EDITOR’S LETTER

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Editorial

Editor Eleanor Goodman
eleanor.goodman@futurenet.com
Production Editor Vanessa Thorpe
vanessa.thorpe@futurenet.com
Reviews Editor Jonathan Selzer
jonathan.selzer@futurenet.com
Art Editor Louise Hilton (neé Brock)
louise.brock@futurenet.com
Associate Editor Dave Everley
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Paul Travers, James Weaver,Christina Wenig, Kez Whelan, Jon Wiederhorn,
Holly Wright, Nik Young
Cover: MagicTorch
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A MASSIVE YEAR
FOR METAL

HOW IS IT the end of the year already?! It seems like five minutes

since we put Ville Valo on the cover in January, and yet so much
has happened since. Metallica released their huge 72 Seasons album
and took it on a two-nights-per-destination mega-tour, while our
friends in Maiden stunned us with the ray-gun-toting fun of their
Future Past shows. Meanwhile, Download blew out the
candles on its 20th birthday cake during a four-day
FOLLOW
party. In 2023, metal felt like a celebration.
US
Meanwhile, there were tons of other, no less
significant victories. Skindred and Sleep Token booked
arena shows, Indonesia’s Voice Of Baceprot took on the
METALHAMMER.COM
States, and somehow even Barbie went metal – you can
relive all the action from p35.
You’ll also find a list of the 50 best albums of the year,
according to our esteemed critics. So if you’ve worn
/METALHAMMER
a hole in your copy of Twisted Sister’s Christmas record,
why not give these a spin? You might just discover your
new favourite band. And as for No.1? Let’s just say that
@METALHAMMER
was another pleasant – albeit blood-soaked – surprise.
Thanks for spending the last 12 months with us, and
we’ll see you back here for 2024!

@METALHAMMERUK

Stay metal,
METALHAMMERTV

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ELEANOR GOODMAN
EDITOR

@ELEANORGOODMAN

MEET THE BAND

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FRANK RALPH

VANESSA THORPE

ESTER SEGARRA

PHOTOGRAPHER
PRODUCTION EDITOR
PHOTOGRAPHER
Yorkshireman Frank has been
Not content with wrangling
Over the past two decades,
snapping gigs for 30 years,
the workflow of both Hammer Barcelona-born, Stockholmand his favourite place on
and our sister mag Prog, this
based photographer Ester
the planet is being in a field was the year our multi-tasking
has produced some of the
surrounded by thousands of
Vanessa got into skating and
most iconic, scene-defining
like-minded metalheads. This
running. We wouldn’t be
images from the extreme
month, he hopped aboard the
surprised if she somehow
metal world. Who better to
Tekkno Train to shoot Electric combined everything in 2024
shoot Watain for their 25th
Callboy for us in Leeds.
and invented a new sport.
anniversary show in Uppsala?

METALHAMMER.COM 3

JANUARY 2024

10 BEARTOOTH

14 SOPHIE LLOYD

40 METALLICA
FRONT ROW

8 Everything you need to know about
DOWNLOAD XXI.
10 You asked BEARTOOTH’s Caleb
Shomo all the hard questions.
14 Guitar hero SOPHIE LLOYD reveals
her shred-worthy Slaylist.
16 From Creed to Alter Bridge, MARK
TREMONTI shares his life lessons.
20 The story behind SKINDRED’s
infamous Newport Helicopter
anthem Warning.
24 We get in the studio with IHSAHN
– and he’s making a double album!
26 Meet SiM – the Japanese
reggae/nu metal fusion band.

64 GHOST
4 METALHAMMER.COM

88 HEALTH

FEATURES

35 We take you INSIDE METAL’S
BIGGEST MOMENTS. Featuring…
40 METALLICA.
45 OZZY.
46 BARBIEGEDDON.
48 IRON MAIDEN.
51 SLIPKNOT.
52 DOWNLOAD 20.
54 BLACK SABBATH – THE BALLET.
55 NU METAL 2.0.
56 LORD OF THE LOST.
58 SLEEP TOKEN.
60 AVENGED SEVENFOLD.
62 VOICE OF BACEPROT.
63 MERCH CUTS.

JANUARY 2024

20 SKINDRED

SUBSCRIBE
NOW & SAVE

48 IRON MAIDEN

Head to p.32
for details

64 GHOST.
68 THE 50 BEST ALBUMS.

ALBUMS

88 Industrial overlords HEALTH get
even more metal.
90 Metalcore lifers ATREYU undergo
an identity crisis.
92 DIMMU BORGIR uncover their
roots on their 30th anniversary.
93 HELGA debut a progressive,
post-black journey of discovery.

LIVES

94 ELECTRIC WIZARD, ANAAL
NATHRAKH and KATATONIA

bring deliverance to Manchester’s
DAMNATION FESTIVAL.
96 ELECTRIC CALLBOY light up the
Leeds Academy.
97 CULT OF LUNA and NAPALM
DEATH go for broke at BEYOND
THE REDSHIFT.
98 EMPLOYED TO SERVE fuse the
festive and the restive.
99 Hellfire reigns supreme as
WATAIN commemorate 25 years.
102 MAX AND IGGOR CAVALERA get
back to the bruuutaaal!!
104 BRING ME THE HORIZON and
BABYMETAL launch NEX_FEST
in Japan.

94 DAMNATION

82 CREEPER
METALHAMMER.COM 5

THE BIG PICTURE

IT’S A BOMBER!

IF THERE ARE two things Sabaton
love, it’s history and heavy metal.
Almost two years since they launched
their 10th studio album, The War To
End All Wars, at the Royal Museum
of the Armed Forces in Brussels, the
Swedish band officially premiered
their own movie based on the songs
from that album on Remembrance
Sunday, November 11th.
As part of their History Rocks
project, Sabaton partnered with
museums around the world to show

6 METALHAMMER.COM

The War To End All Wars – The Movie.
Those attending the screenings at
London’s Royal Air Force Museum got
an extra treat – an appearance from
members of the band themselves.
Vocalist Joakim Brodén and bassist
Pär Sundström introduced the movie
and then offered a Q&A afterwards,
even taking photos with the crowd
as they posed next to one of the
museum’s most impressive exhibits
– an Avro Lancaster Bomber, a plane
most commonly used in World War II.

Attended by fans of all ages
– some as young as eight years old
– and with some travelling from as far
afield as Poland, the Q&A addressed
the band’s plans to move on from
World War I after two records in the
trenches, as well as suggestions that
they’ll be planning something big
in 2024 to commemorate their 25th
anniversary. Seeing how massive
their Wembley Arena show was in
April, one thing’s for sure: the sky’s
the limit…

METALHAMMER.COM 7

PRESS/@JENSTHEPANDA

THE HOT TOPIC

DOWNLOAD
TURNS 21!

Avenged Sevenfold might be Download Festival 2024’s only
metal headliner, but with Machine Head, Babymetal and so
many more on the bill already, there’s still plenty to love!
WORDS: RICH HOBSON

event to celebrate its 20th anniversary
brought a sell-out crowd to Castle
Donington, Download Festival is back
and raring to go for its 21st birthday!
The 2024 edition will see a return
from Avenged Sevenfold, fresh
from the release of their surprising,
genre-hopping album Life Is But
A Dream…, plus debut headline
sets from Queens Of The Stone Age
and Fall Out Boy.
Granted, it’s not the most metal
headline line-up, but after a year
that saw Bring Me The Horizon
make their headline debut, Metallica
play two entirely different sets and
Slipknot utter a triumphant roar amid
possibly their most chaotic year yet,
we can hardly complain that the rest
of the rock and alternative spectrum
are getting a look-in.
Both Queens Of The Stone Age
and Fall Out Boy have only played
Download once before, albeit in
prominent spots. QOTSA played
beneath Iron Maiden in 2013, while
Fall Out Boy played below Linkin

“WE’RE BRINGING
A BIG, POSTMODERN EVENT”
SYNYSTER GATES, AVENGED SEVENFOLD

8 METALHAMMER.COM

Park’s Hybrid Theory headline set in
2014. The elevation of both bands to
headline status at Download marks the
first time since 2012 that the festival
has brought in two new headliners
for the weekend – that year seeing
debut headline sets from The Prodigy
and Black Sabbath – and a definitive
commitment to embracing newer
acts, meaning the likes of Ghost,
Five Finger Death Punch or even
Sleep Token could get the call-up
sooner than anyone expected.
Besides, Download Festival’s shift
to bringing in younger bands for its
2023 edition made it feel like one of
the most vital years at Donington yet,
and 2024 is positively heaving with
ascendant and veteran talent from
the heavy metal world. Machine Head
are officially ending their festival
drought after almost a decade away
from the fields of Europe – a secret
set at Bloodstock in 2022 and headline
appearance at Graspop 2023
notwithstanding – by making a return
to Donington next year as part of
a summer schedule that will also
see them appear at Poland’s Mystic
Festival, Greenfield in Switzerland,
Austria’s Nova Rock, Denmark’s
Copenhell and Rock Am Ring/Rock
Im Park in Germany.
More than 80 bands have already
been announced for Download Festival
2024, with organisers promising big

See you down the front, folks!

names still to come. Among those
already confirmed are festival
favourites like Corey Taylor, Babymetal
and While She Sleeps, as well as
unique emergent bands including
Bad Omens, Heilung, Polyphia, Alien
Weaponry, Hanabie, Scene Queen,
Heriot, Underside, Wargasm and
Vukovi. The controversial current
incarnation of Pantera are also set to
appear, marking the first time this
line-up – featuring Phil Anselmo,
Rex Brown, Zakk Wylde and Charlie
Benante – have played the UK.
Elsewhere on the bill, pop-punks
Sum 41 will mark their final UK festival
set, Germany’s 2023 metal Eurovision
entrants Lord Of The Lost will play
Download for the first time, and the
new iterations of Fear Factory (with
vocalist Milo Silvestro) and The Black
Dahlia Murder (now fronted by

GETTY

AFTER A MASSIVE four-day

10 THINGS
WE LEARNED
THIS MONTH
What’s been blowing
our tiny brains
SPIRITBOX FEATURED ON A MEGAN
THEE STALLION SONG!
One of metal’s hottest new bands
collaborating with one of hip hop’s
hottest new talents? Sign us up!

JAY WEINBERG IS OUT OF SLIPKNOT
The soap opera continues as the band
and drummer parted ways after almost
a decade together.

Jay is out… so who’s
going to fill his shoes?

TOOL ARE COMING BACK TO THE UK
Maynard and co will be hitting our
arenas in May/June 2024.

CRAZY TRAIN IS FEATURED IN THE
TRAILER FOR INSIDE OUT 2

Now we just have to hope the Pixar
sequel will see Riley become a teenage
metalhead. Didn’t do us any harm…

JAY WEINBERG: STEVE BRIGHT

TARJA TURUNEN HAS MADE
A CHRISTMAS ALBUM
guitarist Brian Eschbach after the
tragic passing of Trevor Strnad in 2022)
will also make their Download debut.
And, as if to head off any complaints
about a lack of extremity on the bill,
Download have also booked Dying
Fetus, commemorating 10 years since
a campaign of #WhyNotDyingFetus
saw the death metal band added to
the Download Festival 2014 line-up.
Coincidentally, Download Festival 2014
was the first time Avenged Sevenfold
headlined, having previously appeared
in 2006 and 2011 respectively.
Avenged last played Download in
2018, bringing their sprawling The
Stage production to Donington in
a massive metal extravaganza. While
the UK hasn’t seen what the band has
in store with their Life Is But A Dream…
production yet, given how wildly
inventive and unpredictable the
record is, we suspect there will be
some decidedly massive things in
store when it does arrive in June.

“I’m super-excited to bring a very
unique show,” Avenged guitarist
Synyster Gates enthuses. “The last
time it felt like we brought a big rock
show, with maybe a couple of twists
and turns. This time we’re bringing
a big, post-modern event. We just want
it to stand out; we want to be proud of
it, and we don’t want it to stand out just
for the sake of standing out. We have
the most incredible team to realise that
vision, so I feel really confident this
will be a special show.”
With up to 130,000 fans attending
in 2023 and plenty more names to be
announced in coming months, it’s
fair to say Download Festival 2024
will be as massive a celebration of all
things rock and metal as it’s ever been.
See you in the field!

Ever wanted to hear a symphonic metal
Frosty The Snowman?

DOWNLOAD XXI WILL
TAKE PLACE JUNE 14-16
AT DONINGTON PARK.
TICKETS ARE ON SALE NOW

MIKE PORTNOY IS BACK IN
DREAM THEATER

KERRY KING HAS BOOKED HIS FIRST
SOLO SHOW
Still no word on what the project is, but
Kerry King will be playing Welcome To
Rockville in May 2024.

BRUCE DICKINSON IS STARRING
IN A HORROR MOVIE

Written by son Austin, Bjorn Of The Dead
is about an ABBA tribute act!

RICHIE SAMBORA WANTS TO GET
BACK WITH BON JOVI IN 2024

Next year will mark 40 years since the
rockers’ debut album. Seems like a good
time for a reunion!

MOONSPELL ARE PLAYING THEIR
FIRST HEADLINE ARENA SHOW

The Portuguese band will team up with
Sinfonietta De Lisboa to play Lisbon’s
Altice Arena in October 2024.

After 13 years away, the drumming
legend is back and working on new
material with the prog metal giants.

METALHAMMER.COM 9

HOW MANY BANDANAS
DO YOU OWN?
Caleb Shomo takes your questions on rock’n’roll fashion,
ice cream and meeting Disturbed’s David Draiman
WORDS: CATHERINE MORRIS • PICTURES: BEN GIBSON

THE SUNLIT ROOFTOP of Red

Bull Records is an oasis of calm above
London’s West End. Hammer is sitting
across from Caleb Shomo, the brains
behind Columbus metalcore outfit
Beartooth. Instantly recognisable in
a Barbie-pink bandana that’s become
his trademark, the effusive frontman is
brimming with positivity and gratitude
when we put your questions to him,
and rises to the occasion, relishing the
opportunity to talk about his enduring
love of AC/DC, being a David Draiman
fanboy, having a sweet tooth and, yes,
his extensive headwear collection.

Hammer: Is part of your tour prep
deciding what colour the bandana’s
going to be?
“It goes with the album. The one I’m
wearing today Oshie [Bichar, bass] got
me as a gift, so this is one of my most
special ones. I don’t wear it onstage.
I wore this one in the Might Love Myself
music video. They all mean something
to me. I’ve given a few out in very
special scenarios, but for the most
part I keep them.”
Did you get to hang out with David
Draiman when you toured together?
Joe Slater, email

Mint choc chip or vanilla ice cream?
Andrew’s Feeder, Facebook

“Mint chocolate chip goes real hard.
You cannot sleep on it if we’re talking
a scoop on a hot day. But you can do so
much with vanilla. Last night I had a
sticky toffee pudding with vanilla ice
cream and it was the best dessert of my
life. Shout-out to sticky toffee pudding;
that shit changed my entire existence.
I slept real good. [Sighs] End of the day,
I’m going vanilla.”

“We played a show with them a long
time ago, early in Beartooth’s career,
and I think he remembers this – I did
not have a good show. When we started,
I looked over to the left and David
Draiman was sitting there. I get through
the first chorus of the song, and I look
over and he’s gone. And I remember
being like… [exhales] ‘Oooh, I bombed.’
But this is why I respect him so much,

How many bandanas do you own?
Amy Wright, email

“A lot! So usually on tour, I always wear
the same one onstage throughout.
Then I have one back-up in that same
colour. I usually carry two black ones
that I’ve had for a really long time.
Currently in my bag I have… [counts]
six with me. You gotta be prepared.
It’s become like, my cape. It’s my thing,
a part of my ritual before I go onstage.
It just makes me feel good. So I’ve
always got to have some extra on deck.”

10 METALHAMMER.COM

because when he saw us on tour he
said, ‘You’ve been training. You’ve put
in the work.’ You know it’s not bullshit,
you know? That, without a doubt,
is one of the coolest moments of
my career. So, shout-out to David
Draiman. He’s one of the greatest
frontmen in heavy music, ever.”
What’s the most rock’n’roll song in
the world?
Eddie H, email

“Let There Be Rock by AC/DC. I mean,
come on. It rules! AC/DC is one of the
most rockin’ bands of all time. They’re
my favourite rock’n’roll band and it’s
a song specifically about rock’n’roll.”
Hammer: speaking of which…
What’s the best AC/DC album to get
into the band and why?
Steve T, email

“That’s such a tough question! I guess
it depends on what you want to get out
of it. The record that got me into the
band was Back In Black. But I do think
it’s worth starting earlier, in the Bon
Scott era, so I would say Highway To Hell
is the right answer. That record covers
so much of the band; it’s still got a little
bit of their earlier, very raw, wild sound,
but it was right when they started to
transition to a little more of a polished
thing. And it’s still got Bon Scott on it,
so you get the best of all worlds.”
Do you think you would you ever
reunite with Attack Attack!?

Beartooth (left to right): Will Deely,
Zach Huston, Caleb Shomo, Connor
Denis, Oshie Bichar

Yaz, email

“In the state it was? Absolutely not.
There’s a reason I left. There are

BEARTOOTH
Caleb Shomo: always ready
to give it up for AC/DC

“DUETTING WITH
PAPA ROACH IS ONE
OF THE COOLEST
THINGS I’LL EVER
DO IN MY CAREER”
METALHAMMER.COM 11

BEARTOOTH
certain aspects of it that I will always
look fondly on, a lot of aspects that
were pretty gnarly, but that shaped me
into who I am today. I’ve learned to look
at the good in it. It took a long time to
do that. I will say, Johnny Franck, who
was the guitarist and singer of Attack
Attack!, is still a wonderful friend of
mine who I love very much. Johnny, if
you’re out there, let’s get together and
see what could happen.”

