Welcome to another bumper episode of Riot Act. It's been a busy and mad week in the world of popular culture, Wembley paid tribute to Taylor Hawkins with one of the most star studded shows of all time, Cardiff hosted the first WWE pay per view in 30 years (and Steve was there, not really knowing what was going on), Harry Styles flobbed in Chris Pine's lap, the DIRTY GHETT, and we have been listening to new albums from Parkway Drive, Holy Fawn, The Bug and Stray From The Path.

Having fought our way through all that, we look at a couple of what could be considered guilty pleasures. There are probably plenty of you listening that would consider both The Killers and Insane Clown Posse to be, you know, a little embarrassing. We're not having it though! We give you the case for the defence for a pair of albums that many wouldn't admit to loving.

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Welcome back to another episode of Riot Act, a podcast about music. This week Steve is once again joined by Sam Sleight to chat about all the big issues and events over the last week.

There's new albums from The Callous Daoboys, JID and 156/Silence to get through, there's also some pretty depressing news from various angles regarding Scott Kelly's disgraced retirement from music, Pras from The Fugees getting tied up in a money laundering scandal, fire starting destruction at Reading and Leeds festivals and... this isn't so bad, Cradle of Filth and Ed Sheeran's collab effort drawing ever closer.

We then look back at the Human Rights Now! tour, which began on this day back in 1988 and featured a bill of Bruce Springsteen and The E-Street Band, Peter Gabriel, Sting, Tracey Chapman and more. All put on to raise awareness of Amnesty International, which it succeeded in doing in spectacular fashion. We track the progress of the ambitious tour and look at the genesis of the Benefit Concert, from Handel playing Messiah for a children's charity back in the 18th century, to Ariana Grande's One Love for Manchester concert set up in the aftermath of the terror attack on her Manchester Arena show in 2017.

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Hey there, look at that, you've gone and got yourself a bonus episode of Riot Act!

Steve is joined by Sam once again to discuss a very different pair of festival experiences that have happened over the last couple of weeks. Sam found himself at the Arc Tan Gent Festival, the premier UK festival for all things post-rock/metal to gorge himself on the challenging sounds of Cult of Luna, Amenra, Perturbator and more, while Steve has just arrived back from the Reading Festival, which gets more poppy and easily digestible with every passing year, to jump up and down (bad back permitting) to Dave, Bring Me The Horizon, Halsey and Charli XCX.

We do our best to cover as much as possible from both festivals, before answering some of your questions about our experiences, and seeing if we can find some common ground in two very opposing weekends.

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Welcome to a very special episode of Riot Act, the alternative music podcast. This week we are delighted to once again team up with our good friends Tom Dare and Matt Rushton from the excellent Hell Bent For Metal Podcast, for the finest crossover since... er... Suicidal Tendencies.

We warm up by chatting about new music in over two decades from Botch, the sad passing of former Cradle of Filth guitarist Stuart Anstis, and looking at new albums from Soilwork, Ether Coven and *sigh*... Muse.

Before getting into the real reason we've teamed up; for Steve and Tom to talk the much more youthful Matt through some of the highlights of the longest running televised music contest in history, The Eurovision Song Contest.

Expect high camp drama, a Terry Wogan love in, some bizarre stage costumes, some of the finest pop music in history and one of the hottest takes on ABBA you are ever likely to hear in your life!

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It's been a while, but it's time for another Riot Act Reviews. We're taking one big release from the music world and focusing all of our attention on it here, and Steve is delighted to be joined by Guardian and Metal Hammer journalist and full time Cult of Luna obsessive Matt Mills to pick through the bones of the latest Machine Head album; Of Kingdom and Crown.

We're ten albums into what has been a rollercoaster of a career for the Oakland metal legends. Whilst albums like Burn My Eyes and The Blackening are well established classics at this point, it's been a mixed bag ever since, with folk punk, rap metal and radio rock all being dabbled with over the past fifteen years. There's been plenty of line up changes and controversial booking decisions made as well, and at this point none of us are really sure what to expect from a new Machine Head album; will we get the muddled, lengthy Catharsis, or is it really "The Blackening part II" return to form that Of Kingdom of Crown has been talked up as in the build up to the release of the record?

We think we've got the answers...

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Hello, yes, welcome back to another episode of Riot Act, a podcast all about music.

This week Steve is joined by Gaz Jones, 90's Brit-rock enthusiast and the host of the very excellent Track One, Side One podcast. Together we cast our critical eye over some cracking new music from Russian Circles, The Spielbergs, Danger Mouse & Black Thought and The Interrupters, before reacting to the heart warming news that the two remaining members of Depeche Mode have shared a picture from the studio.

We end by talking about the upcoming Reading and Leeds festival, you may have heard that Rage Against the Machine have pulled out and been replaced by The 1975... it hasn't gone over so well. So we look back at our withered memories of the festival and try and work out when it changed, what it used to be and preview the line up for this year. Have a listen to our findings here...

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Welcome back to Riot Act, the home of all good alternative music chat. This week Steve is joined by Ohhms frontman and host of the excellent A Year in Horror podcast, Paul Waller to discuss the links between horror movies and music.

Paul picks six of the albums from his lifetime that he believes are the perfect accompaniment to the horror movie genre, which leads to in depth discussions on Kiss, Death, Sabbat, Bathory, Iron Maiden and Gost.

Plus we pay tribute to the late Olivia Newton John and review and eclectic group of albums from Norma Jean, Beyonce and Chat Pile. Spooky stuff!

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Welcome back to another informative look at the world of music from us here at Riot Act. It's the final week of lovely Sam Sleight's stand in tenure, and as such we have given him free reign to run us through his 20 favourite albums of all time. And there are some absolute cracking picks in there, if we do say so ourselves.

Before we get to that Steve and Sam talk about brand new albums from both Jack White and Working Men's Club, discuss the relative merits of the recent Mercury Mercury Prize nominations, cross their fingers for both a Kinks and Pulp reunion in 2023 and then recoil in horror at the new that there is another Red Hot Chili Peppers double album careering our way. Have we really not suffered enough?!

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Oh happy days, Riot Act is back. It's your weekly delve into the world of alternative music, and this week Steve is once again joined by lovely Sam Sleight to talk about new albums from Ithaca, RZA as Bobby Digital and Oceans of Slumber.

Before that we pay tribute to both Paul Ryder and Mariusz Lewandowski, both of whom sadly passed away recently, and end the show by looking back at Woodstock 99 on its 23rd birthday. Obviously it was a very controversial, tragic and infamous festival, and much of the blame of what went wrong is laid at the feet of some of the musicians on the bill. While we can't say that those pointing the fingers are being fair or reasonable in that assessment, we thought that maybe there would have been a more suitable way to book the festival to keep the ethos and aura of the original Woodstock more present in people's minds. So both Steve and Sam have fantasy booked the two main stages on all three days of the festival to see what might have been.

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