These are not rumours. These are the accounts of multiple bands who tried to resolve their concerns privately, in good faith, and at length — and who have now chosen, as a collective, to speak.

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A group of bands — including Antiquus Infestus, Galloglaigh, DUSK, Maddox Theory, Mythos, Hëllridër, Catharsis, Anemoya, Obscured Violence, and others — have issued the following statement:

“We are a group of bands who have all experienced serious problems with Darkside Records and its representative, Saïd Chebacheb. We were repeatedly given promises and deadlines that were not fulfilled — regarding physical releases, payments, distribution, promotion and live shows. Some bands paid money and did not receive what was promised, while others were not paid for performances.

We tried to resolve these issues privately for months. Instead, we received excuses, delays, broken promises and, in many cases, silence.

We are no longer willing to remain silent. This is our collective statement. We have the messages, agreements and evidence to support what we are saying.

Please share this post so that no other band or artist becomes another victim of the same situation.”

Egyptian band Hëllridër have added their own detailed account, which Rock Era Magazine reproduces here in full:

“We’d like to highlight our experience with DSR. We were ignored the whole time — miscommunication was the norm. We felt that the label took advantage of our work. We contacted fellow bands Catharsis and Anemoya, who are signed to the same label. We contacted the venues ourselves and booked them, and at the end of the day someone else took the credit.

Agreed funds were either late — and we mean two hours before a gig type of late — or stalled entirely. The private group that included the band members was deleted.

Promotional material was generated using AI, despite an abundance of real video footage — to the point where we ended up making our own promotional content to post ourselves.

As per contract, DSR was required to commit to the artist’s online fan community for up to 20 hours per week, with a $300 monthly budget. The label has not posted any content related to the band since February.

And we will note: the engagement on the label’s posts appears to come from purchased bot activity — with zero organic reach.”

Independent music is built on trust. Artists invest their time, their money, their work, and their reputations when they enter into an agreement with a label or management entity. When that trust is broken — and when the same pattern of broken promises, missing payments, uncredited work, and sustained silence is reported by multiple independent bands across multiple countries — it becomes a matter of wider concern for the entire music community.

Rock Era Magazine stands unequivocally with the artists who have come forward. We encourage any additional affected bands to share their documented experiences publicly. We encourage the wider music industry — journalists, promoters, booking agents, distributors, and fellow artists — to take note.

The bands involved have stated clearly that they hold documentation: messages, contracts, and evidence. We take them at their word, and we believe the community deserves to know.

To Darkside Records and Saïd Chebacheb: the artists you work with are not without voice, and they are not without support.

The journey begins with “Uneasy,” where a restrained piano-led introduction eases listeners into the EP’s psychological landscape. That quiet fragility doesn’t last for long, however, as the arrangement gradually expands into a driving, atmospheric surge that mirrors a mind losing its grip on certainty. It sets the tone for what follows, introducing an emotional tension that remains present throughout the release.

Rather than functioning as three disconnected songs, Infinity Fall III unfolds as a single narrative exploring anxiety, emotional stagnation, and the often uncomfortable pursuit of clarity. Each chapter examines a different emotional state, yet they remain connected by a shared atmosphere where uncertainty becomes less of an obstacle and more of a space for reflection. The songwriting avoids easy resolutions, allowing the listener to sit with these emotions instead of escaping or simply repressing them.

The EP thrives on contrast. Cinematic textures weave through heavy guitars, while moments of restraint make the heavier passages feel even more impactful. The dynamic shifts are carefully measured, giving the music a natural sense of progression rather than relying on constant intensity. Silence and space are used just as effectively as distortion, reinforcing the emotional weight behind the band’s themes.

Infinity Fall III has established itself as more than a collection of songs. It is a concise yet ambitious meditation on confronting discomfort instead of escaping it, delivered through immersive songwriting and carefully crafted atmosphere. With Infinity Fall III, Watch Me Die Inside demonstrates that some of the most rewarding listening experiences aren’t the ones that provide comfort; they’re the ones that encourage us to question why we seek it in the first place..

