signed up to direct the 1996 sequel to cult hit The Crow for Miramax, the hugely successful film and TV production company founded by brothers Harvey and Bob Weinstein. But the experience proved to be hugely frustrating, deeply humiliating and traumatic for the now 70-year-old Pope, to the extent that he didn't make another film for 25 years.

Pope writes about his spectacular career in his forthcoming memoir I Shoot Rock Stars, and lays bare his painful memories of working with Harvey Weinstein in new interviews with British newspapers The Guardian and The Telegraph.

Having carved out a reputation as one of the most imaginative and innovative video directors of the MTV era, Pope was approached to direct the sequel to The Crow, a surprise commercial hit for Miramax, and a cult favourite film for a generation of goths and metal fans. Tragically, the film's charismatic leading man, Brandon Lee - the son of martial arts legend Bruce Lee - died during the film's production due to an on-set accident with a prop gun, which left Pope at an immediate disadvantage when seeking to follow up the film's success.

"It was a tricky situation," Pope admits to The Guardian, "but I’d loved [Quentin Tarantino's award-winning Miramax films] Reservoir Dogs and Pulp Fiction. This was before we knew about [Harvey Weinstein] wanking into flowerpots and destroying women’s lives.

"He was still seen as ‘good old Harvey’, the most powerful man in Hollywood, but his other nickname was Harvey Scissorhands. He had a reputation for meddling in the cutting room and I suffered that really badly. I poured everything into that film and ended up with something I loathed."

At a disastrous test screening, Pope learned that his original cut of the film had been completely reworked at Harvey Weinstein's request. In The Telegraph Pope recalls that during this screening Weinstein threw popcorn at his head and shouted, "Call yourself a fucking director?" at him. Afterwards, at dinner, Weinstein told Pope, "Just cut the damn picture as we want it, or else, you fucking bastard… Remember, pal, we own you."

Pope calls the whole experience of working with Weinstein "brutal".

"There were times working with him when I thought I was going to end up at the bottom of the Hudson River wearing concrete wellington boots," he told The List last year.

"I hope Harvey Weinstein reads my book" he tells The Guardian.

Weinstein is currently in prison in theUS after being found guilty of three counts of rape, plus sexual assault. More than 80 women made allegations of sexual harassment or rape against him.

Diamond-selling nu metal sensations Linkin Park have announced a documentary about their return and a tie-in live album.

The California six-piece have confirmed that their new film, Unshatter, will get a cinema release on September 30. Tickets go on sale on Thursday, August 13. Its soundtrack Unshatter: Live In São Paulo, recorded in Brazil during their comeback tour in 2024, comes out on September 25.

To accompany the news, the band have released Unshatter’s trailer as well as live footage of their performance of Somewhere I Belong in São Paulo. Watch both below.

Unshatter will tell the story of Linkin Park’s reunion in 2024, following their inactivity in the wake of former singer Chester Bennington’s death in 2017. Fans will see glimpses of early studio sessions in 2022, the recording of their comeback album From Zero, their return to the stage and the blockbuster 18-month From Zero world tour.

Joe Hahn, Linkin Park’s turntablist and Unshatter’s director, comments: “Unshatter follows a very particular moment in Linkin Park’s history and documents a path through loss, uncertainty, friendship, and reinvention.

“I hope longtime fans see parts of our journey they've never seen before, and I hope people who are just discovering our music come away with a better understanding of how we got here. But even beyond Linkin Park, I hope people connect with it as a story about relationships, resilience, and what it really takes to move forward when you don't have all the answers.”

Linkin Park reunited with Emily Armstrong (Dead Sara) on lead vocals and Colin Brittain on drums, replacing ex-member Rob Bourdon. The comeback was initially controversial, with some fans expressing concern over Armstrong’s past ties to the Church Of Scientology and her previous support of convicted rapist Danny Masterson. She responded in a statement, saying, “I do not condone abuse or violence against women.”

Although Armstrong didn’t clarify whether she was or has ever been a follower of Scientology, the BBC reported that several of her lyrics in her rock band Dead Sara “suggest criticism and rejection of Scientology's teachings”. It highlighted lines in 2018’s Heaven’s Got A Back Door, which criticised conservative religious attitudes towards sexuality.

Despite the furor, From Zero – released on November 15, 2024 – was a critical and commercial success. It topped the UK albums chart and hit number two on the US Billboard 200, and has since been certified three-times Platinum in Brazil and two-times Platinum in France.

The From Zero world tour was one of the biggest in the band’s history, drawing an estimated three million fans worldwide and grossing more than $200 million (£148,600,000). On June 28, 2025, they played their largest headline show ever at a sold-out Wembley Stadium in London. The following June, they headlined Download festival, becoming the first band with a female singer to top the bill at the grounds in Donington Park, UK.

In a BBC interview at Download, co-singer/multi-instrumentalist Mike Shinoda responded to the distinction: “I asked [Emily] and she said: ‘If it wasn’t us, it would’ve just been someone else, because there are so many great female-fronted bands.’ But, she’s so grateful, she wanted you guys to know, she’s so grateful that she is the one and that she’ll remember it forever.”

Linkin Park have no further shows on their schedule at time of publication.

Writer and director John Hamburg has shared his memories of working with Rush on his hit 2009 bromance I Love You, Man, starring Paul Rudd, Jason Segel and Rashida Jones.

In the film, Rudd's character Peter Klaven is struggling to find an appropriate best man for his upcoming wedding to his fiancée Zoeey Rice (Jones) until he meets new best friend Sydney Fife (Segel), a fellow Rush fan. In pivotal scenes in the film, after bonding over their shared love of the Canadian prog rock trio, the two men jam on Rush songs, and attend a Rush gig together, much to the bemusement of Klaven's fiancée, who isn't entirely sure whether or not to accept her beloved's offer to have Neil Peart "all up" in her.

"It felt like the perfect band to have these two guys bond over," Hamburg tells Vulture in a new interview. "Rush is iconic and everybody knows them, but they’re not the Rolling Stones or the Beatles where everybody is a fan. A Rush fan is a certain type of person, and obviously there’s millions of them out there, but there’s a certain connection between Rush fans where even though they’re huge, you still feel like you’re part of a secret club. That’s what felt right for the movie."

To get Rush's blessing for the film, Hamburg wrote to the band, explaining that he was a big fan, and assuring the trio that referencing them in his film was based on respect and admiration.

"Once they understood that, they were onboard," he tells Vulture. "They’re funny Canadian dudes. They have goofy senses of humor."

"They couldn’t have been nicer and cooler," he adds. "What I learned was they got it. You know what I mean? They understood what the scene was about and where the comedy was. I knew from their short films that appear at their concerts that they do have great senses of humor. They go in makeup and as these crazy characters. It’s obviously different from I Love You, Man, but it’s all under the umbrella of embracing comedy and the absurd. I would say Neil was the surprise. He’s pretty intimidating. First of all, he’s Neil fucking Peart. He’s the GOAT. People think he’s super-serious, but he could be the goofiest one out of all of them."

The film-maker goes on to say that filming the band at the Avalon theater in Hollywood for the movie "was the most fun I’ve ever had on a set"

In addition to the film, Hamburg later shot an additional short forFunny Or Die in which Rudd and Segel actually meet Rush.

"The movie came out and did well," he recalls. "It certainly introduced Rush to new audiences. It was just a win-win for everybody - and we all got along. They were going on the Time Machine Tour and asked if we would do a film to end their concerts. Of course we were like, 'Hell yeah'.... It was funny to watch them interact with Paul and Jason, because in the movie, they never interact."

Following Neil Peart's death in 2020, Paul Rudd paid tribute to the drummer in a statement shared with Rolling Stone.

"When I first met Neil, I was intimidated as I certainly knew him to be a serious and private person," Rudd said. "Within two minutes, we were cracking up and quoting lines from Team America. I’m missing him as I write this. Being the greatest drummer on the planet was only a part of Neil. He was a thunderbolt of a human being, and he’ll live forever."

Watch the Funny Or Die sketch below.

First appearing in the hallowed pages of Marvel comics over sixty years ago, Spider-Man has become one of pop culture's most iconic and enduring superheroes. Created by Stan Lee and Steve Ditko, ol' Web Head quickly established himself as a foundational part of Marvel's world, making an eventual transfer into the movie world inevitable.

While Spidey made his feature-length debut in 1977 courtesy of a pilot for the 70s live action TV show, it was Sony's purchasing of the film rights to the character in 1999 that laid the foundation for his legacy on the Big Screen. Since then, we've had no fewer than eleven Spider-Man movies across four entirely difference franchises, making his cinematic journey a rather convoluted one that ranges from the spectacular to the, quite frankly, slightly rubbish.

With latest MCU outing Spider-Man: Brand New Day htting cinemas today, we've ranked all eleven of those 'proper' film adaptations in reverse order of greatness. Note: we've elected to leave the TV pilot by the wayside for this one, and we're not including our friendly neighbourhood hero's numerous appearances in other Marvel outings. You only have so much time in the day.

11. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 (2014)

Given one of the biggest issues with Spider-Man 3 was there being too many villains to make for a compelling, focused plot, it's baffling as to why Marc Webb's sequel to his own Spidey universe reboot fell into the exact same trap. Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone are both fantastic, arguably packing the best chemistry of any Spider-leads, but they're lost in a convoluted story that introduces Jamie Foxx's unconvincing Electro as chief antagonist while recycling Harry Osbourne's pseudo-Goblin arc from Raimi's three-quel. Plus, we also get a clunkily realised Rhino, throwaway Norman Osbourne, Felicia Hardy and Alistair Smythe cameos and a Sinister Six tease that never went anywhere. Garfield's Spider-Man deserved better.

10. Spider-Man 3 (2007)

When the first teaser poster for Spider-Man 3 revealed our titular hero in a black suit, fans went doolally with excitement over what that likely telegraphed. Sadly, Raimi's trilogy would end on the dampest of squibs, offering a messy plot, a bloated rogues gallery, a terrible take on Venom and one of the most cringe-inducing scenes in blockbuster history courtesy of that Toby Maguire dance segment. We'd later learn that studio pressure led to Venom being included in the film in the first place, which is doubly frustrating given that it took time away from Thomas Haden Church's brilliant, layered performance as Sandman. The special effects are magnificent and there are some great set pieces, but this felt like an almighty piss had been unleashed into the Spider-pool.

9. Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

After a good first full outing in Homecoming, Tom Holland's second solo flick had a high bar to grab at. Sadly, while it's by no means a bad movie, Far From Home falls short in having to cater so fullheartedly to the wider MCU, Tony Stark's death dominating too much of the film's emotional pull and Nick Fury's presence rendered flat by a fully phoned-in showing from Samuel L Jackson. There are also way too many rug-pulls, eroding the impact of any major plot twists to the extent that, by the time Jake Gyllenhaal's (admittedly very good) Mysterio meets his demise, you're left second-guessing yourself. Still, the core cast's chemistry fizzes wonderfully, and the segment involving a zombified Iron Man is amongst the MCU's most unique and visually impressive.

8. The Amazing Spider-Man (2012)

With Raimi's franchise biting the dust due to the director not feeling compelled by any of the new ideas being put in front of him, it was up to Marc Webb to reboot the Spider-World. In Andrew Garfield, he found a pitch-perfect Peter Parker who ably embodied the character's geekiest, cheekiest and most arrestingly charming traits. Garfield would find the perfect romantic foil in Emma Stone, and while Rhys Ifans' Lizard just didn't feel as emotionally wedded to Parker's world as Doc Ock and Green Goblin had before him, the film's mixture of dazzling visuals and intimate emotional stakes made for a very solid first outing for Spidey's new era.

7. Spider-Man (2002)

After languishing for years in development hell, Spider-Man finally made his big screen debut proper courtesy of Sam Raimi, and Hollywood would never be the same again. While X-Men had officially made superhero films a mainstream concern again two years prior, Raimi's eye for an unforgettable visual (the upside down kiss!) and an emotionally compelling narrative backbone gave Spider-Man the feel of both a true cinematic blockbuster and an adaptation in keeping with the spirit of its source material.

Toby Maguire was easy to root for as the nerdy but determined Peter Parker, while Willem Dafoe's increasingly unhinged turn as Norman Osbourne/Green Goblin remains world class. Then there's J.K. Simmons' legendary portrayal of J. Jonah Jameson, so good that it'd survive well beyond the Raimi era. Some of the effects looked a little ropey even for the time, and Dafoe's Power Rangers-esque Goblin suit remains an absolute howler, but this is still a great first showing for the Webbed One.

6. Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)

After a show-stealing turn in Captain America: Civil War, Tom Holland confirmed once and for all that he was another inspired casting choice as Peter Parker, his overawed, youthful enthusiasm providing the perfect emotional backbone for a more grassroots, very local friendly neighbourhood-centric take on the character. His cohorts, MJ and Ned, warmly brought to life by Zendaya and Jacob Batalon, offered a different dynamic to what we'd seen on screen to this point, while Michael Keaton's turn as Vulture is one of the MCU's most underrated villain portrayals. Breezy, funny as hell and action-packed, Homecoming gave us hope that we might finally have a Spider-Man franchise built to last.

5. Spider-Man: No Way Home (2021)

Even given the rumours that had been doing the rounds for months and despite the MCU finally toying with multiverses, the idea of Tom Holland, Andrew Garfield and Toby Maguire's Spider-Men all sharing the screen at once seemed too good to be true. That it happened and produced some of the most triumphantly exhilarating moments in MCU history is one thing, but the fact that John Watts managed to so deftly weave those three heroes, their accompanying villains, a bonus Doctor Strange and a major character death together is an amazing achievement.

No Way Home isn't just the ultimate love letter to Spider-Man on the big screen; it's a riotously fun, hilarious and emotionally devastating ride, giving welcome second winds to Alfred Molina's Doc Ock and Willem Dafoe's Green Goblin, a nice new coat of paint to Jamie Foxx's Electro and a much-needed, satisfying moment of cathartis for Garfield's Spidey.

4. Spider-Man: Brand New Day

While the Tom Holland era of Spider-Man has been very good and, on occasion, great, his Spidey has often felt compromised by being tied to the MCU's ever-expanding mythos (not to mention also being tied to former Spider-Man franchises by the time No Way Home turned up). Taking over from Jon Watts, Shang-Chi director Destin Daniel Cretton attempted to fix that for Holland's fourth solo outing in the mask, crafting a film that gave Peter Parker his Neighborhood Friendly stripes back while still wrangling with the fall-out of Brand New Day and stuffing a few MCU cameos in for good measure.

The result is a brilliantly entertaining, emotionally resonant sequel that is easily the most SPIDEY!!!! of Tom Holland's Spider-Man movies so far, evoking some of the narrative swings of Raimi's films and peppering them with some particularly dazzling set pieces. It's not perfect - those MCU connections are still tying Peter Parker down just a little too much - but it's arguably the best Spider-Man movie of the MCU era and a hopeful signpost for what's to come.

3. Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (2023)

Topping the visually astonishing and wonderfully original Into The Spider-Verse was a tall ask, and while Across The Spider-Verse doesn't quite manage that, it absolutely does its predecessor justice and is a brilliant, retina-singeing, breathless epic in its own right. Packed with so many stunning visual quirks and narrative flourishes that it requires repeat viewings to take everything in, Across The Spider-Verse very nearly comes off the rails thanks to its relentless pace and head-spinning array of new Spider-People, but manages to hold on thanks to the sheer charm of its voice cast and lovingly crafted characters, Hailee Steinfeld's Gwen Stacy stepping up magnificently to help hold the film together alongside Shameik Moore's conflicted Miles Morales. Not for the first time, we find ourselves tantalisingly close to having a great Spider-Man trilogy. Will Sony finally pull it off?

2. Spider-Man 2 (2004)

Having confirmed it was possible to bring Spider-Man to the Big Screen in style, Sam Raimi upped the stakes dramatically, producing not just an all-time great comic book movie, but one of the greatest blockbusters of the 2000s. Key to this is Alfred Molina, whose haunted, methodical and, eventually, maniacal Doctor Octopus arguably remains the greatest on-screen Spidey baddie, bringing an extra emotional weight to his dynamic with Maguire's Peter Parker that makes the stakes feel that much more tangible. Raimi also brings Doc Ock's battles with Spider-Man to life in astonishing fashion courtesy of some world class cinematography and brilliant set-pieces. Other great (and not so great) Spider-flicks would follow, but Spider-Man 2 perfected the simple supes formula of a hero that's easy to root for, a believable love interest and a compelling, memorable villain.

1. Spider-Man: Into The Spider-Verse (2018)

With Tom Holland's Peter Parker now bedded into the MCU, the idea of another new Spider-Man entering the chat seemed like overkill. That it could outdo the MCU's take on the character seemed implausible. With Into The Spider-Verse, however, directors Bob Persichetti, Peter Ramsey and Rodney Rothman struck gold by shifting the focus to a different Spider-Man entirely, going for broke with a wildly out-of-the-box plot and embracing the limitless possibilities of animation to produce something thrilling, surprising and completely new. Into The Spider-Verse isn't just the best Spider-Man movie; it's the most accomplished piece of animation Hollywood has produced in a generation, every risk and strange flight of fancy paying off handsomely as we get to experience new visions of familiar characters and a near-unprecedented level of visual flair.

None of this would matter as much if the story itself wasn't convincing, however, and with Miles, Gwen and their increasingly ludicrous cast of Spider-buddies, Into The Spider-Verse becomes a film, more than any of its predecessors, that just gets what Spider-Man is all about. The message of anyone potentially being under the mask wasn't just an easy catchphrase Stan Lee liked to throw out; it represented the potential for greatness that we all have within us, and this instant classic nails that idea. It took almost twenty years for us to get there, but Into The Spider-Verse finally gave us a perfect Spider-Man movie, and all without Peter Parker even being its central Spidey.

Historic, previously unreleased footage of Black Sabbath playing the classic N.I.B. has been uploaded to the official YouTube channel of the pioneering German music show Beat-Club.

Beat-Club, which ran for 83 episodes between 1965 and December 1972, was broadcast from Bremen, West Germany, and hosted Black Sabbath twice in 1970.

On the first occasion, in June 1970, they played a cover of Carl Perkins' Blue Suede Shoes while the studio's audio and camera levels were being set up, unaware that the performance was being filmed, as well as their own Black Sabbath. They also performed N.I.B., but footage of the latter performance has not been officially released until now.

It is believed that the footage of N.I.B. wasn't broadcast in 1970 because Ozzy Osbourne made a mistake with the lyrics, singing "Your love for me has got to be true" instead of "Your love for me has got to be real".

Black Sabbath returned to the show in September 1970 to perform two tracks from their second album Paranoid: the title track and Iron Man.

Other bands to appear on Beat-Club during its seven-year run included Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones, Alice Cooper, The Who, The Kinks, Grateful Dead, Fleetwood Mac, King Crimson, the MC5, Mountain, Status Quo, Yes and Santana. The show was syndicated to more than 30 countries, but not to the UK or the US.

"Our idea when we started the programme was that we couldn't please both the mums and dads and the kids too," producer Michael Leckerbusch told Record Mirror in 1970. "So why not do something that appealed exclusively to the kids – even if the adults thought it disgusting?

"British television fits the Establishment view of things. Young people don't necessarily want to accept that view. And that's what I try to show with Beat-Club."

The show was rebranded as Musikladen in late 1972, which ran until 1978.

Pulp have shared the first trailer for their forthcoming documentary film What Do You Do For An Encore?, and announced its release date.

Directed by Garth Jennings (Sing, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), the 90-minute film promises to chart the Sheffield band’s “extraordinary journey from obscurity to cultural touchstone”, according to a press statement.

