Leeds band 'Versus' celebrate their debut album 'The Catalyst' with a live gig showcasing the full album.

This post-hardcore band  will launch their debut album "The Catalyst" at Lending Rooms, Leeds, on December 12th.

The album starts with "The Catalyst," which sets a cinematic mood, then moves into the emotional songs "Lost & Found" and "Burning Bridges," mixing hope and sadness. 

Versus examines the everyday fight using skewed perceptions, emotional outbursts, and quiet reflection.The band says the record is about standing in the ashes and realizing that sometimes destruction is the first step toward rebuilding and renewal.

 "It's as much about self-discovery as it is about the chaos that surrounds us." 

The Catalyst perfectly encapsulates Versus in their rawest and most intense form. The album is primitive and cinematic, changing from forceful, aggressive sections to vulnerable, haunting ones, demonstrating the band's versatility in post-hardcore and alternative music.

The band honed their sound through years of practice, growth, and live performances. Their music explores where emotions and mayhem meet, mixing order with disorder. 

With The Catalyst, Versus step forward as one of the UK's most interesting voices in modern post-hardcore. 

The Catalyst will be available on all streaming platforms 12th December, 2025, with pre-sale available now. Out 12th December, 2025 via CK Records.

Click here to see more about the debut album launch

York Band, Miles and The Chain Gang release new track 'We're All Amateurs Here'.

The bands new track is on Spotify and other platforms and available now. 'We're All Amateurs Here' is brief, energetic reflection on human imperfection.

It's the 13th track the band have released since the start of 2020, and the fifth song they have released in 2025.

The band have seen an increase in traffic in 2025. Their songs have been streamed 10,000 times this year, and they've been heard in countries around the world, thanks to Spotify and internet radio. 'Road To Damascus', their soul-blues thumper, was played over 1000 times on internet radio following its release in July 2025. Total plays on Spotify are now around 37,000.

 'Things are building,' says Miles Salter, the band's singer and songwriter. 'It is slow, but you do what you can. Really, I need a proper budget so I can promote this thing effectively, but it's great to know people around the world have listened this year. Taylor Swift gets 37,000 plays in a lunchtime, but you just have to do your best and work on building it as best you can.' 

The band returned to Young Thugs studio in York for the latest song. 

Tim Bruce, who has been a gang member since the start (2018), played bass, new recruit and multi-instrumentalist Gary Stewart played drums and Jonny Hooker provided keyboards, as well as production duties. 

The new track mixes influences like REM, U2, Talking Heads and Pink Floyd. 'There are different influences in there,' says Miles. 'It's a tiny bit postmodern, I guess. Jonny found a percussion loop that I like and that's at the start of the song. It's nice when the studio surprises you, you end up with something a bit different. Tim always has nice ideas, he brings different things in. It's much stronger when you have several people all helping to make it work.' 

'We're all amateurs here' was released via Kycker in Novembe. It will be on all the main streaming platforms, including Spotify, Apple Music, Deezer and more.

Click here to visit Miles and the Chain Gang

Dylan performed seventeen songs at Leeds. Nine songs from Rough and Rowdy Ways, and mostly what many fans would consider minor tracks from his immense back catalogue.

His band had Anton Fig on drums, longtime ally Tony Garnier on bass, Bob Britt on guitar, Doug Lancio on guitar and Bob on a piano, a little guitar and harmonica. 

The concert starts with Dylan seated playing the guitar either with his back to the crowd or facing the band, depending on your perspective. For two or three minutes he then turns around and sits at the piano. This occurred several times during the show. Dylan stood only for the concert finale with the rest of the band at the end. 

Dylan's vocals were clear and powerful, and the songs, even the recent ones, had gone through multiple re-arrangements sounding radically different from the originals. 

The band had a kind of rockabilly sound on a couple of numbers with a prominent drum sound from Anton Fig. On some numbers he played 'experimental' sounds adding a mysterious texture to the lyrics. 

I thought Dylan played the piano well, and it was very prominent most of the time. The second song, 'It Ain't me babe', had an effective chorus, the band performed 'Desolation row' interestingly and powerfully, and 'It's all Over Now Baby Blue' sent the crowd into a frenzy, with people shouting 'thank you's' back at him.  

The show culminated with 1981's 'Every Grain of Sand' the track generally considered the saving grace of his 'Christian Period', and ended with an inspired harmonica solo leaving me with a wistful feeling that the show was now over. 