Dark. Heavy. Fast — just like life.

Gallant Guest plunges headlong into some of the most difficult and resonant territories the human experience has to offer: love, mental illness, disease, and the mysteries that refuse to be resolved. Carried on a wave of death metal and progressive chaos, it is a record that doesn’t flinch from its subject matter and doesn’t ask for permission to be exactly what it is.

“Science is the magic of gods,” Bohn says. It is a line that captures the Gallant Guest worldview precisely — the intersection of the analytical and the mythological, the rational and the sublime, the crushing and the transcendent.

⇒ Check our thoughts on Daniel’s album here.

Gallant Guest is a concept album, following directly from Bohn’s previous record Colors of the Land and taking its narrative into a grimmer, darker, more war-torn territory. The story follows a god seeking revenge on another god — deploying a mortal character as an instrument of destruction against everything the targeted god loves. Once the main character begins to understand what is happening, the vengeful god turns to the land of mortals itself, corrupting and destroying it — and stripping away its most sacred symbol of courage and life: The Whale.

Two tracks anchor the album’s emotional and narrative arc. “The Red Blight” — the opening track — marks the beginning of the corruption, the moment the rot sets in. “Kujira” — the album’s closing piece — delivers the death of courage itself, the loss of the symbol that gave the world its meaning. Between those two poles, Gallant Guest is relentless, technically precise, and steeped in the kind of melancholy that, as one reviewer put it, is “created in a way never before.”

The album was written, performed, and recorded entirely by Bohn in St. Louis, with mixing and mastering handled by Dorian Falconeri. Every guitar, drum, piano, bass line, and vocal is his — a one-man operation of formidable scope and discipline.

Gallant Guest carries additional significance as Bohn’s first record under Sliptrick Records — a signing that marks a meaningful new chapter for an artist who has built his world entirely on his own terms. The label partnership brings his music to a broader international platform without compromising an ounce of the creative autonomy that defines the project.

Drawing from the progressive metal universe of Between the Buried and Me, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, and Persefone, Bohn’s sound is simultaneously indebted to the greats and entirely his own — progressive death metal from the gateway to the West, with a storytelling ambition that sets it apart from everything around it.

Those who have been following Bohn’s output will recognize the title. “The Gallant Guest,” which we covered previously, is now the album’s title track and the centerpiece of this larger work. We noted then its raw intensity, its debt to Slayer and Lamb of God, and the way Bohn’s guttural vocals served the track’s unrelenting weight rather than fighting it. That song’s DNA runs through the entire record, but Gallant Guest as a full-length proves there is considerably more range here than any single track could suggest. The influences Bohn cites, Between the Buried and Me, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Persefone, tell you more about what this album is actually doing than the death metal tag alone would. There is prog architecture underneath the brutality, and the concept album framing demands it. I’ll be focusing on three tracks that best illustrate what makes this record worth your time.

Daniel Bohn kicks the album off with “Runes,” which gradually builds with sweet atmospheric tom grooves accompanying washed-out, haunted guitar sounds, then morphs into a very modern interpretation of classic black metal riffs. The secret to why it sounds so modern is how ever-evolving the drums sound; you can’t really pin the drumming to one groove for a long time, which is the reason why it sounds so intense. In my opinion, it’s like a flailing monster lashing out, but at the same time, it’s brilliantly musical.

“Failure” stands out as one of the more melancholic and dynamic pieces on the album, featuring clean guitars, piano, and soft vocals at the helm. It manages to really tug at the heartstrings because of the huge sonic space it takes and because of how it utilizes the silence between the notes and the tom hits. Even when it does dial it up and introduces a full groove and the delicate vocals turn to screams, it feels earned and in tandem with the narrative, creates a unique almost post-metal sound.

