LTW newsletter 112

Dear Warriors,

I’m back!

I have been traversing the emerald isle for a couple of weeks on tour so now catching up now with website duties. Its always great to tour our neighbouring island and we zigzagged from one end to the other with a road trip booked by an agent with no map! The first half of the jaunt was a spoken word tour with Richard Jobson from the Skids and we interviewed eachother about our lives in the punk and post punk battlefields before we then toured together as or bands, Skids and Membranes. 

It’s always great going over to Ireland and the music scene there is still in very rude health with much of the best and ground breaking music of the moment coming out of there…did anyone hear Lankum’s recent cover version of the Specials Ghost Town? Wow!

We have now announced more of the bill for our upcoming Louder Than War Live festival headlined by Sea Power which will be on in Manchester in March next year. 

We are loving that dark atmospheric new single of Gothic melodrama from Charli XCX with John Cale - it’s total unexpected genius.

Over the last couple of weeks there has been much going on including a catch up of the Stranglers annual UK jaunt which saw the meninblack dig deep into their own back pages for some surprise cuts at their recent sell out show at Manchester Apollo. Like a fine wine the band are still ageing gracefully. Hopefully they still have it in them to record one more album.

Gary Numan’s career renaissance continues with intense and physical live shows that are in complete contrast to the detached alien of his youth. His heavier industrial sound embraces the likes of Nine Inch Nails who were so influenced by him in the first place and make him sound and feel contemporary in a way that maybe was not once expected. Capturing some of the sonics of the reinvigorated android the recent live album which marks his 1,000th gig with a live album full of blistering industrial goth metal that marks his renaissance and proves him to still be vital force. 

Queens of the Stone Age are one of the finest rock bands in the world and their cranked blues born out of tripped out desert sessions in the American hinterland has been moulded into twisted yet powerfully contagious slabs of molton modern rock. The band were recently in London and our man with the ear plugs popped into have a listen.

The Psychedelic Furs were always a fantastic anomaly - they kinda felt punk but didn't and existed in a universe of their own. Maybe they, like Ultravox, were the sound of where rock music was going if punk hadn't happened. Whatever, they fitted and their timelessness has been their superpower in that in 2025 they still feel detached and timeless from the narrative and as atmospheric and compelling as ever.

Blurt are one of the great undergound quirks in the post punk scene. Their mainman Ted Milton has, as you would expect, a weirdly fascinating life from being Eric Clapton’s best mate in the sixties to being a controversial puppeteer who toured with Hawkwind to his his free jazz skronk adventures in Blurt…it would make for a great film and thats what is happening if the crowd fund can raise enough money…

We caught up with Glen Matlock for an interview about his ‘I Was teenage Sex Pistol’ book getting turned into a film that was screened last week. In the past few years Glen’s stock has deservedly risen as people come to understand his key role in the band creatively and its always a pleasure to get an articulate self effacing interview from an ex Pistol. 

Whilst in Germany a couple of weeks ago I caught up with Johnny Marr who was as effortlessly great as ever. The former Smith is now perfectly comfortable in his own skin delivering a mix of his former band’s beloved classics and his own solo material that somehow sits together in a timeless whole.

Prolapse - the indie stalwarts brought their delicious domestic on steroids neu driven power indie to manchester for a one off show and our reviewer was ecstatic.

Florence and the Machine returned to the frey with an album of powerful gothic pop and swooning theatrical melodrama…the kind of stuff that she does so well. 

Another returning gang are the Charlatans whose new album is one of their best for years. It’s weird to think of these bands being veterans now as Tim Burgess looks identical to his youthful self and the band still sound fresh whilst decades into a long career but they still find subtle ways to reinvent themselves.