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In 2021, Metallica brought together a head-spinningly diverse selection of artists to record reimagined cuts from the metal titans' seminal, self-titled 1991 LP, AKA The Black Album. Titled The Metallica Blacklist, it saw everyone from Miley Cyrus and Elton John to Ghost, Rina Sawayama, Chase & Status and Kamasi Washington get involved. It wasn't just seen as a celebration of 30 years of The Black Album itself, but a mark of how just widely respected and appreciated metal's biggest band had become.
Now, just four albums in and two fewer decades into their career, Turnstile have managed to pull off the same trick. Last year's Never Enough was widely regarded as an instant classic, a companion album to 2021's Glow On that added yet more shades to the Baltimore crew's versatile, increasingly pop-infused brand of arena punk. So far had they outgrown the US hardcore scene by the time of its release that even Charli XCX referenced them at the end of her Coachella headline set a couple of months prior.
Perhaps, then, we shouldn't be too surprised that the five-piece's seemingly boundless ambition has led them to this: Never Enough: Versions, a project that unites Turnstile's peers, heroes and pals from across the music spectrum for a series of refurbished versions of the songs from that record.
The guestlist here is quite remarkable: where else would you find Hayley Williams, Slayyyter and Four Tet rubbing shoulders with Elton John (him again!), Julien Baker and Dying Fetus? And, most importantly of all, it makes for a fascinating record full of genuinely brilliant moments.
Slayyyter's rambunctious reimagining of Birds borrows many of the motifs that made her outstanding latest album Worst Girl In America such a hit to produce a simmering electroclash banger; Dying Fetus, meanwhile, choose to trade the song's buzzing hardcore riffs for scything death metal, to wonderfully brutal effect.
Floating Points mashes Sole into pulsating hard house, while Baltimore hardcore mob Angel Du$t take their version of Sunshower on a delirious journey that stops off at scuzzy punk, eerie ambient electro and doom metal. It's a far cry from Four Tet's funky edm redub of Look Out For Me or Blood Orange's beautifully wistful, flute-powered Light Design, but no less enjoyable for it.
Other highlights? Elton John's twinkly piano and echoey vocals lend Seein' Stars a surprisingly surreal bent; Dan Deacon's take on Dreaming swaps out the mariachi hardcore of the original and replaces it with flittering, euphoric drum 'n' bass, while Brandon Woody's version opts for smooth jazz and woozy saxophone. A.G. Cook grinds Dull through a gritty industrial filter; Hayley Williams brings some gorgeous, slow-burn soul to Ceiling.
Not everything works. Porches' strained croons and damp acoustic dabblings on Never Enough open the album on a bit of a bum note, Chanel Beads' pondering take on Dull embraces its namesake and you can't help but feel the closing Time Is Happening would have been better if Julien Baker had just left Mustafa to it. But these are mere nitpicks on what is undoubtedly one of the boldest and most interesting musical projects of 2026. This is Turnstile's world now; we're just living in it.