“Verisimilitude” begins with an absolutely gut-wrenching cello melody that is reminiscent of the great Russian composers, with how infinitely depressed it sounds. It ushers in the end of this beautifully tragic album. The cello melody fades out, and a musical section that sounds like what thick fog looks like fades in. The bass and drums create the horror beneath the surface, and the guitars create the suspense as the vocals sound like the ghastly fog speaking. But it doesn’t last forever; soon that fog turns into a storm, as what I personally feel is the most intense rhythm section on the album takes lead and relentlessly moves from one groove to the next, from screams to solos, it’s sublime. The way it returns to a choir singing the main theme is an absolute masterclass of writing.

Gallant Guest is a record that earns its ambitions. Pulling off a concept album as a solo project, with this level of compositional range, from the feral black metal of the opener to the elegiac cello of the closer, is a significant undertaking, and Bohn handles it with the kind of conviction that makes you want to go back and hear it again from the beginning. His first record under a label is a strong statement of what this project is capable of.

“Heterotopia” is cinematic and quite surprising at times – there’s a lot of music here, and the way one song weaves to the next flows really well. It’s an album that’s meant to be listened to in one sitting from start to finish, and in that way, they’re upholding the art form of the album, unlike the trend these days to curate music specifically for short form content and loops. You get to explore a shifting sonic palette, and that alone tells a story aside from the main lyrical method of narrative delivery. The music tells the side story and provides context and movement to the story here, and the way the band shifts dynamics from powerful, aggressive sounds to haunting and borderline disturbing ambient sounds serves the storytelling marvelously.

The title track is symphonic in its arrangement, starting almost like a horror movie cue with a simple yet harrowing piano line and then unleashing the might of this metal orchestra. The deliberate dissonances in the riffs and how they descend chromatically create a terrifying spiral of sound. The intermission that breaks off the song into two halves features ominous drones and breathing sounds that add to the disturbing atmosphere invoked by the lyrics, and then when the band comes back in full force, it just makes that much more impactful.

“Immaculate” has an intro riff that sounds like someone blowing into Gjallarhorn itself, ushering in the indescribable evil that emanates from the lyrics like ancient words that aren’t supposed to be spoken out loud. Their voices screaming “Immaculate reflection!” sounds like a thousand frenzied demons shrieking, and the legendary bassist Steve Di Giorgio tearing it up in the breakdowns make this one of the heaviest tracks on the album. The performances here are immaculate indeed.

“Begotten” is an example of those surprising tracks I mentioned. It starts off with drones and what sounds to my ears like Mongolian throat singing, and it builds to a relentless blast beat as the main vocalist trades vocals with Camilia Bayazi’s soaring vocals. The relentlessness crashes down to an ambient section with a saxophone in a borderline jazz noir-inspired section that conveys desolation and hopelessness. The ambient section is very similar in function to the intermission in the title track. The band knows their strengths, and they are playing to them.

Heterotopia is the kind of record that rewards the listener who gives it the full, uninterrupted sit-down it asks for. Primordial Black is operating in a space where extreme metal, cinematic atmosphere, and genuine compositional ambition don’t cancel each other out – they compound. For a band this young in their discography to already have this kind of control over texture, pacing, and darkness, the only real question is where they go from here.

Musically, those gritty, washed-out guitar textures are almost like ambient darkness; it’s not in your face, it’s like the looming incomprehensible danger that’s always there in the corner of your room. There is obviously no shying away from the darkness here, and over its 9-minute runtime, different chapters of the story unfold. Sonically, though not everything Weaving Shadows offers up is in that ambient soundscape of darkness, the drums are more upfront, which helps keep the listener involved and not too detached. That contrast is what holds the song together across its runtime – the guitars pull you into the fog while the drums keep reminding you that you’re still standing.

Tim Zick’s production is worth singling out. He has a way of making the dread feel three-dimensional rather than flat, which is exactly what this kind of doom-sludge material demands. On April 17th, Weaving Shadows will be opening for Dopethrone and Year of the Cobra in Lincoln, NE – if “Kodokushi” is any indication of what they bring live, that’s a bill worth making the drive for.

