Foo Fighters’ new drummer debut, Toadies’ Steve Albini farewell session, At The Gates’ final album with Tomas Lindberg, and 12 more new releases worth your time.
Stevie Wright’s Hard Road up next, Pretty Girls Make Graves revisited, and the best listener suggestions in the Hopper right now.
This Week on Dig Me Out
Pretty Girls Make Graves’ Good Health: The 27-Minute Album That Had Everything
Remember when you couldn’t take a CD out of your car player? Not because the stereo was broken, but because the album inside was too perfect to remove? That’s what Good Health was for a certain kind of listener in 2002. This week on Dig Me Out, we revisited the Seattle post-hardcore band that existed for just six years (2001–2007), made three albums, and left a mark that still hasn’t faded. Producer Phil Ek (Built to Spill, Modest Mouse) captured something raw but never under-produced, and Stereogum wasn’t wrong when they called it “28 delirious minutes that are enough to leave you breathless and stirred.” If you haven’t heard it since college, you owe it to yourself.
80s Metal Poll: Demons, Thrash, & Black Crowes Connections
80s horror soundtracks, thrash experiments, and genre-defining chaos. Each one’s got a story worth telling. The question is: which one do you want to hear us tear into first?
Know a lost or forgotten album that deserves the spotlight?
Suggest it for a future episode.
Coming Up Next
Stevie Wright – Hard Road (Tuesday, May 5)
If the name Stevie Wright doesn’t ring a bell, here’s the entry point: he was the original lead singer of The Easybeats, the Australian band that gave the world “Friday on My Mind” in 1965. Hard Road was Wright’s 1974 solo debut, and it was produced by Harry Vanda and George Young, the songwriting duo who would go on to produce AC/DC’s early records. That pedigree alone should make your ears perk up.
This one was picked by Gavin Reid, a member of the Board of Directors. Give it a spin before Tuesday and come ready with your take.
Want to hand-pick an album and join us on the podcast to discuss it? Join the Board of Directors at dmounion.com.
New Releases
Foo Fighters – Your Favorite Toy
You know Foo Fighters. Your Favorite Toy is their 12th album, out April 24, and at 36 minutes it’s the shortest thing they’ve put out. The bigger story is the drum stool: this is the first Foos record with Ilan Rubin behind the kit, following Taylor Hawkins’ death in 2022.
What works: Eli Enis at Kerrang! calls it “back to brilliant basics as Foo Fighters strip back and crank the volume on killer 12th album.”
What doesn’t: Drew Litowitz at The A.V. Club calls it “a retread of well-worn ideas advertised as a ‘return to form.’” If you wanted Foo Fighters to evolve rather than consolidate, this won’t change that.
The Toadies – The Charmer
Fort Worth’s finest, authors of “Possum Kingdom,” are back with their eighth studio album, their first in nine years. The detail that makes it worth your attention regardless of where you land on the band: The Charmer was tracked all-analog with Steve Albini at Electrical Audio, one of the final projects he completed before his death in 2024.
What works: Jeremy Lukens at Glide Magazine writes that the record “stays true to the raw, aggressive roots of their early work.” The Albini influence is audible in the best way: nothing is smoothed over.
What doesn’t: Nine years is a long time, and David M. Rangel at The Indy Review frames it as “a no-frills record, devoid of studio trickery.” That stripped-down approach rewards familiarity with the band’s earlier work; coming in cold, the appeal is less immediate.
At The Gates – The Ghost of a Future Dead
The Swedish band that wrote the rulebook for melodic death metal with Slaughter of the Soul in 1995 returns with their eighth album. Vocalist Tomas Lindberg recorded his parts the day before surgery for the cancer that took his life in September 2025. This album is his last. It debuted at number one on the Swedish albums chart.
What works: Nick Ruskell at Kerrang! gave it five out of five: “Out of context, it stands tall among their best records.” Fans on r/melodicdeathmetal have treated it as a landmark moment.
What doesn’t: This is unrepentant melodic death metal: tremolo riffs, blast beats, Lindberg’s signature bark. Even sympathetic listeners can find it heavy lifting. As Andrew Rothmund at Teeth of the Divine put it, “the songs vary fairly widely in style; thus, depending on what you actually want from At The Gates, you might be put off by various sections of this album.” If the genre has never been your entry point into extreme music, the emotional story will likely land harder than the songs themselves.
If you want to hand-pick an album for a future episode and join us on the podcast to dig into it, that’s exactly what the Board of Directors is for. Join at dmounion.com.
American Football – LP4
If you know American Football, you know “Never Meant” and that 1999 self-titled debut. LP4 is their first album in nearly seven years, and Mike Kinsella has written a record about middle age, divorce, addiction, shame, suicide, and rebirth across 10 tracks and nearly 50 minutes.
What works: Sam Law at Kerrang! calls it “a huge, exploratory, horrifyingly candid” record that “may just be their best.”
What doesn’t: American Football have always asked for patience, with songs that build slowly over seven or eight minutes. As Boolin Tunes’ 9/10 review notes, the band turns “disparate personal tragedies into a collective opus that is disarming and often breathtaking,” but only if you commit. Background-listen this one and you’ll miss everything that makes it work.
Failure – Location Lost
Failure are one of those bands the people who know them feel personally responsible for. Location Lost is the LA trio’s seventh album, written by Ken Andrews while recovering from back surgery and intentionally turning off what he called his “editorial brain.” Hayley Williams of Paramore guests on “The Rising Skyline.”
What works: PsychicChris at Sputnikmusic gave it 4.5 out of 5 and called it “an especially impressive offering that may be their best since Fantastic Planet.” That’s a serious benchmark for this fanbase.