The press release goes on to say that the documentary, which is narrated by frontman Jarvis Cocker, "fuses the brilliantly choreographed stage spectacle of Pulp's biggest ever arena show – part of the global tour for More, the band's first album in 24 years – with four decades of colourful, never-seen-before archival material", and that it will serve as "a vibrant tribute to a band of brilliant misfits, whose unique blend of irony, rebellion, and razor-sharp social commentary resonated with generations of listeners and helped define an era of British culture."

“You’re invited to come and experience a night you’ll remember for the rest of your life," a voiceover in the trailer promises.

Global distributor MUBI have announced that What Do You Do For An Encore? will be screened in cinemas in the UK and Ireland for one night only on September 18, and US cinemas on September 24.

Following its brief cinema run, the film will be streamed exclusively on MUBI, from a date yet to be announced.

Accompanying the film, Pulp are releasing Live!, a new live album which doubles up as the film’s soundtrack.

"A concert is an event where songs come back to life," says Jarvis Cocker. "That’s why this album is called Live! It’s both a statement of fact (it’s a recording of a live band) & a challenge (come on! Everyone come alive!)."

Live! will be released via Rough Trade on August 28, and will be available on double vinyl, double CD and via digital streaming services.

Grammy-winning hard rock devil church Ghost have released the first trailer for their upcoming concert film 2 Big To Rig.

The follow-up to 2024’s Rite Here Rite Now is set to hit cinemas and IMAX screens worldwide from August 26, and tickets are on sale as of today (July 23). Watch the trailer below and get tickets via the film’s website.

“You have been chosen to partake in a ritual celebration that world has not yet seen,” a voiceover says at the start of the trailer. “Welcome to a night you will remember forever.”

Unlike Rite Here Rite Now, which mixed concert footage with an original story connected to the Swedish band’s mythos, 2 Big To Rig offers a behind-the-scenes look at the globe-trotting Skeletour, which took place from 2025 to ’26 in support of their sixth album Skeletá.

The live recordings were captured during Ghost’s residency at the Palacio de los Deportes in Mexico City in September 2025. Originally scheduled as a three-show run, the first planned gig was cancelled last-minute due to singer Tobias Forge (who performs as Papa V Perpetua) contracting food poisoning.

The 10-month Skeletour was an entirely phone-free event, after Ghost experimented with banning mobile devices at two shows in 2023 and enjoyed the results. Concertgoers kept their phones on their person, but had them placed into magnetically sealed Yondr pouches upon entering the auditorium. The only way the pouches could be unsealed was by a member of venue security.

In April 2025, Forge explained that he was banning phones because he felt an “ever-growing distance” between himself and his audiences.

“I felt that I have a problem with watching someone [in the audience holding up a phone in front of their face]. It’s irritating,” he told Metal XS. “Maybe I’m old-school, maybe I’m old-fashioned. I just feel that we’re having an intimate moment, and it disturbs me that you’re filming while we’re doing this together. I’m doing something for you to respond to me.”

Response to the phone ban was widely positive, and it inspired other rock artists to follow suit. Iron Maiden singer Bruce Dickinson told Hammer last year that he supported the practice. When the UK metal giants hit the road for their 50th-anniversary Run For Your Lives tour last spring, they discouraged fans from bringing phones. Mobile devices were then outright banned for a gig in Paris this summer.

2 Big To Rig was announced last week and will come out via Trafalgar Releasing, who distributed Rite Here Rite Now.

Kymberli Frueh, EVP of Content Acquisitions and Programming at Trafalgar, commented: “We’re proud to share it with cinema audiences worldwide before Ghost takes a well-publicised break. It’s the perfect way to close such a significant chapter in the band’s history and give fans a chance to relive this moment together.”

Ghost are currently on hiatus, as Forge hopes to spend more time with his family and gain inspiration for future projects.

“I’ve had two kids waiting at home with my wife for 15 years,” the frontman told Full Metal Jackie. “And maybe that says something about me that it wasn’t a pushing enough factor during those years. Believe me, I felt bad, but I’ve definitely come to a point where I feel, physically and mentally, I need to be home. [My kids are] 17; they’re not gonna be around for an eon.”

It's fair to to say that Nancy Spungen was a divisive presence on London's punk scene in the 1970s: Sex Pistols bassist Sid Vicious loved her, everyone else hated her.

Known as 'Nauseating Nancy' by the English media, Philadelphia-born groupie Spungen came to London with The Heartbreakers in December 1976, ahead of the New Yorkers jumping aboard the Sex Pistols' ill-fated Anarchy Tour, and immediately latched onto bassist Vicious after being rejected by Johnny Rotten (aka John Lydon).

The relationship between Spungen and Vicious was tempestuous and violent, not helped by the young lovers both developing addictions to heroin. In January 1978, following the Pistols break-up on their debut US tour, Spungen and Vicious relocated to New York, taking up residence at the city's iconic Hotel Chelsea. It was here, in room 100, that Spungen was found dead on October 12, 1978, aged 20: she had been murdered by a single stab wound to the abdomen, the murder weapon being a knife Vicious owned. The English musician gave conflicting accounts of what had happened, and was immediately arrested, and charged with second degree murder: however, his lawyers were able to get him released on $50,000 bail, on condition that he would not leave New York.

The news of Spungen's murder caused far less shock in London than one might imagine.

"Normally in a situation like that, there would be an emotive response from family and friends alike," Chrissie Hynde, who Vicious once offered to marry, wrote in her autobiography Reckless. "'Sid? He would never do anything like that - not to the woman he loved!' However, the nonchalant shrugging of shoulders like a Mexican wave making its way across London's punkerage was palpable. No one who knew them was particularly surprised to hear that Sid had inserted a blade into exhibit 'N'. We were only surprised that he'd stuck it out as long as he had."

The bleak and brutal end to what was a seemingly doomed relationship was partly what drew English film-maker Alex Cox (and his co-writer Abbe Wool) to make Sid & Nancy, his 1986 biopic about the pair: that, and rumours that a Hollywood studio was interested in casting Madonna and Rupert Everett in a film about the ill-fated lovers.

"In the spirit of punk," Cox told Clash magazine, "Abbe and I felt this had to be stopped, or at least pre-empted."

"I thought, for the times, the story was a good one to tell," the film-maker told money-into-light.com. "Sid and Nancy were terrible fuck-ups and they betrayed the punk ideal, but in the midst of all this chaos was a romantic story. It was all so tragic the way it played out."

Once Cox had secured a $4 million budget for the film, he set about casting the two lead roles. Daniel Day Lewis was considered for the role of Vicious, but the part was ultimately given to a young Gary Oldman, who would later claim that he turned down the role twice, which Cox denies.

"Gary came from the same neighborhood as Sid, Bermondsey," Cox told Money Into Light, "and he had the same understanding and desire to escape, to create a new persona and life for himself."

Courtney Love pleaded for the chance to play Spungen, but eventually accepted a part as fictional character Gretchen, while American actress Chloe Webb was cast in the title role.

Iggy Pop also had a minor part in the film, while the members of Guns N' Roses were employed as extras for scenes shot in a Los Angeles club, for which they were paid $100 per day. "It wasn't much fun," Slash recalled in his 2007 autobiography. "Actually it was like jury duty... I was the only one of us pathetic enough to show up for the duration."

At the conclusion of the film, after Spungen is stabbed during an argument with her drugged-up lover, Vicious is collected in a New York taxi, and in his confusion, he believes that Nancy is still alive and in the back seat, and the pair are driven away from the crime scene. In reality, after a stay in prison, Vicious died of a heroin overdose on February 2, 1979.

"The end feels bogus," Cox admitted 30 years on. "We should have shown Sid dying in a pool of vomit. Instead we opted for a touchy-feely way out."

The ending irked Vicious' friend John Lydon, who called it "stupid."

"To me this movie is the lowest form of life." Lydon stated. "I honestly believe that it celebrates heroin addiction."

"It's all wrong," he wrote in his autobiography. "It was all someone else's fucking fantasy, some Oxford graduate who missed the punk rock era. The bastard."

Cox, however, defended the film in a 2017 BFI article.

"The most important scene in the film, from the perspective of [co-screenwriter] Abbe Wool and myself, was in the methadone clinic, where Sy Richardson plays the guy who won’t hand over their dose of methadone until he’s delivered a lecture about how they’re screwing up," Cox wrote. "Essentially, Sid and Nancy betrayed the punk movement. They should have been out there on the barricades, but instead they became another example of junkie rock stars getting high in a hotel room.

"That’s what we wanted to say, how they’d become such a disappointment to punk, but because the film got deeper and deeper into their horrible little world, everything outside them got a bit lost. The last we see John Lydon, he’s in the corner of some club, fading away. All that explains a sort of misunderstanding in the UK, where it was taken to be a film about the punk scene. The reception in America, where it was viewed as a horrific love story, was closer to our intentions."

AC/DC appeared on the Australian TV show Countdown numerous times over the years.

The show ran between 1974 and 1987, but broadcaster ABC (the Australian Broadcasting Corporation) would frequently tape over shows that had already aired, as film was very expensive and no one expected the footage to have any historical value.

Some of AC/DC's early performances, such as the March 1975 performance of Them's Baby, Please Don't Go – the one where Bon Scott is infamously dressed as a schoolgirl – are available on YouTube, while others (including the November 1974 performance of the same song, where Angus Young is dressed as an Aviation Pioneer, or the following month's version, where he's wearing a Zorro costume) have been lost.

In the last couple of weeks, more Countdown footage has emerged on the official Bon Scott YouTube channel, notably two clips filmed in 1976 as AC/DC visited London on their Lock Up Your Daughters tour.

Incredibly, AC/DC played 27 London shows over the course of the year, from their European debut at the Red Cow in Hammersmith in April for fewer than 100 fans, to a headline show at the 3500-capacity Hammersmith Odeon just seven months later. Over the course of those months, AC/DC also played 11 residency shows at the iconic Marquee Club on Wardour Street.

The first Countdown segment, which was broadcast in July 1976, finds the band in Covent Garden, where a shirtless, shorts-wearing Bon Scott (it was a famously hot summer) can be seen toying with a banana before the band runs between the Nag's Head and White Lion pubs.

The second clip, shown in Australia the following month, finds AC/DC hanging out with the tourists in Piccadilly Circus before heading to the Marquee, where anyone watching the filming would assume that then-bassist Mark Evans was the band's leader.

Other footage recently uploaded to the official Bon Scott YouTube channel – which is curated by his estate – includes four live clips of the singer fronting his pre-AC/DC band Fraternity, a short 1977 interview clip filmed in Hobart, Tasmania, and a 15-minute interview filmed for Countdown in November 1977.

Bon Scott would have turned 80 today.

Hollywood superstar Javier Bardem has revealed that listening to Slipknot, Linkin Park and Bad Omens helped inspire his frighteningly intense performance as vengeance-seeking psychopath Max Cady in the new Apple TV+ remake of Cape Fear.

First screened in cinemas in 1962 with acting legends Gregory Peck and Robert Mitchum cast, respectively, in the roles of attorney Sam Bowden and fresh-out-of-prison convicted rapist Max Cady, Cape Fear was remade in 1991 with Martin Scorsese directing and Robert DeNiro turning in a terrifying and unforgettable performance as Cady.

Only a brave or really foolish actor would attempt to out-do De Niro's acting masterclass in the 1991 version of the thriller, but Oscar-winning Spanish star Bardem says that listening to metal helped him get into the appropriate headspace to put his own stamp on the challenging role in the new 10-part Apple TV+ limited series.

"We absolutely went for a metal look, I loved that," the 57-year-old star tells Kerrang!

"I listened to five songs especially," he says. "Two from Linkin Park, Given Up, with the great Chester [Bennington], and Up From The Bottom from the last album, From Zero. I think [Emily Armstrong] is an amazing singer.

"She really brought it back," he continues. “Those two songs really express frustration and the fight for raising up from [one’s] own ashes that [resonates] with Max. And songs by Slipknot, Falling In Reverse, and Bad Omens. I’m so bad with the names of songs, but they were in my head all day long before doing anything and helped put me in the mood."

With that said, Bardem goes on to declare that he'd be listening to metal however his life had turned out.

"It's not that I use the music," he says. "It's that I can't live without it. It's what I listen to: when I drive, when I’m being driven, before I go to sleep... For me, metal is… a way of living."

Earlier this year, in an interview with Metal Hammer, Bardem revealed how Iron Maiden changed his life.

"I put my hand on the Number Of The Beast vinyl and I put it on, then life changed," he recalled. "They have the most amazing lyrics that really convey mostly everything that you can think of – philosophy, religion, politics, war, love, family, friends, metal... I mean, it’s fantastic."

A new Pulp documentary film, Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?, will be streamed exclusively on Mubi later this year.

Directed by Garth Jennings (Sing, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy), the 90-minute film promises to chart the Sheffield band’s “extraordinary journey from obscurity to cultural touchstone”, according to a press statement.

The press release goes on to say that the documentary, which is narrated by frontman Jarvis Cocker, "fuses the brilliantly choreographed stage spectacle of Pulp's biggest ever arena show – part of the global tour for More, the band's first album in 24 years – with four decades of colourful, never-seen-before archival material", and that it will serve as "a vibrant tribute to a band of brilliant misfits, whose unique blend of irony, rebellion, and razor-sharp social commentary resonated with generations of listeners and helped define an era of British culture."

The film will be accompanied by Live!, a new live album which doubles up as the film’s soundtrack.

"A concert is an event where songs come back to life," says Jarvis Cocker. "That’s why this album is called Live! It’s both a statement of fact (it’s a recording of a live band) & a challenge (come on! Everyone come alive!)."

Live! will be released via Rough Trade on August 28, and will be available on double vinyl, double CD and via digital streaming services.

No date has yet been announced as the first screening date for Pulp: What Do You Do For An Encore?

The band are set to play festivals and arena shows this summer.

Jun 02: Mexico City Palacio de los Deportes, Mexico
Jun 06: Bogotá Movistar Arena, Colombia
Jun 08: Santiago Movistar Arena, Chile
Jun 12: Buenos Aires Movistar Arena, Argentina
Jun 25: Berlin Tempodrom, Germany -
Jun 27: Berlin Tempodrom, Germany
Jun 29: Cologne Palladium, Germany

Jul 02: Beauregard Festival, France
Jul 04: Les Eurockéennes, France
Jul 06: Paris, Zenith, France
Jul 08: Lyon Les Nuits De Fourviere, France
Jul 11: Mad Cool Festival Madrid, Spain
Jul 18: London Southbank Centre, UK
Jul 31 All Together Now, Ireland

Aug 28: Manchester Wythenshawe Park UK
Sep 05: End Of The Road festival UK

Linkin Park are teasing fans with details of a new movie on their merchandise.

The band, who are currently touring Europe, have printed unshattermovie.com inside their tour T-shirts, which has led to speculation among fans as to what the movie will be about.

Those curious enough to investigate the URL – the name of the domain owner has been protected – will currently see the band's circular logo from 2024 and nothing more.

A sticker can also be spotted in the corner of an Instagram story countdown to their appearance at Rock am Ring in Nürburg, Germany this evening (June 5).

The band – who recruited vocalist Emily Armstrong and drummer Colin Brittain in time for their eighth album – recorded a song titled Unshatter which was featured on their 2024 album From Zero and released the following year as a single.

A simple Google search suggests it could be the highly-anticipated filmed show which took place at the Allianz Parque in São Paulo, Brazil, on November 15, 2024. The concert footage, with an additional documentary, was slated for release the following year but was consequently postponed.

While pulling this story together, an Instagram post from LPLive showing the URL has since been removed.

The band's European shows run until June 30, where they play Zürich's Stadion Letzigrund. Catch them at the following shows and festivals.

June 5: Nürburg, Rock am Ring, Germany
June 7: Nuremberg, Rock im Park, Germany
June 9: Vienna, Ernst Happel Stadium, Austria
June 11: Munich, Allianz Arena, Germany
June 12: Munich, Allianz Arena, Germany
June 14: Donington Park, Download Festival, England
June 16: Lyon, Groupama Stadium, France
June 19: Santiago de Compostela, O Son do Camiño, Spain
June 21: Lisbon, Rock in Rio Lisboa, Portugal
June 23: Madrid, Auditorio Miguel Ríos, Spain
June 24: Madrid, Auditorio Miguel Ríos, Spain
June 26: Florence, Visarno Arena, Italy
June 28: Werchter, Werchter Parklife, Belgium
June 30: Zürich, Stadion Letzigrund, Switzerland

If you subscribe to Netflix, chances are the streaming platform has politely suggested you might want to watch their latest drama. It was, after all, executive produced by Matt and Ross Duffer, the twins responsible for Stranger Things.

The show is called The Boroughs – and spoiler alert – it features a gang of boomers trying to solve the mystery of a monster who's terrorising their gated community in a New Mexico desert. If we're being lazy, imagine kids from Stranger Things are now of a pensionable age and they're pooling their energy for one more adventure.

That said, it's very watchable. And like The Duffer Brothers used the title track of Metallica's 1986 iconic album Master of Puppets as a narrative hook in Stranger Things, the creators of the show – Jeffrey Addiss and Will Matthews – are doing it in a far more genteel way with a 1975 Bruce Springsteen song and potentially introducing Bruce Springsteen to a new generation.

Early on The Boroughs, Thunder Road – the opening song from Springsteen's third studio album – plays while the show's main character Sam Cooper (played by Alfred Molina) watches his wife Lilly (Jane Kaczmarek) collapse after suffering a stroke. The traumatic event haunts him throughout the story and, after beginning to settle in his retirement community, decides to revisit the song during a pivotal moment in the show.

Throughout the episodes, his adult daughter Claire (Jena Malone) repeatedly yet gently requests that he dig out his mother's vinyl copy from storage, as she wants it as a keepsake.

Sure, everyone loves Bruce Springsteen, and there comes a moment in a person's life when his kitchen sink dramas set to music speak to them. But why did the show pick this song in particular?

"Partly because it had never been done before and everyone thought we were crazy for trying," show co-creator Will Matthews tells Decider "Thunder Road has never been used in any show or movie specifically. Bruce, in general, is very hard to get and so everyone thought that that was nuts. But also, everyone agreed it was the perfect song."

It is, too, and it had to be, really.

Thunder Road opens the most important album of Springsteen's career. The critical acclaim of his first two albums – 1973's Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and it's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle, recorded and released the same year – was not reflected by sales other than on the East Coast.

If his third album flopped, Springsteen would be dropped by Columbia. His manager negotiated a bigger studio budget and although the sessions were "gruelling", Springsteen and his band emerged with an album that reflected a country reeling from the Vietnam war, political scandal and a litany of disappointments.

“The songs were written immediately after the Vietnam War,” Springsteen told Brian Hiatt, author of Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs. “And you forget, everybody felt like that then. It didn’t matter how old you were, everybody experienced a radical change in the image they had of their country and of themselves. The reason was, ‘you were changed.’ You were going to be a radically different type of American than the generation that immediately preceded you, so that line was just recognising that fact."

And four decades after writing the song on a piano, Springsteen's own take on the song changed during his Springsteen on Broadway show.

"There's nothing like that moment in your life of being young and leaving some place," he said. "All that youthful freedom, you finally feel untethered from everything you've ever known: your past, your parents, the world you've gotten used to and you've loved and hated. Your life laying before you like a blank page.”

It makes perfect sense, then, that this song was hand-picked by The Boroughs creators from the millions written and recorded. Sure, it's about the dreams of escaping a dead-end town, but It's a song that will have a deep emotional resonance with people like Sam Cooper who are navigating the depths of grief while attempting to honour their ghosts by living life to the full.