This one is not for the faint of heart. Under two minutes, but it lingers. The track starts with a melodic Black Metal edge before shifting into fast, sharp riffing and high-pitched screams. The vocals move from cold narration to frantic shrieks, mirroring the dialogue. The riffs are jagged, the rhythm grimy. Arne’s drumming pounds relentlessly, tightening everything into a suffocating wall. It recalls early Marduk, 1349, Dark Funeral. Black metal atmosphere over death metal weight.

HKSPK deliver no gimmicks, just raw underground power. “Torture” is a furious statement from a band stepping beyond their local scene. If Holy Scum and The Human Butcher proved they don’t need gloss, this track confirms they’re refining that intensity into something that demands attention.

In addition, Metal Blast is bringing back its educational musical workshops, reaffirming its commitment to giving back to the community and supporting the growth of the metal and alternative music scene.

The 15-year anniversary also marks the beginning of a new branding phase for Metal Blast. Updated visuals, anniversary identity, event dates, and lineup announcements will be revealed gradually later this year.

More details and further announcements will follow soon.

The project was born out of silence, out of moments when a person is left alone with their own tension, fear, and calm. It wasn’t born from a need to create music but from a need to express something that couldn’t be spoken in words. He describes it with one sentence: “Musica vitae meae pars est, affectus autem ea sunt quae narro” (Music is a part of my life, and emotions are what I narrate).

The song transcends language barriers due to its atmospheric and powerful sound. The choice of textures here, from the blackgaze signature sound alongside the dark harmony, creates a vivid image of an apocalyptic event taking place. If one takes the time to translate the Polish lyrics (or if one is a Polish listener), the lyrics tell the story of a horrible and powerful entity awakening. Given the current climate of the planet and the dark tonality of the song doesn’t seem to bode well for humanity. The music overall has that signature drawn out sound of post-metal that creates that inherent desperation, like it’s going to go on forever, capturing you in its sonic vista of despair.

“In excitatione terrae” is the opening track from Jurkiewicz’s debut album In lumine lunae, an eight-part narrative suspended between light and shadow. The album took two years to create, combining Polish lyrics with Latin titles to create contrast between personal language and symbolic narration. Each track carries its own emotional weight, forming a sequence of states rather than a collection of songs. In lumine lunae drops soon, and if this opening track is any indication, it’s going to be a heavy journey.

Asia: Where Metal Meets the Mandate

Asia’s political rockers often fuse cultural activism with headbanging fury, turning stages into soapboxes for independence and identity.

• Sanae Takaichi (Japan, Prime Minister, 2025–present): Elected leader of the Liberal Democratic Party and Japan’s PM at age 64, Takaichi’s rock roots trace back to her university days in a heavy metal cover band. She still unwinds with an electronic drum kit, blasting tracks by Metallica and X Japan to “clear her mind.” Her “Heavy Metal Lady” nickname underscores how this hobby fueled her resilience in a male-dominated field, where she champions economic revival and national security—much like a riff that refuses to fade.

• Freddy Lim (Taiwan, Legislator, 2016–present): As frontman for symphonic black/death metal band Chthonic since 1993, Lim has woven Taiwanese folklore and anti-colonial themes into albums like Takasago Army (2005), which toured with symphonic metal giants like Epica. Co-founding the New Power Party, he won a seat in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan in 2016 (re-elected 2020 and 2024), surviving a 2022 recall. He’s dubbed the “world’s first metal politician,” proving extreme music can drive moderate reform.

North America: From Grunge Grooves to Congressional Jams

The U.S. and Canada boast a roster of rockers who pivoted from festival circuits to Capitol Hill, often using fame to amplify overlooked causes.

• Sonny Bono (United States, U.S. Congressman, 1995–1998; Mayor of Palm Springs, 1988–1992): Half of the iconic pop-rock duo Sonny & Cher, Bono co-wrote and sang on hits like “I Got You Babe” (1965), blending folk-rock with psychedelic edges on albums like Inner View (1967). After a mayoral stint revitalizing Palm Springs’ economy, he served as a Republican Congressman for California’s 44th District until his 1998 death. Bono’s legacy? The Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act (1998), extending artist protections—a direct riff from his music industry battles.

