The Blog

Part I: 1975 – 1979 My parents think I’m crazy and hate the things I do… Where does one begin? I mean, when I try and put into some sort of perspective and do the numbers, it all gets kinda scary. But I’ll give it a try anyway. What you’ll read herein is a very […]

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I don’t mind having a dabble (or two!) with some AI (Artificial Intelligence) drawing apps. Sometimes the results are spectacular. In actual fact, all the art for the Murders In The Rue Morgue Vol III album have been AI created. (Believe it or not as the art looks spectacular!) Anyway, feeding the prompt “devil holding […]

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Forty Three Years Ago!  That’s just something so hard to comprehend when I can remember it all detail for detail as if it happened yesterday! Yeah, forty three years ago, I went to my first gig, KISS at VFL Park. I wasn’t alone. 45,000 people attended too that day, making it for the time – […]

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Alice Cooper – iconic Rock and Roll Hall of Fame® Inductee revs up as loudly as ever on his latest solo album “Road” and reveals the first single “I’m Alice” today. Produced by longtime collaborator Bob Ezrin, it’s written, composed and recorded with his trusted, longtime bandmates – Ryan Roxie [guitar], Chuck Garric [bass], Tommy [...] Continue Reading

I am not sure who created these pieces but, they blew me away as soon as I saw them. It’s as if all the Rue Morgue Records graphics and ethos have somehow coma to life. Superb AI created photos that need to be seen to be believed! So… here they are! Enjoy!

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There is very little that extreme metal artists Cradle of Filth haven’t done over their career – but according to front man Dani Filth there was one thing he felt they needed to do – make their first live album in twenty years. Filth gets his wish with Trouble And Their Double Lives which was [...] Continue Reading

Shot down, traumaticTime haunted by the past When your back catalogue of music contains arguably the greatest Metal album of all time, is it any wonder that everything you do will always be judged (harshly) against that. And that is disappointing because since said greatest Metal album, 1986’s Master Of Puppets, that vast majority of […]

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  IN FLAMES are one of the biggest metal bands in the world – never shying away from pushing their artistic boundaries, crafting music that’s as catchy as it is crushing. Formed in 1990, the band is considered one of the forefathers of melodic death metal and the purveyors of the ‘Gothenburg sound’. With thirteen studio albums […]

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No matter where you look in music press over the past years outlet after outlet have been praising the work of the brutal Arch Enemy. Their lives shows have been described as brute force and their latest album Deceiver was called a work of slaying art. Mind you the band have overcome some things that […]

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Legendary vocalist GEOFF TATE is coming back to Australia after his highly successful shows performing Operation Mindcrime in its entirety back in pre-Covid 2020. This time, Aussie fans are in for a real treat, Geoff Tate and band will perform two classic QUEENSRŸCHE albums in their entirety, Rage For Order and Empire!  Stylistically the two albums couldn’t be further apart. Rage For Order was more progressive than [...] Continue Reading

They say that sometimes great adversity leads to something special. That is certainly the case when you consider new Australian blackened death metal outfit Black Lava. While Australia was enduring some of the harshest pandemic lockdowns in the world the inception and birth of Black Lava came to life when ex Ne Obliviscaris drummerDan Presland [...] Continue Reading

Over the years a number of bands and artists that I have interviewed have often mentioned that one of their biggest influences on them as youngsters was the 1980s born hard glam rock band Faster Pussycat. While Faster Pussycat may not have reached the heights of some of the other bands haunting Sunset Strip at […]

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Halestorm has grown from a childhood dream of siblings Lzzy and Arejay Hale into one of the most celebrated rock bands of the last two decades. Called a “muscular, adventurous, and especially relevant rock record” by Rolling Stone, their Vicious album earned the band their second Grammy nomination and led one magazine to name Halestorm “Rock Artist of the Decade” in 2019.   In Australia Vicious [...] Continue Reading