The Boroughs is available to stream on Netflix.

A trailer for Frampton, the upcoming documentary about Humble Pie guitarist and solo star Peter Frampton, has been released. The film, which has been made to celebrate the 50th anniversary of his breakthrough live album Frampton Comes Alive, will premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival in New York City today (June 4).

Frampton follows the guitarist's career from his early days with The Herd to his recent battles with the muscle-wasting disease Inclusion-Body Myositis (IBM), and features contributions from Ringo Starr, Bill Wyman, Tom Morello, Joe Bonamassa, Mike McCready, Vince Gill, Sheryl Crow, Alice Cooper, Herb Alpert, Kate Hudson, Cameron Crowe, Roger Daltrey, Chris Lord-Alge, Tommy Shaw and Nancy Wilson, in addition to Frampton and his family.

"Drinking too much, too many drugs... and then a car accident!" says Frampton, reflecting on the period after Frampton Comes Alive and the near-fatal 1978 car crash that almost ended his career.

"He was the golden god," says Nancy Wilson. "They don't give you the handbook for that."

Frampton is directed by Rob Arthur, who's been Frampton's bandleader for more than two decades and has previously worked on videos for the Doobie Brothers, Dave Mason, Damon Johnson and Orleans.

"One of the blessings for me was that everybody we wanted to interview said yes," Arthur tells GoSeeTalk. "It says something about him [Frampton] right there, you know? It would have been incredible to talk to Jerry Moss, it would have been incredible to talk to Steve Marriott, but these people are gone.

"But we got Herb Alpert instead of Jerry Moss, and that's pretty damn good. Herb was very happy to do this, and I was out of my skin, just 'I'm talking to Herb Alpbert! He's the 'A' of A&M. Oh my god.' You know, it was incredible for me."

Frampton premieres this evening at 8pm at the OKX Theater at the BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center in Lower Manhattan. For more information about the film and other screenings, visit the official website.

In 1984, Robert Fripp dissolved the then-current lineup of King Crimson after three albums. Discipline, Beat and Three of a Perfect Pair might have been well-received, but the ever-restless Fripp felt that the quartet – completed by Adrian Belew, Bill Bruford, and Tony Levin – had fulfilled its original artistic purpose.

Besides, he wasn't happy, later telling Prog magazine that recording of the third album had been "the most awful record-making experience of my life, and one I would never choose to repeat."

The following year, Fripp released the 20-minute Network EP. He undertook a tour of UK record shops, including a stop at Rough Trade in West London, where he discussed – among other things – his recordings with Police guitarist Andy Summers, the abandoned album he worked on with Brian Eno and Scott Walker, and his sporting exploits. And, most peculiarly, he was the focus of a documentary made by BBC South.

Robert Fripp: New York – Wimborne, which has recently resurfaced online, was broadcast on September 3, 1985. The film, presented by late BBC DJ Anne Nightingale as a BBC2 Late Night in Concert film, follows Fripp as he attends a variety of events, including a marketing conference at Polydor Records in London, where he presents Three Of A Perfect Pair to the assembled marketeers.

"It's time that King Crimson extended itself," Fripp tells them. "We would like a new audience, so that we can get away from the expectations of our reliable audience. New music, new audience. This is what you can do for us."

The film also spends some leisurely time with Fripp in his hometown, Wimborne in Dorset, a place he describes as the "centre of the universe". It's where Fripp was given his first guitar, a cheap Manguin Frere acoustic, in 1957. It's where he made his first public appearance, playing second violin in the Kathleen Gartell Corfe Mullen School of Music Junior Orchestra, in 1959. And it's where, in 1961, he formed his first band, The Ravens.

In the Wimborne footage, Fripp visits a family gravestone, enjoys afternoon tea with his mother, and watches neighbourhood band Sports Day rehearse in their front room. He also offers advice to a young band called Social Science during a record signing at Square Records, a store that's been trading on Wimborne High Street since 1974.

"If you want to be successful in music in England, you have to live in London," says Fripp. "I'm very sorry to say that you cannot do it from Wimborne. You have to go and live in London for seven years. Resign yourself to it. They are not going to come to you. Even trips on the river or tea at the Yew Tree Cafe will not seduce the industry to come here."

Asked if Social Science should send demo tapes to record companies, Fripp doesn't hold back.

"It'll do nothing at all," he advises. "10,000 tapes a week arrive. Don't send a tape. Take a tape. Put a face on the name. You'll still be rejected 99 times out of 100, but nevertheless, go there with it. And it'll take time."

It's not known if Social Science moved to the capital, but it appears that they never released anything, so it must be assumed they failed to heed the great man's advice. And so Robert Fripp remains Wimborne's greatest musical export, although stoner metal pioneers Electric Wizard and folk-rock icon Al Stewart might beg to differ.

"We used to take the bus together when he was 15, and I actually took 10 guitar lessons from him," Stewart told Prog in 2021. "He taught me all these jazz chords that I never used again in my life."

Perfect Crime, the unreleased Guns N' Roses documentary filmed during the band's Use Your Illusion tour between 1991 and 1993, has been leaked online.

The film, which has long been considered a holy grail among Guns N' Roses fans, has appeared online as a 38-minute rough cut, having remained unseen since it was originally completed – reportedly 90 minutes long – in 1994. It documents one of rock's most famously chaotic tours, and features behind-the-scenes material and previously unseen live footage.

The version leaked online includes footage of aftershow parties with waiters dressed as Roman legionaries, fans in various states of undress, a pig served on a platter and lederhosen-clad dancers, plus Axl Rose receiving treatment from an osteopath on an airport taxiway.

Also included are interviews, footage of Izzy Stradlin and Slash jamming in a hotel room, Rose singing The Skyliners' Since I Don't Have You in the studio, Duff McKagan being stretchered offstage after being hit in the head by a bottle, and live performances of two complete live songs filmed at the Pasadena Rose Bowl in October 1992.

"This is what I always wanted to do," says Axl, interviewed as Guns N' Roses played Mount Smart Stadium in Auckland, New Zealand, in February 1992. "I always knew it was going to happen. I never gave up hope. We've seen so many cats come and go in Hollywood that gave up. And it's hard. It's very difficult."

"We all know each other, and we've known each other for so long, it's hard for us to sit back and go, 'Hey! We're in the biggest rock band in the world!'" he continues. "It's not like that. We're still us, and we've got more albums to make, and we've got more shows to do."

Guns N' Roses are just about to begin the European leg of their 2026 tour, with dates in the US, Latin America, Australia and New Zealand to follow. Full dates below.

Guns N' Roses 2026 Tour

Jun 04: Gliwice PreZero Arena Gliwice, Poland
Jun 06: Gliwice PreZero Arena Gliwice, Poland
Jun 10: Dublin 3Arena, Ireland
Jun 13: Donington Download Festival, UK ∞
Jun 18: Amsterdam Ziggo Dome, Netherlands
Jun 20: Amsterdam Ziggo Dome, Netherlands
Jun 23: Berlin Uber Arena, Germany
Jun 25: Berlin Uber Arena, Germany
Jun 28: Antwerp AFAS Dome, Belgium
Jul 01: Paris Accor Arena, France
Jul 03: Paris Accor Arena, France

Jul 23: Raleigh Cater-Finley Stadium , NC *
Jul 26: Saratoga Springs Saratoga Performing Arts Center, NY *
Jul 29: Tinley Park Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre , IL *
Aug 01: Hershey Hersheypark Stadium , PA *
Aug 05: Toronto Rogers Stadium, ON *
Aug 08: Shakopee Mystic Lake Amphitheater, MN *
Aug 12: East Rutherford MetLife Stadium, NJ *
Aug 16: St. Louis Busch Stadium, MO *
Aug 19: Kansas City Morton Amphitheater, MO #
Aug 22: Las Vegas Allegiant Stadium, NV >
Aug 26: Edmonton Commonwealth Stadium, AB >
Aug 29: Vancouver BC Place, BC >
Sep 02: San Diego Snapdragon Stadium, CA >
Sep 05: Pasadena Rose Bowl, CA <
Sep 09: Arlington Globe Life Field, TX +
Sep 12: Ridgedale Thunder Ridge Nature Arena, MO #
Sep 16: San Antonio Alamodome, TX +
Sep 19: Atlanta Truist Park, GA

Nov 29: Adelaide Grand Final, Australia ≠
Dec 02: Townsville Queensland Country Bank Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 05: Brisbane Suncorp Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 08: Newcastle McDonald Jones Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 11: Melbourne Marvel Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 14: Sydney Engie Stadium, Australia ≠
Dec 17: Auckland Eden Park Stadium, New Zealand ≠

* with Public Enemy
# with The Barbarians of California
> with The Black Crowes
< with Ice Cube
+ with Pierce The Veil
≠ with Airbourne
∞ festival date

Find Guns N' Roses tickets.

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein, otherwise known as the composers for the original music for the hit TV series Stranger Things, not to forget members of the synth prog outfit S U R V I V E, have announced a live European tour where they'll be delivering a definitive performance of the entire Stranger Things saga.

At the same time, Invada Records UK and Lakeshore Records release two volumes of double vinyl albums for Stranger Things 5 — Original Score From The Netflix Series on July 15. The 95-track collection includes the score to Season 5 Volume 1 and Volume 2 as well as the music from the finale.

The Invada Records versions (for World excluding the Americas) are V.1 ion Metallic Bronze coloured vinyl and V.2 in Metallic Silver coloured vinyl, both versions are housed in a gatefold sleeve and printed inner with full colour photos.

Lakeshore Records' versions are 2xLP on Blue Smoke coloured vinyl with gatefold jacket and full colour printed sleeves.

Pre-order Invada release.

Pre-order Lakeshore Vol. I.

Pre-order Lakeshore Vol. II.

You can see the full list of live shows and ticket details below.

Kyle Dixon and Michael Stein Stranger Things European tour dates

Jun 26: ITA Fiastra Fiastrapalooza Festival
Jun 28: BEL Brussels Ancienne Belgique
Sep 3: SRB Belgrade Drugstore
Sep 5: SPA Barcelona Paral·lel 62
Sep 8: SPA MadridThe music Station PRÍNCIPE PÍO
Sep 12: POL Sopot Brasswood Festival
Sep 14: BUL Sofia National Palace of Culture
Sep 16: SVK Bratislava Majestic Music Club
Sep 19: GRE Athens Hellenic Cosmos
Sep 21: IRE Dublin 3Olympia Theatre
Oct 31: FRA Nantes Le Lieu Unique
Nov 4: UK Belfast Ulster Hall
Nov 7: UK Birmingham Town Hall
Nov 9: UK London EartH Theatre
Nov 14: POR Braga Theatro Circo
Nov 16: GER Berlin Theater Des Westens

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Bruce Springsteen has paid tribute to Stephen Colbert on the second-to-last edition of The Late Show. The show, which has been hosted by Colbert for 11 seasons, will be retired after a marathon final episode this evening (May 21).

The Late Show was officially cancelled due to financial pressures, with broadcaster CBS stating that the program was losing tens of millions of dollars annually.

However, the decision sparked significant scepticism, with many claiming the decision was politically motivated. The cancellation was announced just days after Colbert mocked a $16 million settlement paid to US President Donald Trump by CBS's parent company, Paramount, calling it "a big fat bribe."

"I am here tonight in support of Stephen, because you're the first guy in America who's lost his show because we've got a president who can't take a joke," says Springsteen. "And because Larry and David Ellison [the father and son duo who serve as the financial backer and CEO of Paramount] feel the need to kiss his ass to get what they want.

"Stephen, these are small-minded people who've got no idea what the freedoms of this beautiful country are supposed to be about. This is for you."

Springsteen then plays a haunting version of Streets of Minneapolis, his song honouring the memory of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, two civilians shot and killed by ICE agents in the city.

The final episode of The Late Show with Stephen Colbert airs on Thursday, May 21, at 11:35 p.m. ET/PT. It will be replaced by Comics Unleashed With Byron Allen.

The upcoming He-Man movie, Masters Of The Universe, will premiere tomorrow (May 18) at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, but fans eager for a taste of Daniel Pemberton's soundtrack will be delighted to learn that two tracks are already available.

The two pieces – different versions of a composition called Eternia – both feature Brian May, and may include what may be the most epic soloing from the Queen guitarist in decades. Composer Pemberton says the soundtrack is the "most maximalist score ever", and Eternia – named after the fantasy planet that serves as the film's main setting – certainly lives up to the billing.

"Ah! Here it is!" exclaims Brian. "I only just discovered this is out! We have the power!"

Pemberton has previously worked on several blockbuster soundtracks, including Project Hail Mary. Spider-Man: Into/Across the Spider-Verse, The Man from U.N.C.L.E. and King Arthur: Legend of the Sword.

May revealed he was working with Pemberton in February, promising the movie "will make a lot of people smile a lot" and revealing that "yes, my ol' Red Special [his famous, hand-made guitar] is all over it!"

May previously contributed to the soundtrack of the 1996 film Pinocchio, and three years later composed the soundtrack for Alexandre Aja's post-apocalyptic sci-fi film Furia. Of course, Queen also provided the soundtrack to the 1980 science fiction movie Flash Gordon, with May composing the film's iconic theme music.

Masters Of The Universe stars English actor Nicholas Galitzine as Adam Glenn/He-Man, 30 Seconds To Mars frontman Jared Leto as the evil sorcerer Skeletor, and Idris Elba as Man-at-Arms. It's on general release from June 5.

Mötley Crüe have completed their highly anticipated appearance on the finale of the latest series of American Idol, performing two Crüe classics with the 2005 series winner, country star Carrie Underwood.

The unlikely pairing tackled truncated versions of Home Sweet Home and Kickstart My Heart. And while Underwood's vocal left little room for criticism, footage of the performance does appear to confirm that Vince Neil – who revealed in 2025 that he's suffered four strokes in recent years – is no longer operating at full capacity.

Underwood has a history of dalliances with rock music and regularly performs Guns N' Roses' Welcome To The Jungle during her solo sets. She has also performed Motörhead's classic hit Ace of Spades and Ozzy Osbourne's much-loved power ballad, Mama, I'm Coming Home, in concert.

Last year, she teamed with an American Idol contestant to cover Drowning Pool’s nu metal banger Bodies, and in 2009, she was responsible for the series' end theme, another cover of Home Sweet Home.

In July, Mötley Crüe will embark on a mammoth Carnival Of Sins tour, celebrating the band's 45th anniversary as well as the 20th anniversary of the original Carnival Of Sins tour, which took in 118 shows in 2005-2006. Support will come from Tesla and Extreme. Full dates below.

Mötley Crüe Carnival Of Sins tour 2026

Jul 17: Burgettstown The Pavilion at Star Lake, PA
Jul 18: Buffalo Darien Lake Amphitheater, NY
Jul 20: Clarkson Pine Knob Music Theatre, MI
Jul 22: Toronto RBC Amphitheatre, ON
Jul 24: Gilford BankNH Pavilion, NH
Jul 25: Bangor Maine Savings Amphitheater, ME
Jul 27: Camden Freedom Mortgage Pavilion, NJ
Jul 29: Saratoga Springs Saratoga Performing Arts Center, NY
Jul 31: Holmdel PNC Bank Arts Center, NJ
Aug 01: Mansfield Xfinity Center, MA
Aug 03: Bristow Jiffy Lube Live, VA
Aug 12: Alpharetta Ameris Bank Amphitheatre, GA
Aug 14: West Palm Beach iTHINK Financial Amphitheatre, FL
Aug 15: Tampa Credit Union Amphitheatre, FL
Aug 17: Charlotte PNC Music Pavilion, NC
Aug 19: St. Louis Hollywood Casino Amphitheater, MO
Aug 21: Shakopee Mystic Lake Amphitheater, MN
Aug 22: Tinley Park Credit Union 1 Amphitheatre, IL
Aug 24: Cuyahoga Falls Blossom Music Center, OH
Aug 25: Cincinnati Riverbend Music Center, OH
Aug 27: Grand Rapids Acrisure Amphitheater, MI
Aug 28: Noblesville Ruoff Music Center, IN
Sep 08: Kansas City Morton Amphitheater, MO
Sep 10: Dallas Dos Equis Pavilion, TX
Sep 11: Houston The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, TX
Sep 13: Albuquerque Isleta Amphitheater, NM
Sep 16: Phoenix Talking Stick Resort Amphitheatre, AZ
Sep 18: Chula Vista North Island Credit Union Amphitheatre, CA
Sep 19: Long Beach Long Beach Amphitheater, CA
Sep 21: Salt Lake City Utah First Credit Union Amphitheatre, UT
Sep 23: Wheatland Toyota Amphitheatre, CA
Sep 24: Mountain View Shoreline Amphitheater, CA
Sep 26: Ridgefield Cascades Amphitheater, WA

Get Mötley Crüe tickets.

Forty years after its original release, and with a TV reboot in the pipeline, Highlander stands as one of the great cult movies of the 80s – an epic fantasy involving sword-wielding immortals doing battle across centuries, with a memorable soundtrack by Queen. In 2019, Classic Rock talked to director Russell Mulcahy about swordfighting, accents and Freddie Mercury’s breakfast-making skills.

Russell Mulcahy remembers attending a typically opulent party at Freddie Mercury’s West London mansion, Garden Lodge, sometime in the mid-80s. After the festivities wound down, Mulcahy crashed in one of the singer’s many guest rooms. He was woken the next morning by the bedroom door opening. It was the host, in ebullient mood.

“He went, ‘Come on dear, come downstairs, I’m making you breakfast,’” Mulcahy tells Classic Rock. “And so I’m in his kitchen, just him and me, he’s making me eggs and bacon. I’m sitting thinking to myself, ‘Freddie fucking Mercury is cooking me breakfast. Wow.’ It was so surreal.”

Mulcahy was no stranger to working with stars of the Queen singer’s calibre, even if they weren’t normally frying up a couple of rashers of Danish for him. The Australia-born filmmaker had made his name as the wunderkind director behind groundbreaking promo videos for the likes of Duran Duran, Elton John and Rod Stewart before graduating to full-length movies.

His first film had been low-budget homicidal-pig-in-the-outback horror flick Razorback, released in 1984. But it was a very different film two years later with which he made his name – and provided his entry to the world of Queen.

Highlander was a time-hopping sci-fi fantasy in which a group of immortal beings battled each other with large swords, each ultimately trying to decapitate the rest. If the premise sounded preposterous, the cast list was anything but – it starred rising French actor Christopher Lambert as the film’s protagonist, 15th Scottish clansman Connor MacLeod, and former James Bond Sean Connery as his mentor, a Spanish-Egyptian buccaneer named Juan Sánchez-Villalobos Ramírez.

It also had a solid gold soundtrack featuring five new songs from Queen, whose career was back on a vertiginous post-Live Aid upswing. The songs would appear later that year Queen’s new album, A Kind Of Magic, an unofficial soundtrack to the movie that would become the band’s most successful studio album of the decade.

“Queen’s music was the icing on it,” says Mulcahy, as he prepares to look back at this cult classic. “I couldn’t have hoped for a better band.”

How did you get involved with Highlander?

I had done videos for Duran Duran, who were on EMI. And EMI were connected to Highlander in some way. So they sent me the script and I read it and totally fell in love with it. I went for a meeting and it went fantastically, and they said, “OK, great, you’re in.” And that was that.

How did you pick Christopher Lambert for the leading role?