• John Hall (United States, U.S. Congressman, 2007–2011): Guitarist and co-founder of soft rock band Orleans, Hall penned yacht-rock staples like “Still the One” (1976), which sold millions and became an NFL anthem. As a Democrat representing New York’s 19th District, he co-sponsored the Veterans Claims Modernization Act (2008), streamlining benefits for service members. Hall’s harmonious style translated to bipartisan environmental advocacy before he retired in 2010.

• Jon Huntsman Jr. (United States, Governor of Utah, 2005–2009; U.S. Ambassador to China, 2009–2011; Ambassador to Russia, 2017–2019): Bassist in the progressive rock cover band Wizard during his youth, Huntsman jammed on classics by Yes and Genesis. Rising through diplomatic ranks under both parties, he governed Utah with a focus on trade and education, later running unsuccessfully for president in 2012 and 2016. His band’s exploratory sound echoed his globalist foreign policy.

• Jon Fishman (United States, Selectman of Lincolnville, Maine, 2017–present): Drummer for jam-rock legends Phish since 1983, Fishman powers marathon sets blending funk, psychedelia, and bluegrass on albums like A Picture of Nectar (1992). In his low-key town role, he tackles local environmental issues, from zoning to conservation—applying Phish’s improvisational ethos to community governance.

Europe and Oceania: Protest Anthems to Parliamentary Thrones

Down under and across the pond, rockers have long used music as a megaphone for social change, storming parliaments with the same fervor as mosh pits.

• Peter Garrett (Australia, Minister for the Environment, 2007–2010; Minister for Education, 2010–2013; MP, 2004–2013): Lead singer of post-punk rockers Midnight Oil (1976–2002), Garrett belted protest anthems like “Beds Are Burning” (1987), railing against Indigenous dispossession and uranium mining. As a Labor Party MP, he shaped climate policies and Indigenous reconciliation, retiring to reform the band in 2017 for The Makarrata Project (2020). Garrett’s arc shows rock’s protest roots seeding policy fruit.

• Tony Blair (United Kingdom, Prime Minister, 1997–2007): Guitarist and singer in the rock cover band Ugly Rumours at Oxford (late 1970s), jamming on Fleetwood Mac and Chuck Berry tunes. As Labour PM, Blair modernized the economy and devolved powers to Scotland and Wales, though his Iraq War legacy remains divisive. His band days hint at the charisma that won three elections.

Africa and Beyond: Fusion Rhythms in Ministerial Chambers

African leaders blend traditional sounds with rock edges, using global stages to elevate cultural diplomacy.

• Youssou N’Dour (Senegal, Minister of Tourism and Leisure, 2012–2013; Minister of Culture and Communication, 2017–2021): A mbalax pioneer fusing Senegalese griot traditions with rock and pop, N’Dour‘s hits like “7 Seconds” (1992, with Neneh Cherry) earned a Grammy and UNESCO ambassadorship. Appointed by President Macky Sall after a 2012 presidential bid, he promoted tourism and cultural exports, turning Senegal’s music scene into soft power gold.

While runners like Jello Biafra (Dead Kennedys frontman, 1979 San Francisco mayoral candidate) and Kinky Friedman (country-rock satirist, 2006 Texas gubernatorial hopeful) electrified campaigns without victory, the true office-holders above form a eclectic lineup. Notably absent: any sitting or former presidents with verified rock/metal performance histories—Bill Clinton’s saxophone leaned jazz, not shred.

From Tokyo’s drum kits to Canberra’s cabinet rooms, these rock-rooted rulers remind us that governance, like a killer solo, thrives on passion and improvisation. In an era of polarized playlists, their stories bridge divides, showing how the thunder of amps can harmonize with the gavel’s strike. As Takaichi taps her sticks in the PM’s residence, one wonders: Who’s next to trade distortion pedals for diplomatic cables? The stage is set—let the riff begin.