(Image credit: Harmony Gerber/Getty Images | Gabe Ginsberg/Getty Images)
Papa Roach singer Jacoby Shaddix has shared his thoughts on the ongoing nu metal revival.
In recent years, luminaries of the turn-of-the-millennium genre have started playing to larger crowds than ever before. Korn played the 25,000-capacity Gunnersbury Park in London last summer and headlined a Los Angeles stadium to celebrate 30 years of their debut album. Deftones are about to headline the 25,000-capacity Crystal Palace Park in London, and Papa Roach recently finished an arena tour of the UK and Europe.
In a new interview with Iowa radio station Rock 108, Shaddix calls the genre’s resurgence “dope” and says that other era-defining styles of metal, specifically hair metal, didn’t get to experience something like it.
He says (via Blabbermouth): “Dude, it’s sick, man, because although the 80s hair metal never really had this major resurgence – I mean, Mötley Crüe had a second wind – but nu metal, for real, is having like a second go-around right now. It’s so dope.”
The singer goes on to acknowledge the up-and-coming bands who were inspired by the original nu metal movement.
“And it’s cool because there’s this underbelly of bands that were listening to our bands back in the day that we’re now sharing the stage with all these guys – Beartooth and Bring Me The Horizon, to name a couple – that were fans of this genre of music,” he says. “And so you could hear how our music inspired them and influenced it and then they just flipped it on its head and did their own thing. And it’s just really cool to have this moment.”
Papa Roach toured Europe to celebrate 25 years of their breakthrough album Infest. Metal Hammer’s Merlin Alderslade attended their show at London’s Wembley Arena and awarded it a near-perfect four-and-a-half stars.
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Alderslade wrote: “‘You made our fucking dreams come true!’ says a visibly emotional Shaddix after a raucous Last Resort brings the evening to a close. Maybe, but this is a richly deserved moment for him and his three bandmates. Over 25 years in and there are few bands that could have so effortlessly handled Wembley as this.”
Papa Roach appear to be on the cusp of releasing their 12th studio album. The band put out a new single, Even If It Kills Me, in January.
Papa Roach – EVEN IF IT KILLS ME (Official Music Video) – YouTube
Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Prog and Metal Hammer, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, NME, Guitar and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.
You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.
Sixteen years between albums is Guns N’ Roses territory. But that’s how long Masters Of Reality frontman and psychedelic desert-blues swami Chris Goss has spent holed up in his California bunker, like a mystical Axl Rose, making The Archer, only the seventh Masters Of Reality album in a career that stretches back to the beginning of the 80s. A gestation that lengthy can result in a corpulent blowout, but The Archer is anything but. Instead, it’s lean, graceful and magnificent.
It drifts in like a cloud with the title track, Goss’s clear and high voice floating gently on top of it as guitars and gentle percussion stir the strangeness. There’s a sense of uneasy dislocation amid its beauty, a Masters Of Reality hallmark that reappears on the haunted cowboy ballad Powder Man, where he sounds like a singer echoing down from decades ago.
Masters Of Reality – Sugar (Official Lyric Video) – YouTube
Goss is a master shape-shifter, to the point where it makes his music impossible to pin down. The see-sawing Chicken Little has the same dizzying effect as staring up at a wide-open sky for a little too long; an electrical charge of guitar cuts through the malevolence of Mr Tap’N’Go; It All Comes Back To You drapes gypsy guitar around an effortlessly mighty chorus.
There’s a whiff of the lysergic to it all, or maybe it’s Goss’s fondness for astral travelling – or so he insists – that make these songs start in one place and end up somewhere completely different.
Masters of Reality – Mr Tap N’ Go (Official Visualizer) – YouTube
The Archer is an old-school album timewise, just nine tracks and 39 minutes. Experienced producer that he is (clients and compadres include Kyuss and Queens Of The Stone Age), Goss has resisted the temptation to turn on the firehose and let everything he’s recorded gush out brainlessly. It feels like these songs have been nurtured and crafted, carefully sculptured by the hand of a man who knows exactly what he wants them to be. Maybe more bands should try it.
Anyone who has followed Masters Of Reality’s stop-start career since the late 80s, when they were briefly and unhappily Rick Rubin’s pet blues-rock magicians, knows what to expect, which is Chris Goss sounding like no one else but Chris Goss. The Archer doesn’t step out of line with regard to their own albums, but it’s at a right angle to everyone else’s. Long may he continue to confound.
