Music News

Weekly Roundup: Friday 11th October

C.C. / Friday 11th October, 2019 5:02PM

Excitement for the oncoming silly season ramped up this week, with a fistful of significant announcements hinting at even more earth-shaking thrills to come. Highlights included Florida death metal pioneers Obituary will be obliterating the earholes of punters in Auckland and Wellington, celebrating the 30th anniversary of their brutal classic Cause Of Death in early 2020, Tāmaki Makaurau punk upstarts Miss June announced a homecoming tour of Aotearoa for December, Pōneke psych-fuzz gurus Earth Tongue have revealed they'll be playing a run of summer launch parties for their debut album Floating Being, California skate punk veterans Bad Religion are returning to Aotearoa also in December, Christchurch's Salad Boys revealed a trio of Aotearoa headline events before touring the East Coast of Australia this spring, and Pōneke bedroom pop hero Lontalius is playing an intimate Auckland release party for his news album All I Am in late November.

It was a jam-packed week for features too – our roving reporter Fluffy chatted with legendary Manowar and Dictators co-founder Ross The Boss in advance of his tour of NZ with band in November, playing Manowar's trailblazing 1984 album Hail To England in its entirety plus a fistful of classics. Assistant editor Annabel Kean caught up with Tui award winner Reb Fountain ahead of her extensive tour of Aotearoa, starting this Saturday in Auckland at The Wine Cellar, and Tāmaki Makaurau-based sound artist Flo Wilson had an insightful conversation with Ben Lemi of Dawn Diver, who are playing a special free event at Wellington Museum this coming Saturday. We also lifted the lid on our October Playlist, featuring the freshest of cuts from throughout Aotearoa and beyond, carefully selected / fussed over with your listening pleasure in mind by UTR editor Chris Cudby.

Our Caught Live video for the week features Tāmaki Makaurau guitar-pop champs The Beths, who are concluding their epic 2019 global travels with a rapidly selling-out homecoming tour of Aotearoa in November – tickets are still available for their Christchurch and Dunedin shows but you better move fast. Get amped with footage of singer / guitarist Elizabeth Stokes performing a stunning acoustic rendition of the title track to their VNZMA Album of the Year | Te Pukaemi o te Tau nominated album Future Me Hates Me, with vocal accompaniment from her toe-tappin' bandmates, recorded for Paste Magazine earlier this year at Riverview Bungalow in Austin, Texas...