Ensiferum are a true powerhouse when it comes to folk-inspired melodic death metal, something they hammer home more resolutely than ever with eighth full-length Thalassic.

Crown Of Thorns serves as the band’s twelfth studio album as The Crown and is the dynamic, groundbreaking follow-up to 2021's Royal Destroyer. The band made distinctly different creative choices to ensure that the LP’s ten songs would stand as a unique collection.
“For me, Cobra Speed Venom and Royal Destroyer are like siblings,” says guitarist Marko Tervonen. And while Royal Destroyer was termed a “a ridiculously catchy album,” The Crown wanted to “make sure that we would take a step forward, get a bit more out of the comfort zone on Crown of Thorns.”
It's very few bands who have a revered and established career - The Crown celebrated their 30th anniversary in 2020 (their first eight years spent as Crown of Thorns) - yet up the ante continually. With 2018’s Cobra Speed Venom the band reached the same lofty heights as their 2002 landmark release, Crowned in Terror. And with the barbaric Royal Destroyer, and now, 2024’s powerful and unique Crown of Thorns, the metal vets rage with a rekindled fire and ferocity while honoring their roots.

On Heavy Metal - the debut solo album from Cameron Winter - the Geese frontman unravels his eclectic influences into a surreal mosaic of modern songwriting. Rumored to have been composed in abandoned basements, taxi back seats, and in impromptu jam sessions in public spaces, Heavy Metal draws on both the chaos of the road and Winter’s greater sense of existential dread.

Originally recorded in 1995 in Prague at the famous Karlin Studios (the former broadcasting hub of the occupying Soviet forces), Food of Love has been out of print for many years. With a stellar line up of Julian Nicholas, Emil Viklický, joined by Robert Balzar and the late Dave Wickins, this remarkable album was laid down in two days. The freshness and spontaneity of the music making was in Julian’s view, due to the fact that he and Dave Wickins were great friends and had already made albums together, and, in Emil they had met a kindred spirit. Food of Love sounds freshly minted, as all great music making does… Play on!

Recorded at the Philharmonie de Paris and one and a half years after releasing his magnum opus "Music For Animals"—described by PopMatters as “a musical waterfall of monumental proportions”

On his new album ‘Bosquejos do Brasil’ jazz saxophonist Lucas Santana (Brazil, 1993) brings contemporary Brazilian and Latin American music in a classical context, paying homage to the likes of Jobim, Bonfá and Nascimento. Lucas also wrote six new compositions that reflect his personal, musical journey between classical and jazz. Line up jazz quartet plus string quartet. This CD represents the culmination of a long journey, says Lucas. “It is a collection of musical ideas that blend the spontaneity of jazz, the beauty and rich melodies of Brazilian music, with the structured beauty of classical music.”

Romain Leleu and his musical partner Julien Gernay, captivated by the sounds of the unique instruments in the Musée de la musique, invite us on a whirlwind tour around the land of the French trumpet and cornet. Other musicians have joined them to add a touch of horn and trombone to these pieces, whether originals or transcriptions of emblematic works from a ‘Belle Époque’ indeed!

Since their inaugural presentation, Paganini’s Twenty-Four Caprices have consistently garnered admiration from audiences, with their mesmerizing effect attributed to the exceptional technical proficiency demanded of the performer. Conversely, it is uncommon for performers to project anything other than their own instrumental excellence, with the technical content of the performance becoming the primary focus for listeners. François Sochard, concertmaster of the Orchestre de chambre de Lausanne, has risen to the challenge with his first solo album, which is as sensitive as it is daring.

Linde Tillmanns presents her new album “Stillness, Chaos, Thoughts, Feelings” containing 12 compositions by her hand for sextet and trio.

The program “Musical Moments by Schubert and Rachmaninoff” explores two distinct approaches to the same musical concept. For Schubert, Musical Moments embody an intimate form, where simplicity and poetry unfold through brief and elegant pieces. Composed in 1827, a year before his death, these six miniatures distill the essence of his work, alternating between lyrical melodies and darker atmospheres, as a tribute to the fleeting nature of time.

The River' is concerned with how a location holds and hide memories, and inadvertently how perspective and time creates unreliable narrators.

In his Symphonie fantastique, the young Berlioz bared his soul in music, torturing himself with passion — some might say obsession — for his beloved. Through tender love scenes, a thrilling march to the scaffold, and an opium-induced nightmare, Berlioz’s riveting masterpiece is unforgettable.

LTO's ambition to create ever more ambiguous and far-reaching sonic environments, whilst retaining something of the familiar and physical, have led him to take inspiration from imagined landscapes of the folklore of his Welsh ancestry and of the planet Mars.

Our new album ‘Echoes Across Borders’ is brought to you by principal clarinettist of the Welsh National Opera Thomas Verity and British-Hungarian pianist and composer Michael Csányi-Wills. This album takes as its jumping-off point Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg’s Clarinet Sonata. Its resonances are then answered in Csányi-Wills’s brand new Clarinet Sonata. References to Jewish themes emergent in both works take centre stage in Michael’s Variations on a Ukrainian Theme, which takes as its source material a recording of a song by a 19-year-old concentration camp prisoner from 1945 – the same year that Weinberg wrote his Sonata. Finally, we come full circle but heard afresh, with a cross-genre realisation of Weinberg’s Rhapsody on Moldavian Themes by a contemporary klezmer band.

Under its recently appointed Director of Music, Stephen Mannings, Liverpool Cathedral Choir sets down a programme of music for occasions of Remembrance.