Metal Hammer UK

BLOODSTOCK 2024 IS over. Long live Bloodstock. In a weekend that saw sets from some of metal’s brightest names – including a UK-first festival headline spot from Architects – the Derbyshire event continued to show how it has become an invaluable part

HORDES OF COSTUMED performers known as the Wasteland Warriors laid siege to German mega-fest Wacken in August, complete with pyro performances and apocalyptic vehicles. With nine stages, a capacity of around 85,000 fans and a site so big it has its o

BURY TOMORROW ARE on an exciting trajectory. Following their 2023 album, The Seventh Sun, and recent single Villain Arc, Southampton’s metalcore veterans stand poised to enter possibly their heaviest era ever after almost two decades in the game. Wha

“SEX MACHINEGUNS ARE a great Japanese group, and the band that introduced me to heavy metal. German Power has an absolutely epic reputation live – it’s essentially a classic thrash metal song in a Japanese style, and has an intro with crowd participa

SINCE THEIR EARLIEST days, Opeth have strived to be more than just another Swedish death metal band. Ditching their death metal roots after 2008’s Watershed, the band continued to thrive as prog metal masters, headlining festivals around the world an

FOR MORE THAN 20 years, Falk Maria Schlegel – also known as plain Christian Jost when he’s out of the corpsepaint – has been providing Powerwolf with their booming organ and ethereal keyboard embellishments. He formed the band with guitarist Matthew

IT’S 2005, AND on a freezing cold December night in the Hollywood Hills, Lacuna Coil vocalist Cristina Scabbia can hear the sound of howling in the distance. She’s there to film one of four music videos for the Italian gothic metal band’s fourth reco

SAMMY CIARAMITARO, VOCALIST with hardcore hellraisers Drain, is the human equivalent of a golden retriever. Always smiling, greeting every crowdsurfer he sees at their shows, he and his friends formed Drain because of a mutual admiration for each oth

STEPHEN HARRISON AND Aric Improta knew they wanted to create something unique together someday. It was just a matter of being patient. The pair bonded during their five years in Fever 333, with Stephen (formerly of The Chariot) on guitars/bass and Ar

SUPERGROUP CROWNSHIFT MAY be packed with Finnish metal royalty – they feature members of Children Of Bodom, Nightwish and Finntroll – but guitarist Daniel Freyberg wants you to know that this isn’t one of those half-arsed projects artists embark on w

For Slipknot, getting selected to play Ozzfest 1999 was a dream come true. Not only would the Des Moines nine-piece get to embark upon their first national tour in the company of some of metal’s biggest artists - Black Sabbath and Slayer among them -

‘DREAM’ AND ‘METAL’ aren’t two words usually heard side by side in heavy music. LA-based doom-gazers Iress, however, are proud to be the first band to officially represent the subcategory. “Some songs of ours are really dream-like and pretty, whereas

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EARACHE £150 PIGEONHOLES? WHO NEEDS ’em! Certainly not sibling duo ALT BLK ERA, whose forthcoming debut album giddily bounces from alt metal and indie pop to rap, rave and drum ’n’ bass like it’s the most natural thing in the world. Such a massive re

In 1999, Metal Hammer editor Robyn Doreian boarded a plane to the US to interview rising stars Slipknot. The result? Chaos. And this – the band’s first-ever Hammer cover feature, led by legendary drummer Joey Jordison. She was so sure of the band, sh

“IT’S BEEN A long process,” Profiler frontman Mike Evans says wearily, when talking about the making of their debut album, A Digital Nowhere. Formed in Bristol in 2017, more than half of the band’s existence has been spent writing, demoing, rewriting

In July, temperatures in Des Moines average 30˚C, and humidity levels can reach 80%. But back in the mid-90s, nothing could stop a Slipknot performance. “In the summertime, the heat was so bad, they’d have buckets on the side of the stage,” recalls t

Slipknot may have missed the actual 25th anniversary of their debut album by a few months – it came out in June 1999 – but that doesn’t mean that the band aren’t plotting a release to celebrate its silver jubilee. And it sounds like it’s going to be

”I heard Slipknot for the first time when I was 13. A girl I sat next to in science class was wearing one of their shirts over her school blouse and she told me all about them. I was fascinated, and had never got into music like it before. I became a

Slipknot’s reputation as an explosive live band was sealed by their stint on the US Ozzfest in the summer of 1999. By the time they flew to Europe at the end of that year, the buzz surrounding them was deafening. On December 13, 1999, they played the

“LET’S FUCKING GO!” Heriot drummer Julian Gage has jumped to his feet behind his kit, his face contorted with rage and adrenaline. Eyeballing the crowd, he gestures wildly with his arms, orchestrating the mosh. On either side of him, singer/guitarist

