Are you feeling miserable? Anxious over the disease, depressed at being shut in, broke as fuck and wondering how May’s rent is going to be paid? Well, much as we’d like to give you the solution to all those ills, we can’t — except for the ailment of emotional misery. Right now, at least for about four minutes, we can blast those dismal demons into outer darkness. Or more accurately, the Swedish band Tøronto can do that — man, can they do that!

In naming their debut EP Under Siege, it’s almost as if Tøronto foresaw the current siege, and also foresaw exactly what would be needed to break the siege — eight bursts of high-voltage speed metal delivered with a raucous punk vitality, the kind of wild thrill-ride that their label’s publicist sums up as “greased-up NWOBHM colliding headlong into early Razor and Warfare, but overseen by Inepsy, mid ‘80s Discharge, and even Howard Benson-era Motörhead“.

If those references get you salivating, wait ’til you hear “Ride the Rails“, the song from Under Siege that we’re premiering today in advance of the record’s May 22 release by Dying Victims Productions. Continue reading »