While the music industry is littered with accounts of survivors, the vast majority are those who have endured multiple (un)healthy and self-destructive decades within the business. Very few, however, can compare to Beth Blade and her ordeals, yet here is a truly unbreakable spirit with an irrepressible joie de vivre. In an age when accolades are scattered as liberally as confetti, she is a genuine inspiration.
Beth Blade And The Beautiful Disasters – Vintage Rebel x Trauma Bond
Release Date: 12 September 2025
Words: Sophie James
Beth Blade, together with her Beautiful Disasters, return this Friday with the release of their fourth album, Vintage Rebel x Trauma Bond. This is an album that can be succinctly described, just like the old football cliché, as A Game of Two Halves.
“This is an album for those whose souls are torn in two,” Beth says. “For those who need to escape from real life or who wear a mask to get through their day.
“For the moments we’re able to forget the world and burn brightly to the music.
“For the nights we don’t wanna turn off the light because we fear ourselves more than the monsters.
“It’s two distinctive sides and personalities existing in one vessel to deliver a story.” 
Side One, i.e. Vintage Rebel, “Explores the retro, the history, the old school and everything we’ve learned from the trailblazers of the past about rock ‘n’ roll.”
Before further scrutiny, these half dozen tracks boil down to four out ‘n’ out rockers, the big power ballad and a whiskey-soaked duet.
“Looking back, I just laugh. Things never seemed to work out right for me.”
A brace of big drumbeats kickstart the breezy effervescence of first single Never Let Go. The kind of number that would generate tremendous crossover appeal from repeated exposure on US FM Radio back in the day.
Next up is second release You Only Love Me When You’re Drunk, a number hopefully many of you will now be familiar with. With a conversational guitar above a glam beat, this is a 3 1/2-minute contagion that wriggles its way into your subconscious, and in my humble opinion, it’s not even the most absorbing earworm on the collection.
More on that later. One can imagine this igniting in a live setting.
“Down the Front, we forget about tomorrow. Just for tonight, we bang our heads, forget our sorrows.”
Cue Cowbell! No more needs to be said about the topic here. It has the feel of Kiss and could easily sit in their back catalogue. The kind of song that celebrates that Friday or ‘Crunchie’ feeling. Like its predecessor, it’s tailor-made for live performance.
“People say the pain fades, but it still hurts like it was yesterday.”
I Still Want You is the big power ballad. As it soars and implores, I would say it is one of the best vocals Beth has committed to vinyl.
“If you want me, then you’re gonna have to give me more. You can’t be wasting my time, so I’m showing you the door.”
Right from its initial chord, Over It means business. Over the frantic riff and funky bass, Ms Blade delivers the vocal with a sassy swagger signalling her growing exasperation at the subject relationship.
“We were doomed to ruin before it started.”
A Rock N Roll Romance is a duet with the gravelly-toned Arjun Bhishma of groove kings Gorilla Riot. Commencing with what one pictures as heartfelt exchanges of emotions in a rundown bar, it builds into something that would not be out of place in a slick Hollywood production. I’m getting a Germanotta/Cooper dynamic here.
With swirling Hammond and accentuating Sax, it takes the traditional quartet-based arrangement to an altogether higher plane as the protagonists contemplate ‘what might have been’.
Side Two, Trauma Bond is something else entirely. Back to Beth: “It’s about the pain, the struggle, the fight to keep going in the face of all the darkness and being able to sit with it and still choose to move forward.”
As befits such explorative themes, the arrangements of what follows exhibit an ambition and evolution.
“Open your eyes, you are deceived. Believing lies, a hate they feed.”
Colour Of Our Bones possesses a gloriously propulsive, grungy fuzz that adds impact to Beth’s soaring yet caustic social commentary. Bad times produce good music, and this is another prime example of a musician employing their art to vent their frustration and justifiable anger at the world.
Musically, a Side One track, but lyrically totally Side Two.
“I tried to give you the antidote to the darkness you had hiding inside.”
Third teaser Damage’s melody and attack is so propulsively uplifting. It is THE earworm of the album, which contrasts completely with the impassioned darkness of the lyrics. The kind of track that has you reaching repeatedly for the Repeat Button.
“When will I see myself as more than broken?”
“Now I won’t be satisfied until your heartbeat screams my name.”
Every day’s a school day. Limerence is a term that I had not previously encountered, although it is a sensation I’m sure many have experienced.
This latest single occupies that middle ground between ballad and compelling rocker. It possesses a doomy, adagietto feel coloured by delicate keyboard flourishes before Beth flies high on the chorus.
“They’ll never hear the way I talked to myself today.”
One is instantly enchanted by the flowing lick of Dysmorphia as both Symphonic Metal and theatrical traits surface during its course. The lyrics perfectly articulate the inner loathing and self-doubt, yet still retain hope for the future.
“All of these monsters that stalk my dreams are ghosts of real flesh and blood that left scars on me.”
You Never Screamed paints a powerful picture of traumatic female experiences from childhood through adolescence and beyond. A flowing acoustic provides the accompaniment for Beth’s wistful vocal prior to the expansive, incensed punch of the chorus.
“The weight of the world had dragged me down. In quicksand, in tears, I’d drowned.”
Following a chiming opening, Eclipse returns to grungy territory with an AIC-type groove coloured with SOAD-style flourishes. The immersive rhythm is something that I look forward to experiencing live. A song of hope and redemption on which to close.
With lyrics exorcising bitter experiences, Vintage Rebel x Trauma Bond is a deeply personal and cathartic album.
If the musical colours followed such responses entirely, it would be a bleak listen. But Beth Blade is not that kind of artist, hence we have the light and the shade.
The moods created are uplifting, hedonistic and escapist or contrastingly darkly lamenting to convey the expelled feelings. In my time contributing to MetalTalk, I have never felt more compelled to feature so many potent lyrical extracts in a review to illustrate the moods.
An essential listen. On first play, it may not overly appeal to the casual listener, but given time, its dark treasures will slowly unfurl, leaving an undeniably powerful empathy with the artist.
Catch Beth Blade And The Beautiful Disasters at the Album Launch Show at The Waterloo, Blackpool, on 21 September or at any of the other iconic venues around the country. The band also feature at China Street Beer & Music Festival at The Pub, Lancaster, on 11 October 2025. For more details and album pre-orders, visit linktr.ee/BBATBDOfficial.