English is Caleb’s second
language, after music

Do you ever look back and think,
‘I could have saved myself a lot of
time by hiring session musicians’?
Sophie Lynch, email

“Beartooth would not be what it is
without me doing all of it. Honestly,
I think it would make it a longer
process if I had session musicians.
But for me, doing it all is what’s
fulfilling, getting to explore all those
different sides of myself. It’s my
calling. I feel like music is the language
that I speak the best; better than
English, better than anything.”
What’s the biggest thing people
misunderstand about heavy metal?
Isobel, email

“I think to a lot of people from the
outside, it just looks like it’s one note.
It’s very angry, it’s loud, it’s this really
violent expression of people screaming,
yelling and turning their amps as loud
as they can or whatever. But while for
some people it is incredibly angry and
violent, for some people it’s really
therapeutic. It can be almost calming
in a way, of hearing somebody else
letting that expression out that you’re
feeling. I think that’s one of the things
that can be pretty misconstrued.”
What was it like duetting with
Papa Roach [on Cut The Line]?
Kerry Beckett, email

“Surreal. I remember getting the call
from Tom, my manager, and him
saying, ‘Hey, do you want to be on
a Papa Roach song?’ They’re such
a sick band, and I still say they’re the
benchmark of how to age properly as
a live rock act. Those dudes still go so
wild up there. They put in so much
effort. They care so much. They’re not
jaded at all. They love what they do.
Jacoby [Shaddix, frontman] just gave
me control and said, ‘From here to
here, this is your part. Write whatever
you want.’ To have that freedom to do

my thing, in tandem with such an
amazing band and such a huge act, is
one of the coolest things I’ll ever do in
my career, for sure.”
What advice would you give a teenager
starting out in the industry now?
Roisin, email

“I know that the climate has changed
with social media and so many people
focus on that. But I still stand by this:
play live shows, as many live shows as
you can. It makes you better. It gets you
in front of people. It gets you used to
performing. You can go viral and have
that moment and maybe it lasts for
however long, but you need to have the
toolkit to back it up – learning what it
feels like to bomb, to work through
when you don’t have a voice, when
you’re breaking strings, or feeling
tired, but still being able to put on
a great show with any variable.”
Why aren’t Beartooth headlining
festivals yet?
Alice Pennington, email

“We kind of have at a small scale. I will
say, though, to headline a festival, you
need to be
prepared.
Beartooth have
been around
for about 10
years, call it.
I think that just
over the last

“I’M USING BEARTOOTH TO
BETTER MYSELF, MY LIFE
AND THE MUSIC SCENE”
12 METALHAMMER.COM

few years we’ve started becoming
a band that is starting to even get close
to being able to do that. I still think we
have a long way to go, and I don’t take
that lightly. We have had some calls
recently that are very monumental for
us, but I don’t think we were ready
until now… but you’ll find out over the
next couple of years what it means
when Beartooth headlines. It’s going to
be pretty cool.”
You helped change the look and sound
of metalcore. How do you feel now
it’s changing again?
Emma Dee, email

“I have a hard time ever grasping
Beartooth’s influence on things
because I’m so involved in it. If our new
album and this new era of Beartooth
has any influence on metalcore, I hope
that it’s just for the positive and that
it’s empowering to people. Beartooth
wasn’t always that way. There have
been times where it’s been really
healthy and there have been times
where it’s been incredibly unhealthy.
But as of now, I do feel like I’m using
Beartooth to better myself and to
better my own life, and hopefully to
better the music scene.”

BEARTOOTH’S NEW ALBUM,
THE SURFACE, IS OUT NOW VIA
RED BULL. THEIR 2024 UK
TOUR STARTS IN BIRMINGHAM
ON OCTOBER 21

Slash inspired Sophie to
write her album, Imposter
Syndrome

THE SLAYLIST

SOPHIE
LLOYD

The shredder extraordinaire talks
learning Mötley Crüe, working with
Steel Panther and her love-hate
relationship with Eruption
WORDS: EMILY SWINGLE

“WHEN I FIRST heard SLASH’s Beautiful Dangerous with

LISTEN
NOW

To hear Sophie’s
choices, go to
tinyurl.com/
SophieLloyd
Slaylist

were headlining, we went down and moshed to Can You Feel
My Heart in front of the barrier! Growing up, THE OFFSPRING
always stood out for me. I loved The Kids Aren’t Alright because
it wasn’t their traditional sound. It has a more serious edge to
it and when a band is normally so fun, those serious tracks
hit so much harder. It spoke about things I could really relate
to, and it was really comforting. Plus, it’s catchy!
“Speaking of catchy, I’ve been obsessed with GHOST
recently. I only properly got into them this year - which is
funny, because I was actually one of Ghost’s back-up nuns on
stage at Download Festival once. Right now, I cannot get Call
Me Little Sunshine out of my head. They just have incredible
vocal harmonies - I can’t stop singing it around the house!
“Despite being a parody band, STEEL PANTHER are such
talented musicians. Satchel’s riffs are crazy! I love Eyes Of
A Panther - it’s a classic. I collaborated with Michael Starr on
my new album Imposter Syndrome for the song Runaway, and
he was so humble. We shot the video at this old, 80s-style
rock bar [Slim Jim’s] in London, and we made the mistake
of providing free alcohol to everyone that came down…
but everyone was certainly happy to be there, at least!
“VAN HALEN’s Eruption is a love/hate thing for me. I can’t
listen to it anymore - it was my alarm during uni. Whenever
I hear it, it feels like being hungover at 7am, blearily having
to crawl out of bed. But I loved it. My old guitar teacher was
inspired specifically by Eddie Van Halen, and he would have
lessons dedicated to him. It’s just raw emotion, no bells or
whistles. It’s really special. I, of course, have to give ROB
ZOMBIE a shout out. My boyfriend and I once went to Beverly
Hills and we stuck out like sore thumbs; everyone was all
fancy, while we were in our grungy clothes. So we decided
that we’d really make a statement by driving down Sunset
Boulevard, windows down, just blasting Dragula. You could
feel everyone staring - it was brilliant.”

“WE DROVE DOWN SUNSET
BOULEVARD, WINDOWS
DOWN, BLASTING DRAGULA” IMPOSTER SYNDROME IS OUT NOW VIA AUTUMN
14 METALHAMMER.COM

PRESS

Fergie, I knew what path I wanted to take my career down.
My new album wouldn’t exist if I’d never heard this song.
Slash made me realise it was possible to be an established
guitarist without having to be a vocalist. And it really
inspired me how Slash tailored his playing to each person
featured. For Fergie, the guitar feels sexy - it has this
feminine, powerful edge to it. Similarly, IRON MAIDEN’s
Fear Of The Dark - specifically the Rock in Rio live version
- really inspired my playing. It was the first Maiden song
I ever heard, and I remember thinking, ‘I’ll be the best
guitarist in the world if I can ever play this song.’ It taught
me about being soulful with your playing, how to really
speak through your instrument.
“There’s also a lot of DISTURBED in my rhythm playing.
Their time signatures can be so intricate. Stricken is one of
my favourite riffs of all time - it’s so powerful. MÖTLEY
CRÜE’s Kickstart My Heart was one of the first songs I learned
to play. Not that I played it that well - I was 14, I was trying!
I’d ask people to come up to my room and listen to me play
it on my shitty little Line 6 Spider amp. I used to go on rock
bandcamp for weeks away, and we once played this song
in front of all the parents. I actually met Mötley Crüe and
watched them side of stage this year, which was a very
full-circle moment.
“I had another full-circle moment with BRING ME THE
HORIZON this year. Bring Me were one of my favourite
bands growing up – I had their posters on my walls and
everything. On tour with Machine Gun Kelly, we played Rock
Am Ring on the same day as them, and Oli Sykes performed
Maybe with us, which was crazy. Later on, when Bring Me

guitarist in multi-platinum post-grunge band
Creed, Mark Tremonti has seemingly made it
his life goal to be one of the most impressive
men in music. After Creed’s dissolution he
formed the wildly successful Alter Bridge
– where his reputation as a 21st-century guitar
hero skyrocketed – and started his own solo
project, Tremonti. He later proved himself
a capable crooner by recording an excellent
album of Frank Sinatra covers.
If that wasn’t enough, his work for the
National Down Syndrome Society, inspired
by his daughter Stella, is proof he is one of
rock’s true good guys. Hammer sat down with
him prior to the release of his forthcoming
Christmas album, Christmas Classics New & Old,
to find out who his festive king is, how he
tackled Woodstock 1999, his regret at taking
his shirt off for photoshoots and much more.

TAKE BOTH HATE AND PRAISE
WITH A PINCH OF SALT

“You have to have thick skin. Back when
Creed were on the radio 24 hours a day, if
a friend would call me and say, ‘Man, this
person online said this or that about your
band’, I’d be like, ‘Just let me enjoy myself.’
I’ve been able to live on both sides of that
fence across my career; to have the very
recognised commercial band that had a lot
of success, but also had some backlash, and
then to have Alter Bridge, who everybody’s

KNOW WHEN TO
MAKE AN EXIT

BE MORE LIKE DAVE GROHL

“Creed were very polarising among our peers.
There was one guy – I don’t want to name
him – but I approached him, pretty much
said I was a fan, and he was kind of cold.
Then I was playing guitar with a bandmate
of his, and they told me, ‘Oh, yeah, he talks
mad trash about your band.’ But then there’s
been other comments; somebody told me
Dave Grohl came out and said With Arms Wide
Open was one of the best songs ever written,
which is awesome.”

STAND OUT FROM THE CROWD

“When Creed first came out, all the bands of
rock radio were kind of upbeat, more pop rock.
Bands like Third Eye Blind were really big at
the time, and Marcy Playground and
Semisonic, stuff like that.
So, when we came out with
My Own Prison, to me at the
time, it was the only sombre
song that was doing well on
the rock charts. I think the
seriousness of it grabbed
people’s attention. The
grunge scene had a lot of that
moody stuff going on, but
when we had come about,
it had been years since the
grunge thing really popped.”

there and it was like, ‘Okay guys, let’s take the
shirts off.’ Come on, man! I didn’t want to take
our shirts off, but when you’re young and
impressionable – I think we were, like, 23,
24 years old – you see all these other people
doing this kind of stuff so you just go along
with it. My friends, when we’re trying to
be funny and making fun of one another,
they just send me that picture to shut me up.
It’s something that I’ve got to take for the
rest of my life.”

LIFE LESSONS

ALTER BRIDGE REALLY OWE A LOT
TO THE UK

MARK
TREMONTI

“Woodstock 1999 was
definitely not a ‘Let’s relive
the original Woodstock days’
kind of show – it was just
a big festival with a bunch of
modern rock bands that had
more of an aggressive feel to
it. We drove in just a couple
hours before we hit the stage. It was a great
show with a massive audience and a very
receptive crowd. I remember walking to the
stage and I walked by [singer/songwriter]
Jewel and I was like, ‘This is cool.’ But then
the Red Hot Chili Peppers came on and our
tour manager was like, ‘Hey guys, let’s get out
of here, because after Chili Peppers is going to
be a mass exodus.’ We
got in the van, which
had a TV, and we were
watching the show as
we were driving away,
and we saw everything
catching on fire. I don’t
regret playing the
festival, though – it was
one of those moments
I’ll never forget.”

The post-grunge guitar hero shares parables
from his time with Creed and Alter Bridge
through to his solo band and beyond
WORDS: STEPHEN HILL

always been very complimentary about, but
we’ve never sold the millions and millions
of records that Creed did.”

KEEP YOUR SHIRT ON

“Back in the early Creed days, we got the
cover of Spin magazine, and they set us up
with some great photographer. We got in

“Because three of us were
from Creed, it was tough in
the States – everybody just
kind of compared us to
Creed. That’s why we spent
so much time in Europe,
because we had a blank
slate. The UK especially took
off for us, and we just kept
on touring over there and
building on that. The UK is
really the reason why we’re
still a band; if we didn’t have
the UK and the rest of Europe
to support this band and
we had just the amount of
success we had in the States
in the beginning, we might
have called it quits.”

I NEVER WANT TO
BE TYPECAST

“People that put their lives
into being a musician, an artist, a writer and
a performer, they don’t want to just stay in
the same lane all the time. I definitely don’t.
I don’t know if I’d have been happier if Creed
had stayed together for the last 30 years
and we were as successful as the big classics
– the Metallicas, the Floyds and the AC/DCs.
I’m happier being able to experiment.”

“EVERYBODY’S ALWAYS
COMPLIMENTARY ABOUT
ALTER BRIDGE, BUT WE’VE
NEVER SOLD THE MILLIONS OF
RECORDS THAT CREED DID”

16 METALHAMMER.COM

FAMILY ALWAYS
COMES FIRST

“My daughter was born
during Covid, so I spent
most of the first two
years of her life at
home. But since then,
I’ve had about three
months away where
I’ll have a four- or

PRESS

SINCE RISING TO prominence as the

MARK TREMONTI

Mark Tremonti, with shirt
most definitely on

METALHAMMER.COM 17

MARK TREMONTI
It’s always family first
for this six-stringer

five-week tour where I can’t see her, because
we can’t be flying a two-year-old to Europe.
But me and my kids are super-close, they’re
still number one to me. If they ever said,
‘Dad, stop touring. I want you to stay at home.’
I’d say, ‘Sorry everybody, I got to go home for
a while.’ They always will be number one.”

MY WORK WITH THE NATIONAL
DOWN SYNDROME SOCIETY WILL
BE MY PROUDEST LEGACY

“The most exciting thing going on in my
world right now is we are about to launch
a medical programme, which will be the most
comprehensive Down Syndrome medical
programme in the US, if not the world.
It’s going to be called Smile With Stella,
named after my daughter, and we’re
partnering with Advent Health, one of the

18 METALHAMMER.COM

biggest
health
care
providers
in the
country.
We’re
going
to do
a big benefit show in December, to fund the
hospital programme, and it’s going to be in
Orlando. We’re hopefully doing a show at
the Walt Disney Theater [in Florida] and my
goal is to partner with Disney to get kids free
admission to Disney World Orlando. If Disney
gives free passes and housing for kids to come
in, it would just be the best situation in the
world. When I’m a little old man on my
deathbed looking back at my life, that’ll be
my most proud moment, for sure.”

DO WHAT YOU ENJOY

“I had Christmas Songs By Sinatra [Frank’s
1948 festive classic album], and felt like this
stuff was in my range and it felt good to sing.
When I did the Sinatra thing [2022 charity
album Mark Tremonti Sings Frank Sinatra],
a lot of people were like, ‘You should do

a Christmas record!’ And I was like, ‘You know
what, I should do a Christmas record!’ So I just
went through and did my research as much as
I could on every version of every Christmas
song I could ever think of. I came up with the
10 best arrangements for the record, gathered
the same host of characters that did the first
Sinatra record with me, then added a string
section. We do anything on the record from,
like, a four-piece to a 52-piece and everything
in between.”

THE CLASSIC CROONERS ARE THE
KINGS OF CHRISTMAS

“I was already grown up when Mariah [Carey’s
All I Want For Christmas Is You] came out.
Mariah’s song is more of a modern thing for
me – it’s a great song, but it doesn’t remind
me of childhood. Nat King Cole is the king of
Christmas, he’s even got the king in his name!
He screams Christmas! Frank Sinatra is near
and dear to my heart. Andy Williams is
another, just a classic, you know? Even
Donny Hathaway. I’m channelling Donny
Hathaway on this record.”

CHRISTMAS CLASSICS NEW & OLD
IS OUT NOW

PRESS

“IF MY KIDS EVER ASKED
ME TO STOP TOURING,
I’D TELL EVERYONE I WAS
GOING HOME FOR A WHILE”

THE STORY BEHIND

WARNING
SKINDRED

While born from infighting, the song gave the Welsh band
their unifying live stunt – the Newport Helicopter
WORDS: RICH HOBSON • PICTURES: KEVIN NIXON

20 METALHAMMER.COM

THE FACTS
RELEASED:
2011

ALBUM:

Union Black

PERSONNEL:

Benji Webbe
(Vocals), Daniel
Pugsley (bass),
Mikey Demus
(guitar), Arya
Goggin (drums)

HIGHEST CHART
POSITION:
N/A

Keen to build on the success of
Babylon, Skindred continued to make
in-roads in the US with their next two
records - 2007’s Roots Rock Riot and
2009’s Shark Bites And Dog Fights. Roots…
peaked at No.6 on the US Heatseekers
chart, but Shark Bites… stalled at No.21
on release. It also marked a rare period
of instability for the band, whose
line-up had remained fixed from the
release of Babylon with Daniel Pugsley
on bass, Mikey Demus on guitar and
Arya Goggin on drums.
“At the time of Shark Bites… I was
going through a lot of stuff,” Benji
admits. “I left my wife and moved to
Florida with someone else, so I was in
a really different place. We were in the
studio recording it, but it was quite
difficult because even though I lived
out there, the boys were basically away
from home the whole time.”
Ahead of writing for their fourth
record, Union Black, Benji moved back
to the UK and the band reconvened
in Bristol to start rehearsing. These
sessions laid the groundwork for
the band’s most important record to
date, one that reaffirmed their core
values and gave them anthems that
would dominate sets for years to
come. Some songs came easier than
others, however.
“We’d had this brilliant rehearsal
and I left that night like, ‘Right, I’m
gonna get this one done’ and basically
came up with the whole of Warning
there and then,” remembers Benji.
“So I walk back into the rehearsal
room the next day like a peacock, like,

Skindred (left to right):
Arya Goggin, Benji Webbe,
Mikey Demus, Dan Pugsley

‘I’ve got it!’ I put a demo on I’d made
up and the band looked at me like I’d
shit in their faces.”
A blow-up ensued, as Benji
explained the finer merits of the track
to the band and things got heated. The
rest of the band ultimately opted to
exit the studio for a coffee run, leaving
Benji to ruminate on the song he was
so fiercely trying to sell them.
“I was just by myself with this
pent-up anger,” Benji recalls. “I just
wanted to fucking kill everybody in
the room! So the lyrics of Warning were
basically me being so pissed off that
I wanted to explode. When the boys
came back, I sang the lyrics to them
and they were like, ‘Now that is fucking
cool.’ But it’s just funny that it came
from this anger about my bandmates
not getting it. I’m so glad that the boys
thought it was shit though, as that
made me rewrite, and that rewrite
made it Warning.”
Decamping to London, Skindred
booked time at Britannia Row Studios
to record Union Black. But while Benji’s
rewrite had brought Warning closer to
completion, he was still struggling to
nail the final elements, including
a bridge that would help the whole
thing come together. Thankfully, by
this point he had plenty of friends in

KEVIN NIXON

IT’S THE PART of Skindred’s live
shows that has gone down in legend.
We all know it’s coming and we all
bloody love it. At some point - most
likely at the end of the set - fans will
hold their shirts aloft and whirl them
around like the world’s most costeffective method of air conditioning.
But the band’s iconic Newport
Helicopter didn’t come into being
until a decade into their career – and,
hard as it is to imagine, they faced an
uphill battle even getting audiences
moving when they first started out.
“It was like pulling teeth!” admits
frontman Benji Webbe. “Like, ‘For
fuck’s sake, put your hands in the air!’
Now every time we turn up somewhere,
they treat us like it’s our hometown.”
In 2011, the band were well on the
way to cementing their reputation as
metal’s most reliable party-starters.
Although their 2002 debut, Babylon,
did not chart domestically, it enjoyed
success in the US when it topped the
Billboard Top Reggae Albums Chart,
while the singles Nobody and Pressure
both earned Top 50 spots on the Hot
Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
“We spent about three years going
over and touring there, so we clearly did
something right,” Benji says. “We played
Nobody on [Late Night With] Conan
O’Brien [in 2004], which was huge for
us. They might not have the history of
the ska stuff like the UK does, but the
audiences in the US just gravitated
towards the heaviness. We’ve always
been the weird kids in the class – we’re
the alternative to the alternative!”