Dave Everley has been writing about and occasionally humming along to music since the early 90s. During that time, he has been Deputy Editor on Kerrang! and Classic Rock, Associate Editor on Q magazine and staff writer/tea boy on Raw, not necessarily in that order. He has written for Metal Hammer, Louder, Prog, the Observer, Select, Mojo, the Evening Standard and the totally legendary Ultrakill. He is still waiting for Billy Gibbons to send him a bottle of hot sauce he was promised several years ago.
Ghost have launched a video for Lachryma, from their upcoming sixth album Skeletá. The song, which mixes typically doom-laden riffing with bright and shiny AOR sizzle, is the follow-up to Satinized, which came out last month.
Lachryma is a title which, according to our Latin-English dictionary, is a Latin word meaning “tear”. It’s the root of many English words related to tears, such as “lachrymose”, “lachrymal” (also spelled “lacrimal”), and “Lachryma Christi”. So there you go.
“It opens with more of a riffage,” frontman Tobias Forge tells Metal Hammer. “And I guess now comes off as somewhat of a ‘typical’ Ghost mash-up, where it’s heavy on one end and met with a big, bombastic chorus. That’s a song about self-deceit.”
Skeletá follows on from 2022’s critically acclaimed Impera, and arrives on April 25 via Loma Vista, right as Ghost are set to head out on their latest world tour, which will take in dozens of dates that will include stops in Europe, the UK, North America and Mexico.
Apr 15: Manchester AO Arena, UK Apr 16: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK Apr 19: London The O2, UK Apr 20: Birmingham Utilita Arena Apr 22: Antwerp Sportpaleis, Belgium Apr 23: Frankfurt Festhalle, Germany Apr 24: Munich Olympiahalle, Germany Apr 26: Lyon LDLC Arena, France Apr 27: Toulouse Zenith Metropole, France Apr 29: Lisbon MEO Arena, Portugal Apr 30: Madrid Palacio Vistalegre, Spain May 03: Zurich AG Hallenstadion, Switzerland May 04: Milan Unipol Forum, Italy May 07: Berlin Uber Arena, Germany May 08: Amsterdam Ziggo Dome, Netherlands May 10: Lodz Atlas Arena, Poland May 11: Prague O2 Arena, Czech Republic May 13: Paris Accor Arena, France May 14: Oberhausen Rudolph Weber Arena, Germany May 15: Hannover ZAG Arena, Germany May 17: Copenhagen Royal Arena, Denmark May 20: Tampere Nokia Arena, Finland May 22: Linköping Saab Arena, Sweden May 23: Sandviken Göransson Arena, Sweden May 24: Oslo Spektrum, Norway
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Jul 09: Baltimore CFG Bank Arena, MD Jul 11: Atlanta State Farm Arena, GA Jul 12: Tampa Amalie Arena, FL Jul 13: Miami Kaseya Center, FL Jul 15: Raleigh PNC Arena, NC Jul 17: Cleveland Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, OH Jul 18: Pittsburgh PPG Paints Arena, PA Jul 19: Philadelphia Wells Fargo Center, PA Jul 21: Boston TD Garden, MA Jul 22: New York Madison Square Garden, NY Jul 24: Detroit Little Caesars Arena, MI Jul 25: Louisville KFC Yum! Center, KY Jul 26: Nashville Bridgestone Arena, TN Jul 28: Grand Rapids Van Andel Arena, MI Jul 29: Milwaukee Fiserv Forum, WI Jul 30: St Louis Enterprise Center, MO Aug 01: Rosemont Allstate Arena, IL Aug 02: Saint Paul Xcel Energy Center, MN Aug 03: Omaha CHI Health Center, NE Aug 05: Kansas City T-Mobile Center, MO Aug 07: Denver Ball Arena, CO Aug 09: Las Vegas MGM Grand Garden Arena, NV Aug 10: San Diego Viejas Arena, CA Aug 11: Phoenix Footprint Center, AZ Aug 14: Austin Moody Center ATX, TX Aug 15: Fort Worth Dickies Arena, TX Aug 16: Houston Toyota Center, TX
Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazinesince 2014. 39 years in music industry, online for 26. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.
