JULY

This Month's Landscape

July is a mixed bag. You have **Deep Purple** continuing what is now a six-album partnership with producer Bob Ezrin, which has been solid work if not essential. You have **Motörhead** getting a 20th anniversary treatment on "Kiss of Death," which if it was worth issuing once, I suppose someone thinks it deserves the deluxe edition treatment. We live in the age of reissues. I sold that album 300 times in my store.

The meat of the month is legacy acts still swinging. **Five Finger Death Punch** returns with "Legacy" — their first record in four years. **Ratt** gets a reissue of "Dancing Undercover," which is the hair metal angle. I don't have much to say about that. **The Hu** brings throat singing and Mongolian elements to metal, which is different enough to notice. Hardcore continues with **Madball** delivering street-level intensity on "Not Your Kingdom."

You want my honest take? It's a solid month with no breakthrough moments. Plenty to spin. Nothing that makes you sit up and reconsider what metal can be. But that's fine. Not every month changes everything. Sometimes you just get good records from people who know how to make them.

Their sixth studio album produced by Bob Ezrin. Ian Gillan brings an end-of-the-world concept that trades apocalypse for metamorphosis. Ezrin at the helm means orchestration, depth, and production sensibility most bands abandon after two albums. **Deep Purple** at this stage is more interesting than they have any right to be. This is a band that could have checked out decades ago.

Track listing TBA. Expect arpeggios, Jon Lord-inspired keyboard work from Don Airey, and Ritchie Blackmore's influence still hanging over every note even though he is not in the room.

Fourth studio album in four years. This is their tenth record overall, first since 2022. They have made a career out of being heavy, accessible, and exactly the kind of thing rock radio does not mind. This is not a compliment or an insult. It is fact. Better Noise Records knows what they have here.

If you expect depth or surprise, you are not paying attention to what **FFDP** does. They make big riffs, straightforward vocals, and songs that land exactly as intended. For some listeners, that is enough. That should be fine.

A Mongolian band doing what no one else does. Throat singing, traditional instruments, and heavy metal fusion. You cannot accuse them of chasing trends. They are creating something that lives in its own space. Better Noise Records is backing them, which tells you the label sees potential in something genuinely different.

This is the kind of band you put on when you want to remind yourself why rock and metal matter. Not everything has to be a reference to something that happened before. Sometimes different is enough. Track listing TBA.

Twenty years. **Motörhead's** "Kiss of Death" gets the treatment. This was 2006. Lemmy was still Lemmy. The album was exactly what you expected from them at that point in their career. Not the best, not the worst. Solid, loud, and uncompromising on their own terms.

Expanded reissue via BMG. If you care about bonus material, sessions outtakes, or the documentary treatment, this is the version. If you have the original CD and it still plays, you know what you are getting. Nothing new to say about a record this old except that **Lemmy** would be amused that we are still talking about it.

1987. The second album. This is the hair metal entry point for the month. Rhino Records is handling the reissue, which means someone in Los Angeles decided that now is the time to give this the vinyl treatment again. The album has its moments. "Back for More" is not terrible. "Dance" is exactly what its title promises.

I do not have much to say about hair metal in 2026. I already said what I needed to say about it in 1989. But this is a historically significant record, and if you missed it the first seven times it was reissued, here is your chance again.