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She started training at 15, signed with WWE before she’d finished working out who she was, and then did the hardest thing in wrestling, she stopped. Now 25, rebuilding at TNA and figuring out where the character ends and she begins, Elayna Black talks to Dom Smith about anxiety, imposter syndrome, Deftones, and the one musical genre she’ll never love. More here: https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/the-lines-get-blurred-brianna-coda-reflects-on-rediscovering-elayna-black/

Thirty years after Republica’s self‑titled debut detonated on the mid‑90s scene, Saffron Sprackling still talks about the band like it’s all just kicking off. With a 30th‑anniversary reissue on the way and a new UK tour booked, she isn’t treating this as a museum piece. For her, Republica are still a living, mutating thing – and their legacy is about much more than nostalgia. For more visit: https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/medicine-for-the-soul-saffron-sprackling-on-30-years-of-republica/

There’s a particular kind of dread that runs through the work of Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats—a slow, creeping unease that feels at once timeless and painfully contemporary. On the band’s new album, Shapes of Midnight (out September 18), that dread becomes fully weaponised: a twisted gothic vision of power, class, and paranoia that feels like Edgar Allan Poe dragged into the age of 24-hour news, billionaire bunkers, and endless crisis. For more visit: https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/culture/a-horrible-hellscape-inside-uncle-acids-shapes-of-midnight/

Three decades into a career that’s quietly shaped the emotional vocabulary of modern guitar music, Death Cab for Cutie find themselves in a rare position. They’re still here. Still functional. Still making records that matter. For bassist Nick Harmer, that simple fact – survival, in all its mundane and miraculous forms – has become the real measure of success. Not the plaques, not the streaming numbers, not the festival font sizes. Just the continued ability to make music with his closest friends, to step onto a stage and feel that old electricity crackle through the room again. On the band’s latest record, I Built You A Tower, Harmer and his bandmates lean into that reality with a calm confidence that only comes from time served. It’s not a victory lap, and it’s not a nostalgia piece. Instead, it feels like the sound of a band who have finally made peace with their own reflection – and decided they quite like what they see. This conversation with Soundsphere finds Nick talking about Tower, the weight and wonder of “legacy”, streaming-era chaos, and what it means to stay Death Cab after all these years. For more visit:

#wwe #gabbyforza #tnawrestling One of TNA’s newest signings, Gabby Forza sat down with Soundsphere to tell us all about her career, her relationship to WWE superstar Bayley, her plans for the future – and the lesser-gnome facts about her origin story. More here: https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/wrestling-news/gabby-forza-on-joining-tna-spending-time-with-wwes-bayley-and-gnomes/

As Indi Hartwell gears up to face NXT’s Thea Hail in the TNA Knockouts TV Championship Tournament, we asked her about her time in TNA, her plans for the TNA Lockdown pay-per-view, and her viral moment between her and former Wyatt Sicks member Dexter Lumis (Samuel Shaw). https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/indi-hartwell-talks-tna-championship-gold-lockdown-dexter-lumis/

When Stacey Haber talks about her life, it sounds like three or four full-time careers running in parallel. She’s a music lawyer, publisher, Chief Legal Officer to multiple companies, theatre-maker, former New York City judge, sample-clearance pioneer, and Fringe regular. At 64, instead of slowing down, she’s premiering a new show at the Edinburgh Fringe: Cereal Entrepreneur. https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/the-art-of-never-retiring-inside-stacey-habers-cereal-entrepreneur/

As Humber Street Sesh 2026 barrels toward Hull Marina with over 100 acts across 11 stages and an expected crowd of up to 15,000 people, its co-founder Mark “Mak” Page is brutally honest: this festival is not guaranteed to exist next year. “It’s not a given, it’s not a case of like miss out this year, maybe come back next year. We need your support now.”  This year’s Sesh isn’t just another date in the city’s cultural calendar – it’s the product of financial risk, community faith, and two and a half decades of obsession with grassroots music. Across a long, candid conversation, Mak opens up about the real costs of putting on a festival like this, why metrics aren’t everything when it comes to picking bands, and what he wants emerging artists to finally understand about treating themselves like a serious proposition.