SKINDRED

the industry to call on for advice - in
this case, Papa Roach frontman Jacoby
Shaddix, whom he’d met backstage
at Ozzfest in Milton Keynes almost
a decade earlier.
“My old band Dub War were dying
a death and Skindred hadn’t really fully
come into being yet,” Benji reminisces.
“Jacoby came up like, ‘Hey man, are
you the guy from Dub War?’ and we got
to chatting. About a year later Skindred
were playing a festival in Florida and
he came up and was like, ‘We need to
go out on the road together’, which
ended up happening a bit further down
the line. We got pretty close.”
Close enough that when Benji called
Jacoby and explained he was struggling
with a killer new song he’d written, the
Papa Roach frontman offered to fly
over to London and help out.
“He was actually in Paris at the
time,” Benji says happily. “Straight
away, he heard the song and said, ‘I’ve
got it: You better tread lightly.’ Straight
away I knew that was it, get this man

a mic so he can sing it! For me that was
the icing on the cake, getting Jacoby to
sing his part.”
Jacoby wasn’t the only guest Benji
had his sights on for Union Black, either.
“I’m fucking sick of Corey Taylor
telling me ‘No’!” he jokes with a cackle.

“WE’RE THE
ALTERNATIVE
TO THE
ALTERNATIVE”
BENJI WEBBE

“I’m a massive, massive Slipknot fan
and I’ve always loved his voice, so pretty
much every album we try to send
feelers out, like, ‘Is Corey available?’
but he just can’t get to us. It’s funny,
I don’t really like features, but I would
make an exception for someone like
Corey Taylor!”

Sans Corey, Skindred recorded Union
Black and released it on April 25 2011.
This time, the band’s chart success
was reversed; in the UK the album
peaked at No.54, but failed to make
the US Billboard chart entirely.
Nonetheless, Warning, the opening
track proper - after a drum’n’bass
instrumental intro - set the tone for
a reinvigorated Skindred.
“Union Black for me was the album
where we laid down what we’re all
about,” Benji admits. “The opening
track is the British national anthem
in a drum’n’bass remix. It’s such
a British record, collecting these
uplifting songs to bring people
together through the sound of music.”
Two months after Union Black was
released, Skindred were set to play the
2011 edition of Download Festival.
Their third appearance at Castle

METALHAMMER.COM 21

SKINDRED
Metal’s favourite
party-starters

“THE NEWPORT
HELICOPTER IS THE EIGHTH
WONDER OF THE WORLD”

BENJI WEBBE

SKINDRED’S NEW ALBUM,
SMILE, IS OUT NOW VIA
EARACHE. SKINDRED PLAY
MANCHESTER, LONDON AND
BIRMINGHAM WITH P.O.D.
AND AS EVERYTHING UNFOLDS
IN MARCH
22 METALHAMMER.COM

KEVIN NIXON

Donington, the band already had an
idea of what to expect and what they
were going to do while onstage, with
new member Dan Sturgess serving as
a DJ and opening possibilities for the
band to have fun with the crowd.
But when they got to Download, they
found one plan had to be abandoned.
“We were backstage at Download
Festival when this security briefing
went out: we need to stop the wall of
deaths,” Benji recalls. “We were pissed
off because it was such a huge crowd,
we kind of had to do it!”
Rather than give up, Benji thought
on his feet - and came up with an
iconic idea that would become a staple
of their gigs.
“There was this song years back on
MTV [Raise Up by Petey Pablo], where it
has this line, ‘North Carolina, come on
and raise up / take your shirt off… spin it
like a helicopter,’” Benji recalls. “That
came into my head when I was thinking
about that big breakdown in Warning.
So I was like, ‘I wonder if I can get these
heavy metal fuckers to do that?’”
Sure enough, thousands of fans soon
had their shirts swinging and the band
had etched out their own unique slice
of Donington history.
“I never thought it’d go so well,”
Benji marvels. “People get so excited
just for that now – it’s the eighth
wonder of the world!”
More than a decade later and the
idea of seeing Skindred not do the
Newport Helicopter is akin to seeing
Iron Maiden without Eddie. And as the
band prepare to bring the move to
their biggest headline gig to date
– Wembley Arena in March 2024
– Benji admits there’s something he’s
even prouder of.
“I pinch myself at the start of every
album cycle because I can’t believe
we’ve still got the same line-up,” he
admits. “It’s breathtaking to me that
we’re still family. It’s all coming up
Skindred now, man, things have never
been so good. The tortoise and the hare
comes to mind – he won in the end
didn’t he? Fuck ’em.”

Hero’s journey? Ancient
Greek twist? Homer ain’t
got nothin’ on Ihsahn

IN THE STUDIO

IHSAHN

The prog metal mastermind
is digging into his Emperor
roots for an ambitious
metal/orchestral double album
WORDS: MATT MILLS

Why have you made a double
album of avant garde metal and
orchestral music?
“I like to experiment, find new angles
to attack the album format. Sometimes
it’s more basic, sometimes it’s more out
there. This time, I wanted to really play
to my strengths, and I’ve been blending
soundtrack-like elements with
extreme metal since the beginning of
Emperor. My ambition, going into this
album, was to utilise that – go all in on
the extreme, with an orchestral layer
that raises the bar tremendously.”
Is your history with metal and
symphonic music why you
wanted this album to
be self-titled?
“I was very ambitious going
into this and I wanted this
to be the quintessential
Ihsahn album. I was
building on my experiences
and my strengths to push
the envelope. This is the
hardest, most complex
album I’ve ever made.

24 METALHAMMER.COM

I’ve always loved orchestral music and
soundtracks, and I’ve always wanted
to dig deeper.”

THE FACTS
ALBUM:

Which part of the album came first:
the metal or the orchestral stuff?
“It was simultaneous. I wrote the
entire album as a piano score, then
orchestrated it for guitars and bass and
everything else, then I orchestrated
the same music for an orchestra.”

8

STUDIO:

Mnemosyne
Studio

PRODUCER:
Ihsahn

EXPECT:

The most
symphonic and
mind-boggling
music Ihsahn’s
ever made

Is that how you usually write?
“I used that technique on my fourth
album, [2012’s] Eremita. The biggest
difference this time was the duality
aspect: I put a lot of effort into the
underlying layers because, most of
the time, they don’t come through in
a dense metal mix. If you listen to the
orchestral album, there are parts that
sound really intimate, whereas, in the
metal version, they’re really intense.”
Did the Emperor tours you did before
the pandemic [celebrating
the 20th anniversary of
Anthems To The Welkin
At Dusk] influence the
orchestral side?
“It’s hard to say – maybe
subconsciously. It’s very
different from Emperor,
harmonically and
structurally, but I did get
some feedback when friends
started hearing the album,

and one of them said, ‘This sounds like
the Emperor album that was never
recorded.’ That’ll probably upset my
bandmates in Emperor! Ha ha ha!
But it has that extremity.”
Is there a lyrical theme to the album?
“There’s a very conceptualised
storyline underneath. It’s a very classic
hero’s journey type of story, with an
existential crisis and a slightly Ancient
Greek twist. The protagonist is trying
to figure out the balance between
conforming to norms and culture
and breaking away from them.”
That’s very black metal.
“It’s an archetype you see through all
of metal, I think. I’m digging deeper
into the core of the kind of material
I’ve always made.”
Do you have any Ihsahn tours
planned for after the album’s out?
“We’ve already started booking live
shows. I really want to perform this
music live.”
With an orchestra?
“If you can get me the resources, yeah!
Ha ha ha! Ideally, it would be with the
Norwegian Radio Orchestra, because
they’re very good at this kind of stuff,
but they cost about 10 grand a day.”

IHSAHN IS OUT ON FEBRUARY 16
VIA CANDLELIGHT

PESS

IT’S BEEN FIVE years since Ihsahn’s
last album, Ámr, but the prog metal
maverick is compensating for the dry
spell with some of his most complex
material yet. The Emperor leader’s
eighth full-length solo record (handily
titled Ihsahn) will be a 100-minute
double album that casts him back to
his symphonic black metal origins: one
half heavy, and the other orchestral
interpretations. Chatting to Hammer,
the multi-instrumentalist reveals that
the string-backed songs are already
being called “the Emperor album that
was never recorded”.

SiM: patience is
their main virtue

NEW NOISE

SiM

The Japanese reggae/nu metal fusion band finally
taking the world by storm after almost 20 years –
thanks to anime Attack On Titan

AS MOST BANDS will tell you,
one song can change everything.
After grinding away for almost two
decades in their home country to
little international fanfare, Japanese
alt-metallers SiM released their
single The Rumbling in March 2022…
and got 10 million views in a week.
Written as the opening theme for the
final season of anime phenomenon
Attack On Titan, it catapulted the band
in front of a global audience: currently
the song has been viewed 50 million
times on YouTube and has more than
118 million streams on Spotify.
“Suddenly, our YouTube was filled
with comments from all around the
world,” says vocalist and songwriter
MAH of the moment he realised
everything had changed for the band.
“It became difficult to find comments
in Japanese.”
Named after a catastrophic scene
where a marching army of flesh-eating
giants are unleashed to end humanity,
the track saw the band incorporate
symphonic elements into their already
diverse blend of ska, dub, punk and
nu metal, capturing the apocalyptic
feel of the show’s final season, while
maintaining their own sound.
“I would say we gained many anime
fans from the release of The Rumbling,”
he continues. “But we want to reach
rock fans and not just anime fans.”
Clearly, it’s been quite a journey for
the quartet, completed by guitarist
SHOW-HATE, bassist SIN and
drummer GODRi, but before that, SiM
were becoming steadily disheartened.
Having formed in 2004, they played
their first US show at Knotfest in 2016.
“We’ve been a band for 19 years,
but we only had a few people in the
26 METALHAMMER.COM

IN SHORT
SOUNDS LIKE:

Reggaeinfused,
nu metalinfluenced
punk that
can soundtrack
moshpits…
and the end
of the world

FOR FANS OF:
Skindred,
Korn,
Linkin Park

LISTEN TO:

The Rumbling

audience [at Knotfest],” says MAH.
“We felt like we failed. During that
time, we thought an international
breakthrough was not possible,
but when we were asked to record
The Rumbling, our dream came true.”
These days, he says can’t even
walk down the street in Japan without
being recognised.
“I learned good things will come if
we don’t give up.”
Having been introduced to Rancid
by his mother and grown up listening
to the reggae-infused rock of San
Diego’s Pepper and Cali’s Long Beach
Dub Allstars, MAH formed the first
iteration of the band in Shonan, in
Japan’s Kanagawa Prefecture, when
he was still in high school as part
of an after-school club. The band’s
2008 debut, Silence Iz Mine, blended
the two styles with patchy results
– unsurprising given their young
age – but won the band plenty of
props for their fresh take on heavy
music nonetheless.
“I don’t think there were many bands
[in Japan] that mixed heavy style music
and reggae like we did,” MAH considers.
Since then, following several line-up
changes, their sound has developed,
pulling the dark anthemia and
heaviness of nu metal and electronica
into their ragga-metal fusion.
“I remember finding it interesting
that Korn and Linkin Park mixed
metal with pop music,” says MAH.
“As a musician, I learned a lot from
them on how they create and use
their sound.”
While SiM have been successful and
prolific in Japan for years, the rest of
world is finally catching up. In March,
they released Under The Tree, another

track created for Attack On Titan, which
has so far racked up more than 25
million Spotify streams. Their latest
and sixth album, Playdead, is their
biggest yet, packed with bouncy,
emphatic anthems written specifically
with huge stages in mind. Meanwhile,
the band played their first UK headline
show in June at London’s Islington
Academy – only their second time
on these shores. It sold out months
in advance.
“The audience were singing along
to our music, not just to The Rumbling,
but even songs from our first album,”
MAH remembers. “I felt so blessed.”

PRESS

WORDS: DANNII LEIVERS

SIM

“I LEARNED GOOD
THINGS WILL
COME IF WE
DON’T GIVE UP”
MAH

In 2024 they’ll graduate to even
larger rooms as they hit the UK again
with Texan rockers Nothing More.
However, the biggest indication of just
how far SiM have come over the last
few years was clear to see as the band

made their debut appearance
at Download Festival this summer.
On the second stage, sandwiched
between the sugary metalcore of The
Amity Affliction and the nu metal
bounce of Blind Channel, a large crowd
assembled, crowdsurfers flew over the
barrier and voices united as one. After
almost 20 years, it felt like an arrival.
“We had no idea how many people
would come to see us, until we got on
the stage,” remembers MAH. “Right
before our performance, we were
saying that we probably will only have
50 people at most in the audience. But
when we got onstage, we saw so many

people, and more and more came until
the space was completely filled.”
It was the moment, he says, when it
felt like all the band’s hard work had
finally paid off.
“Our goal from the very beginning
was to go outside of Japan,” he says
proudly. “Though it took time, we’re
now getting interviewed all over the
world. Life is such an interesting and
exciting journey.”

PLAYDEAD IS OUT NOW VIA
PONY CANYON. SIM TOUR
THE UK WITH NOTHING MORE
IN FEBRUARY
METALHAMMER.COM 27

NEW NOISE ROUND-UP

NEW NOISE

ASINHELL

Taking a break from arenas, Volbeat’s frontman
returns to his dirty death metal roots
WORDS: EMILY SWINGLE • PICTURES: BRITTANY BOWMAN

CREAK

Newcastle’s nu-metalcore bruisers
offer a message of unity amid an
ear-splitting racket
WORDS: ALI SHUTLER • PICTURES: JOE GUPPY

NEWCASTLE NU METAL/METALCORE brutes

IN SHORT

28 METALHAMMER.COM

IN SHORT

DEPTH PERCEPTION IS OUT NOW VIA PROSTHETIC

PRESS

“I FOUND AN old guitar and small
the sound - Asinhell is untameably
amp in my basement, cranked it up
rough around the edges, and that’s
to 10, and it sounded absolutely
exactly how they like it. You might
disgusting… it was perfect,”
be wondering why Michael is taking
Volbeat’s Michael Poulsen beams.
a step back from vocals this time
Joining forces with Insidious
around - and the answer is simple.
Disease’s Marc Grewe on vocals and
“Because Marc Grewe is the best,”
Raunchy’s Morten Toft Hansen on
states Michael.
drums, new project Asinhell has all
When Marc’s uncleans brutally
the makings of an old-school
rumble out like a hungry lion
death metal monster. For
on tracks such as Trophies,
Michael, it’s a return to his
you can’t help but agree.
SOUNDS LIKE:
roots, harking back to his
Roiling with frantic
Mercilessly
90s band Dominus.
blastbeats, chunky riffs and
thundering death
“Returning to the style
churning breakdowns, their
metal lurking in
the depths of the
of my old band felt pretty
debut, Impii Hora, is an
80s underground
natural, almost like
abrasive whirl of 80s-tinged
jumping on your bike
death metal. And unlike
FOR FANS OF:
again,” he reflects.
Michael’s arena-bothering
Death, Bolt
Thrower,
Asinhell began life as
main job, this one isn’t for
Entombed
a number of riffs Michael
the mainstream.
wrote while working on
“We don’t want to
LISTEN TO:
Island Of
Volbeat’s 2021 album, Servant
over-hype it,” Michael
Dead Men
Of The Mind. He subsequently
insists. “We want it to
put together a band to realise
exist where it belongs,
his old-school death metal vision and,
in the underground.”
when they finally hit the studio, the
Asinhell may very well be crashing
aim was to capture everything in its
into a basement near you soon.
rawest state, recording a live take
and layering in some extra guitars.
IMPII HORA IS OUT NOW VIA
There was never any attempt to polish
METAL BLADE

Creak have always loved a savage riff, but it’s the raw
emotion found in metal and hardcore that’s been the
driving force behind the four-piece.
“If I’m going to sing about very specific things from my
life, it’s all or nothing,” explains vocalist Jack Dunn.
There’s a delicious aggression to Creak’s debut album,
Depth Perception, but there are also moments of
atmospheric introspection, the band
taking inspiration from the surreal
works of David Lynch, anxietySOUNDS LIKE:
inducing horror films and videogame
The crushing,
soundtracks. Left To Heaven, for
cinematic
example, started life as Creak’s take
soundtrack to
a harrowing,
on the Resident Evil save music.
real-life horror
“We didn’t set out to make an album,
we just got excited trying out new
FOR FANS OF:
things,” Jack says.
Code Orange,
Pupil Slicer,
With lyrics written about his mum’s
Beartooth
cancer diagnosis and her four-year
recovery, the album tackles guilt,
LISTEN TO:
Hare In
fear, loss, misery, dread and selfThe Woods
loathing in excruciating detail.
But as heavy as Depth Perception is,
it never feels oppressive.
“It just felt like there was more to explore than anger,”
Jack admits. “I’m not very good at talking about how I’m
feeling normally, but I was making music with my friends
and getting things off my chest. It was a positive experience,
even if it was difficult.”
With massive mosh-calls and stirring melodic passages,
Creak hope to share a message of “Whatever you’re feeling,
that’s OK” with fans. “There’s an element of ‘These things
suck, but I’m not going through it alone’,” says Jack.

NEW NOISE ROUND-UP

CELESTIAL
SANCTUARY

The Cavalera-endorsed band leading
the next gen of British death metal
WORDS: MADISON COLLIER

MAX CAVALERA HAS given

IN SHORT
SOUNDS LIKE:

If the sludge on
the walls of Hell’s
moodiest dungeon
could emit sound
(and really
liked blastbeats)

FOR FANS OF:

Obituary,
Morbid Angel,
Frozen Soul

LISTEN TO:

Biomineralization
(Cell Death)

Celestial Sanctuary his seal of
approval, and they’re unapologetic
champions for ‘The New Wave of
British Death Metal’ – the name
they’ve coined to describe the batch
of exciting death metal bands, such
as Tomb Mold and Blood Incantation,
who have been revitalising the
scene. Their second full-length,
Insatiable Thirst For Torment, is an
eight-track pummelling inspired
by the Jivaro, an Ecuadorian tribe
who rebelled against Spanish
colonials and their gold tax in the
16th century.
“It isn’t a concept album, but there’s
this theme running throughout of

greed, temptation and wastefulness,”
explains frontman Tom Cronin.
The band use a macabre story about
a Spanish governor’s execution as
a springboard for its exploration of
rapacity: “He had a thirst for greed, so
they melted their gold and silver, and
poured it down his throat,” Tom says.
The brutal story is well in keeping
with the band’s core death metal
influences, and they even shared
a stage with Obituary in February.

“There are two bands that I credit
for us starting this project: Obituary
and Morbid Angel,” says Tom. “To go
from starting this one-person demo
thing in my basement, to three years
later playing with Obituary, blows my
mind completely.”

INSATIABLE THIRST FOR TORMENT
IS OUT NOW VIA CHURCH ROAD.
CELESTIAL SANCTUARY TOUR
THE UK FROM JANUARY 13

IN THE KNOW
What your favourite
bands are listening to

BODY VOID

New England industrial doom trio focused on
America’s capitalist atrocities
WORDS: NOAH BERLATSKY • PICTURES: SKYELER WILLIAMS

IN SHORT
SOUNDS LIKE:

Sludge-soaked
giant machines
falling on the
unsuspecting with
enormous clangs
and squeals

FOR FANS OF:
Uniform,
Godflesh,
Pharmakon

LISTEN TO:

PRESS

Atrocity Machine

FLESH MARKET, ON Body Void’s
new album, Atrocity Machine, is less
than seven minutes long – practically
a hardcore track by the band’s usual
monumental standards. Yet guitarist/
vocalist Willow Ryan’s music remains
a pounding, shrieking sludge assault
of industrial doom and power
electronic howls.
“We wanted to do shorter songs,
because live it’s just more fun to play
more songs,” they explain. “There’s
also a desire to be more focused and
less sprawling.”
Willow also applied this focus to the
record lyrically and thematically. While
they’ve previously explored climate

change, dysphoria and trans identity
(the latter the subject of Deathless, the
latest album from Willow’s side-project,
Hellish Form), Atrocity Machine refers
to capitalism. The 10-minute title track
feels like a kind of national anthem of
colossal dismemberment; you can hear
the tattered, broken humans being fed
into a blind and horrific process.
“I find myself basically just writing
about how capitalism grows and
evolves,” Willow explains. “How it
reduces us, extracting labour. The
atrocity machine is just America.”