Clocking in almost four decades, it’s no stretch to say that Grammy-nominated Swedish epic doom legends Candlemass are still one of the heaviest metal bands on earth. As the godfathers of epic doom metal, the band defined the genre with releases such as Epicus Doomicus Metallicus (1986) and Nightfall (1987). Through their evil riffs, crushing rhythmic attack and dramatic vocals, they [...] Continue Reading

Music documentaries can be strange beasts. It has seemed over the past few years that they either became a tabloid doco where a filmmaker sets out to expose an artist or they become a vanity affair where the main aim is to showcase an artist’s career or in some tragic cases simply boost album sales. […]

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Being a Fear Factory fan is a little bit like being on a constant roller-coaster ride with a little bit of ghost train thrown in for good measure. Over the thirty years that the band has been operation for there have been plenty of highs, a couple of lows but added to that is the [...] Continue Reading

English heavy metal group Iron Maiden outside the Island Queen pub in Islington, London, 1982. Back row, left to right: singer Bruce Dickinson and guitarist Adrian Smith. Front row, left to right: bassist Steve Harris, drummer Clive Burr and guitarist Dave Murray. (Photo by Michael Putland/Getty Images) In The Mist Dark Figures Move And Twist! [...] Continue Reading

Straight from Metallica HQ the world woke up to some HUGE news: Yes, you read that correctly... we have completed recording at HQ, and our 12th studio album is coming your way! It’s been six years since Hardwired…To Self Destruct, so we think it’s about time for some new music. With 12 tracks totaling over [...] Continue Reading

By: Rod Whitfield First up, I have personally written a review of this album previously, but when John from Rue Morgue Records asks you to write more about the great Dev, you damn well accept! To make it different, I will make this a track-by-track examination of the main album Lightwork, and then a discussion [...] Continue Reading

The forthcoming Celtic Frost box-set has received the stamp of approval from Tom Gabriel Warrior! And that, ladies and gentlemen, has us very, very excited for this release! To quote Tom from his blog... As a life-long vinyl album collector, I have always felt that a record company's decision to compile a box set is [...] Continue Reading

There have been a lot of questions asked about Melbourne metal lords Witchgrinder over the years. Are they industrial? Are they thrash? The answer to those questions is that Witchgrinder is an entity and a sound all of their own. There was nothing before them that was similar and nobody has managed to emulate their [...] Continue Reading

SLIPKNOT will release its new album, "The End, So Far", on September 30 via Roadrunner. The official music video for the LP's new single, "The Dying Song (Time To Sing)", can be seen below. Directed by the band's own M. Shawn "Clown" Crahan, the clip sees one of the world's most popular and deeply enigmatic [...] Continue Reading

You know, the term 'old bastard' gets thrown in my direction a few times, but when you got to be a child in the Seventies, you can throw any name at me you like... the Seventies were the BEST times to be a kid. No contest! Social Media and the internet were all years away [...] Continue Reading

It is hard to pinpoint an exact sound for Melbourne’s very own HZED. Some have said that their style of rock conjures up memories of  Chrissy Amphlet while others say they have had the unique ability of capturing 50 years worth of rock all in one track. While a lot is said about them one [...] Continue Reading

What's the buzz, tell me what's happening! Winter has surely hit us hard in the Southern Hemisphere! Well, as hard as a Australian winter can hit I guess. And the colder months find us all at Rue Morgue Records facing an extremely busy period. Both the online store and the record label are experiencing a [...] Continue Reading

Whilst putting together the compilation albums we are doing at Rue Morgue Records, with every campaign we usually get 50-60 bands who send through their music. Which is great! I love getting the opportunity to hear stuff I otherwise would not have. The most disappointing aspect of this process tho, is telling a band that [...] Continue Reading

It was a Friday night sometime in 1989. I was visiting the boys at Metal For Melbourne which had become a weekly ritual in that year. They unpacked a bunch of new stuff that had come in and out of the cardboard box came a record called The Real Thing by Faith No More. "Who [...] Continue Reading

