The Snake Corps’ cult classic debut Flesh on Flesh is back in physical circulation, with the album newly reissued in two 2026 editions: an expanded and remastered CD from Iconoclassic Records and a clear-vinyl pressing from Lantern Rec.

Originally issued on Midnight Music in 1985, Flesh on Flesh captures the English band’s early sound in full reach: ringing guitars, hard-edged romanticism, cavernous drums, and the kind of widescreen emotional pull that placed them in the same weather system as Sad Lovers & Giants, The Chameleons, The Sound, Echo & the Bunnymen, and early U2. But where Sad Lovers & Giants often leaned toward a more misted, coldwave-adjacent strain of post-punk, The Snake Corps pushed the shared DNA into something heavier and more gothic-rock-inclined, with a sharper guitar attack and a larger, more anthemtic vocal presence.

That presence belongs to Marc Lewis, whose voice gives Flesh on Flesh much of its force. Lewis sings with a dramatic, open-throated command that rivals Bono at his early-80s peak, turning songs such as “Victory Parade,” “Science Kills,” “Another Monday,” and “Look East for Eden” into broad, urgent statements without losing the record’s underground charge. The Snake Corps could brood with the best of their era, but they also knew how to make that brooding move outward, toward scale, sweep, and grandeur.

The new Iconoclassic edition, catalog number ICON 1093, marks the album’s first CD pressing in more than 35 years. It has been remastered by Maria Triana and expanded with seven bonus tracks, three of which appear on CD for the first time. The package also includes new liner notes by Mick Mercer, based on newly conducted interviews with the band.

A separate Lantern Rec. edition, issued for Record Store Day 2026, brings Flesh on Flesh back to LP as a limited clear-vinyl pressing with one bonus track, “Dreamland.”

The Snake Corps formed around 1984 in the wake of the first breakup of Sad Lovers & Giants, with guitarist Tristan Garel-Funk and drummer Nigel Pollard initially launching the project. Pollard soon returned to Sad Lovers & Giants, and the early Snake Corps lineup solidified around Marc Lewis on vocals, Garel-Funk on guitar, Liam McGuinness on bass, and Jon Greville of Rudimentary Peni on drums.

The connection between the two bands was not merely biographical. The Snake Corps and Sad Lovers & Giants shared a musical bloodstream, sometimes quite literally: songs such as “In Flux” passed between both their worlds, revealing how close the projects could be in origin while showing how differently each band handled the same material. In the hands of Sad Lovers & Giants, that language could feel spectral, icy, and suspended in another world; with The Snake Corps, it became denser and darker. Still dreamy, yet more forceful.

Though Flesh on Flesh never became a mainstream hit, the record built a devoted following among post-punk, darkwave, and gothic-rock fans, particularly in Europe, where The Snake Corps found much of their audience through touring. They later continued with albums including Smother Earth and 3rd Cup, and eventually returned to activity in the 2010s, carrying forward the same grand, bruised romanticism that made their debut such a cult favorite.

Order the Lantern Editions vinyl edition here:

Flesh on Flesh vinyl

Order the Iconoclassic Records CD edition here:

Flesh on Flesh expanded CD

The Snake Corps, Flesh on Flesh — Expanded CD Tracklist:

Victory Parade
Animals All
Save My Heart
Man in the Mirror
Miracle
Science Kills
Another Monday
Look East for Eden
House of Man
Flesh on Flesh
Party’s Over
In Flux
Always Be the Same
Painted Ocean
Testament
Hit the Cat
Goodbye Forever

Follow The Snake Corps:

Official Website
Linktree
Bandcamp
Instagram
Facebook

The post British Post-Punk Outfit The Snake Corps Reissue Cult-Classic Debut Album “Flesh on Flesh” on Vinyl and Expanded CD appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

Legendary Manchester post-punk act The Durutti Column have announced Renascent, their first new studio album in 16 years. The new record, led once again by the unmistakable guitar work of Vini Reilly, is due this summer via London Records, with Bandcamp currently listing the digital release for July 10 and physical editions shipping around July 31. The album follows 2010’s A Paean to Wilson and arrives after the recent expanded reissue campaign surrounding the band’s Factory Records-era catalog.