ATROCITY MACHINE IS OUT NOW
VIA PROSTHETIC

TAILGUNNER
“IT IS SO

refreshing
to see a young band
like Tailgunner
doing classic heavy
metal - it doesn’t
matter if their
influences are
totally blatant,
I’m still really
glad to see
them. They are
a young band
with a big future
ahead of them, and
their first album
has only just
come out.”

K.K. DOWNING, KK’S PRIEST

METALHAMMER.COM 29

HOARD
ALMIGHTY
Box sets, underground oddities and all the
essential merch you need this month

JOB FOR A COWBOY T-SHIRT
£20.30

It’s been eight years since Job For A Cowboy’s
last album – is there work left on the ranch?
Judging by the artwork for upcoming record
Moon Healer, business is booming. Giddy up
with this t-shirt.
tinyurl.com/jfac-tee

HANGING BAT NIGHTLIGHT
£25.70

Scared of the dark? Assuage your fears with
this handmade, translucent resin nightlight.
Never mind the fact that it depicts a bewinged,
blood-sucking beast of the night, packed to
the bubes with disease. It’s cute!
tinyurl.com/bat-light

EVANESCENCE

FALLEN - 20TH ANNIVERSARY
SUPER DELUXE EDITION BOX SET
CRAFT RECORDINGS
£150/£210

Yep, Evanescence’s debut is older than the Xbox 360 – we’ve got some Zimmer
frames going spare if you’d like one. While you wait for time’s inevitable march,
consider feasting upon Fallen in all its 20th anniversary, box-setted glory. You’ll
find the remastered and expanded album on sumptuously patterned vinyl, sure.
But then there’s another LP, chunky with demos and live recordings, and a cassette
tape featuring 11 more unreleased demos. We’re not done yet, though: you’ve got
enamel pin badges, three 8 x 10 prints hoisted from the Fallen era, a companion
book featuring track-by-track scribblings by Amy Lee, and a slipmat. Pony up
an extra £60 and you get a boxed, Evanescence-branded cassette player on top.
Oh, and 500 of the 5,000 copies are signed, too. Bring your wallet to life.
evanescence.craftrecordings.co.uk

30 METALHAMMER.COM

HUMAN SKULL GAS LOGS
£63.05

Love metal? Skulls? These metal skulls are for
you. Chuck them on a barbeque, yeet them
into camp-fires, then witness the flames
billow from skeletal orifices. They also last
for 10 years – creepy, yet responsible.
tinyurl.com/skull-logs

HOARD ALMIGHTY

MORBID ANGEL SPIRIT BOARD

HEAVY METAL KITCHEN GLOVE

HIP HOP BOOK

Conjure the spirits of death metal past with
this Covenant-themed spirit board. If you’re
not up to asking the undead punisher-level
questions about Trey Azagthoth’s guitar
set-up, maybe just use it for serving cheese?

Outrageously devoid of a mitt for those of the
left-hand persuasion, this glove is a must for
those who believe heavy metal is bigger than
life, death and getting your cookies out of the
oven unspilled.

Shot by award-winning director Peter Spirer
while he made his 1997 Rhyme & Reason
documentary, this mammoth tome compiles
130 candid snaps of legends like Ice-T, Wu-Tang
and Biggie on the brink of global domination.

tinyurl.com/evil-spells

tinyurl.com/glove-metal

tinyurl.com/hiphop-book

AMAYA COAT

KATATONIA BEANIE

CANNIBAL CORPSE COLOURING BOOK

Want to cut a stylish silhouette while avoiding
the elements? This winter coat – with faux furtrimmed hood and cuffs, no less – will see you
right, all while subtly revealing your gothier
inclinations thanks to its lace detailing.

Hailing from the frozen plains of Sweden
means prog-metal demigods Katatonia should
know a thing or two about keeping warm.
Take them up on their offer of a floppy, logoemblazoned beanie and keep your bonce snug.

Delight the kids this Christmas with an
offal-strewn colouring book that features
graphic depictions of all your favourite Vince
Locke art crimes. Just don’t forget to pick up
some crayons, too. Lots and lots of red ones.

tinyurl.com/amaya-coat

tinyurl.com/viva-warmness

tinyurl.com/paint-it-red

HEALTH T-SHIRT

SLAYER SHOES

HEAVY METAL BADGER BOOK

Is this the ultimate ‘If you know, you know’
shirt? Celebrate industrial rock oiks Health
and the Chainsaw Man manga while
(unintentionally, we assume) also referencing
a particularly drippy Michael Jackson track.

Current kicks ready to commit mandatory
shoe-icide? Then hop to it and grab a pair
of these, which see the legendary thrash
act teaming up with skate brand DC.
Just remember to cleanse the soles, eh?

Badgers have natural corpsepaint and live
underground in sets, so it’s no surprise the
protagonist of this kids’ book wants to play
metal. It’s lovingly crafted with lots of puns
– Nine Inch Snails and Ant-Thrax, anyone?

tinyurl.com/health-tee

tinyurl.com/shoe-against-shoe

tinyurl.com/metal-badger

£50

£184.99-£194.99

£26.15

£30.60/£31.70

£13.99

£80.99

£39.95

£12.99

£7.99/£11.75

METALHAMMER.COM 31

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2023: THE BIG REVIEW

From Metallica and Maiden bringing us huge live
extravaganzas, to Download Festival turning 20
with a four-day weekend, this was the year metal’s
big players shined. But we’ve also had surprises
– from glittery metal at Eurovision, to Avenged
Sevenfold going trippy, and Sleep Token being
anointed as… sexy? So sit back and throw the horns
as we remind you of an incredible 12 months.
METALHAMMER.COM 35

METAL’S BIG
HITTERS
REIGNED
SUPREME

We had Metallica’s comeback album and mega
world tour, plus Iron Maiden’s Future Past run.
But a wave of rising bands also delivered the
goods, shoring up metal’s next generation
WORDS: ALEC CHILLINGWORTH

Nicko McBrain smash a big gong every
evening, the heroic drummer had
recently suffered a stroke and was
still recovering.
Black Sabbath announced an actual
ballet, a mechanical bull in Birmingham
was named Ozzy, and speaking of
which… remember The Osbournes?
They’re back! In pod form.
Babymetal became a trio again,
officially inducting dancer Momometal
during a show in Yokohama, and
Gojira played their biggest headliner
to date in Paris. Avenged Sevenfold
dropped their brain-squeezingly
experimental record Life Is But
A Dream…, Kiss retired – but probably
didn’t, let’s be real – and Download
Festival celebrated 20 years with
a four-day chunkathon, so loud that
the Donington locals complained.
Rage Against The Machine were
inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of
Fame, if anyone’s still paying attention
to the ceremony, and Guns N’ Roses
did Glastonbury – still not as hard as
Elton John banging out Pinball Wizard
in a shiny suit, though.
Dads worldwide rejoiced when the
Foo Fighters came back with Josh

2023 SEEMED NORMAL,
BUT IT WAS THE WILDEST
12 MONTHS
36 METALHAMMER.COM

STEPHANIE CABRAL

I

n the parlance of our times, 2023
hit different. We had no more
paradigm-wrecking pathogens
nor primate-based NFTomfoolery
– it seemed normal, almost mundane.
Tours were announced and they
happened. Albums were released on
schedule. Skindred played Download
for the 96th time.
But the year was like an ogre: it had
layers, and even a cursory peel reveals
the wildest 12 months. The inaugural
Power Trip festival’s line-up read like
a fake poster from a forum, solely
featuring Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden,
AC/DC, Judas Priest, Tool and Metallica.
The latter carved their own pavé
elsewhere, doing two nights per city
for their new 72 Seasons album and
promising punters a ‘No Repeat
Weekend’. This gave the Four
Horsemen time and space to fine-tune
touring into their 60s, and Kirk just
one chance per venue to fudge Nothing
Else Matters.
Maiden rolled out The Future Past
tour, airing Senjutsu material alongside
rarer Somewhere In Time tracks,
including a debut for Alexander The
Great. Unbeknownst to those watching

METAL THRIVED
AC/DC at Power Trip: the line-up
poster wasn’t a misprint, it really
did ‘only’ have six of the world's
biggest bands on the bill

METALHAMMER.COM 37

Freese behind the drumkit, not
replacing the late Taylor Hawkins but
just being their guy. It made people
smile, buoyed by the strength of the
resulting album, But Here We Are.

I

t wasn’t just household names
making noise. Voyager brought
Australian prog metal to Eurovision,
and Germany’s Lord Of The Lost
crashed out in last place – though they
did get to meet King Charles while
dressed as glittery gimps. The band,
not Charles.
In muggier climes, stuff was
happening for the UK. TikTok got
sopping wet for Sleep Token and pushed
the R’n’B metallers to a Wembley
Arena sellout, shifting 10,000 tickets
in 10 minutes. Bands like Malevolence
and Bleeding Through started getting
their flowers – albeit spin-kicking
them into a wall of death – as While
She Sleeps sold out London’s Alexandra
Palace. Biffy Clyro frontman Simon
Neil teamed up with the band’s touring
guitarist/ex-Oceansize frontman
Mike Vennart, plus drumming icon
Dave Lombardo, for their hilariously
extreme Empire State Bastard project.
Creeper released their third – and
best – album in Sanguivore, proving
that you can, in fact, tack a Cradle Of
Filth outro onto a nine-minute Jim
Steinman song.

38 METALHAMMER.COM

And Skindred, lovely Skindred. The
Welsh reggae metallers were no longer
our little secret, landing at No.2 in the
UK album charts, appearing on BBC
Breakfast and late-night TV, and
announcing their own Wembley gig
to boot. Go on, lads.
Even when you dig into the murk,
milestones were milled. Morbid, the
Swedish band in which the late Pelle
‘Dead’ Ohlin of Mayhem cut his teeth,
reconvened for one night only: Pelle’s
brother took on vocals, with Watain’s
Erik Danielsson on drums. Watain
themselves commemorated 25 years of
blood, fire and stench with two packedout gigs in their hometown of Uppsala.
Given we’re looking back, 2023
dripped with nostalgia. Rose-tinted
glasses and murmurings of The Good
Old Days™ dished up droves of gold:
Adidas and Korn’s collab, Creed’s
return being greeted with arms wide
open, the reawakening of Sleepytime
Gorilla Museum, Gen Z becoming
obsessed with nu metal, and the

THIS YEAR,
STUFF STARTED
HAPPENING
FOR UK BANDS

misty-eyed line-ups curated by US
festivals like When We Were Young
and Sick New World.
Elsewhere, we welcomed Swollen
Teeth: the bemasked four-piece
produced by Slipknot’s Sid Wilson,
signed by nu metal super-producer
Ross Robinson – five points for
guessing who they sound like. Mike
Portnoy stopped joining other bands
and returned to Dream Theater after
13 years away, while Ghost got back on
their covers EP train for Phantomime.
Spooky versions of Genesis and Tina
Turner? Why not.
There was more banter and silly
bollocks where that came from.
In a crushing blow to bald blokes
everywhere, Five Finger Death Punch’s
Ivan Moody took to TikTok to explain
he’d been mistaken for Disturbed’s
David Draiman – looks more like
Jason Statham to us. And in another
stroke of misfortune, ex-Megadeth
bassist Dave Ellefson covered Faith
No More’s Epic with the bloke from
Insane Clown Posse.
This year also harboured a horde
of legal snafus. Mötley Crüe and
ex-guitarist Mick Mars’s lawsuit
rattled along with the pace and grace
of dentures in a washing machine,
Billy Corgan paid a hacker’s ransom to
prevent the new Smashing Pumpkins
album from leaking, and, more

WSS: BEN GIBSON.

While She Sleeps sold
out London’s Ally Pally.
Excellent work, lads!

METAL THRIVED

Mick Hutson: a great
photographer
and friend

Brixton Academy was
saved from closure

for bands’ gas money. The move was
branded transparent as clingfilm on
a toilet bowl, posited as a ploy to lure
acts from independent locales.
It wasn’t just venues getting put on
blast. Several of Pantera’s ‘reunion’
dates were cancelled, Slipknot’s future
was questioned as some members left,
and, uh, John Dolmayan said Serj
Tankian should’ve just quit System Of
A Down in 2006. OK, pal.

SWOLLEN TEETH: PRESS. BRIXTON ACADEMY: GETTY. MICK HUTSON: SHUTTERSTOCK.

T

Swollen Teeth: we can’t
quite place who they
remind us of…

seriously, London’s Brixton Academy
faced closure following a fatal crowd
crush in December last year. The iconic
building was given 77 “extensive and
robust” safety measures it must meet
before reopening.
As an O2-owned site, Brixton and
similar sites were dragged over the
coals for taking merch cuts from artists.
Igorrr helped lead the charge for metal
bands, refusing to sell merch at their
Kentish Town Forum gig, for which
a 25% share of sales was demanded.
2023 was the year bands finally told
venues to fuck off.
Live Nation tried steadying the scales
by freezing merch cuts across its North
American clubs, even offering to pay

hat’s not to say musicians spent
2023 sharpening their knives and
hoping their peers had an accident at
work. Bands, fans and locals came
together to house people during the
opening days of Wacken Open Air,
which was hit with severe flooding.
Metallers helped support drumming
legend Nick Barker with a crowdfunding
campaign as he suffered from kidney
failure, and the internet held its breath
for a day while David Draiman’s puppy
was lost and subsequently found.
Maybe he should spend more time
with his dog now, and less on social
media, because to put it mildly, online
metal discourse has been a mess in
2023. You could argue it always has
been, but recently there’s been more
ugly, irresponsible instances of artists
attacking trans rights, believing
pronouns to be weapons rather than
fundaments of language. All the more
surprising, then, that when Thy Art Is
Murder’s CJ McMahon said a mother
should be “burned to death” for
good-naturedly affirming her child’s
comment on being both genders, he
was fired, replaced, and only found
out his vocals had been re-recorded

on Thy Art’s album release day. There’s
a German word for that.
And as with every year, we lost some
good ones along the way. Dark Angel’s
sole original member, Jim Durkin,
passed away in March. Polaris’s
guitarist, Ryan Siew, died at the unjust
age of 26 this June; the Australian
metalcore band released his final set of
songs on Fatalism a few months later,
topping their native album charts.
Music photographer Mick Hutson
also passed away in June. Having
worked for Hammer, Classic Rock, Q, and
more, Mick was so good at his job it
literally stopped ISIS from kidnapping
him. Raise a glass for Mick, Jim, Ryan,
and everyone else no longer with us.
It can be tough to stay upbeat when
the world’s all wonky. Bandcamp culled
half their staff during a corporate
overhaul. The Russia-Ukraine War
shows no sign of ending, there’s
escalating conflict in the Middle East,
and basic services like healthcare and
electricity are treated as luxuries.
Listening to your old favourites
offers comfort, and it’s fun. So do that.
Savour those riffs, the stuff you live
for, the lyrics you know by heart.
But find a new band. Just one, if
you’re tight on time and need to TikTok
yourself having a shit or something.
Whether it’s Scene Queen and you’re
just baffled, or it’s Heriot and you’re
just frightened, there’s always
something fresh, vital, and ready to
be discovered.
Those new bands are going to mean
something. If you waded through the
comment section of 2024’s Download
line-up announcement – a diverse cast
of supporting bands topped by the, er,
famously underground Fall Out Boy,
Queens Of The Stone Age and Avenged
Sevenfold – you’ll have seen the
discussion surrounding the next
generation of headliners. The old guard
will be here until they’re not – your
curiosity and support will decide who’ll
take their place.

METALHAMMER.COM 39

72 Seasons, Spinal Tap stage sets and celebrity moshpits
– Rob Trujillo looks back on Metallica’s blockbusting year
WORDS: RICH HOBSON

40 METALHAMMER.COM

PRESS/TIM SACCENTI

METALLICA MADE
AN EPIC COMEBACK

METALLICA

M

etallica’s 72 Seasons was
the most anticipated
album of the year, finally
arriving in April, seven
years after its predecessor, Hardwired…
To Self-Destruct. Full-speed-or-nothing
single Lux Æterna may have called back
to the band’s early days, but 72 Seasons
itself was an epic trawl through singer
James Hetfield’s psyche, recorded
against the backdrop of the pandemic.
Then the band embarked on the
equally ambitious M72 World Tour,
which saw them playing two shows
in each destination, with a different
setlist each night. It also found the
quartet bringing their in-the-round
stage to stadiums for the first time,
complete with Snake Pit in the centre.
And it’s not done yet – the run extends
towards the end of 2024.
“It’s all go, man,” says bassist Rob
Trujillo, speaking to Hammer from
Mexico City, where he’s watching his
son, Tye, play with his own former
band, Suicidal Tendencies. “Sometimes
you’ve just gotta roll up your sleeves
and move forward.”
How has 2023 been for Metallica?
“2023 has been great. The release of 72
Seasons was obviously a big deal for us,
especially considering we couldn’t be
in the same room together most of the
time we were writing it [due to the
pandemic]. We started working via
Zoom, which was strange, but it helped
us dig deep and really turn this into
a passion-driven batch of songs and
ideas. You can hear the energy that
came forth when we finally did get
together. Some songs had first-take
moments – we might have played
Inamorata like 20 times, but the first
take was the one we used.”
In an interview on Metallica’s official
site, you say the first creative thing
you did for 72 Seasons came from
an acoustic version of The Day That
Never Comes. Will we ever get to hear
that version?
“That’s a good point! There were a lot
of ideas that weren’t included in the
final batch of songs for 72 Seasons. In
the back of our minds I’m sure there
was an idea we should have a slower
song or ballad, but we were ready to go.
So far as The Day That Never Comes goes,
it has a lot of potential as an acoustic
song, so I think it’s something we’ll
do at some point, maybe as part of
All Within My Hands [Metallica’s
non-profit foundation]. I was more
interested in the metal, though, which
is basically what we’ve pursued as
a team. But at some point there will be
a ballad. I’m ready to start writing the
next album with these guys already,

METALHAMMER.COM 41

METALLICA

Rob, Kirk, James and Lars:
still surprising us, still
pushing the limits

If you could take just one song from
72 Seasons to a desert island, which
would you choose?
“Inamorata is an amazing song and we
all feel it has classic potential, but I’m
gonna have to go with You Must Burn!.
That’s the first official semi-solo vocal
moment for me in Metallica. Greg
[Fidelman, producer] and James gave
me the freedom to present my vocal
moment, where I was just trying to
channel Ozzy – you may or may not
hear that! I do really like that middle
section, it feels like a very complete
song and has the right power groove.
That’s my desert island jam.”
Do you think you’ll sing more
in future?
“I’m always there for what the band
need! I was expecting to just do gang
vocal-type things, adding a bit of
texture and presence to the recording,
but I didn’t realise I’d get a semi-solo

42 METALHAMMER.COM

moment! I always do my best whatever
I’m asked to do though man, and these
are the moments you can cherish.”
The M72 Tour was ambitious even by
Metallica’s standards. Has it set the
bar ridiculously high for future tours?
“Taking that record out on the road
with this enormous stage and basically
docking in each city was really
challenging, but I think we found our
stride with it. You need to figure out
how to work out different terrains,
especially given how big the stage is
and how huge the Snake Pit is. It was
like, ‘How do we connect with our
fans the way we want to?’ Thankfully
we still did. Kirk and I would have

“WE HAD A WICKED
CIRCLE-PIT WITH
JASON MOMOA AND
DAVE GROHL”

these moments where we’d write
a song for each city – an instrumental
– and oftentimes that would be just
me and him rehearsing in a vehicle
on the way to a venue, coming up
with a two-minute song that we put
together. It could be punk-influenced,
funk, speed metal… there’s a lot of
cool little gems that’ve contributed
to this live show.”
What was it like walking out onto
that stage, under those huge towers,
for the very first time?
“Surreal! Every single show had its
own customised adventure. You learn
each show a little more on how to
get things running the right way
– and it wasn’t always easy. The first
couple shows we were opening with
instrumentals, which we thought was
really cool, coming on to like The Call
Of Ktulu or Orion. But we got the feel
from the fans that they liked the
instrumentals, but they need us to
come out with like Creeping Death that’s
gonna be more direct and in-your-

PRESS/TIM SACCENTI

but we’re only halfway through the
tour currently so that’s a way off yet.”