Well, we were sitting around going, “Who’s going to play the Highlander?” And the obvious list of the usual Top 20 in-demand actors from that time got passed around. Then I was flipping through this magazine and I came across this photo of Christopher from Greystoke, the Tarzan film. He had the most incredible eyes – they had this eerie immortality about them. So we met him, he loved it… and that’s when we found out he could hardly speak a word of English! So we had a French guy playing a Scotsman and a Scotsman playing a Spaniard. (Laughs) Who cares!

The real-life Scotsman would be Sean Connery. What was he like?

I remember going off to meet Sean, who had read the script, at the Savoy Hotel in London. I get to the door and my knees are shaking, I’m pissing my pants, I’m petrified. All I can think is, “Oh my god, I’m going to meet 007.” And the doors opens and there’s this six foot three man standing there. He invites me in, we have a coup of tea and sandwich, and he turned out to be the most wonderful, wonderful gentlemen. He was into it a hundred per cent.

It’s a fairly crazy plot. Did he tell you what he saw in it?

Yes, it was a crazy story, this fantasy that spanned centuries. But the thing that grabbed me, and grabbed everyone, was that there was a tragic romance to it. This guy MacLeod falls in love with a girl in Scotland in the 1500s. He can’t get old and die, but she does. So he can never really fall in love again. It was this wonderful tragic love story.

What was it like working with Connery?

It was fantastic. I remember we got on a small plane to go up to Glencoe in Scotland, where we were filming. He gets in there, hands me a little glass, pulls out a bottle this very special Scotch someone had made for him. He said, “You’ve got to try some of this, laddie”, and he gives me a shot. My god, this thing must have been 300 per cent proof or whatever the fuck it was. I was singing the blues all the way up to Scotland.

What was the shoot itself like?

Brilliant fun, but there was one hairy moment. The was one sequence featuring the Kurgan [the film’s towering barbarian villain]. It was the big entrance, where he bashes through the door of this fort and says, “Where’s the Highlander?”

Clancy Brown, the actor who played The Kurgan, was meant to leap from the stairs and cut this table in half. But this was Clancy’s first day of filming with Sean, and he was so nervous. As he bashed through the door, he didn’t cut the table straight down like he was supposed to, he swiped across it. This candelabra went flying over the crew, the sword breaks and a shard flies over Sean’s head. At which point Sean quietly walked off the set.

Poor Clancy’s in the corner, going, “What the fuck have I done?” Sean’s in his trailer, he’s taken his costume off, and he says to me, “You need to talk to this young lad, because that’s not what we rehearsed.” And him and Clancy had a chat. Clancy was so apologetic, but Sean understood, and everyone was the best of friends again.

Clancy Brown was the perfect person to play The Kurgan – big, menacing, strange-looking…

He was totally into it. There’s a bit in the film where his head is shaved, and he was totally into that. He would sit there, taking bits of pins and sticking them into his costume. I went, “What are you doing?” And he says, “It’s all part of the ritual man, Kurgan’s ritual.” I’m, like, “Okay, whatever, sounds good…”

Can we talk accents? What instructions did you give to people, given that none of the actors were from where there characters were meant to come from…

With Sean we both agreed we didn’t want to force any accents. When you get Sean Connery, you get Sean Connery. He didn’t attempt to do any Spanish-Egyptian thing. That would have faked it out a bit – I mean, come on, it was Sean Connery. The rationale is addressed in the movie. There’s one scene where a cop says to Christopher Lambert, “You talk funny, where you from?” And he replies, “Lots of different places.” These guys have lived hundreds of years. They’ve probably lived in every bloody country in the world.

How did Queen’s involvement in the soundtrack come about?

I loved Queen, I was a huge fan of their music, and I really loved the soundtrack they had done to Flash Gordon. So we contacted them and I think they were a little sceptical at first, but we invited them over to the edit studio in London and we showed them 20 minutes of cut footage – six or seven different scenes. All the band came over, and they came out and said, “That’s really cool.” So I thought we’d get one song out of them. But two days later we got the message back that they all wanted to write a song: Freddie wanted to write as song, Roger wanted to write a song, so did Brian and John. I ended up getting five songs in the end, which was amazing.

Were they your first choice? There’s a rumour that Marillion were in the running to do it.

I think there was some talk of Duran Duran being involved early on. I love Duran Duran, but we wanted something with a heavier edge. Queen had that, but then they also gave us a song like Who Wants To Live Forever, which was just beautiful. I also got Freddie to do New York, New York, which he didn’t want to do: “Oh god, come on…” I had to convince him. There’s a snippet of it in the film, where MacLeod crosses the bridge at the end.

What was Freddie Mercury really like? Did you get to see a different side of him ?

He was the most wonderful man. Actually, I was just living round the corner from his house in Earl’s Court at that point, so I’d go and see him for lunch and just sit and chat and laugh. We became good friends. Same with Roger and Brian,.

Did you stay in touch with them?

Yes, especially with Freddie. We became really close friends. We’d go out and see opera and ballet – he loved that stuff. He also became friends with John Taylor from Duran Duran. Me and Freddie and John would go out with Roger Taylor from Queen. Or they’d turn up at my place and we’d play cards until 4am.

Were you happy with the finished movie?

The studio didn’t meddle with me too much. The American version is different – they cut out a few scenes, like the French scene, where he keeps getting stabbed by thee guy. They also cut the World War 2 scene where he [McLeod] saves the girl who becomes his secretary later in the. Cutting it out was ridiculous – you didn’t understand why Lambert was so passionate about here. He viewed this woman like his daughter.

How do you look back on Highlander these days?

It was a complete delight, because I loved the genre. I loved the romance of it, the scope of it, I loved the music, the costumes. And when we filmed in Scotland, the Scots themselves were magnificent. I’m delighted that people are still talking about it.

Originally published in Classic Rock Presents: Queen

A rare colour video of Led Zeppelin miming to Good Times Bad Times, the opening track on their 1969 debut album, has been found in the University of Georgia's digital archive.

The footage was originally captured in February 1969 at Thee Image Club on Collins Avenue in Miami Beach, Florida. A low-quality, black-and-white film of the band performing Communication Breakdown at the club has been circulating for years, but the Good Times Bad Times clip is in colour and has not been seen for over half a century.

Both videos were reportedly filmed for The Rick Shaw Show, an MTV-type show in Miami featuring the latest rock'n' roll songs being lip-synched by local performers and touring musicians. Hall would later become a VeeJay on The Now Explosion, a show in Atlanta, GA, that featured dancers performing to popular songs, with wild video effects employed to make the clips more psychedelic.

Footage from The Now Explosion has been archived by the University of Georgia's Walter J. Brown Media Archive & Peabody Awards Collection, where the Good Times, Bad Times clip was discovered by a Led Zeppelin fan, alongside film of Three Dog Night performing Try A Little Tenderness and James Brown miming I Got You.

"I requested digitisation of about a dozen items that had Zeppelin song titles in the description," says the fan, who goes by the name of Zep Head. "There was Whole Lotta Love, Communication Breakdown, Good Times Bad Times, What Is and What Should Never Be and Living Loving Maid all set to kids dancing. Immigrant Song was set to stock footage of a downhill ski race!

"Then there was this. I was floored! Surely we've all seen the black-and-white Communication Breakdown promo video shot in Miami in Feb 69. That grainy video. Turns out they mimed two songs that day. And Good Times Bad Times was shot in colour!"

The video, which features perhaps the clearest available colour footage of Jimmy Page's iconic Dragon Telecaster, is embedded below.

Kansas have reacted to the use of their classic song Carry On Wayward Son during a sketch on the long-running variety show Saturday Night Live over the weekend.

In the sketch, entitled Husbands (see below), a group of girlfriends (played by Chloe Fineman, Sarah Sherman, Ashley Padilla, Jane Wickline and Veronika Slowikowska) introduce their husbands (played by SNL host Jack Black, Kenan Thompson, James Austin Johnson, Andrew Dismukes and Tommy Brennan) to each other for the first time.

While the women fret in the kitchen about what their husbands in the room next door might be up to, the men, after an awkward start, break into song. Led by Black, they're swiftly committed to performing Carry On Wayward Son together, their inability to converse defeated by their shared love of the music – and a secret costume fetish. Male loneliness epidemic? What male loneliness epidemic?

"Everybody I know is sending me the clip," Kansas guitarist Rich Williams tells Vulture. "It’s another feather in our cap that adds to our legacy. We’re still out there and working, but to be acknowledged by an institution like Saturday Night Live? Wow."

"I’ve seen so many parodies and interpretations of our work," he continues. "A capella, jug bands, all kinds of stuff. So when I first watched the sketch, it made sense to me that they would go in that direction. But still, I was like, Wow. It keeps going and going. We got a lot of airtime, and that was fantastic.

"It made me think back to recording our second album, Song for America, and how both Kansas and Saturday Night Live were born almost at the same time. They were about a year after our first record, so we have a lot of shared history in Americana in general. To be acknowledged in a sketch in a funny way felt nice. It wasn’t mocking us. It was very cool. And Jack Black is one of a kind. He’s very serious, but he’s very talented. He’s a jack of all trades."

Carry On Wayward Son, written by then-Kansas guitarist Kerry Livgren, reached No. 11 on the US Billboard Hot 100 in early 1977 and has gone on to become a much-loved fixture on classic rock radio.

"It’s an autobiographical song,” Livgren told Classic Rock in 2016. "Parallel to my musical career, I’ve always been on a spiritual sojourn, looking for truth and meaning. It was a song of self-encouragement. I was telling myself to keep on looking, and I would find what I sought."

Chip Monck has quite a story to tell. The lighting designer for Monterey Pop in 1967 and Woodstock two years later, he emceed the latter and was responsible for what might be rock's most infamous onstage warning: "The brown acid that is circulating around us is not specifically too good."

Five years later, he got a job hosting Speakeasy. This music discussion show, produced by advertising agency J Walter Thompson, was shown in over 100 markets and played host to a stellar list of guests, including Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Bill Wyman, Dr John, Peter Gabriel, Alvin Lee, Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, John McLaughlin, Dave Mason, Jackson Browne, Steve Miller, Bonnie Raitt, Tom Waits and Frank Zappa.

In the wake of the California Jam – the landmark 1974 one-day festival held at the Ontario Motor Speedway in California – Monck hosted two musicians who'd played at the event. Black Sabbath frontman Ozzy Osbourne and Deep Purple keyboardist Jon Lord were joined in the studio by Ian Hunter from Mott The Hoople, who were in California to play shows with Aerosmith.

Footage from the broadcast has rarely surfaced in the half-century since, but Ritchie Blackmore has come to the rescue, with 45 minutes of footage appearing on the guitarist's YouTube channel this week.

In the show, the three men are entertained by Wendy Waldman, the former singer of Los Angeles folk-rockers Bryndle, and discuss a variety of subjects, including Purple's reputation as the world's loudest band, Ian Hunter's then-new book Diary Of A Rock'n'Roll Star, and Ozzy's first experiences touring the USA.

"We got off the plane, and I was expecting gangsters," says Ozzy. "I was so terrified to go out, I stayed in my room for a week. I wouldn't go out because I was so frightened."

Monck also asks the musicians about the effect of the rock'n'roll lifestyle on their lives,

"I wouldn't be doing nothing else," Ozzy reveals. "It's like living in pain, but also living in the most incredible high in the world. I had to go and see a few head doctors now and again, because it was getting too much. It takes you from one life to another."

Speakeasy was short-lived and didn't make it into 1975, but Monck went on to work with Michael Jackson, Frank Sinatra, Muhammad Ali and dozens of other big names. He served as the lighting designer for the 1984 Summer Olympics in Los Angeles, and for Pope John Paul II's visit to the city three years later.

In 2024, Monck's archive was accepted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame museum in Cleveland, OH.

“FUUUUCK!”

Lars Ulrich screams into James Hetfield’s face, but the frontman doesn’t flinch. It’s an extraordinary moment in the documentary Metallica: Some Kind Of Monster, as the tension that’s been ratcheting up between the pair for decades comes to a shocking climax.

For co-director Joe Berlinger, it was also a scene of great cinematic merit. “From a filmmaking point of view, when your intention is to capture raw human emotion, it was pure gold,” he says.

Some Kind Of Monster was an intimate portrait of a band working through an interpersonal crisis that had been bubbling under the surface long before the cameras started rolling. By early 2001, Metallica’s management company, Q Prime, were aware of fracturing relationships in the band, and had drafted in psychotherapist and ‘performance enhancement coach’ Phil Towle, to help ease relations as they prepared to make their eighth record. His first meeting with Metallica took place at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in San Francisco, but the smooth introduction he had intended on making did not go as planned.

“Jason came in and said: ‘I’m leaving’,” remembers Phil. “He asked me to go to the room adjacent, where I listened to him railing against the bandmates for 10 minutes. And that was chaos. I decided at some point to knock on the door and say, ‘May I come back in? This is exactly why I’m here.’ And Lars said, ‘Let him stay.’ And we started the process, which was an awkward, challenging moment.”

In a statement, Jason cited “private and personal reasons” for his departure, and “the physical damage I have done to myself over the years while playing the music that I love”. A series of interviews for Playboy, conducted two months earlier but published in March 2001, also revealed that James had forbidden Jason from releasing music with his side-project, Echobrain. “The band were stunned, and a fight ensued, and there was a lot of conflict in that first session,” Phil recalls.

The group therapy continued regardless, and during this period documentary filmmaker Joe Berlinger flew over from New York. He had been in talks with Metallica about doing a film that could be released as pay-per-view content, or as a bonus featurette on the CD for their next record, but now Lars told him there might not even be a new record because Jason had quit the band. When Lars also explained they were working with a performance enhancement coach, Joe’s artistic interest was piqued; would they allow him to film the sessions? Incredibly, the band said yes.

“I remember sitting in this nice lounge room of a hotel suite, with these icons of metal, of male testosterone, opening up to each other and exploring how they feel,” Joe says. “There was a little bit of reluctance from James, but as I got to know him better, I’d say it’s amazing that he opened up on that first day with the camera in front of him.”

The session also had a therapeutic effect on Joe; he realised he wanted to continue documenting the process, and after splitting with his longtime filmmaking partner, Bruce Sinofsky, he felt compelled to reach out and bring him into the project. Filming stepped up as Metallica moved into the empty barracks at the Presidio, a former military base in San Francisco, with emotions still running high. After one particularly intense disagreement, James slammed the door behind him and did not come back.

Instead, the frontman checked into rehab. Phil knew that he would be doing intensive therapy there, and was determined that the sessions between himself and Kirk, Lars and returning producer Bob Rock should continue so the band could connect more easily when he returned.

Lars dived deep into his own past. In a segment that held a mirror up to the drummer’s perfectionism, he played demos to his father. In an astonishingly open scene, he also met with Dave Mustaine, who told him how hurtful it was to be fired from Metallica and that he missed “his little Danish friend”. He also, however, alluded to the fact that the absent James was yet to reach out.

“It was a very touching moment for them, and it was the beginning
of some healing, and also they left the meeting with some unfinished business too. It wasn’t all nicey-nice, right?” says Phil. “But I think Lars realised that there were things he wishes he could have done differently with Dave.”

Following Some Kind Of Monster’s release in 2004, Dave condemned the scene and said he had asked for it not to be included, citing unhappiness with the final cut and describing the unsettled mood he was in during filming, two days after the terrorist attacks of 9/11. However, he had already signed a release form, granting the filmmakers legal permission.

“I think two years later when he saw the scene and 9/11 was now a thing of the past, and people weren’t spiritually awake the way we were that first week, he regretted perhaps participating,” says Joe. “But I think that’s a shame. I think he is very strong and human.”

James returned from rehab with new ground rules: he would only work on their album between noon and 4pm. Resentment flared between him and Lars; was Lars allowed to listen to songs after James left for the day, if he didn’t change anything? Why couldn’t Lars just do what he wanted anyway? That frustration exploded via the sweary drummer’s most notorious utterance of one simple word: “FUUUUUUCK!”

“These guys are waiting for James. Waiting, waiting, waiting – not only waiting, but wondering whether James was ever going to come back. They were scared it was over,” explains Phil. “And when James comes marching back and says, ‘I can’t work between certain hours and certain hours’, Lars was really pissed off. Like, ‘What the fuck? We’ve been waiting for you, and you’ve controlled us for 10 months.’ And he probably felt that James had controlled them for more than 10 months, right? So this was the collision of years of frustration.”

Because of the outburst, because Lars already had a reputation for running his mouth off, and because of the recent media attention surrounding his battle with file-sharing service Napster, some fans began to turn on him.

“Lars was not being an asshole, he was just somebody who was expressing the pent-up anger he had felt,” says Phil. “And James was saying, ‘Look guys, I have to work with my family, maintain my sobriety and maintain my composure.’ So that collision was scary, but it was necessary.”

To Joe’s mind, the overarching issue was that Metallica were trying to reconcile how to make music without indulging in the practices that had earned them the ‘Alcoholica’ tag in their younger years. “I think living that ethos of sex, drugs and rock’n’roll in their 40s wasn’t working for them,” he says. “A lot has been said about the tension between James and Lars, but I think the larger issue is that the band was wanting to continue to make music, but they didn’t want to live that life that made them famous.”

Following the bust-up, work on what would later be titled St. Anger gathered speed, alongside their journey of self-reflection. Encouraged by their work with Phil, the band had started contributing lyrics collectively, but there’s one moment when the coach himself offers a suggestion, which is highlighted in the film. “That to me was a crossing of the line,” says Joe.

Not long after, James rounded on Phil and accused him of becoming too attached to a future with Metallica, suggesting it was time to terminate their involvement with each other. Caught off guard, Phil is visibly teary-eyed and shaken.

There was some background to this encounter, says Phil. A year or so earlier, he and Metallica had agreed to part ways – but then Lars had called and asked him to stay. He’d been under the impression that the partnership would continue, and admits it was difficult to hear he was no longer needed.

“The unhealthy part of me is guilty of wanting to hold on to something, because this was like a family to me,” says Phil. “It was like something I had never experienced before, personally and professionally. No person in my work gets to be with a group of people, almost every day, for 12 hours a day. The embedment makes it difficult for an ending like that. Then it was done on camera, in contradiction to what I thought was agreed upon. So that was a moment when I fumbled the ball.”

After fans saw Some Kind Of Monster, some cast Phil as the villain of the piece – criticism that was difficult to stomach, especially as he had no right of reply. But last year Lars publicly stated that Phil saved Metallica – and Joe agrees.

“I think the misperception is that he had his hooks in the band for fees and he was just looking to milk the situation,” says Joe. “I don’t think that’s the case at all. I think he’s a caring human being who wears his heart on his sleeve, and did great work in the band, and it got to the point where his job was done, and he had a hard time saying goodbye. But in having a hard time saying goodbye, he unwittingly gave Metallica the tools they needed once again to come together as a brotherhood.”

St. Anger was released on June 5, 2003. Reactions were mixed, with widespread criticism over the album’s production, in particular Lars’s snare sound. But when Some Kind Of Monster followed six months later, fans were shown how lucky they were to still have Metallica at all.

“Prior to making it, I would have told you that the role of the documentarian [during filming] is to observe, but not affect or change the outcome,” says Joe. “But what’s interesting about the Metallica film is that Lars said the cameras were like a truth serum. He felt that the therapy would not have worked if there weren’t cameras there to record it. And so while I don’t want to take credit for the salvation of Metallica, I do think Some Kind Of Monster really helped them work through their issues.”

The film was a true first, taking viewers into the private lives of one
of the world’s biggest bands, as well as showing metal musicians – with their reputation for bravado – being vulnerable with the aid of a therapist. There might be sensational scenes and occasional bursts of levity, but Joe says fans have told him it helped them to address alcohol problems, and bands have thanked him for allowing them permission to be human.