You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.
Four albums in, we’re beginning to understand what we’ll get from Bridgend’s Those Damn Crows. They’re not ready to surprise us with major tangents just yet, but God Shaped Hole sees them building on 2023’s top-three album Inhale/Exhale, honing their craft with the doughty doggedness of those in it for the long haul and already sufficiently sure of themselves to deploy their weapons with relish and gusto.
The opening seconds of the opening Dancing With The Enemy sets the tone: big, almost krautrocky guitars, Ronnie Huxford’s clattering, Stranglers-style drums and a sprinkling of grunge squall before Shane Greenhall’s Eddie Vedder-eqsue vocals seal a very appealing deal. We’re barely half a minute in and the fists-in-the-air, made-for-arenas chorus has yet to be unfurled, but already we’re in a good place.
Those Damn Crows – No Surrender (Official Video) – YouTube
What follows confirms what was widely suspected: these are huge songs from a band with the potential to be huge. There’s buzz-saw heaviness at the heart of all they do, but the cascading melodies of Glass Heart, the Skindred-friendly light and darkness of No Surrender (a title they might perhaps reconsider) and the controlled brooding of the hypnotic The Night Train suggest this is a band who will not allow themselves to be caught in a rut.
Meanwhile, the better-than-it-sounds Let’s Go Psycho! boasts a spoken interlude, yet more massive drums, and the sense of urgency that fuels all the better rock bands. It shares the details of a conversation between God, AI and an ordinary person (not wholly surprising, it was written after Greenhall had enjoyed an afternoon on the psychedelic drug DMT).
Those Damn Crows – Still (Official Video) – YouTube
Most intriguing is the closing Still, which begins with Greenhall’s vocals floating over acoustic guitar. It’s their More Than Words moment, and for once they embrace the less-is-more theory as Greenhall relives a near-suicidal moment of a decade ago (‘My moral compass shows nowhere to go’). You’re waiting for the big guitars and even bigger drums to come in, but they never do, and the song is all the more powerful for it.
Still may be a curve ball, but while God Shaped Hole is a distillation of all that has gone before in Those Damn Crows’ world, the unashamedly American undertow to Dreaming and Turn It Around suggest they now feel ready to cast their net into international waters. It’s difficult to imagine there’ll be too much resistance. They’re on the right track.
As well as Classic Rock, John Aizlewood currently writes for The Times, The Radio Times, The Sunday Times, The i Newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph and Mojo amongst others. He’s written four books and appears on television quite often. He once sang with Iron Maiden at a football stadium in Brazil: he wasn’t asked back. He’s still not sure whether Enver Hoxha killed Mehmet Shehu…
In 2014 Mike Oldfield released Man On The Rocks, which featured a collection of vocal-led songs rather than a series of instrumental pieces. The Struts’ Luke Spiller was entrusted with delivering the vocal tracks; and the result, as he told Prog in 2025, changed his career.
“My initial knowledge of Mike Oldfield would have been limited to Tubular Bells as the soundtrack to The Exorcist – I didn’t put two and two together until much later. But I really started to dive in when I was approached to work with him on 2014’s Man On The Rocks.
You have two sides to him – you have his really deep instrumental side where he becomes like a rock classical composer; and then you have the songs that feature a vocalist.
Being the son of a preacher man, The Exorcist was regarded as something that one does not tiptoe into. Tubular Bells is such a great piece of music, but there’s also something very devilish about it that really pulls you in and makes you want to see how far down this rabbit hole goes. It does everything a great movie soundtrack should do.
Tubular Bells was him at his most hungry. He had everything to lose and he had to really prove himself – and it was him as a one-man band! There was no one else on that whole record. I think there’s a difference when an artist can do everything himself.
Bringing in dozens of additional musicians is all well and good, but there’s something really special about when someone sits down and just boils away at something with pure blood, sweat and tears, and sees it through to the end. It couldn’t have been more unique and authentic.
There are certain times in your life when you go through an experience and you come out of the other side having learned a lot. Doing Man On The Rocks was one of mine. It was totally alien to me to listen to his guide vocals – which, for the most part, were pretty good. I was very surprised.