METALLICA
The huge M72 World Tour kicked
off in Amsterdam back in April

Power Trip: well, you couldn’t have
the most metal festival ever without
Metallica there, could you?!

face. Then we can mess with the
dynamics. It was all about working out
that production, the setlist, even the
way we move onstage; there’s a real
worry you can fall off if you’re not
careful or trip over a snare. But you
know, it keeps you on your toes.”

POWER TRIP: STEPHANIE CABRAL. AMSTERDAM: DEREK BREMNER

There’s definitely a lot of opportunity
for Spinal Tap moments.
“Ha! Oh man, yeah there were times
where a drum-riser wouldn’t come up
or whatever. James literally said that
a few times: ‘Spinal Tap!’”
Do you argue over the setlists?
“Definitely one of the biggest
challenges for this tour has been
figuring out what that setlist is gonna
look like. You want a sense of throttle,
but also to have plenty of highlight
moments – like, when are we gonna
do the ball drop? Where are we gonna
have the moment for Kirk and I to
jam? It’s all about pacing and it’s not
something you can figure out on the
first show, it takes time. Especially
when certain songs might not
resonate in Europe as well as they
do back home.
“At the same time, we will be going
back into these territories next year,
so we want to give ourselves room
to mix it up too, especially with the
new songs where someone might go,
‘Yeah we’ve seen Too Far Gone?, what
do you have for us now?’ But Lars is
always thinking ahead too, making
suggestions like, ‘We need to do this,
pull this one out of the back catalogue’
or whatever, so we’ll see! Plus, some
fans come to multiple shows and don’t

really want repetition, so you’ve gotta
cater as best you can. It’s balance.”
You played two headlining sets at
Download, which was the first time
any band had done that. How was
that for you?
“Download, at that point, was my
favourite show of the tour. It was
massive! There must have been at
least 80,000 people there, but there
was just a magic that even with it being
so massive, it felt personal. It was
surreal in a Mad Max way, looking out
and seeing these towers protruding
from the crowd. There were a lot of
good times there and we watched
some great bands. I loved seeing
Benji [Webbe] of Skindred [and Rob’s
bandmate in side-project Mass Mental],
because we don’t see each other all
the time now.”

Jason Momoa and John Travolta
turned up to see you in Los Angeles.
How did that come about?
“Well, Jason Momoa lives in my
neighbourhood, actually. So to see
Momoa in the Snake Pit was like,
‘Wait, what?!’ That was pretty scary!
Ha ha ha! He’s a big dude! We did have
a pretty wicked circle-pit with Momoa,
Dave Grohl and even some of my old
Suicidal Tendencies bandmates in
there, like Mike Clark. It was like,
‘What the hell is going on?!’”
You also played the Power Trip
festival in Indio, California. What’s
your favourite memory of that?
“Just being able to stand there
watching those bands so up close and
personal was incredible; I stood 15 feet
away from AC/DC! Even though
I’m friends with people like [Iron

METALHAMMER.COM 43

METALLICA

Download 2023: “magic”
and “massive”. Damn right!

What was it like backstage?
“Well, I know a lot of those guys
anyway, but I’ve gotta say I’m always
starstruck whenever I run into Rob
Halford. I didn’t get a chance to
meet Angus, but hopefully someday
because he seems so super-cool!
But it was cool just hanging out with
guys like Duff and Slash, they were
just so nice.
“It’s always incredible reconnecting
with musicians after so many years,
and finding them still so humble and

44 METALHAMMER.COM

grounded. A lot of those bands were
just there for a one-off. Iron Maiden
were going on a long break afterwards,
and Judas Priest had only had a few
rehearsals before the show. We were
all in different mindsets, but you get
on that stage and it becomes this huge
celebration of what we do.”
This year’s marked the 20th
anniversary of St. Anger. Have
people’s opinions of that record
changed over time?
“Most people that I talk to have found
a place in their heart for St. Anger.
What’s cool is pulling out Dirty Window
in the set. The way we play it now, I’ve
found my place in the songs we play
and found a groove for those songs
from St. Anger, almost like we’ve given
it a facelift.”
There’s a new documentary in the
works about Metallica superfans.
How’s that all coming along?
“Well, we’ve got some of the best
fans in the world, so I think it’s great
to be able to celebrate them and who

“DOWNLOAD
WAS SURREAL IN
A MAD MAX WAY”

they are. It goes back to this idea of
helping people in general having
a better life, so we want to show what
it all means to them.”
What does 2024 hold for Metallica?
“We’ll be coming back to hit Europe,
the States, and territories we haven’t
hit on this run. We’ll be looking to mix
up the set a little more, which is fun
and challenging. There’s definitely
some curveballs there that I like.
Creatively, I’ll definitely be jamming
and writing, especially because I’ve got
so many great neighbours to have fun
with. Who knows what that’ll end up
being. Maybe the world will hear it,
maybe they won’t!”
Have Metallica been approached to
play the Sphere in Las Vegas?
“You’d have to ask Lars that question!
He’s always the guy with his finger on
the pulse, so we’re happy to let him
go ahead with all this cutting-edge
stuff, exploring possibilities. So if we
do end up playing the Sphere, I’d say
that seed is being planted about now…
We just want to get into 2024 and see
where that takes us, but I’m pretty
sure we have shows going right up to
2025 at this point.”

72 SEASONS IS OUT ON
BLACKENED RECORDINGS

DOWNLOAD 2023: KATJA OGRIN

Maiden’s] Adrian Smith, watching him
onstage, doing what he does, it’s like
‘Oh, that’s right! He’s the guy that’s
influenced us all!’
“I was interviewed by the LA Times
and they also got Justin [Chancellor,
Tool bassist] to answer the same
question: Which band do you feel you
could play with? And we were both
like, ‘Iron Maiden!’ We grew up
listening to Steve Harris, so he’s our
path through all this music, so seeing
that band onstage just took us back
to our youth.
“Then you get to Sunday, and it’s
like, ‘Oh yeah, we’ve got to play now!’
I commend the crew and audience, it
was literally triple-digit temperatures
with all this dust, so people who
endured that and still made it a great
gig, it’s truly commendable.”

OZZY
Ozzy: retirement?
Fuck that!

OZZY RETIRED
(OR DID HE?)

The Double O stepped back from touring… but he’s started work on a new album
WORDS: RICH HOBSON

GETTY

O

zzy Osbourne is the first to admit
that 2023 was quieter for him than
he’d have liked. Although still
basking in the success of last
year’s Patient Number 9 album, he was forced
to finally cancel his much-delayed No More
Tours 2 run in February, announcing his
retirement from touring due to ongoing
health issues. There was a glimmer of
hope when he was announced as one of
the headliners for October’s Power Trip,
but he pulled out of the show.
“It’s been fucking miserable man,” he says,
speaking to Hammer from his home in LA.
“I thought I’d be back on my feet months ago.”
It’s not all been bad. This year saw the
return of The Osbournes Podcast, effectively an
audio continuation of 2000s reality TV show
The Osbournes. Each episode finds Ozzy
and members of his family talking about
everything from Satanism to Hollywood.
“We have a real laugh with it, but it’s just us!
But it seems a lot of people are listening and
liking it.”

He may live in the US right now, but Ozzy’s
links with his hometown of Birmingham
remain strong. A giant metal bull in the city
centre was named after the singer (“It’s a bit
better than a fucking park bench,” he says,
referring to the seat on Broad Street that was
opened in 2019 and got a spruce-up this year).
And then there’s the Black
Sabbath ballet staged by
the Birmingham Royal
Ballet, which debuted
in September.
“When Sharon told
me about it, I thought:
‘A Black Sabbath ballet?
I can’t see that!’” he admits. “But then they
sent us some of the rehearsal footage and it
wasn’t half bad – shows what I know.”
Sadly, the same health issues that kept him
off the road meant he couldn’t attend the
ballet’s premiere (though Sharon did go).
But having undergone what he says is
his final bout of spinal surgery, he offers
a hopeful forecast for 2024.

“I can’t walk properly yet, but I’m not in any
pain anymore and the surgery on my spine
went great,” he says with audible delight.
“So I’m getting myself fit, and I am going to
go on the road! I want to do one more album
and then go back on the road.”
Ozzy says the album will most likely be
produced once again
by Andrew Watt, but
he’s planning to keep
things simple this time
around compared with
the star-studded cast
of his last two records,
2020’s Ordinary Man
and 2022’s Patient Number 9.
“I’m just starting to work on it now, and
we’ll be recording in the early part of next
year,” he says. “I want to take my time with
this one, do a good rock album.”
The last 12 months may have been painful
for Ozzy, but 2024 looks like being the year
he makes his comeback. After all, when has
retirement ever stopped him before?

“I AM GOING
TO GO ON
THE ROAD!”

METALHAMMER.COM 45

BARBIE TOOK
OVER THE
WORLD

A blockbusting movie meant Mattel’s iconic
doll was everywhere in 2023 – and metal wasn’t
immune to Barbiegeddon
WORDS: DAVE EVERLEY

46 METALHAMMER.COM

G-String, etc), as well as the Bimbocore
Vol.1 and Vol.2 EPs. But her 2022 single
Barbie And Ken (‘Ken and Barbie sitting in
a tree / K-I-L-L-I-N-G’) predicted both
this year’s Barbie Takeover and the
subversive nature of the film itself.
“I love the fact that the track
will always tie me to Barbie, in
a way,” she says. “And the film
coming out has been so perfect
for me, because everything
exists in pink now. I feel
like my crowd has gotten
10 times pinker on tour
this year.”
Scene Queen
wasn’t the only one
to predict the rise
of all things Barbie.
In June, more than
a month before the
movie hit the screens,
Avenged Sevenfold
released their dizzying
eighth album, Life Is But
A Dream…. It featured the
song Mattel, named after
the company behind the
Barbie doll itself and
conjuring the same surreal,
hyper-reality as the film.
‘My vinyl skin provides
protection / it holds in place my
plastic bones,’ sings M Shadows,
referencing a world where
nothing is real. ‘Now I know
this might sound crazy,’ runs
the song’s chorus, ‘but I’ve

Scene Queen:
powerful in pink

smelled the plastic daisies / And it seems
we’ve found ourselves in Hell.’ A music
video for the song used actual
Barbie dolls to present a funny, if
increasingly nightmarish and
X-rated vision of Barbie Land
that put the version in the film
in the shade.
“I took my dog on a walk, and
all I see is plastic grass and I see
plastic homes and people outside
doing their plastic things. We’re
so predictable,” Shadows told
Hammer of the inspiration behind
the clip, echoing the very themes
the Barbie movie explored. “And I’m
like, ‘Dude, this is fucking crazy. I’m
one of those people, too!’” (The fact
that the singer had, by his own
admission, spent several months
microdosing LSD probably contributed
to this worldview.)
It wasn’t all one-way traffic. The
movie itself dropped in a few subtle

ADDITIONAL CONTRIBUTIONS: EMILY SWINGLE • SCENE QUEEN: PRESS/PAIGE

T

his was the year the whole
world turned pink. The Barbie
movie turned Mattel’s beloved
plastic doll into a big-screen
icon, perfectly embodied by Margot
Robbie. Released in July, it was a huge,
rosé-coloured success, pulling in
$1.4 billion at the worldwide box office.
Dour World War II biopic Oppenheimer
might have had the atomic bomb,
but the Barbie phenomenon was
truly explosive.
Even metal was swept up in
Barbiegeddon. The movie left its vivid
pink mark on the scene this year,
both directly and indirectly. The
most obvious connection came in
the shape of Scene Queen, aka US
singer Hannah Collins, whose
hyper-femme personality,
100-megawatt smile and mix of
metalcore vitriol and pop choruses
saw her single-handedly leading the
self-styled bimbocore revolution.
“When Barbie was called a
‘professional bimbo’, my friend looked
over at me and was like, ‘This movie
was made for you,’” Scene Queen
tells Hammer. “The humour was also
just so on point; I’ve definitely had
musician boyfriends sit and play me
guitar for excruciatingly long periods,
just like Ken…”
In fairness, Scene Queen was ahead
of the Barbie curve. Over the past
two years, she’s dropped a string of
pink-themed singles (Pretty In Pink,
Pink Bubblegum, Pink Panther, Pink

BARBIEGEDDON

BARBIE STILL: © WARNER BROS/ENTERTAINMENT PICTURES, ALAMY

He’s just Ken… and
a bit of a metalhead
at heart

nods to metal, most centred around
Ryan Gosling’s Ken. There was the belt
buckle worn by the character that
featured a Metallica-style logo. The
same logo appeared on the acoustic
guitar played by Ken during the
cringe-inducing scenes where he tries
to impress Barbie with his musical
skills. And just to add an extra shot of
metal cred, the instrument itself was
modelled on Alice In Chains guitarist
Jerry Cantrell’s signature Gibson Fire
Devil Songwriter acoustic.
A more overt link to metal was the
presence of Slash on the movie’s
soundtrack. The Guns N’ Roses
guitarist provided the solo for Ryan
Gosling’s epic power ballad, I’m Just
Ken, which also featured Foo Fighters
drummer Josh Freese and Wolfgang
Van Halen on rhythm guitar.
“I sent him the song and he was like,
‘This is a good song… cool, I’ll play on
it,’” said I’m Just Ken producer and

“MY CROWD
HAS GOTTEN 10
TIMES PINKER
THIS YEAR”
SCENE QUEEN

songwriter Mark Ronson of Slash’s
involvement. “He kills it, he plays the
solo at the end and the rhythm parts.
It’s wonderful.”
And then there’s Margot Robbie
herself. The Australian actor may
perfectly capture Barbie’s mix of glam,
glitter and ultra-femininity, but she’s
also a bona fide metal fan who grew
up listening to Slipknot and Bullet For
My Valentine.
However, not everybody bought into
Barbiemania. The inevitable tsunami
of toxic online pushback from real-life

bedroom-dwelling Kens was mirrored
by – checks notes – Spinal Tap bassist
Derek Smalls, who called the Barbie
movie “the embodiment of lukewarm
water” and released the godawful
song Must Crush Barbie. Which is a bit
rich coming from a has-been who
hasn’t been involved in anything
halfway decent since Smell The Glove
back in 1984.
But ultimately, the movie was
unstoppable. It reinforced the idea that
Barbie can be anything: an astronaut,
a doctor, a president, a mother… even
a metalhead. It’s a sentiment that
Scene Queen relates to.
“I’ve always been told that I don’t
look ‘metal’ enough by fellow musicians
and producers,” says Scene Queen. “But
Barbie believes she can be anything she
wants to be. She embodies this idea
that there are no limits to what you can
do. That’s an incredibly important
lesson for everyone.”

METALHAMMER.COM 47

IRON MAIDEN

IRON MAIDEN
BRIDGED THE PAST
AND THE FUTURE

Epic tours, live landmarks and gong mishaps – drummer
Nicko McBrain looks back on an eventful 12 months
WORDS: ALEXANDER MILAS • PICTURES JOHN McMURTRIE

48 METALHAMMER.COM

IRON MAIDEN
Nicko: back, and in fine form!

I

when we played it, it was like, ‘Why
t has been a historic year for
did we leave this so long?’ Because
Iron Maiden, who brought an
everybody’s been asking, especially
electrifying mix of old and new
the lads over in Greece. Everyone
with their Future Past tour.
wanted to hear it live, so we’ve blown
A double-barrelled blast of 1986’s
the cobwebs away and I think it could
iconic Somewhere In Time album and
become a staple in the set!”
2021’s Senjutsu, the run saw them
storming Europe, Canada, and finally
Is it pleasing to know that you can still
California’s Power Trip festival. There
surprise the fans after all this time?
were surprises along the way, not least
“When it comes to a setlist we do what
the long-awaited live debut of epic
we want, not what we think the fans
Somewhere In Time album closer
want. Alexander The Great was being
Alexander The Great, although drummer
pushed for many years. We’re not
Nicko McBrain got an altogether more
driven by fans but we know what they
painful shock in Dublin when a gong
want, and then you see the reaction and
whacked by frontman Bruce Dickinson
it’s brilliant. It’s such an electrifying
fell on his head.
stage set. And we put these beautiful
The year was capped with an
LED screens up,
appearance at
which continue
the all-star
the theme of
Power Trip
the backdrops,
festival
which I really
alongside
don’t get to see,
the likes of
but I can turn
Metallica and
around and
AC/DC, though
have a peek!
Maiden being
There’s a lot
Maiden, there’s
NICKO McBRAIN
going on with
plenty on the
the screens and the lights and the
slate for next year, including Bruce
scrims, and it’s so great to give those
Dickinson’s solo album, The Mandrake
fans something new… and you’ve got
Project, a comic book celebrating the
three Eddies coming out!”
40th anniversary of the band’s fourth
album, Piece Of Mind, and yet more
Tell us about the gong incident.
dates that prove Maiden are the most
“Oh, for crying out loud! I encouraged
tireless band in metal.
Bruce to do the gong and it looks great.
We caught up with Nicko McBrain
At first, Charlie, my drum tech, would
to look back on 12 months of epic
get behind me, stage right, and he’d
live shows, personal turmoil and
whack the gong on the edge, and
gong-based accidents.
I remember Bruce saying, ‘Ooh Nick,
do you think I could have a go on the
Maiden played Alexander The Great for
gong?’ I said, ‘Yeah, that’d look great,
the very first time ever on The Future
but you can’t hit it hard.’ He’s like, ‘OK
Past Tour. Did it feel good to finally
I won’t!’
bust that one out?
“We were in Birmingham and he
“It was stunning. In rehearsal everyone
blasts the bloody thing! Fortunately
just had a smile on their faces, and it
I’ve got a little back support on my
was magic - that moment in the room

PRESS/JOHN McMURTRIE

“I KIND OF
EXPECT TO BE
HIT BY THE
GONG NOW”

Another understated Maiden set.
We do wish they’d put a bit of effort
into the visuals sometimes…

METALHAMMER.COM 49

IRON MAIDEN

Bruce with the gong mallet.
Everybody duck and cover!

