ROCK & METAL: YES return, and a Debut Album on a Nintendo Cartridge
Your dispatch from the UK scene
Issue #4
From the Editor
Festival season is upon us. The tents are coming out of the loft, the wellies are by the door, and the lineups we’ve been poring over since the depths of winter are about to become real. There’s nothing quite like that first walk through the gates, the distant thud of a soundcheck carrying across a field, the realisation that you’re about to spend a weekend with thousands of people who love this stuff as much as you do.
This week’s issue leans into that energy. We’ve got everything from prog legends 24 albums deep to a debut record pressed onto a working Nintendo cartridge, plus a clutch of new bands worth getting to know before they’re the ones on the bill you’re racing across the site to catch.
So get your calendar out, start mapping the clashes, and let’s get into it.
Read our FULL Download Festival 2026 Preview here.
🤘 This Week’s Big Stories
Yes return with 24th studio album Aurora
The prog institution are back, with Aurora landing 12 June via InsideOutMusic/Sony Music. Built across home setups after the Classic Tales of Yes tour wrapped in 2024, with Steve Howe producing and acting as the point all ideas flow through, the record spans everything from a seven-minute opener to the sprawling 13-minute ‘Countermovement’. Roger and Freya Dean’s artwork returns for a deluxe green vinyl artbook edition. Twenty-four albums in, Yes clearly have no intention of standing still. Read more at RAMzine.
Daydream Plus announce debut album with a playable NES chiptune edition
Instrumental rock outfit Daydream Plus, featuring members of Tomb Mold, have announced debut album Second Last Day Of Summer, out 10 July via Run For Cover Records. The real talking point: a limited companion version, Extended Forecast, that reconstructs all twelve tracks in 8-bit and presses them onto a fully functional retro Nintendo cartridge. Lead single ‘Speed Limit’ is out now.
Here and Everywhere release new single ‘It’s in the Way’
Rock duo Here and Everywhere drop ‘It’s in the Way’ on 29 May, tracked at Abbey Road Studios and mixed by multi-Grammy-winning engineer Andrew Scheps. The 80s vibes wail in from the very first second, and we’d put money on these two being great live.
📍 UK Scene Spotlight
Young Martyrs — Bath & Bristol
Right on our own doorstep, alt-americana-turned-indie-rock four-piece Young Martyrs are gearing up for new album Might Just Be Enough this summer, led by single ‘Sugar On My Tongue’. Recorded between Real World Studios in Bath and Indefra Studios in Frome, with mastering by Christian Wright at Abbey Road, it’s the sound of a band who’ve quietly been doing the work for years. Frontman Tom Corneill reckons Bath is finally a scene worth watching, thanks to events like 7 Hills and Party In The City, and after two decades grafting locally, Young Martyrs are proof of it. If you like Kings of Leon, start here.
📋 Quick List: 5 New Bands On Our Radar
Toria and the Terror — Liverpool-formed, Tokyo-based horror punk with riot grrrl bite. Debut EP The Operating Table is out now and surely destined for UK festival stages.
Young Martyrs — Bath and Bristol’s finest slice of guitar-driven indie rock, with an album due this summer.
Daydream Plus — Instrumental rock meets 8-bit chiptune, for the math-rock and video-game-soundtrack crowd.
Mass Hallucination — Leeds hardcore punk four-piece on Makeshift Swahili, raw and DIY, with a self-titled EP out on cassette. For fans of Negative Approach and Killing Joke.
Loons — Newcastle (Australia) alt-rock with their sights set on a UK tour. One to catch before they make the trip over.
💭 Honest Opinion
Festival season always brings the big-name announcements, the headliner reveals, the “is it worth £350 plus camping” debates. But the festivals that actually keep this scene alive are the smaller and mid-tier ones, the ones booking the bands three slots down who’ll be headlining in five years. Every act on that undercard is somebody’s new favourite band waiting to happen.
So as the calendar fills up, we’d make the case for spreading your money around. Sure, go to the big one. But throw a weekend at a grassroots festival too, the kind run by people who do it for love rather than spreadsheets. That’s where the discoveries are, that’s where the next generation cuts its teeth, and frankly it’s where the best stories of the summer tend to come from. The scene needs those fields just as much as it needs the arenas.
Read about the Maid of Stone 2026 Line-up here.
🔗 If You Loved... Try This
Classic: Yes → Try Now: The Pineapple Thief
With Aurora proving Yes still chase ambition 24 albums deep, The Pineapple Thief are a natural next step for anyone wanting that same thoughtful musicianship in a current band. More restrained and song-focused than full-blown symphonic prog, they trade some of the cosmic sprawl for mood and atmosphere, but the craft and emotional weight that drew you to Yes runs right through them. A modern prog institution in their own right.
🎸 Did You Know?
Daydream Plus’s chiptune edition isn’t just a gimmick sleeve — it’s a genuinely playable Nintendo cartridge, with the artwork displaying real temperature readings accurate to 30 August 2025 in Toronto, the meteorological “second-last day of summer” that gives the album its name.
🎧 On Rotation
New Release: Yes – Aurora (the title track and ‘Turnaround Situation’ are both out ahead of the 12 June release)
Deep Cut: Beartooth - 'Pure Ecstasy' (like a rising phoenix he returns, and that kind of emotional weight is exactly what makes the best music.)
Can’t Stop Playing: Daydream Plus – ‘Speed Limit’ (the breezy summer-eve instrumental we flagged this week)
Until next week – keep it loud.
Victoria // RAMzine