By making Some Kind Of Monster, he and Bruce, who passed away in 2015, captured an incendiary time in Metallica’s history and reimagined what a music documentary could be and do.

“When some people dismiss this film as Spinal Tap, I find that deeply offensive, because I think these guys were brave and honest and dealt with real issues that all creative people go through,” says Joe. “If you think it’s a real-life Spinal Tap, you’ve totally missed the point of the film.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 355 (November 2021)

Jim Steinman was one of rock’n’roll’s great visionaries, a raging maniac with a head full of noise, romance and death. As a composer and producer, he brought the drama of Broadway and the scale of opera to almost everything he touched. He was Richard Wagner in a leather jacket, Phil Spector without the homicidal tendencies, the power behind the throne who refused to stay hidden.

Born in New York in 1947, Steinman was weaned on rock’n’roll, girl groups and musical theatre. By the late 1960s he had summoned up his own creative touchstone in the shape of The Dream Engine, a fantastical dystopian sci-fi musical written as a college project, that would provide source material for many of his later songs.

It was another musical, More Than You Deserve, that marked the biggest turning point in his life. Among the cast was a hulking, wild-eyed Texan named Marvin Lee Aday, known to friends and family alike as Meat Loaf. The two of them hit it off and decided to work together. It would be the making of them both.

The story of how Meat and Steinman spent two years getting laughed out of every record label office in New York while hawking the album that eventually became Bat Out Of Hell has passed into legend. Even the album’s eventual producer, Todd Rundgren, found Steinman’s outrageous vision ridiculous. “When I heard the record, I rolled on the floor laughing,” Rundgren later said. “It was so out there.”

Of course, Bat Out Of Hell was released eventually, and became phenomenally successful and swept all before it. It did more than make Steinman wealthy – it was a springboard for his greatness. Throughout the 80s and 90s, he put his stamp on albums and songs by such a diverse range of artists as Bonnie Tyler, Air Supply, the Sisters Of Mercy, Celine Dion and, of course, his old friend and sometime enemy Meat Loaf. He was a master recycler, using and re-using parts or whole songs for different artists – everyone he worked with became part of the Jim Steinman Extended Universe.

Steinman’s ambitions in his later years were thwarted by illness, and when he died in 2020 the world became a less epic place. “When I sang Jim’s song, everyone stood on their feet and went crazy,” Meat Loaf said after his passing. He was referring to a single number from the musical they did all those years ago, but he could have been talking about Steinman’s whole career.

...and one to avoid

Walking down Los Angeles’ Sunset Strip now, as the milky winter daylight casts spectral fingers across the low, flat rooftops and the constant stream of cars snake their way west, you’ll notice the sidewalks are quiet.

If you want to get even the remotest hint of rock’n’roll in your veins, then it’s a long walk to the far end of Sunset where the squat Rainbow Bar & Grill building still sits. Lemmy is set in effigy at the end of the bar where he once spent so many happy hours drinking and playing the slots.

Walk through the bar and into the dark red restaurant, letting your eyes adjust to the low light. It’s so quiet in here now, but in 1987, infamous bands like Guns N’ Roses and Mötley Crüe partied here, drinking beer and whisky and eating slices of pizza as their female friends disappeared beneath the large, round table tops to kneel before them. Occasionally, a stray, stilettoed shoe sticking out from under the long tablecloth would topple an unsuspecting waiter as he passed by, and the band’s raucous laughter would follow him down.

“Slash was a friend and we sat down with Guns N’ Roses to discuss them doing the film, so I was pretty sure they would be the closing band in the movie,” recalls director Penelope Spheeris today.

The film in question was The Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, the second in a trilogy of films that Penelope helmed through the 80s and 90s charting Los Angeles’ cultural underbelly. Part I (1981) focused on Hollywood’s then-burgeoning punk scene, and 1998’s Part III (arguably the strongest of the three) looked at the hardcore scene growing up around the droves of homeless kids living on the margins of society in and around Hollywood. It’s Part II, however, that has gone down in infamy.

Released in 1988, the film shone an unblinking light on the clubs and bands that were making a noise in the glam metal scene that engulfed the Strip in 1987 and 1988. Throw a can of Aqua Net around in those days and you would hit at least half a dozen singers with backcombed hair and a ‘z’ or an ‘x’ in their name just waiting for that elusive big break.

And even though Guns N’ Roses did have a singer with an ‘x’ in his name, the band eventually declined to take part in the movie.

“I met with their manager the day before we were supposed to shoot their performance and for some still-inexplicable reason, he backed out,” says Penelope with a sigh, speaking on the phone from Los Angeles. “That was very disheartening for me. I loved their music and I knew they were going to blow up.

“I distinctly remember, I wanted W.A.S.P. and Guns N’ Roses. I don’t recall exactly why Blackie [Lawless] didn’t want to be in the movie, but I do recall as a second choice I went for [then-W.A.S.P. guitarist] Chris Holmes and for obvious reasons, I am very glad I did.”

Part II is a fascinating series of vignettes of self-delusion, excess and some truly awful make-up, but there is nothing more fascinating (well, at least in the way a house fire or car crash is fascinating) than watching Chris Holmes being interviewed on a floating chair in a swimming pool, while decked out in full stage gear, completely out of his head on vodka.

At one point, as if things aren’t unhinged enough, his mother turns up poolside to berate him for his behaviour. He is part man-child and part Cookie Monster, but mostly vodka, and in a movie that often floods the lens with the grotesque, he is truly something to see.

“When Guns N’ Roses ditched out, I was fortunate enough to recruit Megadeth,” says Penelope. “I had done a couple of music videos with the guys and Dave Mustaine and I were friends, so he agreed to be the closing band in the film. I was finally able to get some heavier music in the movie.”

Penelope had originally intended for Part II to focus on heavy metal, until the producers pushed her towards glam. Although Part I wasn’t widely seen (the VHS copy Dave Grohl managed to snaffle was, he said, like getting hold of contraband. Ironically, the film has since been inducted into the US Library of Congress National Film Registry), Penelope was moved to make Part II as Los Angeles was changing before her eyes.

“In the mid-80s there was a dramatic shift in the scene on the Sunset Strip,” she says. “One night I was hanging out and I was amazed at the influx of metal fans. For me, it’s all about the study of human behaviour and preserving a moment in music history. Had it been strictly my call, the bands would have been more hardcore, heavier heavy metal.

“However, the producers found the glam side of metal more entertaining. And I guess it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, because people seem to get a giggle out of that lighter side of metal, the hair metal. The premise for all the Decline… movies is that the bands that perform must be relatively unknown, and they were.”

“What I remember was that someone in their production staff approached us over the phone and asked if we were interested in being in a movie about the Strip and the LA music scene,” says Nadir D’Priest, singer with London, a band that was not only a staple of the late-80s West Hollywood bar scene, and the starting point for a host of musicians including Nikki Sixx, Blackie Lawless and Izzy Stradlin. London were one of the most animated and gleeful acts to perform a short live set specifically for the second Decline… movie.

“It was nice to be part of the film, and I thought the movie was fucking great,” says Nadir. “I couldn’t believe that I was watching myself and our music on the giant screen – all that hard work had paid off. We had no complaints about it. My grandmother and my mom both attended the premiere at the Cinerama Dome [in Hollywood]. We were all completely hammered and riding around in a black limo.

“And it captured that whole scene; vibrant, colourful and loud! It seemed like there was a party every night in the Hills or on the east side of Hollywood. I remember all the girls on Sunset in their miniskirts, hair as high as possible, like exotic birds of paradise. The music scene was vibrant, busy, complicating, toxic, fun, destructive and basically an all-round good time! It will never ever be as it was; just awesome memories.”

“It was metal madness,” says Penelope. “You couldn’t even walk down the sidewalk. You could barely drive down Sunset Boulevard because drunk people would spill out into the street and you had to be careful not to run over them. A couple of my drunk-stoned friends actually did get hit. Luckily, they lived and partied on, like good headbangers do.

“There was no social media back then, so everyone passed out flyers to promote their bands. It was a feeling of exuberance, both guys and girls high as hell and looking for love, or at least a good lay.”

Alongside London, W.A.S.P. and Megadeth, Faster Pussycat performed for the cameras, as did Odin and Seduce (both wilfully committed to the idea of stardom or nothing, they might have changed their thinking on that now). Aerosmith talked cocaine, Poison remembered the days before fame, Kiss’s Paul Stanley did his interview from his bed (with three doting and doe-eyed ladies draped over him like wet towels on a deckchair) and Lemmy was shot from a distance, the city’s skyline framed behind him.

“For me, the most powerful moment is when Dave Mustaine is reading the lyrics to In My Darkest Hour [from 1988 Megadeth album So Far, So Good… So What!]. That seemed so significant to me,” says Penelope. “It represents the true nature of what great metal lyrics could be. And the instrumentation that went along with those lyrics gives it even more impact.

“Probably the most comedic moment in the film is when the outgoing ‘beauty queen’ at Gazzarri’s [nightclub on the Strip where both The Doors and Van Halen once played] says she is going to continue her ‘actress-ing’. And that moment when the fans are being patted down by security. Back then, the bouncers were looking for booze flasks or spiked jewellery that could be used as weapons. It was a sign of things to come. Now they have to look for real weapons. Unbelievable.”

Penelope would take some of Decline…’s tainted magic with her when she went on to direct 1992’s Wayne’s World (her biggest commercial hit) and her excellent, if rarely screened, 2001 Ozzfest documentary, We Sold Our Souls For Rock ’n Roll.

“It was totally decadent, indulgent and made the last days of Caligula look tame,” she says, 80s LA lights still burning Day-Glo red and green in her mind. “It’s dreary now. Tourists flocked in; the club owners saw the opportunity and catered to them. The real music fans and the good bands kind of faded away. It’s sad, but I’m glad I was there to experience it. And I’m glad I could capture it on film.”

Originally published in Metal Hammer issue 323 (February 2020)

You wait 40 years for Iron Maiden to make it to the big screen, and then three appearances happen all at once. First, The Trooper popped up in the (movie-length) finale of Stranger Things in January, then Number Of The Beast stole the show in 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple. Now, Maiden are back for a third bite of the pie as Killers appears on the soundtrack to Corin Hardy's new horror movie Whistle.

Released this Friday (February 13), Whistle follows a group of high schoolers who discover an Aztec death whistle that, when blown, summons death for all who hear. So naturally, someone blows it and bloody, gloriously gory mayhem ensues - watch the trailer below.

Basically, think Nightmare On Elm Street crossed with Final Destination with a bit of It Follows and The Monkey chucked in for good measure. Sound good? It is!

Hammer caught up with director Corin Hardy to talk about the movie's killer, genre-blurring soundtrack and just how important music is to this film - including a mammoth hundred-plus song playlist the director made to help actors and crew get into the Whistle spirit - which you can listen to at the bottom of the page.

It seems appropriate for a movie about a cursed instrument to have a plot-relevant soundtrack…

Corin Hardy: “I always used to make compilation tapes when we did that, and now I make playlists. When I got to making Whistle, first thing I did was put together a few-hundred song playlist called DEATH LIVES that was basically bands that were part of the vision I was having. That involved music from the 70s, 80s and 90s in a mix of genres but a lot of rock, goth and metal, as well as a lot of electronic music and techno stuff.”

And what happened with that playlist?

“I sent it out to the cast and crew. Basically, I just said, ‘If you fancy listening to where my head was at…’ I think it just helps form this movie I was making. That was the start point and then I even started working things into the script with specific bands and songs I would hope to get into the film. I’ve actually made that playlist public, so you can listen to that as well as the digital soundtrack and we’ll also have a vinyl score release [coming this Friday] because that was made by Doomphonic.”

How important was the music to the story?

“I’m trying to make a movie that is timeless, but also a nod to classic horror movies of the 80s like Nightmare On Elm Street and The Lost Boys but also The Breakfast Club. If you think of those movies, you’ll also have music you’ll instantly think of – Don’t You Forget About Me in Breakfast Club, Cry Little Sister in Lost Boys… The movie is set now but I wanted to work certain types of music in.”

So what decided which songs would make the final cut?

“I was actually inspired by this post I’d seen on Twitter, when I was on that platform once upon a time. It was a woman who said her dad had died, but he’d left her his record collection. So each day she posted some album artwork and said she was getting to know him through that, which I thought was so brilliant and moving.

I really identified with that – my brother Robin [Guy, drummer for Rachel Stamp] died a year and a half ago and we had a very close bond. He drummed in various rock and punk bands and he got me into music – he got me into Iron Maiden when I was eight years old. So this idea of connecting with someone through music was really important.”

And that literally comes up in the film.

“Yeah! With Chris – the character Dafne Keen plays – her father has left her this jacket and record collection. So she’s introduced in the movie listening to this collection of albums, getting to know him through it. What we hear in the movie is rooted in her character. That was my starting point, but I was looking for opportunities in the script for sequences.

This was before we started shooting too, so like Joey by Concrete Blonde is playing on the record player in the script. It’s pretty dangerous to do that because you don’t know if you’re going to curse it and never actually get the track. I’d done music videos for The Prodigy and I wanted to get bands that would identify into this kind of movie.”

Is there a theme to the songs?

“There’s something in all of the bands’ lyrics that is relevant to Whistle or to death, like Omen by The Prodigy. It’s about a death whistle that when you blow it, it calls upon your future death to hunt you down. But there’s a commentary about death, life and mortality going on. I’d heard the band CHVRCHES – more of a sort of modern, electronic band who have a retro sound and they had a song called Final Girl. It just felt so made for a horror movie – like something you’d hear in Nightmare On Elm Street 4 in 1989 or something.”

How did you get bands to sign on?

“I reached out! I’ve known Gunship for a while through Dan Haigh, because back when I did music videos, I did some for Fightstar and also gave my voice to a song of [Gunship's] called Cthulhu. They’d done a cover of Cyndi Lauper’s Time After Time that felt heartbreaking, which helped tap into this character Rel [Sky Yang], who is an outsider, artistic weirdo type. He’s obsessed with this character called The Revenger, and is like me when I was 14. So I tied some bands in to different characters.

There’s a Tiger Army track, Dark And Lonely Night that worked really well and I wanted to use that because over the years I’ve been flagging different tracks and thinking, ‘I’d love to get this in a movie.’ Then finally, there’s a romantic scene where the lead character is alone in her bedroom, trying to contact this girl through a message and there’s a lot of longing, uncertainty and romance going on and that Tiger Army track is perfect – it sounds like Elvis as a gothic vampire.”

Were there any songs that didn’t make the final cut?

“A few. There was a Suicidal Tendencies song I wanted to use, Type O Negative too. Sometimes it just doesn’t work out, we can’t find a place for it. I wanted to try and get Rachel Stamp, my brother’s band, in and I’ve always loved this song of theirs called Witches Of Angelholm which has such a groove in the guitar riff and the lyrics, ‘Hey little girl…’ which worked perfectly for the Harvest scene.”

How did Maiden come into the picture?

“Iron Maiden were my first love, the first band I got into in the world of rock and heavy metal. I always was like, ‘I want to feature a Maiden track’ and had got to know them and their management, we’d done things together like carving pumpkins for the Eddie videogame. I contacted them and they’re very particular about who gets to use their music. This year they’ve got Number Of The Beast in [28 Years Later] The Bone Temple, The Trooper in Stranger Things and now Whistle has Killers.”

Have you seen those others?

“Oh yeah. They’ve got the best scene in The Bone Temple!”

Maiden have a good presence in the film even before they show up on the soundtrack…

“What Maiden stands for as a band was relevant to this strength that Chris as an individual has. I didn’t want it to just be, ‘She’s the goth weirdo and she listens to goth weirdo music.’ She’s got a number of tastes going on. But Maiden are actually quite symbolic for Chris through the film – she’s into that stuff and has this Live After Death vinyl early on in the movie, but then you’ve got characters like Ellie (Sophie Nélisse) who is very safe and set in her ways early on, but when those characters come together they become like Ying and Yang where they need to work together to fight this terrible death whistle curse. So when you see a Maiden t-shirt pop up [later in the movie], it’s a subtle hint things are changing.”

It’s wild that Maiden haven’t really featured in movies or TV for years and have now been in three big projects in as many months.

“Well yeah! I think they’re in Demons [1985 horror directed by Lamberto Bava], but it was a real honour [to get them for the soundtrack]. I actually got The Duellists in Gangs Of London too, which is also featured for a good reason.”

You mentioned The Revenger earlier – that’s something you created for this movie… it’s very The Crow, isn’t it? You were attached to that movie for a few years, would you still want to try making your vision?

“I did like three years of pre-production, nearly making The Crow. It was more of an opportunity [in this film] to say something about Rel. Originally in the script, Rel was obsessed with The Green Lantern, but when I read that it was like, ‘I’m not a massive Green Lantern fan’ so suddenly I don’t identify with the guy as much. Plus, we wouldn’t be able to clear The Green Lantern.

So without spoilers, with his arc it made more sense for him to take on characteristics of this character he’s obsessed with who’d be like The Punisher or The Crow. So we got to design a new superhero! I was amazed to clear the name ‘The Revenger’, which was pretty cool. I knew there’d be things like him sitting on the roof in the rain, so it’s a gravitation towards the kind of costumes and things I knew and did growing up.”

It feels like there’s a lot of brilliant easter eggs in the film.

“Absolutely. There’s one key sequence that stood out to me, which was a real challenge to do. It definitely took inspiration from Wes Craven’s Nightmare On Elm Street where Tina gets dragged up to the ceiling, or Johnny Depp gets sucked into the bed.

But there was also a bit of American Werewolf In London going in – the transformation scene where we see it happen right in front of your eyes. So we wanted to have a transformation sequence using different techniques like prosthetics, animatronics, puppetry, contortionists, wire work… all these visual effects to create an illusion that feels visceral and immersive.”

No spoilers, but my hand still feels weird after seeing it.

“That was actually done with a real, in-camera animatronic that they built!”

Is there a future for Whistle as a franchise?

“The mythology felt too simple and effective to not want to tell more stories within it. With something like this, while you’re making it – all the way through to the edit – you’re honing and exploring what it is. In some ways this is the first story of this death whistle, but with this mythology it could be in different time periods, settings and whatever. Given the opportunity, I’d be excited about doing more stories in this world."

WHISTLE is released in cinemas in UK and Ireland from February 13. The official WHISTLE SCORE by Doomphonic will also be released on digital platforms February 13. The Vinyl through MUTANT will be released soon.

Will Sleep Token finally snag their first Grammy? Can Linkin Park add to their trophy haul? There’s only one way to find out – and we’ve got all the ways you can watch without breaking the bank. The 68th Annual Grammy Awards takes place on February 1, 2026, and this year’s ceremony is shaping up to be an absolute belter. The show kicks off at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, with Trevor Noah hosting for the sixth consecutive time – though it’s his swan song, as the Grammys’ 10-year deal with Disney begins next year.

The event will be broadcast live on CBS & Paramount+ Premium, and even if you’re out of the country on the night, you’ll still be able to watch using a VPN. It is worth noting that Paramount+ Essential subscribers won’t be able to watch live, but the good news is that the ceremony will be available to stream on demand the following day.

For rock and metal fans, this year’s nominations are particularly exciting. Sleep Token could take home the award for Best Rock Song with “Caramel”, while the band’s “Emergence” is nominated for Best Metal Performance alongside Dream Theater, Ghost, Spiritbox, and Turnstile. But here’s the burning question: how can you watch all the action without emptying your wallet? Let’s break down your options.