On a more serious note, you revealed
that you suffered a stroke earlier
this year. How do you look back on
that experience, and how are you
feeling now?
“Well, it was very, very difficult. When
it first happened I thought, ‘This is it,
I’m not going to be able to play. I’ve got
a tour coming up in three months’
time.’ I had a lot of time for reflection
in the hospital. My wife was really my
bastion of strength and encouragement
and she was with me throughout.
“I did a lot of strength exercises, a lot
of stretches with weird weights that
they have and I got my stamina back.
Through all this period of time I was
in touch with Steve, obviously all the
guys, and I’d have a bit of a chat with
them on the phone and they were all

50 METALHAMMER.COM

“AFTER MY STROKE,
ALL THE GUYS
WERE VERY, VERY
ENCOURAGING”
NICKO McBRAIN

very, very encouraging, and none more
so than Steve. He said, ‘Look, the most
important thing is that you get well and
work on getting yourself together.’”
Was it a relief to tell everyone what
was going on?
“I felt they deserved to know why
I wasn’t giving it 100%, and that was
my primary reason. The secondary
reason was that if I can help one person
as an example of my striving to get
better then it’s worth doing, so it was
kind of a double-barrelled thing for me
to let the fans know and help someone
say, ‘Well, if Nick can do it, I can do it.
He had 13 weeks of recovery and he’s
ended up doing a tour of Europe!’”
How was the Power Trip festival?
“It was stunning, mate. It was
immensely well-organised. Not that
most fests aren’t, but this just had
something extra - these little villages
for each band. Your own dressing area,
all the security were great, there were
no issues, so it was a fantastic festival.
And the stage was humongous! They
had these whacking great screens.
Wacken have something similar, but

this one was just kinda crazy - I suppose
with two headline bands a night you’re
going to have a lot of room at the
back for all that equipment, and that
happens each day. It was an incredible
experience and really cool.”
Did you catch up with any old mates
in other bands?
“Oh yeah, I met [AC/DC singer] Brian
Johnson on the Wednesday. We’d
arrived on the Tuesday, and my son
and I were staying at the same hotel.
We went into the restaurant to eat and
I saw these guys sitting at the table,
and my eyesight’s a bit dodgy because
I’m an old git, but I looked over and
we kinda made eye contact. I saw him
lift his hand. I didn’t recognise him
straight away and my son said, ‘Dad,
that’s Brian Johnson!’ He was on fine
form. It was his birthday the next day.
I’m not going to tell anybody how old
he is! Well, I guess they know. It was
lovely, we went for lunch. He’s a good
old mate, I’ve known him for ages.”
What’s in store for Maiden next year?
“I’m very delighted to be able to go see
our chums in Oz and New Zealand and
Asia, and I’ve always loved playing
South America. We’re going to end up
in North America, so it’s going to be
great to say hello to all our chums there
who’ve been moaning and groaning,
‘When are you gonna come and play
our place, man?!’”

SENJUTSU IS OUT ON
PARLOPHONE

PRESS/JOHN MCMURTRIE

stool and it basically broke the forward
motion of the gong, but two things
happened: it hit the backrest and then
the top of the gong hit me. I was more
shocked than in agony! It didn’t really
hurt. I remember coming off the stage
after Maiden and Bruce came running
over to me and he said, ‘Are you alright?
I’m really sorry, Nick…!’ I said, ‘Well,
look, please just don’t hit it that hard.’
‘OK, no, I won’t hit it hard.’
“So what happens? One of the next
gigs he literally busts the mallet, which
comes off the shaft, it flies past my
hair and hits my 14-inch tom-tom with
such force it went down three-quarters
of an inch. It’s a war zone up there! The
last one was at Power Trip, when it fell
back on me. I kind of expect it now.”

SLIPKNOT
Slipknot: how the year
started, but not
how it’s going

SLIPKNOT WERE EVEN MORE
CHAOTIC THAN USUAL

Departures, mystery replacements, an uncertain future - this was the Year In Slipknot
WORDS: PAUL TRAVERS

E

PRESS/ANTHONY SCANGA

ven by their own standards,
the last 12 months have been
chaotic for Slipknot. There has
been the end of long-term
relationships, mysterious departures,
confusing messages and a general sense
of instability, leading to speculation
that the title of their last album The
End, So Far may prove to be at least 50%
prophetic. This is how 2023 played out
for metal’s most combustible band.
APRIL 1
Slipknot’s contract with Roadrunner
Records officially ran out. “It’s such
a different label than it was when we
first signed with it,” Corey Taylor said.
“Once you’re in the hands of people
who don’t care, it’s just a fucking
business.” Clown claimed that their
long-awaited ‘lost’ album Look Outside
Your Window would be released soon
after (spoiler: it wasn’t).
JUNE 7
The first night of their European tour
saw the band playing without Clown,
who said he was “supporting my wife
through some health issues”. On the

same day, a terse statement revealed
that the band had parted company with
keyboard player/sampler Craig Jones.
The statement was then deleted and
replaced with an image of a new masked
figure, who joined the band that night
at Austria’s Nova Rock Festival.
JUNE 12
Slipknot made a record-equalling fifth
headline appearance at Download, and
were joined by Clown! No explanation
was given for his appearance, beyond
Corey’s onstage announcement of
“Goddamn it, we got him back!”
Speaking to Hammer at the festival,
the frontman raised alarm bells by
admitting he wasn’t sure how long
he could continue doing this: “I figure
I’ve maybe got another five years.”
SEPTEMBER 15
Corey released his second solo album,
CMF2. The singer told Hammer that he
was putting “real energy and focus into
this”, suggesting that he started his
solo career because he wasn’t “getting
the credit for the things I was actually
writing” with Slipknot.

“SLIPKNOT CAN
NEVER BE REPLACED
IN MY HEART”

COREY TAYLOR

OCTOBER 11
Original Slipknot singer Anders Colsefni
kicked off an Australian tour, playing
the band’s demo album, Mate. Feed. Kill.
Repeat. Corey gave it his blessing.
NOVEMBER 5
The departure of drummer Jay Weinberg
was announced due to “a creative
decision”. No further explanation was
given, and no replacement announced,
casting more uncertainty on the band’s
future. Fans can take comfort in the
fact that Slipknot are headlining 2024’s
Sick New World festival in Las Vegas,
and Corey’s promised that “Slipknot is
something that can never be replaced
in my heart, can never be replaced in my
life, and I sincerely hope that I’m a part
of it until I hang the mask up”. How
long that will be remains to be seen.

METALHAMMER.COM 51

DOWNLOAD
SHOOK THINGS
UP MASSIVELY

Metallica doubled up and Slipknot had
a surprise for us, but Bring Me The Horizon
pointed the way to the festival’s future
WORDS: DANNII LEIVERS • PICTURE: KATJA OGRIN

F

or 20 years, Download Festival
has been the molten heart of the
UK metal and rock community,
but 2023 might just have been
the most memorable year yet. Yes, the
traffic was horrendous, while no shade
and sun hotter than Satan’s BBQ had
turned the whole shebang into some
kind of endurance test by the end.
But when it came to really important
stuff – y’know, the music – Download’s
20th anniversary held nothing back.
Expanding to four full days, this year
saw Metallica play twice, another
incendiary victory lap from Slipknot,
and Download’s first new headliner in
six years in Bring Me The Horizon, all
supported by an undercard creaking
under the weight of fresh voices and
headliners of the future. It was the
moment metal’s current guard were
joined by a new generation stepping
up to take the festival forward.
A criticism often levelled at
Download, and not without good
reason either, has been their tendency
to lean on an increasingly thinning
headliner pool skewed heavily towards
rock and metal’s past glories.
“Our pool for Download headliners
is shrinking rapidly,” agrees festival
booker Kamran Haq, explaining that
the decision to elevate a new headliner
in the shape of BMTH was a “conscious”
one when the team set out to produce
the 2023 line-up. “There’s always
going to be a place for the Metallicas,
Iron Maidens and Slipknots at
Download, but these bands are not
going to be around forever. We want to
bring the new breed through, so we
don’t stagnate as a festival.”
Download’s attempts over the years
to introduce new blood into their

52 METALHAMMER.COM

headliner pool have been met with
mixed results. Avenged Sevenfold’s first
headline slot in 2014 was well received
(the band will headline for the third
time in 2024), but main stage top of the
bill appearances from Muse in 2015 and
Biffy Clyro in 2017 were less so.
Bring Me The Horizon’s promotion
was initially greeted with that same
suspicion, but any doubts were silenced
by the band’s stunning Friday night
headline debut. Staying true to their
status as one of modern metal’s most
innovative and boundary-pushing
bands, they hit the sold-out crowd with
bold move after bold move, backed
with some of the most insane
production Download has ever seen.
“Bring Me approached us and looked
at headlining before, but we felt 2023
was the year they were ready,” continues
Kamran. He says the towers of pyro
the band were shooting out of the top
of the stage were so big, they caused
complaints from planes trying to land
at the nearby East Midlands Airport.
“That show spoke for itself.”
“We’re humbled by the fact that it
seems to be incredibly difficult for
a rock band that came out after 2000 to
headline these things,” singer Oli Sykes
told NME backstage the day of their set.
“But somehow, we’ve climbed that
mountain and got to the top.”

I

f BMTH represented Download
broadening its horizons, there was
plenty to satiate the purists. Having
confirmed the departure of keyboardist
Craig Jones only days before and
announced that percussionist Clown
would miss the band’s European shows
due to his wife’s health, there were
rumours that Slipknot might not turn

“WE WANT TO
BRING THE NEW
BREED THROUGH”
KAMRAN HAQ

up at all. Show up they did though, to
everyone’s surprise with Clown in tow,
for a bile-filled performance aimed at
anyone suggesting the band’s future
could be in jeopardy.
“Clown showed up that morning,”
says Kamran. “I don’t think anybody
knew he was coming. I think he didn’t
want to miss Download because it’s
such a big part of their history.”
Meanwhile, Metallica’s fourth and
fifth headlining slots on Thursday and
Saturday had a large hand in ensuring
2023 was the festival’s fastest-selling
year ever, not to mention the first
complete sell-out in its history.

DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL
Bring Me well and truly
silenced the haters

Slipknot: keeping the
purists very happy indeed

Not only were both sets a fan’s
dream, covering everything from the
must-hears to deep cuts (King Nothing,
anyone?) the band brought along their
full stadium set-up – a series of huge,
floor-standing screens/speakers
– and let Download use it for the
weekend, upping the wow factor for
every band on the main stage.
“Seeing that semicircle in front of
the stage looked insane,” says Kamran,

confirming it’s inspired the team to
“do something similar” at future
Downloads. “It looked like alien
spaceships had just left.”
Elsewhere though, it felt like
Download 2023 was firmly fixated on
the future. Not only was there more
diversity on show than ever, with
female, LGBTQIA+ and people of colour
taking their place on the line-up, the
likes of Architects, Parkway Drive,

Evanescence, Ghost and even Electric
Callboy – if you could actually get
anywhere near the tent to see them
– were making bids for a potential
headline slot.
That health of the scene, coupled
with the success of 2023, has given the
team more freedom and licence to try
out new headliners. As we go to print,
Download have announced their 2024
line-up. There’s only one classic metal
main stage headliner (Avenged
Sevenfold), next to new promotions
Queens Of The Stone Age and Fall Out
Boy, plus a host of vital supporting
heavy bands. It feels like the festival is
continuing to forge forwards.
“I’m excited to see where Gojira go
next,” says Kamran, who sees the likes
of them, Sleep Token and Bad Omens as
the future of the festival. “We need to
keep bringing these bands through and
supporting them and elevating and
building them as new headliners.”

METALHAMMER.COM 53

BLACK SABBATH BALLET

METAL WENT TO THE BALLET
Ballgowns, battle jackets and Tony Iommi. Why Black Sabbath – The Ballet was 2023’s
surprise cultural success story
WORDS: RICH HOBSON

What did you think
when you heard about
a Black Sabbath ballet?
“The honest thing was,
‘Is that a good idea?
How will it work?’
There are lots of people
involved in a show like this and for
many it might not be their kind of
music. Lisa Meyer, who works with
Home Of Metal, came on as an advisor
to keep people in the right lane, but
once we had Tony Iommi on board,
we knew everything would be OK.”
Were you a Sabbath fan before
working on the ballet?
“Yes! There was a real personal
connection to this show for me
because my dad is from Aston and
actually played the same venues

54 METALHAMMER.COM

around that era. I was going to retire
from dancing last year, but as soon
as I heard that this was something
we were developing, I knew I had to
dance in this show. When I found out
Sabbath Bloody Sabbath would be on
there, I was like, ‘That second riff is
going to be me.’”

“I’D LOVE TO
DO GOJIRA –
THE BALLET”

doing that same show the following
day in the afternoon that it becomes
a real challenge; can you do it again
and still find a way to push yourself
even without that extra presence?
No matter how tired we were, it
always felt like a pleasure to do, which
just shows the power of the show.
It was so fun for us seeing people in
ballgowns sitting next to people in
battle jackets, too. The show’s success
also means it’ll come back – it’s going
to have to!”

What was it like meeting Tony Iommi?
“He’s brilliant! Squaring up the person
in front of you against what you’ve
heard – the Sabbath tours of the 70s
and the wild behaviour – it was so hard
to reconcile. I can’t believe my job.
Putting on a pair of tights to prance
around onstage has meant I got to
shoot the shit with Tony Iommi!”

How is dancing to Iron Man different
to dancing to Tchaikovsky?
“Ballet might be more choreographed,
but people also dance to heavy metal,
albeit with something like the circlepit – it’s all a physical response. At the
same time, I don’t think it’s like we’re
suddenly going to get Iron Maiden – The
Ballet. Hopefully people can see from
this show that ballet is an accessible
artform, that you don’t need to know
lots about it to enjoy it.”

What was the biggest challenge for
the performance itself?
“It’s easy when Tony Iommi’s onstage
to find energy, but it’s when you’re

Well, which metal bands do deserve
a ballet?
“I’d love to do Gojira – The Ballet – can
you imagine?!”

KIT HOLDER

PRESS/JOHAN PERSSON

B

lack Sabbath – The Ballet
sounds like the world’s most
bizarre culture clash, but this
unlikely coming together of
worlds was one of 2023’s most talkedabout arts events. Birmingham Royal
Ballet dancer Kit Holder looks back on
getting to “prance around” in front of
legendary guitarist Tony Iommi.

NU METAL 2.0

NU METAL 2.0
RULED
EVERYTHING

Limp Bizkit’s Fred Durst:
who’s your (scene) daddy?!

From Sick New World to TikTok,
nu metal finally made its
long-threatened comeback
WORDS: PAUL TRAVERS

JAKE OWENS

N

u metal had been threatening to return for years. Limp
Bizkit’s 2009 reunion was a catalyst, spawning a huge
wave of nostalgia. Over the following decade, bands such
as Cane Hill, Ocean Grove, Tetrarch and Tallah began to
emerge, while well-known metalcore acts like Of Mice & Men and
Stray From The Path turned to the often-reviled music of their
youth. The genre that dared not speak its name huffed and puffed
in the background, but it was in 2023 that it truly broke again.
The Sick New World Festival in Las Vegas was a pivotal moment,
the line-up reading like a Who’s Who of OG Nu Metal: Korn, System
Of A Down, Incubus, Evanescence, Papa Roach. “There’s definitely
a resurgence of it,” said Kittie’s Morgan Lander, whose band also
played. “It didn’t really go away… it just took a bunch of kids whose
parents grew up listening to that music to get old enough to like it.”
While the festival did attract Gen Xers and elder millennials
who’d been there the first time round, it also brought hordes of
teens and 20-somethings, often watching bands who’d peaked
before they were born.
Social media, and especially TikTok, has played a major role in
this Nu Metal 2.0 resurgence. Kriss Krypt from Toronto is 19 and
has 90K followers. Her TikTok bio declares that ‘nu metal isn’t a
phase, it’s a lifestyle’. “TikTok is incredibly important for fandoms
because it is a space to connect with likeminded individuals,” she
says. “Nu metal content that’s posted is usually relatable, which
makes people feel a part of a community. I’m so lucky to have been
able to find a community of nu metal-loving mall goths online.”
Mad Kelly agrees: “TikTok is a very strange place but it gets
everything out there that you don’t see anywhere else, especially
nu metal,” he says. The Floridian multi-instrumentalist is one of
a new breed of nu metal-influenced artists using social media and
home recording tech to create and connect without the lumbering
mechanisms of the recording industry getting in the way. “You’ve
got to move on with the best genre in the world. Check out people
like Deijuvhs and Kim Dracula. It isn’t just hip hop and metal mixed
together, with nu metal you can literally add anything.”
And this rush of fresh blood and ideas is vital if a nu metal
resurgence is to be anything other than vicarious nostalgia. In the
UK, the likes of Wargasm are also mixing elements of nu metal
with different ingredients, making something new and exciting
– and winning the approval of Fred Durst in the process. Others
like the masked Blackgold are more overt in their influences, and
scene daddies like Limp Bizkit and Korn still loom large. So is nu
metal in 2023 an exercise in nostalgia, an ironic trend or something
genuinely inspiring? Probably a mix of all three…
“It’s funny because it was such a hated scene back in the day,”
Mad Kelly reflects. “Then it became cool and now it’s already
coming back to being hated again. But that’s what gives it its power
and propels it for a lot of people.”