As is common with all recent shows there was no encore. Also, as far as I can recall Dylan didn't speak to the crowd, not even to introduce the band. 

He has certainly been introducing them at other show's so that felt a little odd, also none of his 'thank you everybody' you often get from him at the end of a song. But I am reminded of a Dylan lyric from 1981's The Groom's Still Waiting at the Altar, a song he didn't play at this show 'Mistake your shyness for aloofness, your shyness for snobbery.' 

So how would I rank the concert? I thought it was great. Having seen him four time's I would say it was one of the better ones, but it was of course heavily loaded with songs from Rough and Rowdy Ways. However, since the show was clearly advertised as The Rough and Rowdy Ways tour, people should not complain about the lack of familiar tunes. How clear can he make it to people that this is what you're going to get and, as I heard someone in the crowd say, it must be heartbreaking to have to play the same songs over and over for 60 years? 

So, if you like what Dylan is doing now, I highly recommend these shows. If all you are familiar with is his sixties work, then the show probably won't work for you, as clearly it rests on that album.  

On the 7th of June 1988, Bob Dylan began what fans know as his Never-Ending Tour (though the designation was rejected by Dylan) sometimes playing over a hundred shows a year. 

The tour seemed as if it would go on and on, and for a long while it did, an ever-evolving band, with songs changing, morphing from one performance to the next. 

Rarely did these shows pander to a greatest-hits collection. Shows ranging from the heights of inspiration to those moments when inspiration seemed to fail him. 

For many, this was all part of being a Bob Dylan fan; sometimes shows could change from bad to worse or vice versa, in the same evening or even the same song! Dylan would experiment with phrasing and singing styles with every performance, rarely repeating himself. 

In the 90s every show had a different set list, keeping just a handful at key points in the show, song 3, song 5, etc. It was a wonder to witness Dylan living in the moment and not playing by rote. And all these shows are circulating as fan recordings, thousands of them. 

Things settled down a little from 2013 when Dylan's setlists became more static and he could hone the same song night after night. All was well until this came to a halt when the Never-Ending Tour ended because of lockdown. 

On March 27th, 2020, Bob Dylan released a new song, the first original since the album 'Tempest' in 2012. After winning the Nobel Prize for Literature on October 13th, 2016, he surprised everyone by releasing two more albums of Sinatra covers, following the release of Shadows in the Night in 2015, and then he released Fallen Angels and the third instalment, aptly called 'Triplicate' a triple album of standards. So, the release of a new original was big news.

The song 'Murder Most Foul' about the murder of JFK was also at 16 minutes and 56 seconds his longest song to date. 

Released (for free) on YouTube, it came with this message. Greetings to my fans and followers with gratitude for all your support and loyalty across the years. This is an unreleased song we recorded a while back that you might find interesting. Stay safe, stay observant and may God be with you. Bob Dylan.

 Back then, no one knew if there would be another album. Later, people could freely listen to a couple more songs, 'I Contain Multitudes' and 'False Prophet', from his upcoming album Rough and Rowdy Ways, which was released on June 19th, 2020. 

When lockdown was lifted Dylan was back on the road, starting in November 2021, in Wisconsin. This time, Dylan gave the tour a name: The Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour. 

Every show Dylan has played since — except for his performances at Willy Nelsons Outlaw festivals, which had radically different set lists and his two short Farm Aid shows — have included 9 of the 10 songs from Rough and Rowdy Ways and have been played under that name. 

The song he hasn't yet sung live is the previously mentioned Murder Most Foul. The tour is still called 'The Rough and Rowdy Ways Tour'. One gets the impression that Dylan is proud of this most recent batch of songs. 

At all these shows except the festival shows, Dylan has insisted upon mobile phones being locked in Yonder pouches. So, it was a rare experience in Leeds to be around a large group of people with not even one person looking down at their phone. Dylan has also resisted the modern trend of having video screens projecting the band. 

So at this show in Leeds, I got the distinct feeling of going back in time to when concerts were about, well, about music. 

There is a clip on YouTube from a show in Vienna 2019, when Dylan and band stop playing and Dylan says to the crowd 'I'll say it once again you can either take pictures or don't take pictures, we can either pose or play' and after a while, they played. 

See here for tour dates.