The track blends straight-ahead country rock with a distinctly ’90s rock edge. Written by lead vocalist Shane Jolie and produced by Winston Hauschild at The Treehouse Studio on Bowen Island, it keeps things refreshingly uncomplicated. The guitars do much of the talking, while the steady groove gives the song an easy, live-ready momentum.

At its heart, though, this is a song about escape. Jolie describes that moment when you can finally leave the noise of everyday life behind, head somewhere familiar with your favourite people, and remember that things might not be quite as complicated as they seemed: as he puts it, “as long as you have friends and family around, and maybe a little moonshine, life ain’t as hard as it seems.”

That sentiment runs through the track’s entire personality. “Hillbilly White Wine” is not interested in turning a night out into an existential experience. Instead, it finds its charm in the ordinary: friendship, familiar places, a drink or two, and the freedom of temporarily forgetting your responsibilities.

It also makes perfect sense as a Pistol Whip The Devil song. The Vancouver band have built their sound around lived-in storytelling, grunge-infused country influences, and what they call “Redneck Rock,” developing a reputation through bars and festivals across Western Canada.

Following 2025’s “The Devil In Me,” “Hillbilly White Wine” by Pistol Whip The Devil feels like another invitation into their world: loud, loose, slightly mischievous, and ultimately pretty simple: find your people, turn the music up, raise a glass, and let the rest wait until tomorrow!

They aren’t really setting out to reinvent the wheel here; they’re more about upholding the torch of a strain of alt rock that’s fallen a bit out of popularity, and they capture that sound and mood with genuine authenticity. One element worth highlighting specifically is the guitar hook that comes in right after the chorus; the tone on that is genuinely great, exactly the kind of detail that separates a band doing this style well from a band just going through the motions of it. It’s the sort of hook that sticks with you well after the song ends.

Pitched at fans of Breaking Benjamin, Shinedown, Three Days Grace, and Alter Bridge, that comparison holds up without CREEPS coming across as derivative of any one of them specifically. Coming off the momentum of “Two Against the World,” “I Will Follow You” makes a strong case that this band’s return isn’t just a nostalgia play; it’s a genuine continuation of a sound they clearly still know how to execute at a high level.

Rest captures the strange exhaustion of wanting to experience everything while feeling increasingly unable to experience anything at all. The song opens with an almost tender instruction: “Lay down, rest your head / Out on the lawn,” followed by “Is it all too much?” There is an immediate tension between the simplicity of resting and the difficulty of actually achieving it. “Breathe in the air / Like it’s all you got” becomes an attempt to return to the present, even as “Tuck the world in tight / Yearn for long ago” pulls the mind back toward memory.

But the calm doesn’t last. As the thoughts begin to multiply, the music follows. What starts mellow and spacious gradually becomes louder, denser, and more layered, mirroring the accumulation of dreams, concerns, hopes, and regrets. The repeated confession, “I toss and I turn / Through the hours I’m worn,” gives the track a circular quality, while letting the feelings “form a life of their own” makes the inner world feel almost physically inhabited.

The song’s most striking contradiction arrives with “Write down all your dreams / Drowning your lungs.” Dreams, usually associated with possibility, become another source of pressure. And when the speaker asks to “Plead with time to crawl,” the central tension becomes clear: this isn’t simply about wanting less from life, but about wanting enough time to actually live it.

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That tension is where As We Sleep are most compelling. Their blend of indie warmth and darker rock textures gives the track room to move from intimacy into overwhelm, while the surreal imagery keeps the emotions suggestive rather than over-explained.

“Rest” by As We Sleep isn’t really a song about achieving stillness. It is about the impossibility of finding it when your mind is already somewhere else: dreaming, remembering, worrying, and asking time to slow down..

That tension comes through in the song’s lyrics, where Halah sings, “Ana samahtik abel ma l-ghalat sar:” I forgave you before the mistake even happened. It’s an almost paradoxical confession: forgiving someone before there is even something to forgive. But she follows it with “Maalesh, nehna kbar / Nihmil zamb shu bnekhtar:” It’s okay, we’re grown enough to carry the weight of what we choose. Suddenly, forgiveness becomes more than an expression of love; it becomes a question of responsibility.

That same contradiction sits at the heart of “Am aane bas habbeitak / W el-hob karar:” I’m hurting, but I loved you / and love is a choice. The two ideas are allowed to coexist. Being hurt doesn’t necessarily make the love disappear, just as loving someone doesn’t make the hurt disappear. “Forsa Tani” doesn’t attempt to resolve that tension into an easy answer. Instead, it stays with the uncomfortable reality of feeling both things at once.

