Alien Metal

Yeah.

So guys, I mean, new album, Alien Metal.

Techno album.

You never can predict what you guys are gonna do.

It's, it's just unbelievable.

That sounds rough, huh?

Well, I had a bass player and he choked on some of the cheese and had to go to the hospital.

He did live, but yeah, we just decided we- we're just gonna be kind of more of an album band.

Those are weird back to back.

I mean, imagine if some like one band did also like Phantom Island and then Alien Metal back to back.

Impossible.

Yeah.

That seems more likely than bluegrass, that's for sure.

It does.

It's not really, just like Alien Metal, it's not really techno.

It's not true boogie grass.

On the show today, we're about three quarters of the way through the year, so I thought I would take a bit of a stock take on the best Australian music that I've heard so far in 2026.

And we're just dealing with songs, not so much albums.

So we've got about 25 songs by about 25 different artists.

That's what we've got coming up on the show today.

One of the members, though, does live in Australia, so they qualify as Australian on that score, but another lives in London, another in New York, and another in Wellington in New Zealand.

They originally started off in Christchurch in New Zealand, all of them, but they've just moved to different parts of the world and they continue to collaborate online.

And when it comes to serious stuff like putting out albums, they just pick a city.

I'll go to somewhere in Mexico or they'll go to Japan or somewhere like that and just book a space, get together and start recording their stuff online.

And hey, there's a good chance you'll learn some rock history you never knew before.

In the previous episode of this two-part series on the glam rock phenomenon of the 1970s, we discussed its origins and the key early singles and albums in its development.

T-Rex, Slade, Roxy Music and its most transcendent star, David Bowie, were covered.

The closest thing to a North American version of glam rock stars were Alice Cooper and Lou Reed and we took on their early work.

Roxy Music continues to chug along without Brian Eno, albeit in a slightly more guitar-heavy, conventional way, while Eno himself releases a couple of visionary, innovative art rock records.

Lou Reed rides the polar opposites of dark, somber theatricality with his album Berlin and campy sleaze with Sally Can't Dance.

And of course, David Bowie continues to amaze with landmark albums, the second of which sees him subtly shift away from glam and onto something altogether weirder and more fascinating.

So slap that makeup on, put on your lipstick, slip into your high platform shoes, and pour some glitter on your gorgeous selves as we, for the second and final time, bask in the glory of glam rock.