1. Sign up for Paramount+

First, the not-so-great news: if you’re in the US, the 68th Grammy Awards will air on CBS and stream live on Paramount+ for Premium subscribers, with the show available the following day on demand for Paramount+ Essential subscribers. Unfortunately, things have gotten a bit trickier since last year.

Paramount+ has ended its direct 7-day free trial for new US subscribers as of January 15, 2026, following a price increase. But don’t despair – there are still ways to watch the Grammys without paying full price.

If you're going to be travelling outside the US and don't want to miss the awards, you can watch through a VPN.

Virtual Private Networks are used to change the location of your IP address, enabling you to watch a movie in any country. Nord VPN is Louder's service of choice and it's currently available with 70% off the usual price - and there's a 30-day money back guarantee.

2. Sign up to Walmart+ (US Only)

Walmart+ is a paid membership program offering benefits like free grocery delivery, free shipping with no minimum, fuel discounts, Scan & Go, and more. Priced at $12.95/month or $98/year, with discounts available to government assistance recipients, it can be seen as Walmart's answer to Amazon Prime.

Here’s the clever bit: A Walmart+ membership includes the Paramount+ Essential plan at no extra cost. While the Essential plan means you’ll have to wait until the day after to watch on demand rather than streaming live, it’s still a solid option if you can avoid social media spoilers for 24 hours.

3. A Paramount+ Free Trial (UK only)

If you’re in the UK, you’re in luck. Paramount+ offers a standard 7-day free trial in the UK for new subscribers, available directly via their website or as an add-on through Amazon Prime Video. The trial automatically renews at £4.99 (Basic with ads) or £7.99 (Premium) per month unless cancelled, with payment details required at sign-up.

Sadly, Paramount says it won't be streaming the Grammys live in the UK – but you should be able to watch an on-demand replay using the Paramount Plus free trial.

Just remember to set a reminder to cancel before the trial ends if you’re only in it for the Grammys!

4. Go Annual and Save

Not keen on the free trial dance? Choosing an annual plan saves you money in the long run. In the US, plans cost $59.99/year for Essential or $119.99/year for Premium – effectively giving you two months free compared to paying monthly at $8.99/month (Essential) or $13.99/month (Premium).

5. Watch the Premiere Ceremony for FREE

Here’s something many people don’t know: the 2026 Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony takes place from 3:30 p.m. ET/12:30 p.m. PT and will stream live for free at live.GRAMMY.com and on YouTube. This is where the majority of the Grammys are actually awarded, so you’ll get to see loads of winners announced without paying a penny.

What to expect this year

Beyond Sleep Token’s historic nominations, Kendrick Lamar leads the list with nine nods, followed by Lady Gaga with seven, and Bad Bunny, Sabrina Carpenter, and Leon Thomas with six each.

The rock categories are absolutely stacked this year. Deftones, Linkin Park, Turnstile and Yungblud are battling it out for Best Rock Album, while this year marks the first time that Sleep Token, Amyl And The Sniffers and Yungblud have been nominated for Grammys.

It's also been revealed that a group of rock icons, including Slash and Duff McKagan, Chad Smith of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, as well as Post Malone and Andrew Watt, will be taking to the stage to perform a special tribute to the late, great Ozzy Osbourne, who recently passed away.

Grammys 2026 rock, metal and alternative nominations

Best Metal Performance
Dream Theater: Night Terror
Ghost: Lachryma
Sleep Token: Emergence
Spiritbox: Soft Spine
Turnstile: Birds

Best Rock Performance
Amyl And The Sniffers: U Should Not Be Doing That
Linkin Park: The Emptiness Machine
Turnstile: Never Enough
Hayley Williams: Mirtazapine
Yungblud featuring Nuno Bettencourt, Frank Bello, Adam Wakeman: Changes (Live From Villa Park, Back To The Beginning)

Best Rock Song
Nine Inch Nails: As Alive As You Need Me To Be
Sleep Token: Caramel
Hayley Williams: Glum
Turnstile: Never Enough
Yungblud: Zombie

Best Rock Album
Deftones: Private Music
HAIM: I Quit
Linkin Park: From Zero
Turnstile: Never Enough
Yungblud: Idols

Best Alternative Music Performance
Bon Iver: Everything Is Peaceful Love
The Cure: Alone
Turnstile: Seein’ Stars
Wet Leg: Mangetout
Hayley Williams: Parachute

Best Alternative Music Album
Bon Iver: Sable, Fable
The Cure: Songs Of A Lost World
Tyler, The Creator: Don’t Tap The Glass
Wet Leg: Moisturiser
Hayley Williams: Ego Death At A Bachelorette Party

Bruce Springsteen fans, rejoice! The highly anticipated biographical drama Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is now available to stream on Disney+, bringing the story of The Boss’s most intimate album directly to your home.

Directed by Scott Cooper and starring Jeremy Allen White, the star of The Bear, as Bruce Springsteen, this compelling film chronicles the creation of the iconic 1982 album Nebraska. The movie captures a pivotal moment in Springsteen’s life during the early 1980s, when he withdrew from the spotlight following his sold-out River Tour to record what would become one of his most enduring works. Recorded on a simple 4-track recorder in his New Jersey bedroom, Nebraska marked a dramatic departure from his stadium-rock sound, delivering instead a raw, haunted acoustic record that explored the lives of lost souls searching for meaning.

Of course, the film doesn’t just focus on the music. It delves deep into Springsteen’s personal struggles, including his troubled relationship with his father and his battle with depression. Jeremy Allen White delivers what critics are calling an Oscar-worthy performance, capturing both the vulnerability and intensity of the young musician grappling with fame and his inner demons. The supporting cast, including Jeremy Strong as longtime manager Jon Landau and Stephen Graham as Springsteen’s father, has received widespread praise for their stellar performances.

Best of all, UK viewers can take advantage of an incredible Disney+ deal: sign up now for just £3.99 per month for the first three months, instead of the usual £5.99. This limited-time offer, available until January 28, means you only have a couple of days to sign up in time!

Whether you’re a lifelong Springsteen fan or simply appreciate powerful biographical storytelling, Deliver Me From Nowhere is a must-watch film that offers a fascinating glimpse into the creative process behind a masterpiece.

How to watch Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere

How to watch from anywhere

If you're going to be travelling outside the US and don't want to miss Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, you can watch through a VPN.

Virtual Private Networks are used to change the location of your IP address, enabling you to watch a movie in any country. Nord VPN is Louder's service of choice and it's currently available with 70% off the usual price - and there's a 30-day money back guarantee.

How to use a VPN

1. Install a VPN. As we've mentioned above, Nord VPN is Louder's favourite from the many available.

2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN. If you're currently in the UK on holiday and want to watch this year's Grammys, just select 'US' from the list.

3. Turn the volume up and relax. You're all set to watch the whole evening's entertainment unfold.

What did we say about the film?

Depeche Mode's acclaimed 2025 concert film M will be streamed on Netflix in the UK, US and Europe from Friday, December 9.

The feature-length film, conceptualised and directed by award-winning Mexican filmmaker Fernando Frias, documents the Essex band’s three sold-out shows at the Foro Sol Stadium in Mexico City on September 21, 23 and 25, 2023, and uses nearly 200,000 fans’ fervent connection with the band as a window into Depeche Mode's global influence, with what the film-makers say is "a powerful tribute to the unbreakable connection between music, tradition and the human spirit.”

The idea behind the film was “to explore the parallels between the themes on Depeche Mode’s latest album Memento Mori and the deep connection to death and mortality in Mexican culture.”

“At its core, our new film M is about the deep connection between music, culture, and people," Depeche Mode frontman Dave Gahan said last year, “and Fernando Frías, who directed and conceived the film, did a beautiful job telling that story that through the lens of Mexican culture and our shows in Mexico City.”

Depeche Mode: M premiered at the Tribeca film festival in New York in June last year.

Dave Gahan and bandmate Martin Gore spoke about the film and their music during a live audience Q&A session at the festival, moderated by film critic Bilge Ebiri.

“We're all kind of hovering between life and death,” Ebiri noted, “and the music captures that. And that's been the special thing about your music for so long. You guys sing about dark subjects very often, but really... dance.”

“There is a playful aspect to death,” Dave Gahan agreed.

Watch the trailer for the film below.

Courtney Love will share her life story in a new documentary film which will receive its world premiere at the Sundance Film Festival in January.

Antiheroine is co-directed by Edward Lovelace and James Hall, and produced by Julia Nottingham via her Dorothy St. Pictures production company, which has previously produced acclaimed documentaries on Pamela Anderson, Victoria Beckham, and Coleen Rooney ('The Wagatha Story').

An official synopsis for the film states: "Singer, songwriter, and actor Courtney Love has long had an impact on rock and pop culture. Now sober and set to release new music for the first time in over a decade, Courtney is ready to reveal her story, unfiltered and unapologetic."

"Courtney has waited a long time to tell her story, in her own words and it’s deeply important to all of us at Dorothy St Pictures that strong, female-forward stories find the audiences they deserve," Nottingham tells movie industry website Variety. "As a child of the 90s, I was always curious about Courtney, a woman who often appeared to be defined by her husband Kurt Cobain. We made this film because Courtney’s story is bigger than the headlines. It’s raw, complicated, and deeply human."

Green Day frontman Billie Joe Armstrong, R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe, and Love's former Hole bandmates Eric Erlandson, Melissa Auf der Maur and Patty Schemel are among the musicians who will add their voices to the story.

The 2026 Sundance Film Festival is scheduled to be held in Park City and Salt Lake City, Utah from January 22 to February 1. No screening date has yet been confirmed for Antiheroine. The festival will also see the premiere of The Moment, a mockumentary starring Charli XCX as a fictionalised version of herself.

Film star Adam Sandler recently revealed that he is a huge fan of Hole's 1994 album Live Through This.

Speaking to NME, Sandler recalled the first time he heard the record.

"I remember I was on tour," he said. "I was doing standup and that album just came out, and I was in my car a lot. I listened to the track one [Violet] and I was like, Ooh, that was nasty. Track two [Miss World], I was like, Two for two. And then I just said, I guess this whole album is going to be great."

With the first season dropping in July 2016 onto an audience unsuspecting of the cultural monolith they were about to watch, the zeitgest-setting 80s nostalgia of Stranger Things has been going almost as long as the decade itself. Love it or hate it, its upcoming fifth and final season is a genuine end to an era, and as you'd expect from any self-respecting period throwback, there’s been room for plenty of show-stealing musical moments. As it builds to its last hurrah starting this week, these are some of the most bitchin’ needle-drops in Stranger Things so far. Spoilers abound, of course.

Jefferson Airplane - White Rabbit (Season 1, Episode 1: The Vanishing of Will Byers)

An ever-popular indicator that things are about to get a little unhinged and a little epic, Jefferson Airplane’s 1967 acid rock freak-out masterpiece provides one of Stranger Things’ earliest memorable music stings. As the escaped, still very buzz-cut and very tiny Eleven seems to find some shelter in the presence of kindly diner proprietor Benny, Grace Slick’s careening vocal accompanies the disruption of that as the agents of season 1 big bad, Dr. Brenner, swiftly and brutally execute Benny, announcing just how dangerous these shady government baddies were going to be.

The Bangles - A Hazy Shade of Winter (Season 1, Episode 2: The Weirdo on Maple Street)



One of the early tragedies of Stranger Things is the loss of fan favourite character Barb to the Demogorgon, and there’s a double layering of ironic sadness to the usage of The Bangles’ upbeat version of Simon & Garfunkel’s melancholic ode to seasonal change, as it plays right after Jonathan observes Nancy and Steve hooking up and misses Barb being yanked away by an interdimensional monster to where we later learn she died a terrifying and lonely death. Brutal.

Peter Gabriel - Heroes (Season 1, Episode 3: Holly, Jolly)

The discovery of a body in the lake at first believed to be the vanished Will Byers casts such a strong spell of loss over the show that they even milk another needle-drop of Joy Division’s Atmosphere out of it at the start of the following episode AND New Order’s Elegia at his funeral in episode five. As Peter Gabriel’s orchestral version of David Bowie’s Heroes ends out episode three with that loss sinking in, though, it’s what really burns into the memory, reminding you how emotional the first season of Stranger Things could be. The track later returns in the finale of season three as the Byers move out of Hawkins, providing a throughline for their story.

Moby - When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die (Season 1, Episode 8: The Upside Down)

Possibly the most encouraging bawl-your-eyes-out moment of the show comes in the first season finale when Will whose disappearance kicked off the entire show is finally found alive (obviously), and it’s the ambient sounds and sublime vocalisations of Moby that soundtrack it. Doubling as a redemptive moment for Hopper as he saves a child to forgive himself for the one he could not, but another of mourning for Mike as Eleven is now believed gone, its usage is so moving it doesn’t even matter it’s not an 80s cut.

Scorpions - Rock You Like a Hurricane (Season 2, Episode 1: MADMAX)

Season 2 brings new characters and new jams to introduce them with, and it doesn’t get much more on-the-nose than the arrival of new kid Max and her overbearing, bullying, racist, generally bit-of-a-shithead brother Billy, whose bad boy looks nonetheless draw the eye of every girl in school while German hard rock legends Scorpions promise that he is indeed going to rock them like a hurricane. Through Billy’s presence alone, we later get Mötley Crüe’s Shout at the Devil, Ratt’s Round and Round, and Metallica’s The Four Horsemen throughout season 2. Not our last Metallica outing, of course.

Jim Croce - You Don’t Mess Around With Jim (Season 2, Episode 3: The Pollywog)

The folk rock track responsible for that GIF of David Harbour dad-dancing you’ve probably seen more times than you remember. Dietetically played by Jim Hopper to get in the zone, it is essentially Hopper’s own chosen anthem, emphasised further by its return in season 3 as he gaudily sings in celebration at overhearing Mike and Eleven’s relationship stumbling.

Bon Jovi - Runaway (Season 2, Episode 7: The Lost Sister)

Speaking of on-the-nose, there must’ve been something in the water for season 2, because the episode where Eleven runs away and catches a bus to Chicago to find similarly psychically-gifted people starts with the unmistakeable keys of Bon Jovi’s Runaway. The Lost Sister is one of Stranger Things’ most divisive episodes as Eleven ditches the main cast to meet a whole new gang who felt destined for a spin-off that never got picked up, but at least we heard some sweet glam rock.

The Clash - Should I Stay or Should I Go (Season 2, Episode 8: The Mind Flayer)

Probably the first instance of an already classic song becoming synonymous with Stranger Things, Should I Stay or Should I Go made its debut in episode two of season 1 as a moment of brotherly bonding between Will and Jonathan Byers, but its return in season 2 as Jonathan tries to reconnect with Will’s consciousness using the power of the music within his memory cemented its legend. For all its sci-fi pulp, it’s a usage that speaks to music’s ability to pull you back to a time and place that’s meaningful for all of us.

The Police - Every Breath You Take (Season 2, Episode 9: The Gate)

Reminding you that all of this interdimensional horror is indeed a coming of age show for teenagers, season 2 ends on that most sacred of 80s rituals: a school dance, with nostalgic cheese abound. As all our characters get swept off into their dance pairings, it’s a lonely Mike locking eyes with Eleven that ushers in The Police’s signature hit and sends it out with a wholesome romantic smile, until the song’s more sinister side feeds into the hint at the Mind Flayer’s impending return.

Madonna - Material Girl (Season 3, Episode 2: The Mall Rats)

A highlight of the mall-centric season 3 was the growing friendship between Eleven and Max, and it’s captured most memorably in the shopping and clothes try-on montage from episode 2, soundtracked by what else but Madonna’s consumerist classic Material Girl. Once again, Stranger Things not one for subtlety in its musical choices, but what would the scene be without it? A banger’s a banger.

Don McLean - American Pie (Season 3, Episode 3: The Case of the Missing Lifeguard)

Possibly the show’s nastiest usage of musical irony here as Billy continues being a menace into season 3, now possessed by the creatures of the Upside-Down, and further spreads his infection around the town. Having already gotten to his lifeguard co-worker Heather, here the two incapacitate and brutalise Heather’s parents under the guise of a family dinner, and Don McLean’s fond farewell to the classic era of Americana backs this perversion of an all-American ritual.

Limahl - The NeverEnding Story (Season 3, Episode 8: The Battle of Starcourt)

This might be cheating as it’s not the original track so much as Dustin and long distance girlfriend Suzie singing it, but this was season 3’s viral moment that began to show just how powerful Stranger Things was becoming in bringer older songs renewed traction. Spotify streams for the original theme of the 1984 children’s fantasy staple soared by 825% in summer of 2019, and YouTube views of the original music video by 800%. Chances are, if someone under 30 today knows this song, it’s not from a deep-seated love of luckdragons but from this unashamedly corny moment.

Kiss - Detroit Rock City (Season 4, Episode 1: The Hellfire Club)

Season 4 would prove to be the season where Stranger Things’ cultural domination with its needle-drops would go into overdrive, and seeing as the iconic merch for the show’s Hellfire Club would also become unmistakeable around the same time, we might as well start this series off with Kiss’ absolute jam from 1976’s Destroyer album. Playing atop their Dungeons & Dragons sessions might as well make it the Hellfire Club theme tune, particularly fitting in associating their game with rock music as both would fall under attack by conservative fear groups.

Talking Heads - Psycho Killer (Season 4, Episode 2: Vecna’s Curse)

On the surface, this would seem to be one of Stranger Things’ patented does-what-it-says-on the tin song choices, which yeah, okay, it is a bit, but it’s the double-meaning that makes this work. Playing as basketball captain Jason drums up a witch hunt for metalhead Eddie Munson over the disappearance of classmate Chrissy, the Talking Heads track acts as the subversion of the Satanic Panic fears season 4 plays with, fitting Jason’s oorah rhetoric whilst planting questions as to where the danger really comes from.

Kate Bush - Running Up That Hill (Season 4, Episode 4: Dear Billy)


The big one. Stranger Things’ virality and deft usage of repeating motifs for powerful pay-off moments had been evident before, but no-one was prepared for the impact on the music industry 2022’s Running Up That Hill fever would wield. Appearing first in the season premiere as Max’s emotional comfort song grieving her brother Billy, in episode 4 it’s deployed for her full potential hero moment, and the world went gaga.

Thirty-seven years after its release, it reached number one in eight countries including the UK, breaking Kate Bush all manner of records, and hitting the billion Spotify stream milestone in 2023. It’s both a globally historic case study of the potency of resurgent streaming culture, and a romantic re-emphasis of the deeper emotional significance of music that the streaming era needs to remember.

Journey - Separate Ways (Worlds Apart) Remix (Season 4, Episode 8: Papa)


This is a straight up “tune in next time” moment from Stranger Things, even using a chopped up and slowed down remix of Journey’s 1983 slice of pop rock genius to squeeze all the epic they can out of it, but with its lyrics emphasising the connections between the lead characters as they head into the biggest fight of their lives, in generating hype for season 4’s final episode this works a treat.

Metallica - Master of Puppets (Season 4, Episode 9: The Piggyback)

As far as hero moments go, they don’t get more bombastic than everybody’s season 4 favourite Eddie Munson sacrificing himself via rooftop Upside-Down Metallica concert. For metalheads, this is the show’s most glorious peak, Eddie calling swarms of demonic bats whilst tearing out one of the most ripping ever riffs.

As well as providing an insane send-off for a character who offered a rare bit of positive representation for metalheads in mainstream entertainment, it brought Metallica their own Kate Bush moment, entering the Billboard Hot 100 for the first time at no.40, thirty-six years after its release.

