Blind Lion

Blind Lion is the deliberately ridiculous hair metal side project of Luke Smyth, the singer, songwriter and multi instrumentalist behind Bath's glam rock revivalists Ulysses. The fictional lineup is presented as four men who would lay down their wives for rock and roll: Axolotl on vocals, ChadGPT on guitar, Johnny Roger on drums and Vic McVicar on keyboards. The project emerged from the ruins of Almost Bad News, the revived incarnation of comedy legend Nigel Planer's fictional metal band Bad News, and it channels Def Leppard gloss and Guns N' Roses swagger into the biggest, silliest 1980s rock song that never existed. Ulysses, Smyth's main band, has spent four albums carving out a space between psych, glam and hard rock and has been covered by everyone from The Guardian to Classic Rock and Shindig!, which is exactly why the joke lands: the playing is real even when the band is not. Debut single Rock The Night Away arrived on 14 August 2026 with a video featuring castles and a swimming pool, and it sits in the long British tradition of comedy metal that runs from Spinal Tap to Bad News to Steel Panther. A radio edit exists for stations with language restrictions. Discovered via Brian Heason (HBM Promotions / Music Plugger).