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Then there are Mike’s lyrics; he’s a very interesting and really underestimated lyricist. He’s very, very deep. Working with him and co-producer Stephen Lipson was a really interesting process. I learned a lot of things about my voice and how to use it in different ways, which benefitted my future recordings.
I found a deep appreciation for everything that he’s done.”
Bon Jovi, who haven’t toured since 2022, are plotting a return to the stage. The band are performing at a three-day event scheduled for Nashville this June, but fans will need to dig deep: the cheapest single tickets, which don’t include hotel accommodation, are priced at $1,750.00.
According to the organisers, Runaway Tours, the package will include admission to an intimate private performance with Bon Jovi, a “Bon Jovi Forever Party” held at Jon Bon Jovi’s JBJ’s venue in Nashville, a signed photo of Jon Bon Jovi, a trip laminate and lanyard, and a “special gift”.
Runaway Tours have previously organised a number of exclusive Bon Jovi events, including a storytelling evening with Jon Bon Jovi in Las Vegas in 2014, and an event in the Bahamas the following year. The company has also organised packages in conjunction with Eagles legend Don Henley and Matchbox Twenty frontman Rob Thomas.
Bon Jovi’s onstage activities have been curtailed by their frontman’s well-publicised voice problems, but he has made several live performances since Bon Jovi’s last North American tour finished in April 2022.
In February last year, Jon Bon Jovi made a brief appearance at the MusiCares Awards Person Of The Year ceremony in Los Angeles, where he sang two songs solo, before the band reconvened for the opening night of JBJ’s in June. A second JBJ’s show – with the house band – followed in September.
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Online Editor at Louder/Classic Rock magazinesince 2014. 39 years in music industry, online for 26. Also bylines for: Metal Hammer, Prog Magazine, The Word Magazine, The Guardian, The New Statesman, Saga, Music365. Former Head of Music at Xfm Radio, A&R at Fiction Records, early blogger, ex-roadie, published author. Once appeared in a Cure video dressed as a cowboy, and thinks any situation can be improved by the introduction of cats. Favourite Serbian trumpeter: Dejan Petrović.
Bon Jovi is returning to the stage this summer. Unfortunately, only a lucky few will be there.
The group hasn’t toured since 2022, as frontman Jon Bon Jovi dealt with a throat issue that threatened his voice. His only appearance since was a mini-set in February at the MusiCares awards in Los Angeles. Bon Jovi is now scheduled to play this June in Nashville, but only in an “intimate private performance” at a “secret location” as part of an exclusive weekend travel package. No show-only tickets will be sold.
Dates are June 13-15, 2025, with pricing that includes three days and two nights at the JW Marriott in Nashville. A fan party is also scheduled at Bon Jovi’s local restaurant, JBJ’s Nashville. Trip packages go on sale at noon ET on Monday, April 14. They are available exclusively at runawaytours.com.
Bon Jovi released Forever in 2024 and played a surprise Nashville concert to celebrate. No proper tour followed, however, and the LP quickly vanished from the charts. Bon Jovi later confirmed that he was still recovering from a 2022 procedure called vocal cord medialization. He said he’d healed enough for one-off performances but not for the rigors of a long string of shows.
“I just wish there was a fucking light switch,” Bon Jovi told The Guardian last summer. “I’m more than capable of singing again. The bar is now: Can I do two and a half hours a night, four nights a week? The answer is no.”
In the meantime, Bon Jovi said he was putting together a re-release of Forever with special guest duets. “This is an album that we’re very proud of,” he told Sound on Sound, “and I think it’s the best Bon Jovi record since [2007’s] Lost Highway or at least [2005’s] Have a Nice Day.”
AC/DC have enough great opening songs for about 10 bands – but which is the best?
That’s for you to decide. Below you’ll find videos for 11 candidates, from the Bon Scott-era staple “Live Wire” to “If You Want Blood (You’ve Got It),” which the band has been using to start shows on their current Power Up tour.
You can vote for AC/DC’s best concert-opening song once an hour between now and Sunday, April 27 at 11:59PM ET. The winning song will be announced the following morning.
AC/DC’s 2025 North American Power Up tour kicks off Thursday April 10th in Minneapolis and concludes May 28 in Cleveland. You can get show and ticket information at the band’s official website.
Back in November last year, organisers of the Coachella festival revealed that Lady Gaga, Green Day and Post Malone would headline the annual event.