The idea of starting over carries its own contradiction, too. “Safha jdeede / Ana alabta abel ma khalsou l-wara:” a new page, I turned it before the papers were even finished. There is an eagerness to begin again, but also an awareness that the previous story hasn’t really ended. And when Halah follows it with “Maalesh, am beshta / W el-shaw’ baado fira:” It’s okay, I miss you / and longing is still separation, the possibility of a second chance becomes less straightforward. You can turn the page and still miss what was written on the one before it.

“Forsa Tani” places these emotional contradictions within an Arabic alternative-rock setting, giving Halah a space to establish a sound of her own. Written and composed by Halah and produced by Bassem Daouk, the track marks her first release as a singer-songwriter after years of performing covers and live shows across Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and the UAE.

What makes Halah Banna’s “Forsa Tani” compelling as a debut is that it doesn’t tell us whether giving someone another chance is right or wrong. It asks a more difficult question: what does it mean to choose someone when you already know the cost?

Sometimes love is the feeling. Sometimes it is forgiveness. Sometimes it is the longing; and sometimes, as Halah Banna’s “Forsa Tani” reminds us, love is indeed a choice..

Metalcore is about as crowded a lane as heavy music gets right now, which makes it worth noting how tight this single is on both a narrative and arrangement level. There’s no sense of a breakdown sticking around past the point it’s earned its place; nothing here feels like it’s padding out the runtime. The band is doing exactly what the song calls for and nothing more. That kind of restraint is harder to pull off than it sounds, and it’s a big part of why this cuts through where a lot of bands in the genre struggle to.

The rhythm section is the other thing worth calling out specifically. Drummer ECHO is relentless throughout, and the chemistry across the whole band- guitarist STATIC, bassist VOID, and SIGNAL out front- feels genuinely locked in rather than assembled for effect. Mixed and mastered by Claire Sutton and Red Mertah, “The World Deserves To Die” arrives as Horizons Demise keep building toward their next EP, Calibration Protocol, due later this year, and on this evidence, their world-building has real staying power behind it.

Following the raw confrontation of “Tu maldad,” Evil Maracas take a more restrained route here. Rather than confronting toxicity head-on, “Madreselvas” lets it hide beneath tenderness. The verses unfold through dark, ambient-rock textures that feel almost prayer-like, creating an atmosphere of reverence that suits the song’s central contradiction. This isn’t simply love; it is love elevated into worship, where devotion becomes so absolute that there is barely any room left for the self.

The band’s alternative-rock instincts remain firmly intact. Bright, distorted guitars and a driving rhythm section give the track an immediate pulse, while the atmospheric production keeps something uneasy moving underneath. Albert Boguñá’s strained, urgent delivery adds emotional pressure, particularly as the arrangement gathers momentum.

Then Cristina Díaz enters with a fragile luminosity that seems to offer relief. Instead, her voice makes the song more unsettling. Against the distortion, her softness feels almost heavenly, precisely the kind of beauty that can make something dangerous difficult to recognize.

That contrast is “Madreselvas”’ greatest strength. Its catchy melodic sections invite rather than intimidate, while the darker textures slowly tighten around them. Even the guitar solo feels less like escape than another turn deeper into the song’s emotional maze.

“Madreselvas” by Evil Maracas understands that toxicity doesn’t always arrive violently. Sometimes it arrives as devotion, sounds like comfort, and only reveals its darker side once you’re already too close to leave..

I like how the classical guitar ties into the arrangement. The way I interpreted it is that it makes it timeless, or related to a time before our time, since lavish parties hiding high atop the tower are definitely not a new social issue; that’s how long this fight has been going on. The lyrics reflect that frustration; we don’t need any more rallying speeches or discussions about why this is wrong; we need actions. That refrain, “grab the pitchforks, heads off, straight to the guillotine,” lands with the same bluntness the song is going for, no metaphor left ambiguous. Musically, the band leans on rock mixed with alternative pop, orchestration, and an epic, soundtrack-style scale that gives the whole thing a cinematic push behind the anger in the lyric.

Directed and edited by Dmytro Laiko, the video matches that same unsubtle energy scene for scene. As the third chapter in a trilogy that started at the top of this year, “Guillotine” makes clear OpCritical isn’t interested in softening the message as the series goes on, and with more releases reportedly planned before the year is out, this looks like a band settling into a long-term project rather than a one-off statement.

But Ross, whose single arrives September 11th, shifts that old landscape by turning it into something sacred. The lovers do not merely lose themselves in each other. They enter heaven, though it is a heaven built from faded jeans, late-June heat, dancing, and temptation. The prayer being answered is inseparable from the kiss that cannot be resisted. Even the angels, drafted into the chorus, appear embarrassed by what paradise has become.

The song lives in the tension between Sunday morning and Saturday night. That divide runs through American music: the church and the roadhouse, salvation and appetite, the hymn and the backbeat. Ross does not choose between them. She suggests that both experiences may spring from the same longing—to be carried beyond oneself, if only for the length of a song.