BLACK SABBATH, BLACK SABBATH, 1970 The song that launched a million bands “We covered Black Sabbath’s title track way back. They’ve obviously inspired so many bands, but for me personally I really love that track because it’s so atmospheric. It’s als

NUCLEAR BLAST Symphonic Finns rediscover the heavy gold on album 10 ONE PROBLEM WITH bands leaving five-year gaps between albums is that if one comes out that you’re not so keen on, you end up waiting a decade for new material you can get behind. Eve

METAL BLADE Detroit’s melodic death maestros reignite the spirit of their late frontman HOW DO YOU replace the irreplaceable? How does a band continue when the focal point, the driving force and the heart of it is suddenly taken way? The follow-up to

This Is Doom Trap SILENT CULT London-based trap metal queen makes an enthralling debut MIMI BARKS IS on her way to becoming a household metal name. The London-based trap metaller writes and co-produces all of her own music; this time around she’s wor

Darker White CENTURY MEDIA/333 WRECKORDS Jason Aalon Butler’s groove/rap metal firebrands attempt to reignite the spark WHEN FEVER 333 announced their formation back in 2017, fans of Letlive had cause to believe frontman Jason Aalon Butler’s union wi

Devoured By The Mouth Of Hell CENTURY MEDIA The Midlands’ next-generation metal champions unleash a dream debut HERIOT MIGHT JUST be the most exciting young band in the UK right now. The Swindon/Birmingham quartet have been making waves ever since th

Where Gods Fear To Speak SEASON OF MIST Lauded Texans conjure another brutal and beautiful vision EVERY TWO YEARS, a new Oceans Of Slumber album arrives and leaves something for the listener to unpack and immerse themselves in over repeated spins. St

…By The Shadows… PROPHECY PRODUCTIONS Elusive, Gaahl-fronted mavericks strive to make Norway weird again LEGENDARY STATUS ISN’T just handed out on a whim in the metal underground. A nebulous but cherished force in Norwegian black metal since the earl

Never, Neverland CENTURY MEDIA Portland’s gothic metal masters annihilate the opposition WHEN UNTO OTHERS said ‘OOWAGH! HOOWAGH!’, we felt that. The Oregon four-piece don’t just play classic heavy metal, they mainline it with full-throttle, broken-bo

Vended SELF-RELEASED Iowa’s nu generation metallers glance out from the family tree THERE ARE SOME facts from which Vended can run but not hide, and for which they will likely forever be judged. Vended hail from Des Moines, Iowa. On vocals, they feat

The Obsession NAPALM Former Delain frontwoman hits the symphonic sweet spot AFTER HER DEPARTURE from Delain in 2021, Charlotte Wessels embarked on a solo journey that revealed her talent as a multifaceted artist. Two pandemic-spanning records nodding

CATTON PARK, DERBYSHIRE Amon Amarth, Architects and Opeth reaffirm the foundations of metal’s broad church BLOODSTOCK HAS ALWAYS been a spiritual lodestone for heavy metal in the UK. There’s an even stronger than usual Motörhead presence this year, w

FERNHILL FARM, COMPTON MARTIN Meshuggah and Electric Wizard lead Somerset’s gathering of mind-melters CELEBRATING ITS 10TH edition, ArcTanGent has developed from a cult curio to both an essential part of the UK festival season and the definitive guid

EXUMER/HIRAX 02 ISLINGTON ACADEMY, LONDON San Francisco’s thrash legends brew up a perfect storm EXODUS HAVE BEEN making their way over to British shores for more than four decades, and the sheer admiration and adoration for them here shows no signs

Zetra NUCLEAR BLAST Atmospheric enigmas’ debut leaves more questions than answers WHAT IF A black metal band swapped blastbeats and screaming for synthesisers and crooning, then rehearsed on the set of a 70s Doctor Who episode? It’s a question no one

SPIRITBOX/WARGASM/LOATHE GUNNERSBURY PARK, LONDON The Bakersfield freaks smash their biggest-ever UK headliner IN 1995, KORN played their first UK headlining show at the now-defunct Astoria 2 in London. Since then, they’ve become not just the godfat

VICTORIA WAREHOUSE, MANCHESTER  Tesseract and Leprous lead the way for metal’s progressive values AFTER SPENDING ITS infancy in Guildford before settling down in Manchester, Radar Festival is opening its doors for a rammed three days of progressive a

You released debut album Mana as Idle Hands in 2019, and follow-up Strength in 2021 as Unto Others. What was it like changing names? “Mana planted the flag of Idle Hands, and Strength was my insane struggle to plant Unto Others. It was hard and I fel