Happy Halloween! Today has a lot of interesting releases, but I'm not going to have as much time to dive into them as I'd like - real life calls. That said, I did have a chance to check out a few records this morning before things got crazy. 

Last night, I caught the tail end of A Queer Ritual, a two-day festival highlighting local and national queer heavy bands that was held in the basement of a warehouse/art space building in an industrial pocket of Minneapolis. This show came to my attention because of its two national headliners, Ragana and Couch Slut. I assumed that these two bands would be split across the two days of the festival, but when the daily lineups were announced, both were billed on Saturday night. With two bands I was interested in seeing at a venue I'd never visited before, plus the interesting niche of a queer-focused lineup and audience, I figured I had to check it out. 

Happy Friday, all. I'm about to peel back the curtain a share a little behind the scenes magic on how I put together these posts. I pull up some of my trusty new release lists and start listening to the albums that interest me early in the morning. If there aren't many, I'll usually listen to my picks a couple times through or more. As I listen, I start building out this post over the course of the day. I post once I've run out of new albums I'm excited to listen to - or once real life dictates that I'm not going to be able to spend anymore time on it. Today, it became clear that this post would drop later in the day, because it's an oddly stacked new release day - plus, I've got a couple other recent releases to mention as well. TO THE READ MORE LINK!!!!!!!

Happy Friday! Here's what caught my attention from this week's new release drop. 

There's a new Athlean-X video out today (embedded above) about the two dumbbell exercises you need to build your chest. As I've mentioned before, Jeff Cavaliere and his Athlean-X workouts were absolutely critical in my personal fitness journey. One of few t-shirts I own that's not a band shirt is an Athlean-X shirt, which I bought because the company literally changed my life for the better. 

It's also because of Athlean-X I learned a fitness truth about myself: I freakin' love dumbbells. 

I'm alive! A long weekend led to a short week, but as most people know, having fewer work days in a week doesn't typically lead to a reduction in the amount of work that needs to be done. In other words, I've been really busy with my day job, which resulted in a quiet week here on the blog. But I'm back, armed with some great new tunes. New music ahoy!

​I'll be leaving for a long weekend tomorrow, so I won't get to a weekly music recap in tomorrow. But I still want to share a few miscellaneous thoughts as the week draws to an end.

• The video above from Jeff Nippard has some great exercises to consider adding into your routine. 
• Miracle Blood, one of the first bands I covered for my concert recap series, has a new live EP coming out on November 6th. It will be fun! The first live track dropped on YouTube a couple months back. 
• The first wave of lineup announcements for Prepare the Ground and Roadburn 2026 have dropped. Prepare the Ground scored a rare North American set from Oranssi Pazuzu and the only Svalbard North American set ever. Roadburn has an even bigger score - an Oathbreaker reunion. I'd given up any hope on ever seeing them live. I still probably won't! But a guy can dream.
• It's October, so you are required by law to listen to The Evil One by Roky Erickson, the most perfect Halloween album of all time.