#rickysaints #wwesmackdown #wweraw   Sitting across from him over Zoom, it’s hard not to be struck by the mix of calm confidence and restless energy. This is a man who talks about success the way some people talk about survival, not as a nice-to-have, but as the only logical outcome of years of risk, graft, and self-belief. Saints has already carved out an impressive run in WWE: multiple title reigns in NXT, standout performances on SmackDown, and pay-per-view bangers opposite the likes of Trick Williams. Yet, despite the accolades, he speaks like someone still climbing, not someone who’s reached the summit. “I feel very accomplished,” he says early on, reflecting on this current chapter of his career, “but I still… there’s still a lot that I want to do.” https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/interview-ricky-saints-on-betting-on-himself-becoming-wwes-next-great-heel/

After becoming the first British woman to hold the TNA Knockouts World Championship, Soundsphere spoke to Xia Brookside after she cemented her reign by defeating rival and former tag-team partner Léi Ying Lee in a no-disqualification match on an episode of Impact! Brookside discussed her career, her title win, and the upcoming TNA Lockdown pay-per-view that returns in August 2026. More: https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/xia-brookside-on-being-the-first-british-tna-knockouts-world-champion/

There are wrestling books that are basically just lists: matches, belts, towns, a few wild road stories. Dan Spivey’s book, The Dangerous Truth isn’t one of those. From the first few pages, it hits with a very different energy. It’s bleakly funny, self-deprecating and brutally honest about the years lost to drink and drugs, the broken relationships, the chaos of the business. At one point in our chat, he sums up his old lifestyle with a single, savage line: “I probably snorted a couple of Rolls Royces in my day, you know.” He’s not boasting. He’s almost bewildered that he’s still here. Spivey hit rock bottom at 56 (he's 73 now). That, he says, was when everything changed. “I finally hit rock bottom with my drugs and alcohol, I was 56 years old when I had a spiritual awakening, and started a road of sobriety.” The book came later, and it wasn’t about ego or legacy. It was about making that wreckage mean something. “[The] Reason I wrote the book is people wanted me to tell my story and… if this book and my story helps anybody get sober, then it was worth the time and effort of it.” You can feel that purpose running through the pages, but there’s something else threaded through it too, a quieter story that sneaks up on you. For more visit: https://www.soundspheremag.com/

Ken Anderson looks like he’s having the time of his life again – and he’ll tell you straight away, that’s because he is. For a guy who’s lived through the extremes of WWE, carried the top belt in TNA, and now juggles training the next generation with hosting his own Mic Check podcast, that sentence says a lot. It’s not just about being back in the ring – it’s about where and how he’s doing it. https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/ken-anderson-on-finding-his-voice-in-wwe-comedy-and-psychology-in-modern-wrestling/

There’s a particular kind of grin that spreads across Stu Grayson’s face when he talks about Mystery Wrestling. It’s not just pride, though there’s plenty of that, it’s something closer to mischief. The kind of mischief that comes from knowing the audience has no idea what’s coming, and that’s exactly the point. For more visit: https://www.soundspheremag.com/news/stu-grayson-on-mystery-wrestling-brodie-lee-the-dark-order-and-his-bond-with-evil-uno/

On screen, in the world of JCW, we see a towering figure in black, red-tinted sermons to the camera, eerie roll calls and cryptic messages about “Red Love.” It looks, at first glance, like a brilliantly unhinged wrestling gimmick: a cult-adjacent preacher, a strange sidekick in the form of Mr. Wiggles, and an ever-growing list of names who’ve made the Red Roll Call. But sit down with Father Bronson—as we did, somewhat nervously, over a screen from the UK—and the language of “gimmick,” “character work,” and “promos” doesn’t just fall away. It’s rejected, dismantled and thrown back at you. “You’re using words like promo and vignette,” he says, eyes locked forward. “I think you might be under the wrong impression. You might think that this is an act… that red love doesn’t fuel the fibers of my being, because it truly does.” For more visit: https://www.soundspheremag.com/

For over three decades, the Hardys have been the glitch in pro wrestling’s system – the weird kids from North Carolina who grew up on trampolines, DIY rings and alternative culture, and somehow dragged all of that into the mainstream. They were the ones in fishnets and baggy cargos while everyone else was in trunks, the outcasts who became icons. For more, visit: https://www.soundspheremag.com/