“NU METAL BECAME
COOL AND NOW IT’S
COMING BACK TO
BEING HATED AGAIN”

MAD KELLY

METALHAMMER.COM 55

LORD OF THE LOST
BROUGHT BLOOD, GLITTER
AND LATEX TO EUROVISION

They may have finished last at the song contest, but Lord Of The Lost’s
Chris Harms wouldn’t change anything about 2023
WORDS: DAVE EVERLEY

You kicked off 2023 with your new
album, Blood & Glitter, hitting No.1 in
Germany. Did you celebrate by going
out and getting trollied?
“No, I don’t drink alcohol. I leave that
to the others. Having a No.1 album was
a big surprise. We announced it six days
before it was released. We were like,
‘We’re not doing any presale, we’re not
going to enter the charts with this one,
it’s all about the magic of just releasing
an album.’ I went on holiday to Tenerife,
and I switched my phone on just once
daily. I got a message from our label:
‘OK, you guys might make it to No.1,
you really need to do some promotion
right now.’ So yeah, there I was on my
holiday, doing interviews, dead sober,
while everyone got pissed without me.”
What was the most surreal thing
about taking part in Eurovision?
“A couple of hours before the final
rehearsal, someone from the BBC came
to the German delegation, saying my
outfit revealed ‘too much penis’. Er, I’m
wearing skin-tight latex pants and I’m
not a Ken doll, so yes, I have a member.
You could see it but it wasn’t exposed
in any explicit way. But they were like,

‘Could you show it less?’ So for the last
rehearsal, I chose another outfit. I was
wearing underwear on top of my pants
showing a cat. They wanted less penis,
so how about a little more pussy?”
Did you bond with the other acts?
“Yes, many of them. We got close with
Noa Kirel from Israel and Käärijä from
Finland, because we matched in terms
of humour. Of course, we got very close
to Voyager because we were the only
two metal bands on set. I’d love to go
on tour with Voyager. Danny [Estrin,
singer] is fighting against cancer, so we
will have to wait for that. I wish him all
the best and all the energy he needs.”
You met King Charles in the build-up
to Eurovision. What did he talk to
you about?
“It was his very first foreign state visit.
He was very interested in our clothes.
He asked where were got them from.
You might see him in some red latex in
the future.”
Have you sent an official Lord Of
The Lost butt-plug as a gift to
Buckingham Palace?
“No, there’s no reason for us to do so.
Unless he asks for one.”
Talking of British royalty, you toured
with Iron Maiden for the second time
this year. What’s the best piece of
advice Steve Harris has given you?
“He told us, ‘If you always do what you
love and never listen to others, then you
never end up being ashamed for what
you do.’ It’s something we already did,
but it was nice to know that
there’s somebody with the
same mindset who has been
doing it for decades. The
funny thing is that, when he
gives advice, he always ends
the sentence, ‘But what do I

“THE BBC SAID,
‘CAN YOU SHOW
LESS PENIS?’”
56 METALHAMMER.COM

know?’ You’re Steve Harris! If anyone
knows anything, it’s you!”
Have you had any offers to act in TV
series or movies since Eurovision?
“Yes, I have! It was crazy – I had an offer
for a Hollywood production. I can’t say
what, but it was a recognisable director
and recognisable actors. It was a movie
that contained music. I would’ve loved
to have done it, but I would have had to
go to the US and Canada for five months
to shoot it, and I would have to have
put Lord Of The Lost in second place for
a year. I couldn’t do that.”
Your new covers albums, Weapons Of
Mass Seduction, features versions of
songs by everyone from Judas Priest
and Billy Idol to Sia and British indie
rockers Keane. What connects them?
“They’re just songs we love, that we
have an emotional connection to. We
didn’t look for the biggest hits or the
songs we might be successful with
because it’s going to be chosen by some
Spotify playlist. Fuck that. We just chose
songs that made us feel something.”
Globally, 2023 has been grim. Do you
think 2024 will be better?
“I hope that things get better today or
tomorrow, not in 2024. Fans write us
messages: are you standing with Israel?
With Palestine? Ukraine? Russia? My
heart stands with the innocent people
who do not have anything to do with
all these wars. No child from Palestine,
Israel, Ukraine or wherever deserves
to live without a mother because she’s
been killed. No mother deserves to see
her child die. I’ll never stand behind any
flag or country or manmade borders or
wars that are based on religion. That
will always be my answer.”

LORD OF THE LOST WILL PLAY
DOWNLOAD IN JUNE

PRESS/CORINNE CUMMING

U

ntil 2023, Lord Of The Lost
were strictly a cult act outside
their native Germany. And
then Eurovision happened,
and the rest of Europe clapped eyes on
these latex-clad, feather-sporting
industrial metal peacocks. Frontman
Chris Harms looks back on 12 months of
unexpected attention, royal encounters
and genital-related controversy.

LORD OF THE LOST

Lord Of The Lost:
Hollywood can wait

METALHAMMER.COM 57

SLEEP TOKEN

A FARTING
SLEEP TOKEN
FAN WENT
VIRAL

We tracked down the person who
filmed the fart that was heard
around the world
WORDS: RICH HOBSON

M

58 METALHAMMER.COM

“VESSEL SEEMS
TO BE HAVING
A SLIGHT GIGGLE”
DYLAN WHIPPER

DEREK BREMNER

any weird things happened to Sleep Token on the
way to becoming 2023’s most talked-about new
band, from their TikTok-assisted elevation to
‘metal’s sexiest band’ (courtesy of the bass drop
in The Summoning), to the sight of guitarist IV hamming it up in
a cowboy hat onstage at a gig in Dallas, Texas, to the fact that
they sold out their Wembley Arena show in just 10 minutes.
But nothing was as weird as The Fart. The band were playing
the Metro Theatre in Sydney, Australia in April when an audience
member chose the quiet segment of Atlantic as the opportune
moment to let rip. A clip of the offending arse burp went viral,
racking up thousands of views and several reaction videos.
The man who captured this moment on his phone was Sleep
Token fan Dylan Whipper.
“The gig was brilliant,” Dylan tells Metal Hammer. “But the
fart was that loud and in such a quiet part of the set that it was
impossible not to notice.
“The immediate reaction was shock and then laughter, but
people got over it pretty quickly,” he continues. “Everyone
seemed to see the humour in it.”
After Dylan posted the footage, the internet did its thing.
“A mate of mine sent me a link to someone’s TikTok where
they’d shared my video and got half a million views. It gave
people a laugh and something to talk about so it can’t be all bad.”
Fans were equally amused and revulsed by The Fart.
“Someone ripping an absolutely SINISTER fart during a quiet
bit at a Sleep Token gig is haunting me,” wrote a Twitter user
named Glass Eating Champion, adding that it was “a full blown
pant-burner”.
It even seems to have provoked a reaction from the band.
“You can see in the video, Vessel actually seems to have
a slight giggle,” Dylan says. “But props to the man for mostly
keeping character.”
As for who exactly the phantom farter was, Dylan has no idea
– it happened in the middle of the crowd. He even jokes that it
could have been part of the band’s set.
“Well, it didn’t smell!” he says. “I’m still highly suspicious
that it was planned out! Ha ha!”
In fact, he suggests that more bands should have fart moments
in their songs.
“I think the norm moving on will be bands replacing bass
drops in a live set with fart drops. In a perfect world, anyway!”

AVENGED SEVENFOLD

60 METALHAMMER.COM

AVENGED SEVENFOLD

AVENGED SEVENFOLD
TOOK A RISK

The Orange County megastars threw caution
to the wind with their mind-bending album,
Life Is But A Dream…
WORDS: STEPHEN HILL

A

venged Sevenfold’s 2016’s
prog-metal masterpiece
The Stage might have been
a left turn, but nothing
could’ve prepared us for its follow-up,
Life Is But A Dream… Landing in June,
their eighth album combined hip hop,
classic rock, EDM, thrash metal, classic
soul and more, with some hailing it as
a masterwork and others condemning
it as career suicide. Like all the finest
art, it was hated and adored – but never
ignored. We spoke to guitarist Synyster
Gates about what it was like being in
the eye of the storm.

MAIN: PRESS/SHUVAM DASGUPTA. INSET: PRESS/NOLEN RYAN.

It’s been six months since the release
of Life is But a Dream… How do you feel
about it now?
Synyster Gates: “I’m beyond proud of it.
I don’t listen to it as much as I did, but
I still listen to it a lot. I’m excited to get
into some other songs to take on the
road. It’s still fresh, we haven’t toured
that much, we still have a few months
off before we announce something…”
Did you have any fear before
releasing the album?
“I say this knowing it’s not everybody’s
cup of tea: you have to write what
inspires you. I’m a big Beatles fan and
a big Pantera fan. You want to touch
people with eclectic taste in music.
I have very eclectic tastes, and so I knew
that if it touched me, it would touch
other people. I knew we were on to
something special. You know, The
White Album by The Beatles is my
favourite-ever album, and we tried to
take our album to the next level… for
us! I’m not saying this is comparable to
The Beatles! Ha ha! We just wrote our
greatest collection of songs.”
With an album like this, it’s probably
too early to know how it’s going to be
thought of in the long run, right?
“I think with an album like this, time
is on its side. I’ve been using this

analogy: both of my parents’ favourite
band is The Beatles. My mom hates
everything post-Sgt. Pepper’s, my dad
couldn’t care less about the early stuff.
They both still respect the fuck out of
it, but it’s not for them. So, for my
mom, Sgt. Pepper’s was the death of The
Beatles, and I think for a lot of people
this is the death of Avenged Sevenfold.
But for a lot of other people, it’s a birth.
The birth of a different band.”
Have there been any comments you
felt were way off the mark?
“Funnily enough, I thought it could
go either way. We’ve actually had
really amazing support from the press,
so I don’t want to make people think
that we feel like we aren’t supported
by the press at all. I actually feel it’s
good that it just hasn’t been ignored.
Even the bad reviews, people have
talked about it. People are still
interested in us, so that’s all I could
ask for, really. The negative comments,
I feel they’re the minority. I think
people have been really thoughtful in
considering this album.”

“WE DON’T
WANT TO BE
A LEGACY ACT”
SYNYSTER GATES

Has anyone else from other bands
reached out to you about the album?
“I can’t name-drop, unfortunately,
I’m not that guy to use their names,
but, yes, overwhelmingly so. The
amount of positive criticisms or even
the ‘What the fuck?’… that’s my
favourite, people calling me up and
going, ‘What the fuck did you do?
What were you listening to? Where
did this come from?’ I love that.
We’ve definitely had more of that
here than from any other record.”

You’ve been touring the States.
How challenging has it been to
integrate the new material?
“Well, there’s a lot of programming,
because the new album is essentially
a hip hop album in regard to the
tracks and different things. The
guitars have to change on a dime.
It took six months to program the
show, it took six months to create
the visuals. We just have to get our
setlist in order and see whatever bells
and whistles we can add.”
Was it hard to choose the setlist,
knowing what to take out and add
in, and make it flow cohesively?
“Actually, no. We were all on the
same page. We wanted to do a lot
of new material, we don’t want to be
a novelty, legacy act. We see the vision.
If the album had flopped and fans
had completely hated it then we
wouldn’t have buttfucked them.
But we can see the passion and I feel
like we’re on the same page.”
Which young bands remind you
of Avenged?
“Kim Dracula, they’re fearless. Their
ability to just be themselves and their
confidence, it’s mind-blowing. I’m sure
you’re going to see a really unique
career there. A personal favourite of
mine is 100 gecs – Jesus, they’ve just
turned music upside down. I was toast
after this record – no more new music,
maybe I could think about a new song
in five years. Then their album came
out just before we released our record
and I was like, ‘Hey Matt, wanna go
write some crazy shit?’ They completely
re-energised me. We’re not planning
anything new, but it gets you excited.”

A7X HEADLINE DOWNLOAD ON
JUNE 16. LIFE IS BUT A DREAM…
IS OUT NOW VIA WARNER
METALHAMMER.COM 61

VOICE OF BACEPROT

VOICE OF
BACEPROT
WENT
STATESIDE

New York, baby! At the
Gramercy Theatre

The unstoppable Indonesian trio
embarked on their first US tour
– and here’s what they learned
along the way

Ladies with Liberty

WORDS: GISELA SWARAGITA

WE <3 DC AND NYC!
Marsya: “Our absolute favourites were
Washington DC and New York. We got
to see The White House from afar, and
the back side of the Statue Of Liberty!
We met a lot of Indonesian people in
those cities, and it was a relief to talk in
Indonesian language again. Also, it was
funny when we posted the picture of
our advertisement at New York’s Times
Square. Many people thought it was
Photoshopped! But when we take some
time to think about it, having our
pictures in Times Square is indeed such
an impossible feat for people like us.
The thought only made us even more
proud of what we’ve achieved so far.”
BIRTHDAYS ARE PARTICULARLY
MEMORABLE ON TOUR
Widi: “Sitti’s birthday [August 17] fell
when we were on the road to Oakland.
We surprised her with a cake just after
we finished doing laundry! The next
day we celebrated again, onstage, with
the concert audience.

62 METALHAMMER.COM

“We ordered
yellow rice
[traditionally eaten
on birthdays]
complete with fritters
and our favourite smashed chicken. It
tasted funny, but the flavour reminded
us of home and helped to quench our
homesickness. Sitti’s birthday wish
was to come back to the US for another
tour in the future. We hope this tour
will be our first, not our last!”
HIP HOP HELPS HOMESICKNESS
Sitti: “The tour lasted for almost one
month, and at some point we realised
how far away we were from home. Due
to the heavy scheduling, we almost had
no time to call and talk to our family in
Indonesia. The tour was gruelling, and
each of us felt lonely in different ways.
We spent most of our time on the road,
travelling for five to
10 hours from one
city to the next. We
even lost the sense
of time and forgot
what date it was.
However, we had
fun listening to
a lot of hip hop like
Eminem and Tupac
Shakur, because
our driver, Dustin, loves rap music!”

Have wheels,
will travel!

Garut, West Java, is now suffering from
drought and it’s very hard for the
villagers to get clean water. I plan to
fund a water well with my tour money
to help my family there. However, the
three of us entertained ourselves by
visiting Universal Studios and bought
Slytherin necklaces for ourselves!”
THE US IS SO NOISY!
Marsya: “It’s surprising that in the US
we always hear sirens from ambulances
or police cars, every minute every day.
However, we really appreciate the
chance to see how the music industry
works, especially because people say
it is very hard to make it in the US. We
also have mixed
feelings, because it
was a farewell tour
with 12Wired, our
management, as
we’ve decided to
run independently!
Next year, we are
recording new
music and planning
an Indonesian tour.
We’re not thinking about touring
abroad at the moment, although we’re
not dismissing the possibility. We’ll
always do our best to play where people
want to see us live.”

“PEOPLE THOUGHT
OUR TIMES SQUARE
BILLBOARD WAS
PHOTOSHOPPED!”

SLYTHERIN IS THE BEST HOUSE
Marsya: “We decided not to buy any
gifts from the US for our family, and
instead save our tour stipend and bring
home cash. My village back home in

MARSYA

RETAS IS OUT NOW VIA 12WIRED

PRESS/AMIEN PRAHADIAN/NADIA YUSTINA

V

oice Of Baceprot, three
metalhead hijabi girls
hailing from the tropical
archipelago of Indonesia,
wrapped their first-ever US tour in
August. The 11-date run stretched from
coast to coast and back again, and
Hammer caught their show in San Diego.
Marsya (vocals/guitar), Widi (bass) and
Sitti (drums) explain what it was like
to celebrate birthdays on the road, and
see their faces staring back at them
from an iconic Times Square billboard.

MERCH CUTS
Will venues continue to
take merch cuts, or will
bands win their fight?

MERCH CUTS GOT
OUT OF HAND

Bands fought back against venues taking a slice of their merch sales
– but was it enough?
WORDS: PAUL TRAVERS

GETTY

T

he practice of merch cuts, in which
venues take a proportion of a band’s
merchandise sales, made repeated
headlines in 2023. In March, French
avant-garde metal artist Igorrr refused to sell
merch at the O2 Forum Kentish Town in
London, claiming the venue was asking for
a 25% cut. British prog-metallers Monuments
took the same stance at a venue in Athens,
citing 18% concessions combined with 24%
VAT. Architects drummer Dan Searle tweeted:
“Hey bands when are we gonna go on strike
and get rid of these insane venue merch cuts?”
In September there appeared to be a positive
development when it was widely reported that
concert giant Live Nation would scrap merch
fees in club-sized venues across the US and
Canada. It then emerged that the ‘On the Road
Again’ programme would only last for a limited
time in a limited number of venues, however.
“I tell people that in this day and age we’re
not musicians on tour, we’re traveling T-shirt
salesmen,” says Exodus guitarist Gary Holt,
who’s been a vocal critic of the venues’ merch
cuts. “That’s where we make our money. I’m
OK with a reasonable fee but then they started
really putting their hands in your pockets and
shaking you upside down for doing nothing.”

We approached Live Nation for comment
In the UK, the Featured Artists Coalition
but they didn’t respond.
(FAC) launched a ‘100% Venues’ campaign
“The independent venues are complaining,
that encourages venues to avoid “punitive”
saying Live Nation are doing it to take
merchandise concessions and maintains
business from us - well, you get rid of it too,
a database of venues that don’t take a cut at all.
motherfucker,” says Gary. “It’s [mid-level club
“Merchandise commissions have been
bands] who need to say, ‘Fuck it, we’re not
a long-time bugbear for artists but coming out
going to do it.’ And it’s, ‘Do we have no shows
of the pandemic it felt like the balance of risk
and an empty venue or do we break and let
had shifted,” explains FAC CEO David Martin.
these guys keep their T-shirt money?’” He
“It was becoming very difficult for artists to
adds that this is unlikely
make ends meet and
to happen in practice,
often it was that
however, as most bands
merchandise
need to tour to survive.
commission that made
David does see cause
the difference between
for optimism in the UK.
breaking even and losing
“We’ve had hundreds
money on tours.”
of venues sign up to
The Live Nation move
be commission-free,”
in the US may help some
he says. “Fans have
bands retain more
become more aware
money for as long as it
of the issue and artists
runs, but the National
EXODUS’S GARY HOLT
are looking at new
Independent Venue
ways of doing things, such as using QR
Association (NIVA) said: “Temporary
codes, or booking tours based on the 100%
measures may appear to help artists in the
list that we have. There’s always more to do
short run but actually can squeeze out
but I think the conversation is completely
independent venues, which provide the
different now.”
lifeblood of many artists on thin margins.”