Among the other acts later confirmed for Coachella 2025 include The Original Misfits, The Prodigy, Kraftwerk, Amyl & the Sniffers, The Go-Go’s, Jimmy Eat World, Circle Jerks, Blonde Redhead and Kneecap.
The festival will take place over two weekends at at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California, with the first weekend starting on Friday, April 12 – and you’ll be able to catch all the action on the official Coachella YouTube page.
There you’ll find streams for the main stage, the Outdoor Theatre, Sahara, Mojave, Gobi and Sonora so you can pick and choose who you want to see live.
Alternatively, you can download the official Coachella Livestream app on the App Store or Google Play. The app will synch to your time zone and you can also create a schedule and set reminders so you don’t miss your favourite artist.
Highlights will also be able to be streamed on-demand through the app should you miss some of the action.
Last year’s Coachellla was headlined by Lana Del Rey, Tyler, the Creator and Doja Cat.
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How to watch Coachella 2025
The Coachella festival will once again take place at the Empire Polo Club in Indio, California over the space of two weekends: April 11, 12 & 13 and then April 18, 19 & 20.
Scott has spent 35 years in newspapers, magazines and online as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. Scott joined our news desk in the summer of 2014 before moving into e-commerce in 2020. Scott keeps Louder’s buyer’s guides up to date, writes about the best deals for music fans, keeps on top of the latest tech releases and reviews headphones, speakers, earplugs and more for Louder. Over the last 10 years, Scott has written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog. He’s previously written for publications including IGN, Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald, covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to tech reviews, video games, travel and whisky. Scott’s favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Cocteau Twins, Drab Majesty, The Tragically Hip, Marillion and Rush.
Gorgeous, gutsy and geared-up for long listening sessions, the third-generation Emberton speaker has a lot going for it. If only its output were a little more detailed, especially at the bottom end, it would be a formidable offering at this price range.
Pros
+
Powerful, punchy audio
+
More than 30 hours battery
+
Quick charge
Cons
–
The bottom end could be more spacious
You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.
In years gone by, the name Marshall conjured images of a huge number of speakers stacked high on a stage. These days, though, you’re just as likely to see the British brand’s logo emblazoned across portable Bluetooth speakers as you are a massive guitar amp.
There are several of these diminutive boomboxes in the growing Marshall range, giving music fans the chance to carry that iconic look and sound with them wherever they go.
Launched in August 2024, the Marshall Emberton III is the latest of these portable Bluetooth speakers, and the follow-up to the successful Emberton II that was released in May 2022. That was a pretty solid speaker, so why should you consider its successor?
In this review, I’ll give you the lowdown on the Emberton III’s design, features, sound quality and competitors, to help you decide if it’s worthy of your money.
Design
The first thing that struck me when the Emberton III arrived in the post was how small the outer packaging was. It’s about the size of a brick – which makes it ideal for fitting into a Christmas stocking, but did make me wonder whether the speaker inside would provide the power I need. I’ll let you know about that later in the review.
Kudos to Marshall for the way they’ve packaged the Emberton III. It’s all very neat and tidy, with the unit itself clothed in soft polystyrene, and the cable and instructions contained in separate compartments.
As for the speaker itself – I’ve reviewed the Sage version (the Emberton III also comes in Black & Brass and Cream), and it looks absolutely lovely. Although not particularly rock’n’roll, the colour scheme is modern and stylish and provides a nice contrast to the trademark Marshall grille and gold/brass logo. The rubbery casing has an aesthetically pleasing, snakeskin-look effect too.
Speaking of the casing, it has a solid feel to it, which you might expect from a firm that’s renowned for making robust studio and stage equipment. This undoubtedly contributes to the speaker’s heavy feel (it’s 0.67kg) – don’t worry, though, as the Emberton III is still easy to carry around, even without a handle.
Marshall report 27% of the Emberton III is made from plastic (79% of which is recycled plastic). This is interesting because the speaker doesn’t feel at all plasticky. Holding it in my hand, it felt like one tough cookie – and this is backed up by its IP67 dust and waterproof rating, which means you can submerge it in three feet of water for up to 30 minutes… if you really want to!
In terms of controls, at the top of the unit there’s a gold/brass rocker switch (up or down for volume; left or right for skip tracks), on/off and Bluetooth pairing buttons, plus a bright, red battery status bar.