Deep Purple - Child In Time (Season 5 trailer)



Okay, this one isn’t actually in the show yet and for all we know might not well be, but as there is history with Journey’s Separate Ways remix appearing in the season 4 trailer before its eventual in-show usage, we thought we’d count it. We’re yet to see how it’ll be deployed, but if Deep Purple’s 1970 monster with Ian Gillan vocal acrobatics galore does find its way from the season 5 trailer into an appropriately monumental episode, who’s to say the British proto-metal pioneers won’t have their own Kate Bush or Metallica revival? Stranger things have happened...

Stranger Things 5 begins Wednesday November 26 on Netflix

Every time you think it's dead, it's back for another hunt. Since John McTiernan's classic original, the Predator franchise has gone through all manner of evolutions; our favourite dreadlocked killer has swapped the clammy jungles of Central America for the grimy streets of LA, mixed it up with Xenomorphs, dipped its claws in animation (not to mention comic books, novels, video games and toys aplenty) and shifted from gritty action-horror to rollocking buddy-cop japes.

That latter twist came in the form of this year's thoroughly entertaining Predator: Badlands, the third of Dan Trachtenberg's entries in the series, and arguably the surest sign yet that the Yautja is in the midst of a new golden age. In fact, with two new Predator films releasing this year, what better time to cast a look back over the franchise as a whole, and rank them in reverse order of greatness? Let's separate the weaklings from the alphas, shall we?

And don't forget, all the movies are available to stream on Disney+.

9. Aliens Vs Predator: Requiem (2007)

In fairness, there may well at least be some cool gore and striking visuals somewhere in Requiem. We say "may", because we honestly have no idea: you can't see a fucking thing for 90% of this clunkily-paced, messily-plotted, poorly-lit plop of a film. It's a shame, because whatever you may have thought of the first Alien Vs Predator (more on that later), the introduction of the 'Predalien' was a tantalising thread for its sequel to pick up on.

As it happens, not only can we barely see the damn thing once it turns up, but Requiem follows in the footsteps of so many come-lately horror sequels in ignoring what helps make the originals so great in the first place: compelling protagonists. Arnold et al might be hilariously over-the-top caricatures in Predator, but they're memorable, charismatic and badass as hell. Dumping a bunch of monsters into a random, no-name municipality in middle America to reap (badly shot) carnage upon a host of faceless, forgettable locals just doesn't cut it. Unsurprisingly, this stinker killed the AvP franchise.

8. The Predator (2018)

All signs, initially, were good for The Predator. Helmed by Shane Black, whose writing and directorial credits included two Lethal Weapons, Last Action Hero and Iron Man 3, not to mention having appeared in the original Predator, it seemed like the series now had someone in charge who know exactly how to bring it back to the look and feel of the original. Throw in an ensemble cast that included Narcos' Boyd Holbrook, Moonlight's Trevante Rhodes and Emmy winner Sterling K. Brown, and the pedigree surrounding the film looked bulletproof.

How wrong we were. The Predator is a mess, packing a jarring clash of tones, an inexplicable lack of chemistry between its stars and some unforgivably goofy ideas (friendly Predator dogs! A giant Predator!). While we give Black some credit for trying to mix some of the themes of the original (quick-quipping military bros) with something different (A GIANT PREDATOR!!!), it just doesn't come off, the final reveal of a stupendously daft-looking 'Predator killer' robo-suit feeling like something that should have come from an abandoned kids cartoon pilot, not a movie designed to resurrect a flagging franchise. Oh well.

7. Alien Vs Predator (2004)

Ok, let's get this straight out of the way: Alien Vs Predator is neither a good Alien movie, nor a good Predator movie. It lacks the visceral tension and bloody violence of either franchise (a 12A rating didn't help), and its canon-shaking revelation that Xenomorphs and Predators have been brawling on Earth for millennia felt way off given everything we knew about both species to this point. Plus, Sanaa Lathan's Lex Woods buddying up with a friendly Predator felt like one cuddly step too far (although in hindsight, maybe it was ahead of its time?!).

There is serious fun to be had, though, if you can stomach the negatives. On its own merit, Alien Vs Predator is a fun, knowingly daft, popcorn-friendly dust-up, at least offering a handful of memorable characters to root for/against, some cool set pieces (Alien Queen running wild!) and a fun cliffhanger to hook a sequel on (even if we all know how that went). Although it really didn't do a good job of portraying the Yautja as the ultimate hunting machines we know and love. Like, two of them get annihilated by a single Xenomorph at one point. Poor show, lads.

6. Predator 2 (1990)

Receiving cold reviews upon release, time has been somewhat kind to Predator 2. A decent stab at attempting something different with the franchise, it switched the eerie surroundings of the jungle for the stark and gritty environs of (future) 90s LA , switching the intense, muscular presence of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Dutch for worldweary but determined cop Michael Harrigan, played with just the right amount of gravitas and manic energy by Danny Glover.

To be fair, it is a batshit crazy movie, throwing the Predator in with cocaine-guzzling gangsters and voodoo-practicing drug lords, so it's perhaps no surprise that its frenetic pace and off-kilter tone jarred with many fans of the original. Given some of the dross that followed it, though, we think Predator 2 deserves some credit for bringing the franchise recklessly freewheeling into the 90s.

5. Predator: Killer Of Killers (2025)

A surprise bonus feature from Dan Trachtenberg arriving three years after his franchise-resuscitating Prey and mere months before his wickedly fun Badlands, Killer Of Killers brought the Yautja into the animated world via three, stunningly rendered, interconnected stories. Continuing's Prey's theme of bringing the Predator into different time periods, we get to see vikings, samurai and even the U.S. navy go toe-to-toe with the best hunters in the universe.

The three main plotlines are good fun, feeling a little reminiscent of Marvel's What If... series in terms of being enjoyable side-quests rather than essential viewing, but the movie's final chapter, bringing all three stories together, gives Killer Of Killers some extra gravitas. Some juicy post-credit reveals also suggest there may be some tantalising future threads for this particular part of the Pred universe to pick up later on.

4. Predators (2010)

It kinda feels like Nimród Antal's Predators is the forgotten entry of the franchise. It's a shame, because not only is the film's premise great fun (a mish-mash of soldiers, warriors, murderers and psychopaths get dumped on an alien planet to try their luck against a horde of you-know-whats), but it produces a surprisingly convincing performance from leading man Adrian Brody, who makes an against-type star turn as a haunted Special Ops soldier-turned-mercenary. Alice Braga, too, puts in a decent shift as a guilt-ridden sniper trying to keep the would-be team together.

Sadly, the majority of the other characters just don't click as well, and an unconvincing and predictable twist unveiling Topher Grace's bumbling doctor as a maniacal serial killer is a silly and needless distraction. Luckily, there's more than enough great action, tense moments (Danny Trejo's Cuchillo being used as bait is nightmare-inducing) and fun new Predator designs to make this a very solid, if imperfect, addition to the fold.

3. Predator: Badlands (2025)

The moment the Predator franchise finally went full MCU. Feeling tonally closer to something from the Guardians Of The Galaxy trilogy or the more rambunctious corners of the Star Wars universe than anything related to the original, Badlands embraces two clear objectives: make this shit fun, and kick as much ass as possible in the process. Having alien beasties and white-blooded cyborg synths as blade-fodder enables Dan Trachtenberg to push the 12A rating just about as hard as it'll go, while a big clutch of enthralling action set-pieces provides more fist-pump moments than a Wrestlemania main event.

Doubtless, the more Disney-fied aspects of Badlands will stick in the mandibles of many diehard Predator fanboys and girls: cuddly monkey-alien buddies, fluffy themes of family (sorry, clans) and a Yautja cracking jokes isn't going to be for everybody. But if you're in for the ride, it's a doozy, and when Trachtenberg dials up the more visceral action - most notably on Dek's homeworld - we're served some genuinely gripping scenes. Plus, Weyland-Yutani and the Yautja are officially canon again. You know what that means...

2. Prey (2022)

How do you inject a franchise on life support with the boost of adrenaline it so desperately needs? You don't just take it back to its roots: you go back even further - a few hundred years further, to be precise. Pitting ol' Pred-head against a determined, intuitive Comanche warrior in the American wilderness was a masterstroke, and Trachtenberg's direction managed to reintroduce the kind of tension and earthy ambience we hadn't seen in a Predator film since 1987.

Crucially, in Amber Midhunter we also arguably had the series' most magnetic protagonist since Arnie himself, with Naru's relationship with her tribe, and in particular brother Taabe, giving her final battle against the Predator some extra emotional grounding. Throw in a super-gnarly, new-look Predator and some all-time-great franchise scenes (the French voyageurs getting wasted and, yes, that bear scene are our favourites), and Prey officially gave us a new entry into the Predator canon that is truly worthy of the name.

1. Predator (1987)

You already knew this though, right? Predator remains not just the ultimate Predator flick, but one of the single greatest action movies of all time. Tense, bloody and filled with memorable characters, the original nonetheless succeeds most where other entries fail in its understanding that, sometimes, less is more. For every explosion of violence or fist-pumping, on-the-nose flash of braggadocio, there's an eerie moment of silence or clever bit of misdirection that leaves you second-guessing. Was the monster even in the trees that time, or are we seeing things?!

Plus, the Predator itself not revealing its full, terrifying visage until its final battle with Schwarzeneggar's Dutch was a masterstroke: we get to experience Dutch's relationship with the beast in realtime, and his fraught, desperate final throw of the dice is all the more nerve-racking as a result. Those final, bone-chilling laughs ringing out as the Predator is blown to smithereens is also one of the most effective final stands of any horror baddie ever. Even if he was one ugly motherfucker (sorry, we had to get one in).

Things were looking good for Bruce Springsteen in 1981. He’d just had his chart breakthrough with Hungry Heart and everyone from the record company bosses on down expected his next release to catapult him to multi-platinum status.

Springsteen had other ideas. Hiding away in a rented home in rural New Jersey with a four-track, a few guitars, and a lot of demons for company, he took the crucial artistic left-turn towards Nebraska, a sparse acoustic record that he, and many others, still consider to be among his best.

Cooper’s movie, authorised and, in part, overseen by a set-visiting Springsteen captures the creation of Nebraska well, from the inspiration provided by Flannery O’Connor and Terrence Malick to the problems of mastering to vinyl from the wonky cassette that emerged from Bruce’s bedroom. But it also concerns itself with a man facing up to his past, from the strained relationship with his father (Stephen Graham) to a crumbling psyche that required urgent attention.

Sticking closely to Warren Zanes' excellent book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, apart from the poorly treated composite character of love interest Faye (Odessa Young), it’s a naturally downbeat portrait of a breakdown, albeit one soundtracked by some terrific tunes, including performances from Rival Sons' Jay Buchanan and two of Greta Van Fleet's Kiszka brothers as members of Cats On A Smooth Surface, the house band at Asbury Park's famed Stone Pony venue.

While there’s the odd bit of superfluous/neophyte-aiding exposition, mostly from Jeremy Strong’s Jon Landau, Jeremy Allen White’s central performance, despite a lot of staring into the distance which doesn’t always clearly define what’s actually bugging the boss, carries this account of a burgeoning superstar unsure of everything apart from the music.

Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere is in cinemas now.

Poppy and Babymetal’s collaborative single From Me To U soundtracks the new trailer for Marvel Zombies.

The trailer for the animated Marvel superhero/horror miniseries dropped earlier today (September 3) and prominently features the 2025 team-up, which also appears on Babymetal’s brand-new album Metal Forth, released on August 8.

Watch the preview below.

Marvel Zombies is a four-episode series slated to come out via streaming service Disney Plus on September 24. It will serve as a spin-off to the 2021 anthology series What If…?, which depicted characters from the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) in parallel universes outside the films’ continuity, and directly follow the events of the episode What If… Zombies?!.

The voice cast consists of actors who’ve appeared in the MCU’s live-action instalments, including Simu Liu as Shang-Chi and Awkwafina as Katy from Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings (2021), David Harbour as Red Guardian from Black Widow (2021) and Thunderbolts* (2025), and Elizabeth Olsen as Scarlet Witch from multiple films and other series.

The original What If… Zombies?! episode was inspired by the Marvel Zombies comic book series and started streaming on September 8, 2021. Despite receiving mixed reviews from critics at the time of release, it became one of What If…?’s most enduring and popular episodes among viewers.

From Me To U first came out as a single in April. It’s one of numerous songs on Metal Forth to have a special guest, with other tracks on the album featuring the likes of Spiritbox, Polyphia and Bloodywood. The album received positive reviews, including four stars from Metal Hammer.

Journalist Merlin Alderslade wrote: “If Metal Forth does overreach, it’s in the sheer density of collaborations – an overload that sometimes blurs the album’s internal arc. But that same excess is what fuels its ambition: transformation through overload.

“Babymetal aren’t asking metal to follow them. They’re asking whether metal has the courage to evolve. And while the answer remains unclear, Metal Forth makes the question impossible to ignore.”

Babymetal are currently gearing up for an Asian tour in September and October. They will play standalone arena shows in the US, Mexico and Japan from November to January. Head to their website for the full list of dates and details.

Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, the long-awaited sequel to film-maker Marty Di Bergi's infamous 1984 'rockumentary' about British hard rock band Spinal Tap, is coming to a cinema near you on September 12.

The film finds the iconic British hard rockers, older but none the wiser, preparing to play a reunion show in New Orleans. And while it will give fans the opportunity to catch up with comings and goings in the lives of David St. Hubbins, Nigel Tufnel and Derek Smalls, it also features guest appearances from a pair of British musicians who've attracted rather more critical acclaim, and scored substantially more album sales than Spinal Tap, namely Sir Elton John and Sir Paul McCartney.

In a new interview with Rolling Stone's Music Now podcast, Marty Di Bergi - or film director Rob Reiner, if we must insist upon letting real life intrude here - speaks about how the two musical giants came to be involved in the most eagerly-anticipated rock 'n' roll film of the year / decade / century.

"I reached out to Paul McCartney, I reached out to Elton John, and they immediately said, Yes," Reiner tells Rolling Stone's Brian Hiatt. "It wasn't like they hesitated."

"The interesting thing about the Paul [McCartney] scene is that it's based on something that actually happened," Reiner reveals. "There's a rehearsal complex in the Valley where there's a bunch of a rehearsal halls and stages for bands to get ready for their shows, and Spinal Tap was getting ready for one of its shows, Paul McCartney was in another room, rehearsing, and he happened to walk in one day when Spinal Tap was rehearsing and he says, 'Play us a song, fellas!' I think they did [The Folksmen's] Start Me Up... So [in the film] he happens to be in New Orleans and he stops by because he hears that they're rehearsing."

"People have always said he's the nicest person ever to be in rock," adds Reiner, "and there's no question about it, he is. He's a good, decent, down-to-earth person, you can't not like him. And so I love the fact that in the movie, David St. Hubbins trashes him, it's perfect. But he's the sweetest guy in the world."

Reiner also praises Elton John for his cameo in the film.

"Elton makes it very easy," he says. "I had only met him one time before, I didn't really know him that well, and he was great too. I mean, you know, these guys, they love playing, they love the music and they dive right in."

"I think the band were honoured, obviously, to be graced by [the presence of] these guys, two Knights, two Sirs, you know, Sir Paul and Sir Elton... they were real thrilled about that," the director adds. "But when it comes down to it, it's just guys playing, you know?"

Listen to the full interview here.

And you can watch the trailer for Spinal Tap II: The End Continues below.

Appalled by the behaviour of Pink Floyd’s audiences, in 1977 Roger Waters hit upon the idea of building a wall between them and the group. By the end of 1982 The Wall had become a multi-platinum album, a groundbreaking live show and an acclaimed film. In 2019 Prog revisited the making of the movie.

The final part of Roger Waters’ The Wall trilogy was the 1982 film. It followed the notoriously difficult creation of the album and its subsequent tour – but the movie production was where the wheels really fell off the juggernaut.

Although David Gilmour looked after the musical side of things, Waters and Gerald Scarfe had a key vision they wanted to see through. More shows were arranged in 1981 for the film’s director, Alan Parker, to shoot, but it became clear it would be unworkable. A dramatised version incorporating Scarfe’s animations was the alternative course to take.

Waters himself screen-tested for the lead role of Pink, but, as Parker said later, he was “closer to Albert Speer than to Albert Finney”. The director had someone else in his sights to play Pink: Bob Geldof. He was of course aware of Pink Floyd; but not a fan.

“I bought See Emily Play and Arnold Layne when I was a kid,” he recalled. “They were fantastic pop records. Then I heard The Piper At the Gates Of Dawn. I thought it was very unconvincing. ‘Piss-poor At The Gates Of Yawn,’ we called it. ‘I’ve got a bike, you can ride it if you like’ – now I think it’s a fantastic thing, but back then I just thought, ‘Fey English nonsense.’ The Floyd, liquid gel and all that. My association with all that was people around my area who I thought were twats. I was a mod, for fuck’s sake, not some platypus-collared, flowery-shirted faux-hippie!”

But Parker was very much out to get him. A fabled argument in the back of a cab between Geldof and his manager, Fachtna O’Kelly, resulted in the singer railing against both the Floyd and the film. Unbeknown to him – and unbelievably – the cab driver was Waters’ elder brother, John. Geldof was summoned to meet Waters.

“It was in some restaurant,” Geldof recalls. “You know if you meet a hero, you’re very intimated; you gabble or you’re silent. I wasn’t, because they weren’t really my guys, like, say, the Stones. He was pleasant enough, but he wasn’t all ‘hail fellow well met;’ he was quite chippy. We went back to his beautiful house and played snooker. I kept winning, much to his annoyance. We kept playing until he won a game.

“He asked me at one time to write something about the meeting at the restaurant. I remember his opening gambit: ‘I really like I Don’t Like Mondays.’ He said: ‘There’s some great ideas in there. You should have extended them out into a longer form.’ I replied: ‘Thank you very much. The Wall is a really good album. Maybe you should have reduced it to a three-minute single.’

“He says he didn’t say it, so the piece didn’t appear anywhere. I think we’re
quite like each other – y’know, chippy, smart-arsey, a bit of ego in there – just a little bit, obviously. And of course he’s annoyingly a tad more successful. What a songwriter, though. We’re friends, which I like.”

Intrigued by the process of film-making, Geldof eventually signed on, and shooting of The Wall began at Pinewood Studios in September 1981. Twenty minutes of Scarfe’s animation would be used. “Parker was always very laudatory about my work,” Scarfe says. “He was quoted as saying that the reason he wanted to make the film was because of my flower sequence.”

But fissures opened up almost at once, with Waters and Scarfe on one side, and Alan Parker and producer Alan Marshall on the other. There would be several hissy fits, all in the name of the art. Parker encouraged Waters to take a six-week holiday. Meanwhile it became clear that more music would be required, so Geldof recorded a new version of In The Flesh, teasing James Guthrie and Gilmour with a cod-Irish accent every time they went for a take.

But he immersed himself in the role. His blankness and wild, staring eyes took Pink into his numb, alienated existence. He remembers one scene with tremendous affection: when he throws a TV out the window in One Of My Turns. “I went to Parker, ‘Listen, if I throw the telly out the window and it doesn’t break, can I keep it?’ He said I could. So I put two mattresses underneath the window. It looks like a skyscraper, but it’s only a few feet off the ground. If you look at the scene, you see me chucking it out the window very gingerly. So it lands on the mattresses, and I still have that Sony Trinitron at home in Kent.”

One of the classic scenes in the film is the fascist rally, featuring extras in the form of infamous Essex skinheads the Tilbury Trojans. “I worried about the skinheads,” Scarfe says. “They were cutting the hammers into their hair and having it tattooed onto their arms. I thought: ‘Shit, have I started a new movement?’”