Alongside Reilly, Renascent features longtime Durutti Column percussionist Bruce Mitchell and producer/multi-instrumentalist Keir Stewart. The album also includes guest vocal turns from a newer generation of artists, including Caoilfhionn Rose on “Agonistes” and Lucas Elliot on the CD and digital bonus track “All They See Is Fire.”

To mark the announcement, The Durutti Column have shared the first single, “Liars,” a graceful return set to a low, downtempo beat with a faint trip-hop sway and a touch of dream-pop atmosphere. Reilly’s smoky, close-miked vocals are counterbalanced by feminine sighs and warm electronic washes, but the center remains that guitar: clean, fluid, and instantly recognizable, with elaborate yet controlled melodic phrases that breathe like poetry. His riffs seem to carry decades of feeling without overplaying a single bar, leaving “Liars” suspended between recollection and motion, tender without becoming fragile, delicate without disappearing. This is unmistakably The Durutti Column: a sound built from restraint, ache, and Reilly’s gift for turning the smallest melodic gesture into an emotional event.

Watch the official visualizer for “Liars” below.

Pre-orders for Renascent are available now on CD, vinyl, cassette, digital, and deluxe formats. The album’s visual presentation also nods back to the group’s Factory lineage, with artwork from longtime Factory design collaborators Mark Holt and Hamish Muir of 8vo.

Listen to “Liars” via Bandcamp below, and pre-order Renascent here.

Renascent by The Durutti Column

Formed in Manchester in 1978, The Durutti Column occupies the first page of Factory Records history. Vini Reilly would later describe the group as Tony Wilson’s “baby”: the first act signed up to the Factory club night and the first band signed to Factory Records. They would also appear on A Factory Sample, Factory’s first record release, alongside Joy Division, Cabaret Voltaire, and John Dowie.

The original lineup soon splintered, leaving Reilly as the project’s center of gravity. His clean, fluid, emotionally exact playing stood apart from the harsher edges of the era. Where many of his contemporaries turned alienation into abrasion, Reilly found tension in delicacy. His music traced quiet lines through jazz, classical phrasing, ambient space, and the private weather of memory, creating a body of work that felt less like a reaction against rock orthodoxy than an escape route from it.

The group’s 1980 debut, The Return of the Durutti Column, recorded with producer Martin Hannett, remains one of the great anomalies of the Factory catalog: a record as hushed and human as its infamous sandpaper sleeve was antagonistic. Inspired by Situationist mischief, the original sleeve was designed to scuff whatever sat beside it on the shelf, with early copies hand-assembled by members of the Factory circle, including Joy Division. It was a typically Factory contradiction: beauty housed in sabotage, gentleness wrapped in damage.

Across the decades that followed, Reilly continued to steer The Durutti Column through a deeply individual body of work, often joined by longtime percussionist Bruce Mitchell and, in more recent years, producer and multi-instrumentalist Keir Stewart. Albums such as LC, Another Setting, Without Mercy, The Guitar and Other Machines, and Vini Reilly moved between instrumental miniatures, chamber-like arrangements, electronic textures, and songs that seemed to arrive from some half-remembered interior place. The Durutti Column never fit comfortably inside post-punk’s usual frame, which is exactly why their work continues to feel so singular.

Reilly’s touch also reached beyond The Durutti Column. In 1988, he played guitar and keyboards on Morrissey’s solo debut Viva Hate, bringing a glassy, mercurial Manchester language to the record. His iconic guitar on “Suedehead” remains one of the song’s defining features: that instantly recognizable opening figure, ringing out with a clarity that helped announce Morrissey’s post-Smiths life while quietly carrying Reilly’s own signature into the charts. Whatever arguments have followed the album’s credits over the years, the sound of Reilly’s guitar on that single is unmistakable.