While I don’t have a major aversion to the rocker switch, I would prefer a proper knob for adjusting volume – but that’s just personal preference. You can also control the speaker using the Marshall Bluetooth app – I’ll talk more about that in the next section.
Last but not least, there’s a USB-C socket on the side of the device for when you want to charge the battery or power it via the mains.
Features
As previously mentioned, the Emberton III can be controlled using the Marshall Bluetooth app. This allows you to play/skip tracks and adjust the volume, which is useful for when you’re not standing close to the speaker.
Elsewhere, there are three equaliser presets to choose from – which I’ll talk about more in the ‘Sound’ section below – and a Battery Preservation feature, which enables you to do things like limit the maximum charging speed in order to prolong the battery’s lifespan.
Speaking of the battery, the amount of play time you’ll get from a two-hour full charge is one of the Emberton III’s key selling points. You can expect 32+ hours, which is roughly two hours more than the Emberton II, and more than twice the longevity of the original Emberton speaker.
What’s more, if the speaker’s completely out of juice and you don’t have time to charge it fully before going out, you can plug it in for just 20 minutes and expect to get six hours of playtime – which should be enough to soundtrack your whole day.
Helping the Emberton III to preserve battery is its support for the power-efficient Bluetooth 5.3 LE (low energy) standard, which is an upgrade on the Emberton II’s Bluetooth 5.1. This latest speaker also supports Bluetooth multipoint connectivity, which means you can connect more than one device (phone, tablet, etc) at the same time.
Another way in which the Emberton III trumps its predecessors is in the microphone department – put simply, this speaker has one while the others didn’t. This means you can now use the speaker for hands-free calls, and also communicate with the voice assistants (Siri, Alexa, etc) on your phone.
As for what’s inside this speaker, the Emberton III packs two 2” 10W drivers, two passive radiators and two 38W Class D amplifiers. To find out how well these components perform together, carry on reading.
Sound
(Image credit: Marshall)
When I turned the Emberton III on, it cranked into life by playing a short electric guitar riff. It’s a nice touch and lets you know that the speaker is ready to rock and roll.
To test its sound quality, I started off with an HD version of Oasis track Cigarettes And Alcohol. As those iconic first chords began to chug through the front and back grilles, I was immediately struck by how loud this portable speaker could go. The bass is also really impressive for a unit of this size – tinny it most certainly ain’t. For me, the most satisfactory equaliser preset was the standard ‘Marshall’ one, as it offered the most balanced output. I felt that ‘Push’ was a little too heavy on the bass, while ‘Voice’ accentuated the mid ranges too much.
On to Walk This Way by Run DMC and Aerosmith. Again, nice weighty bass. However, listening to this track backed up a feeling I’d got while listening to the Oasis song – that the output, and especially the bottom end, isn’t quite as spacious or as clear as I like it to be. Indeed, if I’m being honest, when I subsequently played Walk This Way on my 2nd Generation Amazon Echo, I preferred how it sounded. OK, so it lacked the ballsy bass of Marshall’s speaker, but for me the music was given much more room to breathe.
I’m not dismissing the Emberton III – far from it. It’s a lovely-looking speaker that offers terrific power, hefty bass and outstanding battery life. I just can’t shake off the feeling that the sound could be a tad clearer.
The alternatives
That thing I mentioned about the Emberton III not sounding as good as my Amazon Echo? Well, that speaker is pretty old now, so you might want to try Amazon’s We Hear 2 instead. Made in tandem with German brand Loewe, it’s a similar size to the Echo but can be used out and about. It offers 17 hours of battery life and packs a whopping 60W of power.
If you’re happy to spend more money, then the Bose Soundlink Max must be considered. This portable powerhouse provides superb stereo sound and more than enough oomph to fill a room – even if the 20-hour battery life is down on what the Emberton III offers.
Paul has spent the past eight years testing and writing about gadgets and technology for the likes of Louder, T3 and TechRadar. He might not have the wealth or the looks of Tony Stark, but when it comes to knowing about the latest cool kit, Paul would surely give Iron-Man a run for his money. As for his musical leanings, Paul likes everything from Weyes Blood to Nirvana. If it’s got a good melody, he’s on board with it.