By Rod Whitfield Moving Pictures. The album. When approached to do a review of this mighty record for its 40th anniversary, I was tantalised and excited by the prospect, and just a little daunted, at the same time. After all, what does one say about this record that hasn’t been said before in the last [...] Continue Reading

My love for Ghost... my fanatical love for all things Ghost, happened on the release of the band's first album Opus Eponymous quite a few years ago now. I plugged them and defended them wherever I could. Many laughed at me but over time, those laughs became fans as well. You know who you are! [...] Continue Reading

Well it is not exactly Christmas coming early, but this year we will see an extra AusMusic T-Shirt Day thrown into the calendar, Rising to popularity in 2015 the first AusMusic T-Shirt Day was held in order to raise money for SupportAct, a charity that is designed to help out artists and those who work […]

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40 Years Of Music From The Elder I remember it as if it were only days ago. It was November 11 1981 and my last day of school before summer holidays. It had turned out to be a good year for yours truly and I was excited to kick off the summer holidays with the […]

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ROCK ICONS KISS CELEBRATE MULTI-PLATINUM DESTROYER ALBUM - SUPER DELUXE ANNIVERSARY EDITION OUT NOVEMBER 19, 2021   When it comes to back catalog Deluxe Editions, Anniversary Editions  and Special Box Set releases, KISS have been found wanting. Let's face it, most of them have been subpar and well - for a band like KISS, kinda [...] Continue Reading

The producers of Becoming Led Zeppelin, the first official documentary about the iconic band, released its first trailer after the movie premiered at the Venice Film Festival yesterday. Guitarist Jimmy Page, who attended the event to represent fellow surviving bandmates Robert Plant and John Paul Jones, explained why they’d never previously agreed to take part [...] Continue Reading

By John Raptis IRON MAIDEN Senjutsu RELEASE DATE: September 3, 2021 PRODUCERS: Kevin Shirley, Steve Harris RECORDED: Guillaume Tell Studios Trackllisting: Senjutsu (Smith, Harris) 8:20 Stratego (Gers, Harris) 5:00 The Writing On The Wall (Smith, Dickinson) 6:14 Lost In A Lost World (Harris) 9:32 Days Of Future Past (Smith, Dickinson) 4:04 The Time Machine (Gers, Harris) 7:09 Darkest [...] Continue Reading

By David Griffiths One of the most ambitious projects of last year was the Murders In The Rue Morgue Vol 1 album, and the great news is it was so successful that Rue Morgue now has Vol 2 well and truly on the way. Once again the album is going to be full of some [...] Continue Reading

We are thrilled to announce the release of IRON MAIDEN’s 17th studio album Senjutsu on September 3rd through Parlophone Records (BMG in the USA). It was recorded in Paris with longstanding producer Kevin Shirley and co-produced by Steve Harris. For Senjutsu – loosely translated as ‘tactics & strategy’, the band once again enlisted the services […]

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75th Birthday Celebrated By Launch Of First Ever Official Website   Iconic AC/DC singer Ronald Belford “Bon” Scott would have turned 75 years old on Friday, July 9, 2021.   To mark this occasion, Bon’s family is launching the first ever official Bon Scott website which will serve as a destination for fans keen to discover more about the legendary […]

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Pre Order Now! Dive Into Ruin is delighted to announce that our new 5-track EP “Smithereens” is to be released as a 10-inch coloured vinyl via Rue Morgue Records. Dive Into Ruin is a truly unique Aussie punk rock 4-piece that has been a regular player in the vibrant Melbourne music scene since 2008, featuring […]

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Roger Waters has revealed that the long delay in releasing a remixed version of Pink Floyd’s Animals has been caused at least in part by a battle over the album’s liner notes. Now, he’s bypassing the problem. In new online posts, Waters says he’s agreed to have the remastered 1977 LP issued without liner notes. […]

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“We released a single with Rue Morgue Records last year so it was a pretty easy step to just keep that relationship going that was already there. We’ve been really happy with John and I think that he has been really happy with us so it was just common sense to keep that relationship going.” […]

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