Her language is plain because the experience demands plainness. “Good Lord, have mercy” is not an ornamental phrase. It is both an exclamation and a prayer, an instinctive response to a body moving under the stars. When Ross sings that the full moon “won’t tell anybody,” the moon becomes part confidant, part accomplice. Nature shelters the couple from judgment while illuminating everything they are supposedly hiding.

Then Sunday morning arrives, and the song changes.

The person who seemed like temptation in the darkness is still there in the morning. That image gives “Lost in Heaven” its emotional weight. The night has not dissolved into regret, embarrassment, or convenient amnesia. The fantasy survives sunrise. What first sounded like escape begins to resemble recognition: perhaps heaven is not where the lovers went, but what they discovered in each other.

Ross’ country-rock sensibility is crucial to the song’s effect. Country supplies the setting and storytelling; rock provides the heat and refusal. The result belongs to neither the chapel nor the barroom completely. It stands between them, where much of the most compelling American music has always lived.

“Lost in Heaven” is not interested in resolving the conflict between holiness and desire. It treats that conflict as the source of the song’s energy. The angels sing because the lovers have crossed a line, or perhaps because they have finally stopped pretending that the line was real.

Beneath the pines, Pam Ross finds paradise without leaving the earth. It is secretive, physical, tender, and loud—and morning does nothing to make it disappear.

Now there is a radical idea.

Taken from his album After the Crossing, the single is a firm, energetic rock song with enough theatrical muscle to make its social criticism feel like a public confrontation. Kappen has acknowledged David Bowie as an influence, and the connection makes sense. “Good Samaritans” shares Bowie’s fascination with performance, masks, manufactured identities, and the strange distance between the person and the persona.

The opening lyrics plunge straight into the carnival: “superheroes,” “flashy words,” and dreams sold with the promise that buying them will make us whole. Kappen surveys the entire digital sideshow—filtered pain, plastic smiles, sculpted skies, hashtags, vacant perfection—and sees a culture feverishly turning its tears into champagne before somebody can photograph the bottle.

It would be funny if it were not so painfully familiar.

Then the chorus cuts through the glitter. While everyone else is fighting for attention, the good Samaritans are standing in the rain, stopping to help and sharing another person’s pain. They are unseen, uncelebrated, and decidedly unmarketable. They do not rescue people because there might be a camera nearby. They act because another human being needs them.

That distinction gives the song its punch. Kappen is not merely criticizing social media; that would be too easy, and the world has already produced enough songs complaining about phones. He is attacking the transformation of compassion into performance. In this universe, even goodness requires branding, and suffering matters only when it can be packaged into content.

Mexican singer Danna Gomez joins the choruses, adding another voice to what increasingly feels like a communal declaration. Her presence also reflects the new chapter behind After the Crossing, Kappen’s first album recorded after relocating from the Netherlands to Mexico. Kappen performed, sang, and produced the album himself, but Gomez’s contribution prevents this particular anthem from becoming a solitary sermon.

The finest line is also the simplest: “These saints don’t wear capes.” It could have collapsed into sentimentality, but Kappen earns it by first dragging listeners through the artificial paradise surrounding it. After all the neon promises and carefully planned lies, simple human decency begins to look revolutionary.

“Good Samaritans” is not subtle, but subtlety would defeat its purpose. This is a rock song pointing into the crowd and asking who will remain when the spectacle ends. Kappen’s answer is clear: not the loudest, prettiest, or most followed among us, but those ordinary souls who choose to stay when everyone else walks away.

The album is high-quality and follows the standards of progressive concept records in the best sense, with the narrative built like chapters in a single story, closing on a short, delicate piano piece that serves as a genuine resolution rather than a tacked-on coda. Where it really shines is in that narrative cohesion and in how well the harmony is used to reinforce it. This isn’t a record leaning on scale alone to sell its epic ambitions. The composition holds up structurally, and the orchestral versions included alongside the originals make that clear, showing arrangements sturdy enough to survive being reworked rather than depending on one specific sonic treatment to land.

The guest list adds real texture without overwhelming the record’s identity. Niklas Kvarforth of Shining and Nile drummer George Kollias both appear on the album’s heavier, more apocalyptic tracks, while Michael Herrington Onetwenty brings a rap and R&B presence that pushes the record’s genre-blending further than “Far From Home” attempted. Thematically, “Beauty in Darkness” is built around apocalypse and transcendence, bodies giving way to light and spirit, and that concept gives the record’s guest spots and heavier detours a reason to exist beyond novelty.

“Beauty in Darkness” is an ambitious, carefully constructed record, and the harmony-first approach to its bigger moments is what separates it from records that chase scale for its own sake.