What doesn’t: Failure’s appeal is cumulative. The discussion thread at r/failure shows the split: longtime fans love it, but newer listeners often note they can’t fully connect without working back through the catalog. If Fantastic Planet isn’t already in your rotation, the “best since” framing won’t carry the same weight.
The Claypool Lennon Delirium – The Great Parrot-Ox and The Golden Egg of Empathy
Les Claypool and Sean Ono Lennon’s third record together is out May 1, seven years after South of Reality. It’s a 14-track concept album about the Paperclip Maximizer, an AI ethics thought experiment about a superintelligence that optimizes for a single goal until it consumes everything. There’s a 24-page comic book included. Claypool says it’s the most labor-intensive project of his career.
What works: Eric Harabadian at Music Connection gave it an 8 out of 10 and called it “their best yet.”
What doesn’t: The concept demands buy-in and the runtime demands patience. If Primus or Sean Lennon’s solo work has ever struck you as trying too hard, Tim Jackson at Far Out gets at the line you’ll have to cross: he calls it “a fantastical attack on AI that leans on the right side of psychedelic charm.” Whether you agree with the “right side” depends on your tolerance for the Delirium universe.
Also Out This Week
Sepultura – The Cloud of Unknowing (EP): Four songs recorded spontaneously in Miami, the final studio work from a band wrapping up a 40-year career on their “Celebrating Life Through Death” farewell tour. SonicAbuse called it a “mini-masterpiece and a very special farewell” (10/10).
Tori Amos – In Times of Dragons: Her 18th album, a 17-track concept record about escaping a sadistic billionaire Lizard Demon husband, out May 1. Spill Magazine called it outright “a masterpiece.”
Metric – Romanticize the Dive: Their 10th album, recorded at Electric Lady Studios and designed as a conscious return to the band’s early essence. AllMusic said it’s “yet another great Metric album” and a showcase for Emily Haines’ vocals after 25 years together.
The Black Keys – Peaches!: A covers album of blues tracks, recorded live with minimal overdubs in Nashville, the first they’ve self-mixed since 2006. Louder Sound heard something revitalized and unrefined; the A.V. Club was less convinced.
The Boo Radleys – In Spite of Everything: Their ninth album, out May 1, written in the shadow of real loss (the death of bassist Tim Brown’s son) and produced by Brown himself, without Martin Carr. Hotpress called it an impressive return from Britpop maestros, full of catchy hooks and gorgeous harmonies.
Seefeel – Sol.Hz: The pioneering duo’s first full-length in 15 years on Warp Records, described as their “dub album,” built on cavernous bass, processed effects, and hazy shoegaze-electronic textures. Igloo Magazine called it “ambient-adjacent music with a pulse, dub-inflected electronic music with a human touch.”
John Corabi – New Day: The ex-Motley Crue vocalist’s first full-length of original material, produced by Marti Frederiksen (Aerosmith, Ozzy) with Richard Fortus of Guns N’ Roses on guitar. Maximum Volume Music (8/10) wrote: “What you are really hearing is a songwriter with genuine mastery of the craft.”
Glen Hansard – Don’t Settle Vol. 1: Transmissions East: Recorded live over two days at Berlin’s Funkhaus studio in April 2025 on Hansard’s 55th birthday, this career retrospective draws from his work with The Frames, The Swell Season, and his solo records. Hotpress called it a “powerful and spellbinding listen” (8/10).
Doug Gillard – Parallel Stride: The Guided By Voices and Nada Surf guitarist’s fourth solo album, his first in 12 years, 11 tracks co-produced with Tom Beaujour. Louder Than War called it “a fabulously catchy new album of simpatico songs.”
Fresh in the Hopper
These are recent listener suggestions sitting in the queue, waiting for their moment.
Cherry Blossom Clinic, The Great Poptastic Splendorbomb (2002), submitted by whitsbrain. Described as “very catchy, hook-filled songs with loud guitars that just crunch and grind,” with comparisons to Redd Kross and the Blue or Maladroit stages of Weezer. The whole thing runs 30 minutes and whitsbrain says if you’re fond of harder-edged power pop, “you should certainly enjoy this.” That’s a persuasive pitch.
HSAS, Through the Fire (1984), submitted by Chip. A supergroup of Sammy Hagar, Neal Schon, Kenny Aaronson, and Michael Shrieve that, by Chip’s reasoning, should have been a much bigger deal: Hagar’s solo run was in full swing, Schon had Journey behind him. Then Hagar joined Van Halen in ‘85 and Schon went back to Journey, and the whole thing became a compelling one-and-done footnote. The counterfactual is genuinely interesting.
CIV, Thirteen Day Getaway (1998), submitted by Gavin Reid. CIV started in the hardcore scene, moved into SoCal punk, then surprised everyone on their third album by pivoting toward a 70s British rock sound: think the Faces, but with 90s loudness. According to Gavin, the pivot was met “with predictable bemusement by the public,” the album sank the band’s momentum, and they faded away so completely that they only recently showed up on streaming. That’s a classic Hopper story.
Springbok Nude Girls, Surpass the Powers (1999), submitted by Gary Kalmek. Despite what Gary admits is a terrible name, SNG became the biggest rock act in South Africa in the late 90s. Their thing: a non-ska punk band with a trumpet player who contributes meaningfully to the songwriting, each track blending different styles of rock into something cohesive. Recorded by Kevin Shirley. Gary’s description alone earns it a spot on the list.
Got a lost or forgotten album that deserves the spotlight? Drop it in the Hopper.