In recent years, The Durutti Column’s influence has continued to travel in unexpected directions, with younger artists and listeners finding their way into Reilly’s catalog through reissues, rediscovery, and word-of-mouth devotion. The music has always carried that kind of private magnetism: understated, deeply felt, and resistant to easy summary.

With Renascent, The Durutti Column return not as a relic from Manchester’s post-punk mythology, but as a living presence within it: still tender, still strange, still guided by Reilly’s unmistakable hand.

Renascent Tracklist

Echoes in the Memory
Your Shadow at Morning
Time Present and Time Past
Agonistes
Liars
Vapour in a Matchbox
Your Shadow at Evening
Sargasso Sea
Scammer
For Friends Everywhere
All They See Is Fire — CD and digital bonus track

Follow The Durutti Column:

Official Website
Instagram
Facebook
Bandcamp
Spotify

The post The Durutti Column Announce First Studio LP in Over 15 Years, “Renascent” — Listen to New Song “Liars” appeared first on Post-Punk.com.

Source: Post-Punk.com

Die Power Metal-Band SOLARUS hat nach „The Heavenly Burden“ mit „Angel Afire“ eine zweite Single ihres kommenden Albums „Of Sin and Ruin“ als Video-Clip veröffentlicht. Es ist das vierte Album der Kanadier aus Ontario und wird am 17. Juli 2026 erscheinen.

SOLARUS „Angel Afire“ (Video bei YouTube)

SOLARUS „The Heavenly Burden“ (Video bei YouTube)

Source: Vampster

Die Modern Death Metal-Band MONARCH OF HATE hat mit „There Goes the Sun“ eine neue Single veröffentlicht. Es ist der erste Release des finnischen Duos rund um Tomi TIlli (SUPERDEATHFLAME).

MONARCH OF HATE Line-Up:
Tomi TIlli: guitar, vocals, programming
Mikko Aittola: guitar

MONARCH OF HATE „There Goes the Sun“ (Audio bei Bandcamp)

Source: Vampster

Die Doom Metal-Band WITCHSORROW hat mit dem Video-Clip zu „Hades Chains“ eine zweite Single ihres kommenden Albums „The Devil And All His Works“ veröffentlicht. Es ist das fünfte Album der Engländer und folgt auf das 2018er-Album „Hexenhammer„.

Die Lyrics und der Titel des Albums – entnommen aus einem okkulten Buch des Autors Dennis Wheatley – basieren auf der Idee, dass der Teufel in allem gegenwärtig ist und dass es darauf ankommt, zu wissen, wann man ihn hereinlassen und wann man ihn hinauswerfen muss.

„Als ich die Texte schrieb, fiel mir auf, dass in allem, was mir als Metapher für gute wie schlechte Dinge einfiel, etwas von ihm steckte“, erklärt Sänger und Gitarrist Nick „Necroskull“ Ruskell. „Ich habe zuvor schon warnende Geschichten über Menschen geschrieben, die faustische Pakte eingehen, ohne zu begreifen, womit sie es zu tun haben, aber hier gab es ein anderes Gleichgewicht.“

„The Devil And All His Works“ wird am 3. Juli 2026 via Church Road Records erscheinen. Vorab gibt es einen Video-Clip zu „Bacchus„.

„Bei ‚Bacchus‘ geht es um die Freude an Dekadenz und Sünde, aber es gibt auch Dinge, die Vergänglichkeit und Verlust thematisieren und das Gefühl vermitteln, dass am Rande der Realität eine dunkle Macht lauert, die dir Unglück auflauert, über das du stolpern sollst“, erklärt Nick Ruskell.

WITCHSORROW Line-Up:
Nick Ruskell – guitar/vocals
Emily Ruskell – bass
Scott Taylor – drums
David Wilbraham – drums (on album)

WITCHSORROW „The Devil And All His Works“ Tracklist
01 Omnia Finiuntur
02 Bacchus (Video bei YouTube)
03 Hades Chains (Video bei YouTube)
04 Altar
05 In Triumph We Rot!!!
06 Lamentation
07 A Quintessence Of Dust

Source: Vampster