Some of the most amazing sections are when his illustrations are brought to life, such as the armchair and the battlefield. “I called it the alien landscape,” he recalls. “It used to amuse me when people working on the film would say, ‘Where’s Bob gone?’ ‘Oh, he’s gone up the alien landscape.’ This thing that had been in my mind was suddenly a real place.”

He adds: “There was a lot of bonhomie. It wasn’t pure hatred all the time. We got on because we were working on the same bloody project. You can’t keep walking off every time someone shouts at you.”

At the end of production the props were sold off. Waters and Scarfe went to the sale. “I have got Bob’s lamps from the room he went crazy in,” Scarfe says. Parts of The Wall – along with Geldof’s Sony Trinitron – are kept in houses in the south of England.

Pink Floyd – The Wall debuted at Cannes on May 23 1982. It premiered in the UK on July 14 at London’s Empire Theatre with, in aid of Nordoff Robbins and attended by the band, Geldof, Pete Townshend, Andy Summers and Superman Christopher Reeve, among others. When it opened In LA, instead of seeing the film, Geldof and Waters went off and played pool.

Record Business said of the production: “Roger Waters’ view of mankind is totally and morbidly hopeless.” But it made respectable money. The VHS home video boom carried it through Christmas that year, and it quickly became a student favourite.

Initially, there was talk of a soundtrack album, but there was hardly a great deal of material. However, when Argentina invaded the Falkland Islands in April 1982, and Margaret Thatcher responded by sending a task force to the South Atlantic, Waters suddenly had subject matter – and so the soundtrack mutated into The Final Cut.

The Wall lives on. The most poignant version was the Waters’ concert in Berlin seven months after the Berlin Wall came down in 1990. “I was so very impressed with Roger Waters’ speed in putting it on so soon after,” said flautist James Galway, one the many stellar guests who took part. “It was rather like doing Wagner’s Ring with only one rehearsal!”

In the 00s Waters took the show on the road again. It had become a far wider- reaching spectacle, looking at the desire – as he told the BBC – “to break down the walls between ethnicities, religions, nationalities.” In 2011, for one night only, Gilmour stood atop that wall again, at London’s O2 Arena, singing Comfortably Numb and playing that spinetingling solo. Nick Mason joined him and Waters in the rubble at the end.

The Wall remains immovable object : an ambitious piece with a compelling backstory of feuds, falling-outs and friction; memorable songs, spoken-word passages that have passed into the lingua-franca of men of a certain age; and, in Comfortably Numb, Pink Floyd’s definitive anthem.

“Roger’s a great songwriter, as is Dave,” Geldof says. “Much as they may argue about the content of the record, and who did what, it’s just one of those things. It’s a great band despite everything. They’re just too good not to make an astonishing record.”

Scarfe is delighted that Waters keeps forging ahead, playing the very stadiums that had once so revulsed him. “Last time I saw him, he said: ‘Well, what’s not to like? I’m playing to thousands of people all the time.’ I’m certainly glad I worked on The Wall. I am mostly known for working with Pink Floyd, because they are universal.”

The three fronts of The Wall – the album, the tour and the movie – are testament to Waters’ collaborative process. Could he have made it without the rest of Floyd? “Not this album,” producer Bob Ezrin says. “And he couldn’t have made it without me or James [Guthrie, engineer], either.

“Everyone’s personality and ideas adorned the work, and the band’s distinctive sound and style permeated the whole piece, even in places where we introduced other players, orchestras, choruses and, yes, schoolkids. Everybody got out on that ledge together during the recording and took risks.”

“Roger is not very dictatorial,” Scarfe states. “He was always a brilliant person to work with for an artist. He was very easy to get on with in that way.”

“It was a privilege, a joy, sometimes a real challenge to work on The Wall with them,” Ezrin adds, “and the result remains remarkably relevant today.”

The last word goes – perhaps surprisingly – to James Galway, who said after he’d played with Waters in Berlin: “Every musician should know The Wall. If they don’t, they should be ashamed of themselves. It’s one of the greatest things written in rock.”

It still doesn’t feel real that Ozzy is no longer with us. Since his death last month, I’ve been diving back into his extensive catalogue of music and videos, and that's when I discovered that the trailblazing reality show The Osbournes is available to watch on Amazon Prime Video in both the US and UK.

If you're not a Prime member, sign up now and you can claim a free 30-day trial and re-live those iconic episodes and think back to 2002 when the series made such an impact when it debuted on MTV.

Save big on home entertainment with our pick of this year’s best Black Friday streaming deals.

How to watch The Osbournes

If you want to watch all four seasons of The Osbournes and you're an Amazon Prime subscriber, just head over to Amazon Prime Video, search for the series and you’re all set.

If you're not yet a member, you can get a 30-day free trial. After that, a monthly sub to Amazon Prime costs $14.99/£8.99 and an annual subscription is priced at $139/£95. If you’re a student, you can grab a monthly sub for just $7.49/ £4.49. Plus, you can

Amazon Prime also has a range of other benefits, including Amazon Music, Prime Reading, enhanced delivery options, plus access to Amazon's big annual sales events, Prime Day and Big Deals Days.

How to watch The Osbournes from anywhere

If you're currently outside the US or the UK on holiday or traveling with work and want to watch The Osbournes before you get home, you'll still be able to watch wherever you are with the use of a VPN.

Virtual Private Networks are used to change the location of your IP address, enabling you to watch any show outside of a streaming territory. NordVPN is our service of choice and it's currently available at a great price and with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

How to use a VPN

1. Install a VPN. As we've mentioned above, NordVPN is Louder's current favourite.

2. Choose the location you wish to connect to in the VPN. If you're currently outside the US or UK on holiday and want to watch The Osbournes, just select 'US' or 'UK' from the list.

3. Turn the volume up and relax. Just sign into your account and you're all set to watch all four seasons of The Osbournes whenever you want.

Back in May this year, Sharon Osbourne spoke with Metal Hammer about the show which wrapped up in 2005 and the massive impact it had.

Sharon said: “It was a great experience. It was something that we could all do as a family. Apart from my eldest daughter [Aimee], who didn’t want to be a part of it. It was a great experience, but it had to end. It was something that you couldn’t keep going on and on and on because it wasn’t the real world, you know?"

When pressed on why it didn't feel like the real world, Sharon added: “It’s the bullshit world where people you don’t even know will invite you to Russia for a party and fly you there, and they want to show you off that you came to their party in Russia.

"I mean, we got invited to the White House. It’s like, ‘Why the fuck do you want to talk to us? It’s nice for you to invite us, but what the fuck do you want to talk to us about?’ It’s not the real world. It was time to get back to reality.”

By 2004, Matt Damon was already a major Hollywood star with his storied CV including the lead role in The Bourne Identity (2002), a key character in Ocean's Eleven (2001) and a Best Original Screenplay Oscar for Good Will Hunting (1997), which he starred in, and co-wrote with his childhood friend Ben Affleck. So he really didn't need to make a surprise guest appearance as a punk singer in trashy 'teen sex comedy' EuroTrip. But we're glad that he did.

For those who may not be entirely au fait with the plot of EuroTrip,. one of many vaguely raunchy Noughties films aiming to get a slice of the American Pie er, pie, the narrative begins with dorky teenager Scotty Thomas (Scott Mechlowicz) being dumped by his high school 'sweetheart' Fiona (Kristin Kreuk) following his graduation.

As if this were not sufficiently depressing, Scotty then attends a graduation party where he, all his classmates, and possibly every other high school senior within a five mile radius, learns that his now-ex girlfriend has been cheating on him for the past year with the lead singer of a local punk band: this he discovers because said singer, Donnie, has written a song celebrating the many sexual encounters he has been sharing with "the nastiest, freakiest, little sexpot I know", sensitively titled Scotty Doesn't Know. Cue a tattooed, pierced, tongue-waggling Matt Damon gleefully delivering lyrics such as "I can't believe he's so trusting / While I'm right behind you thrusting / Fiona's got him on the phone / And she's trying not to moan".

Poor Scotty.

Damon's cameo is arguably the very best thing about EuroTrip, and his participation in the film baffled just about everyone who saw it, and indeed the millions more who didn't, and never want to.

The reason why Damon took the role is actually very wholesome. Quizzed about it during a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything), the actor revealed that he signed up because the film's screenwriters, Jeff Schaffer, Alec Berg and David Mandel were his friends at college, and by an extremely happy coincidence he was scheduled to be in Prague working with Heath Ledger on The Brothers Grimm - director Terry Gilliam's follow-up to Fear And Loathing in Las Vegas - at the same time that Schaffer was directing his shoot for EuroTrip in the Czech capital.

"Alec and Dave and Jeff were making EuroTrip and they said 'Will you come play this [Henry] Rollins kind of insane, bad version of a suburban punk band guy?' And I said, Yea, I'm in Prague." Damon told Redditors.

"So I showed up and I'm sitting there, and I'm like, I'm wearing a wig, just shave my head, let’s just go for it, and we did it, and put a bunch of piercings all over. And 'Scotty Doesn't Know', the song, was actually written by one of my college roommate's brothers, and... one of my college roommates... Jason, is playing guitar in that group. So it was kind of a family affair."

Matt Damon, ladies and gentlemen: one of the good guys.

But is this EuroTrip cameo Damon's finest music-related acting role we hear you ask? Well, actually, no, that would be this one...

Judas Priest will be the subject of a new documentary co-directed by Rage Against The Machine guitarist Tom Morello.

The Birmingham metal veterans today (May 21) announced via Variety that The Ballad Of Judas Priest, directed by Morello and Sam Dunn (Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey), will come out via Sony Music Vision, in association with Sony Music Entertainment UK and Epic Records.

Morello and Dunn say that the film, the release date of which is yet to be announced, will trace Priest’s “incredible 50-year journey” and “capture how Judas Priest both defined the sound and look of metal [and] made it a more inclusive place along the way”.

The band comment: “We have lived and breathed metal for over five decades, and finally in this documentary we are summoning our congregation to officially witness our lives uncensored, in a never-before-seen way… the cassock comes off, revealing Priest in all its metal glory!”

Dunn’s Banger Films produced The Ballad Of Judas Priest, with Morello also serving as executive producer and Dunn as co-producer. As well as the Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey documentary, Banger Films have made live albums and concert films with Iron Maiden, Rush, ZZ Top and more.

The Ballad Of Judas Priest’s announcement adds to what was already shaping up to be a blockbuster 2025 for the band. They recently wrapped up the touring cycle for their 2024 album Invincible Shield but have plenty more live plans for the coming months, including co-headline shows with shock rock icon Alice Cooper, a set at the 60th-anniversary celebration for hard rockers Scorpions, and dates celebrating the 35th anniversary of their landmark 1990 album Painkiller.

See all of the band’s upcoming concerts via their website.

As well as being The Ballad Of Judas Priest’s co-director, Morello is the musical director for the upcoming Black Sabbath farewell show, taking place at Villa Park in Birmingham on July 5. Priest are one of very few high-profile metal acts to not be on the stacked bill, about which singer Rob Halford said he’s “gutted” in a recent Metal Hammer interview.

Priest aren’t the first long-serving UK metal band to recently announce a documentary. In March, Iron Maiden revealed that they’ll be the subject of a film, due out later this year. It will be part of the London-based titans 50th-anniversary festivities, which start next week with a headline tour across Europe.

British thrashers Evile are featured on the soundtrack to new horror film Final DestinationBloodlines.

In a post on Facebook, the band wrote:

"We’re huge horror/thriller movie fans and we couldn’t be more proud to appear in a franchise we’re all fans of. Go see the movie and blast some Evile on the way there, making sure to avoid trucks with big logs on of course.”

Final Destination Bloodlines is the sixth entry in the horror franchise that began in 2000, and the first new movie in the series since Final Destination 5. The film also marks the final acting role of horror legend Tony Todd (Candyman), who passed away in 2024.

Evile's appearance on the soundtrack is notable, considering they're the only metal band to appear amidst the likes of Johnny Cash, Creedence Clearwater Revival and Kelly Clarkson.

The title-track of the band's debut album Enter The Grave - released in 2007 - is featured alongside tracks including Johnny Cash's Ring Of Fire, Air Supply's Without You and Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head by B.J. Thomas. Given the series' pointed humour, we'll leave it to your imagination how these songs are deployed.

Final Destination has a history of rock and metal needle drops, with AC/DC's Highway To Hell getting prominent placing in Final Destination 2 alongside appearances of songs by Incubus and (hed) p.e.

Final Destination Bloodlines is out now.

Queens of the Stone Age have shared a trailer for Alive in the Catacombs, a film documenting their performance in the world-famous Catacombs of Paris, the final resting place for millions of French citizens, interred in the 1700s.

The Los Angeles band's performance in the eerie tunnels beneath the French capital represented the fulfilment of a long-held dream for QOTSA frontman Josh Homme, who first visited the extraordinary location almost 20 years ago. No band had ever before been granted permission to play in the Catacombs, which made the group's stripped-back set, augmented by a three-piece string section, genuinely historic.

A press statement for the film, which will be available to view from June 5, reads: "Every aesthetic decision, every choice of song, every configuration of instruments… absolutely everything was planned and played with deference to the Catacombs- from the acoustics and ambient sounds - dripping water, echoes and natural resonance - to the darkly atmospheric lighting tones that enhance the music. Far from the sound-insulated confines of the studio or the comfort of onstage monitors, Alive in the Catacombs sees the band not only rise to this challenge, but embrace it."

Josh Homme says, "We’re so stripped down because that place is so stripped down, which makes the music so stripped down, which makes the words so stripped down… It would be ridiculous to try to rock there. All those decisions were made by that space. That space dictates everything, it’s in charge. You do what you’re told when you're in there."

He adds, "If you’re ever going to be haunted, surrounded by several million dead people is the place. I’ve never felt so welcome in my life."

Queens of the Stone Age will play their first shows since summer 2024 next month.

Their US mini-tour kicks off with a pair of shows at the MGM Music Hall at Fenway in Boston, on June 10 and 11. The band will travel to Europe to play shows in July and August, including an August 20 Dublin gig at the Irish Museum of Modern Art, Royal Hospital Kilmainham, and a headline performance at the Rock N Roll Circus at Sheffield's Don Valley Bowl on August 27.

Cancelling shows last summer, the band released a statement saying, “QOTSA regret to announce the cancellation and/or postponement of all remaining 2024 shows. Josh has been given no choice but to prioritize his health and to receive essential medical care throughout the remainder of the year. Josh and the QOTSA family are so thankful for your support and the time we were able to spend together over the last year. Hope to see you all again in 2025."

The director of hit new horror movie Sinners says his vision for the film was inspired by Metallica's single One.

The track was the third single from Metallica's fourth album ...And Justice for All – and its lyrics and musical direction gave Sinners director Ryan Coogler a blueprint for the movie.

Sinners stars Michael B. Jordan in two roles as twins confronted by a supernatural evil. It is currently ranked 98% fresh on movie review site Rotten Tomatoes and the trailer can be viewed below.

Coogler tells the San Fransisco Chronicle: "I wanted the movie to feel like a song, so I used Metallica’s One."

Coogler says the film, like the song, "starts off intense, then gets melodic and going somewhere just fucking crazy. But by the time you’re finished, it was clear you were always going to get there."

Metallica drummer Lars Ulrich contributed to the Sinners score. Coogler hails from the Bay Area, where Metallica made their name, and says he is a fan of the band but he got into them late.

In Sinners, Michael B. Jordan plays twins Smoke and Stack, described as veterans of the Chicago organized crime wars who come home to a small Mississippi town with hopes of starting a jazz club outside of town.

The white population object but the brothers unite the black and Asian population who are crying out for entertainment.

The song One tells the macabre story of an infantryman who steps on a landmine and wakes to gradually discover he has lost his arms and legs and his five senses.

The internet got very excited yesterday with the strongly-rumoured news – strongly-rumoured in that it came from the band’s own frontman – that Jack Black was slated to star in the forthcoming Weezer film. But then the internet had to get very un-excited about it because it has now been confirmed from a spokesperson for the band that Jack Black is not slated to star in the forthcoming Weezer film.

But let’s go from the beginning. Or at least the middle: during their performance at Coachella a few weeks ago, Weezer frontman announced, “We’ve been busy making the Weezer movie in LA but when Coachella called us up and said, ‘Hey Weezer, could you guys make it out for a surprise appearance?’, we were like, ‘Heck yeah!’.”

The following week news surfaced that the film would be a mockumentary with Keanu Reeves starring at the villain, one theory going that the premise would pitch the Point Break and John Wick star’s band Dogstar against Rivers Cuomo and co. There is some history between the two bands: Weezer played their first gig opening for Dogstar in LA in 1992, a show the two bands re-created at the city’s Lodge Room venue last year to celebrate the 30^th anniversary of Weezer’s Blue Album.

The news that School Of Rock star Black, whose own band Tenacious D have also played with Weezer, had also joined the cast was seemingly confirmed when Cuomo shared a mock-up poster for the film with Black as one of its main subjects on Weezer’s Discord with the title “Weezer – Co-Starring Jack Black”. Underneath he wrote, “Nope, it’s real.”

Hence everyone assuming Cuomo wasn’t pulling a prank – he was a few week’s late for April Fool’s Day, after all – and getting all excited at what an A-list cast the purported Weezer film was pulling together. But then said band spokesperson nipped it in the bud. It wouldn’t be beyond the realms of possibility though that Cuomo jumped the gun on the announcement and was forced to temporarily backtrack. These film types love a bit of smoke and mirrors. One way or another, we’ll find out who’s in the film when it comes out, whenever that may be.

Korn singer Jonathan Davis will be a guest presenter on an episode of Discovery Channel programme Ghost Adventures next week.

In the episode, which airs at 10pm Eastern and Pacific Time on Wednesday (April 30), the founding member of nu metal’s pioneers joins the Ghost Adventures team in exploring the Glen Tavern Inn, a “haunted” hotel in Santa Paula, California.

Warner Bros Discovery, owners of the Discovery Channel, have shared a brief snippet of the episode to YouTube. In it, Davis joins regular hosts Zak Bagans, Aaron Goodwin, Billy Tolley and Jay Wasley in searching for a paranormal presence at the hotel.

The clip shows Davis sit in a chair in a corner of one hotel room, where he says he starts to feel something supernatural. “I got 100 pounds on my shoulders right now,” he claims, before standing up and saying, “Yeah, bro, I can’t take this anymore.”

A voiceover adds that the singer later claimed to have experienced “visions of women being tortured by very bad men” while sitting in the chair. When Bagans sits down in the same chair, he claims to have a heart palpitation, which Davis then says he also felt.

“This is where it sits,” Bagans concludes. “I feel like I’m back in the dream again, Jonathan, and you’re in the dream again.”

Davis responds, saying the chair makes you feel “kinda high”. “It’s very euphoric,” he describes. “It’s a trip.”

Watch the full, bizarre, two-minute preview below.

Ghost Adventures premiered on the Discovery Channel in October 2008. Its 29th season kicked off on Wednesday, April 23, with an episode set inside San Jose’s famous Winchester Mystery House. Comedian Matt Rife will be a special guest on the season’s May 7 episode.

Korn are currently gearing up for a summer of festival shows, which will kick off at Sonic Temple in Columbus, Ohio, on May 8. The band will headline Download festival in the UK on June 15. See their full list of dates via their website.

Korn’s latest album, Requiem, came out in 2022. Last year, guitarist Brian “Head” Welch said the band are working on a follow-up and that it’s “the best and heaviest Korn stuff in years”.