“BANDS
NEED TO SAY,
‘FUCK IT,
WE’RE NOT
DOING IT’”

METALHAMMER.COM 63

GHOST STEPPED UP
TO THE NEXT LEVEL

Arena shows, mystery movies, mad dancers… the occult metal
overlords’ stellar rise showed no signs of slowing down in 2023

PRESS/RYAN CHANG

WORDS: DAVE EVERLEY

64 METALHAMMER.COM

GHOST

T

obias Forge isn’t one for regrets.
“Of course, if I could go back
in time and curate everything,
there would be a few things that
I would have done differently,” says
Ghost’s frontman. “But that has very
little to do with my actual career.”
The last 12 months have borne this out.
In September 2023, Ghost played two
spectacular shows at Los Angeles’
17,500-capacity Kia Forum. While they’d
headlined the venue before, it was only for
one night. This pattern of growth was
repeated across the whole of the US leg of
their recent Imperatour.
“On this last tour, you can tell that
something has happened,” he tells Hammer.
“There’s a lot more kids at the show. The
last time we played Detroit, we played in
front of 4000 people. This time, it was over
10,000. We’re doubling everywhere.”
Those two LA gigs did more than just
rubber-stamp the Swedes’ ascent to
metal’s A-list. Filmed for a mysterious
project that may or may not be a concert
film, documentary, movie or some hybrid
of the three (Tobias remains tight-lipped
over exactly what), they saw Ghost
delivering a visual assault that was
memorable even by their own theatrical
standards, involving multiple costume
changes, a string quartet and, most
notably, a troupe of dancers.
“We opened Pandora’s Box,” says Tobias.
“We were adding all these other elements
to the show that a lot of people – myself
included – thought, ‘That would be cool
to do all the time.’ Which is kind of
complicated, because with something like
the dancers, you’re essentially adding
another team of performers. It’s another
set of people who need to train and be in
shape and travel and be fed.”
It turns out that even a band as successful
as Ghost have to watch the budget sheets.
“There are still budgetary issues,
absolutely,” says Tobias. “Every cool idea
you can ever come up with is really
expensive. It always costs money and
money is what controls everything.
You have to pick and choose.”
That’s not to say the singer isn’t thinking
of future Ghost live extravaganzas. As a kid,
he would rewatch VHS tapes of concert
movies by the likes of The Rolling Stones
and Pink Floyd. The more epic the show,
the more he loved them.
“I’m such a big Rolling Stones fan, and
I really love the film Let’s Spend The Night
Together. How that stage was built, it felt
like this really colourful thing. I would
freeze-frame the film and draw all the
bits, just trying to understand how
everything works and what the people on
the stage were doing. I’ve always been
fascinated by the behemoth that is the
rock’n’roll live performance.”
Tobias holds up Rammstein’s rise from
arena band to stadium headliners,

METALHAMMER.COM 65

Papa Emeritus IV has
well and truly grown
into those pants

complete with retina-searing,
next-level stage sets, as a model of
what a live performance can be.
“They were doing really well before,
but since they’ve been doing the
outdoor thing over the last three or
four years, they’ve really upped the
standard,” he says. “They’re friends
and colleagues, but I look at what
they’re doing and it’s so inspiring to
see. They definitely prove you can
make that jump from being an
arena-selling band to playing to 55,000
people a night. But you do need to put
a lot of effort into it.
“The one thing that goes against
that dream for me is that I really don’t
like outdoor shows, because you’re up
against the elements. Outdoor shows
are great when it’s slightly overcast,
20˚C out, no wind or anything. But if
it’s windy or raining or too hot, it just
fucks with my control tendencies.”

O

f course, the big change that
many expected to accompany
the end of the Imperatour – the death
of the most recent incarnation of
Papa Emeritus and the introduction

66 METALHAMMER.COM

of a replacement – never happened,
despite some seriously big hints in
the Ghost – Chapter mini videos.
Unsurprisingly, Tobias is cagey about
what’s coming down the pipe for Papa
Emeritus IV.
“At some point between now and
when the next album comes, there will
have been a change,” he says. “That’s
all I will say.”
What he does reveal is that he has
started writing for the new album
(“A few songs”), though where he’s
heading with it remains to be seen.
“I like to compare what I’m doing
to being a chef,” he says, unfurling
a culinary metaphor. “A chef with
a few different interests and
specialities. So you might start a few
different restaurants – an Italian
one, a Greek one, an Asian Fusion one.
But what they all have in common is

“IT’S BEEN A LONG
HAUL OF GROWING
INTO THESE PANTS”

the seasoning and the decor and the
interior design… the secret sauce.
With me, each record, each new cycle,
is a new restaurant, but I don’t have
to sit with an empty paper and come
up with something new every time
because the secret sauce is the same.
If it comes from my notebook, it will
sound like Ghost.”
One of the most interesting factors
in Ghost’s recent success has been
Tobias’s willingness to work with
outside songwriters. Since 2018’s
Prequelle, his collaborators have
included Klas Åhlund (who has written
songs for Britney Spears and Charlie
XCX, among others), the duo of Salem
Al Fakir and Vincent Pontare (whose
credits include Madonna and Avicii),
and Peter Svensson, formerly of
breezy Swedish indie-pop band The
Cardigans. Ghost are far from the
only metal band to work with outside
collaborators, but they’re one of the
few who are open about it.
“What they all have in common
is that they all come from a rock
background,” says Tobias. “Peter
from The Cardigans is an old hard
rocker, Klas Åhlund is an old
metalhead. These are friends of
mine, and we’re very fluent together.
I know that when I’ve taken an idea
as far as I can, then they can go,
‘Maybe we can do this, maybe we
could go that way…’ All of a sudden,
that opens my head. It becomes
multi-dimensional. I think better
when I have someone in the room
that I trust. It makes me write better,
because I get challenged.”
Tobias himself has tried writing
for other artists in the past. It’s
something he quickly realised he
wasn’t cut out for.
“I tried to do it in the beginning,
and that’s how some of the songs
that ended up being Ghost songs
started,” he says. “He Is [from 2010’s
Opus Eponymous debut] was originally
written as something I hoped my
publishing company at the time was
going to pitch to a bigger artist, but
they didn’t because they were useless.
Even when I started the co-writing
thing, I did so with the intention of
writing songs for others. Every time
I tried it, the people I was writing with
would say: ‘That’s a Ghost song, that
sounds like you, it’s not something
we can pitch to anyone else.’ That
happened three or four times.”
This lack of distraction is probably
a good thing, given Ghost’s upward
trajectory shows no sign of reversing.
“I know people talk about how
everything went so fast,” says Tobias,
“but now 13 years later, it’s been a long
haul of growing into these pants.”

TRAVIS SHINN

GHOST

OFFICIAL
MERCH

VISIT: BIT.LY/HAMMERTEES
EXCLUSIVE, QUALITY MERCH. ORIGINAL AND OFFICIAL.

FOR ALL
CONTRIB OUR
INDIVID UTORS’
UAL LIS
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AMMER
.COM

49 CANNIBAL CORPSE
Chaos Horrific

METAL BLADE

Those who crown rock
royalty and decide Hall
Of Fame inductions will
never deign to include
death metal oozing
zombies, gore and inky
darkness. But we dare their high foreheads
to name any other band who’s consistently
issued decades of top-tier material without
an ounce of let-up while improving each
and every time? Any other band whose
16th album was a late-career high point?
The answer, written in blood, can only be
Cannibal Corpse!

48 BURNER

It All Returns To Nothing

CHURCH ROAD

From veterans to new bands,
we listened to all the records
released this year. Welcome to
our definitive list of the greats.
WORDS: ADAM BRENNAN, CHRIS CHANTLER, ALEC CHILLINGWORTH,
JOE DALY, ALEX DELLER, DAVE EVERLEY, CHERI FAULKNER, STEPHEN
HILL, RICH HOBSON, HANNAH MAY KILROY, DOM LAWSON, MATT
MILLS, LIZ SCARLETT, JONATHAN SELZER, KEVIN STEWART-PANKO,
EMILY SWINGLE, PAUL TRAVERS, KEZ WHELAN, HOLLY WRIGHT

50 BLOOD CEREMONY
The Old Ways Remain

RISE ABOVE

Blood Ceremony had
always been a unique
presence in the already
niche doom-adjacent
occult rock sphere.
On their fifth album,
the Canadian quartet expanded their
palette even further, with vibrant
shades surfacing through pop, folk,
psychedelia and even jazz-tinted songs.
Appropriately though, the old ways
remained, and the core sound continued
to be riff-driven witch-rock infused
with vocalist Alia O’Brien’s glorious,
otherworldly flute and a penchant
for folklore and fuzzy 70s horror.
Eldritch vibes had never been so
smart, swaggering and sexy.

68 METALHAMMER.COM

Before they released
their debut in June, you
could have described
Burner as death metal
and hardcore crashing
together. It All Returns To
Nothing maintained the South Londoners’
core sound of casting tremolo-picked
riffs against scurrying drums and pinch
harmonics, yet it also forced their vision
even further. With An Affirming Flame and
Waco Horror pushing into post-metal and
grindcore respectively, Burner sounded
both incensed and mature, instantly
reaffirming them as ones to watch in the
stacked UK metal scene.

47 HORRENDOUS

Ontological Mysterium

SEASON OF MIST

Evolving into a fully
kitted-out prog unit
since their death metal
inception in 2009,
Horrendous attracted
a lot of chat in 2023 with
their most impressive and experimental
album to date. Ontological Mysterium played
to the US quartet’s myriad stylistic
strengths, combining their honed death
metal tropes with kaleidoscopic flavours,
from atmospheric doom to jazzy prog.
Collaborative, precise and ambitious, the
album represented a significant step up
in exploration, raising the question: is
there anything Horrendous can’t do?

46 AHAB
NAPALM

The Coral Tombs

These German ‘nautical
doom’ obsessives had
been rising in stature
and greatness since
2006. With their latest
concept album, based
around Jules Verne’s subaquatic classic
20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, they’d

spent eight years honing a masterwork
that is the very definition of immersive
(or should that be ‘submersive’?).
A gripping artistic achievement, bringing
atmospheric post-rock textures,
emotional nuances and dark jazz
inflections to bear on their progressive
death-doom fundamentals, Ahab
reached their tempestuous apotheosis
aboard Captain Nemo’s Nautilus.

45 SPIRIT ADRIFT

Ghost At The Gallows

CENTURY MEDIA

Five albums in, Nate
Garrett’s band of
misfits continued to
find redemption in the
all-conquering riffs of
trad metal. Ghost At The
Gallows may have been written amid
one of the most testing periods of Nate’s
life – lockdown, family deaths and an
ongoing medical issue leaving him “nearparalysed” – but …Gallows nonetheless
saw the Texans triumph anew. A packed
tent at Download Festival attested to
their status as leading lights in the
New Wave Of Traditional Heavy Metal.

44 FOO FIGHTERS
But Here We Are

RCA / ROSWELL

Coloured by the passing
of Dave Grohl’s mother
and Foos’ long-time
drummer Taylor
Hawkins, But Here We
Are nonetheless felt
more like a celebration of life and the
healing power of music. Foo Fighters rode
out a tide of emotion for their 11th studio
album, focusing on their core of enormous
singalongs – Rescued, Under You, Show Me
How and The Teacher all radio hits – to
offer their strongest album in more than
a decade, continuing their international
chart-topping form in the process.

43 HELLRIPPER
PEACEVILLE

Warlocks Grim & Withered Hags

James McBain’s
Hellripper is the best
one-man blackened
thrash band since
Midnight. His third
record, Warlocks Grim
& Withered Hags, trounced peers again
with more grotesque odes to the Devil
and other deities, this time steeped
heavy in Scottish folklore. The result
was more black metal-oriented without
dumping the fun; Goat Vomit Nightmare
was a riot indebted to Maiden more than
Mayhem, there was enough Motörhead
to perforate your septum, and the title
track’s bagpipes were genuinely stirring.
All hail the goat.

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023

42 KHANATE
To Be Cruel

SACRED BONES

ORBIT
CULTURE

They say time heals all
wounds, but 14 years
after their last album,
these drone/doom
legends sounded more
bitter, distressed and
unhinged than ever. Backed by their most
enveloping production to date, these three
lengthy tracks felt like classic Khanate
while also pushing their torturous sound
into more unnerving and desolate places.
It got under your skin like no other album
this year.

41KK’S PRIEST
NAPALM

Orbit Culture: unstoppable!

The Swedes polished their melodeath – with a little help from
their fellow countrymen
WORDS: ADAM BRENNAN

V

PRESS

ocalist Niklas Karlsson and guitarist
Richard Hansson can hardly believe
the progress they’ve made since
forming Orbit Culture in the small,
isolated city of Eksjö a decade ago.
Fresh off a UK tour with Trivium,
they’re reflecting on their achievements. As
Niklas states: “Just an hour ago when Richard
came over, we were watching clips of Meshuggah
play live. And we realised, ‘Holy shit – we’ve
actually played with them six times!’”
After two albums released as a “computer
project” and playing a smattering of local shows
for fun, it wasn’t until 2019 that Orbit Culture
landed a touring spot, opening up a four-band bill
supporting Rivers Of Nihil in Europe… but then
the following year’s international crisis nixed all
future endeavours.
“I’m quite happy people didn’t see us much then,
as we’re way better today,” Niklas admits, laughing.
The forced inactivity worked in the quartet’s
favour. Their third album, 2020’s Nija, created
a buzz far beyond their shores and meant they
emerged from isolation with a ravenous fanbase.
Niklas pinpoints Sweden Rock festival in June 2022
as the moment they realised what had happened.
“We didn’t expect anyone to show up,” he says.
“We were the second band up on the first day.

“WE LEARNED
SO MUCH FROM
IN FLAMES”
RICHARD HANSSON

During the pandemic, we’d only seen the
comments online, but we never expected as
many people to show up as they did. From that
day on, it’s been a real rollercoaster.”
The tours that followed, with the likes of In
Flames and Avatar, influenced the direction of
this year’s blistering but catchy Descent album.
“We found out that the songs on Nija were hard
as fuck,” laughs Niklas. “So we toned it down a bit,
and created more live-fitting songs for [2021 EP]
Shaman. But we liked Nija, so we decided to
combine those two approaches on Descent.
We created these songs, but also we wanted
to be able to play them live.”
“During our two tours with In Flames, we’d
always be on the side of the stage, watching
and learning so much,” adds Richard, who
also references Parkway Drive’s development
from metalcore bruisers to an arena band as
something that inspires him. “That found its
way into the writing. You should always write
what you want, but I think that helped mould
us more into a live act.”
As for the future? There’s another upcoming
dream tour, with Machine Head in North
America. After that, Niklas promises a new EP,
and plans to end the year writing another
full-length to capitalise on the band’s promising
momentum. There are still dreams they have
yet to achieve…
“We have played with so many bands that
are our heroes, but we’re still waiting for that
Gojira tour,” jokes Niklas. “We’re still going to
take it day by day and be the band that we want
to be. But there’s no stopping us, I can promise
you that.”

The Sinner Rides Again

With Judas Priest set
to drop a new studio
album within weeks,
the comparisons will
be inevitable, but why
settle for one blazing
classic metal band when you can have two?
KK’s Priest’s second release dispelled any
idea that they’re a dodgy counterfeit.
There were few surprises but they proved
that they do heads-down heavy metal
supremely well, whether it’s the searing
lead guitars or ‘Ripper’ Owens’ acrobatic
vocals. KK’s Priest remain a holy thriver.

40 ORBIT CULTURE
Descent

SEEK & STRIKE

Orbit Culture’s 2020
album, Nija, was ace.
Their 2021 EP, Shaman,
was even better. The
Swedes followed form
again with Descent, a
formidable entwining of modern metal’s
most effective and exciting strands into
an impressive milestone. Incorporating
massive grooves into their melodeath
blueprint alongside huge choruses and
a fearless sense of enterprise, it delivered
some of 2023’s most exhilarating anthems.

39 MUTOID MAN
Mutants

SARGENT HOUSE

Mutoid Man deserve all
the props there are to
give. For any band to
harness the hallmarks
of impenetrable tech
metal and prog rock –
endless swarms of hammer-on/pull-offs,
fretboard tapping, dizzying time changes
and the erasure of genre boundaries –
into a collection of hooky earworms was
a masterstroke to start. That this feat was
accomplished by a stripped-down trio
made Mutants worthy of all the accolades
and repeated spins the future brings.

METALHAMMER.COM 69

38 ZULU
FLATSPOT

A New Tomorrow

The LA blackpowerviolence crew’s
debut was a singular
experience in 2023.
It merged savage
hardcore, warp-speed
grind and crushing riffs with the sound
of classic soul, pure old-school funk
grooves and NOLA jazz, and then gave
it a searing, uncompromising political
message and musings on what it is like
to be a person of colour operating in the
alternative music scene. A New Tomorrow
was the sound of a new and essential
voice in the realm of heavy music.

70 METALHAMMER.COM

Zulu: spreading a vital
message of unity

ZULU

By calling for unity and expanding the reach of
the scene, the LA newcomers revitalised hardcore

I

WORDS: EMILY SWINGLE

n 2019, Anaiah Rasheed
Muhammad had an idea. After
11 years performing in LA
indie-rockers The Bots alongside
his brother, he would form
a hardcore side-project. It would
incorporate the music he listened
to growing up, making connections
between people of the African
diaspora. The result? Zulu.
“It’s the sounds of all Africanderived music,” explains Anaiah.
“We’re talking about jazz, we’re
talking about soul. We’re talking
about funk, R’n’B, hip hop. And
maybe it’s not always the sound, but
it’s the essence of the sound and the
essence of the band. It’s all due to
those folks that made the genres
that made it possible for punk to
exist. That’s kind of a shortened
version of what Zulu is.”
Debut album A New Tomorrow
reinvigorates hardcore, offering
surprises at every turn. Music To
Driveby might be a thunderous
plea to end intra-community
violence, but it segues into
a sample of Curtis Mayfield’s
We The People Who Are Darker
Than Blue, a song calling for
community unity but released
in 1970. Meanwhile, Lyfe Az
A Shorty Shun B So Ruff counters
desperation and a chugging
beatdown with a clip of Nina
Simone’s hopeful To Be Young,
Gifted And Black from the same era.
These voices of encouragement and
activism crop up again and again, and
throughout the songs there’s a strong
thread of defiance and an emphasis
on Black joy. Even the album artwork
depicts celebration.
At the centre of it all is Créme de
Cassis by Alesia Miller & Precious Tucker,
a stunning spoken-word piece from
guest artists where a dreamy piano
part lays the foundation for Alesia’s
statements, such as: ‘Discourse around
blackness in America / Often orbits around
Black pain […] / But I grow weary of
repeating our plight / While never
highlighting the beauty of us.’
“It was exciting to collaborate with
people eager to change the scene like
I am,” says Anaiah. “Alesia did such

an amazing job writing the poem.
There’s frustration, but it’s mainly
from a place of love. And that’s why
the softer moments work, as well as
the heavier moments. I think people
usually like to equate hardcore music
with anger – and that can be true.
There’s a lot of that in the scene.
But I tried to go a different route with
this record.”
It’s followed by Anaiah’s own take,
in the laidback We’re More Than This:
‘I hide my ghetto from the whites not
because I’m embarrassed of / they just
don’t deserve my essence to use for they
character / Then turn around and treat
me like I’m the caricature.’ Were there
any moments on the record when he
wanted to let rip with anger?
“I dip and dive a bit, but I never
dwell,” says Anaiah. “It’s a reflection
of a reality that I live day in, day out.
And only I can speak on that. Anyone

tomorrow for all the people of the
diaspora, hopefully to not only unite
with love for each other, but for folks
from the diaspora to stop hating on
one another. I really hope it helps
people connect.”

F

ollowing in the footsteps of
hardcore punk/reggae pioneers
Bad Brains, Anaiah’s heartened
to see that Zulu are reaching ethnic
groups who wouldn’t necessarily
know about or feel welcome in the
hardcore scene, bolstered by the rise
of peers such as Pennsylvania’s Soul
Glo. In the video for Where I’m From,
a homage to A Tribe Called Quest’s
iconic video for their 1991 song Scenario,
Anaiah and his bandmates party
alongside Soul Glo’s Pierce Jordan,
Obioma Ugonna from Atlanta’s
Playytime, comedian Eric André and
Fever333’s Jason Aalon Butler – it’s
fun and welcoming, inviting
everyone to take part.
“Seeing the new people
coming into the scene, the true
expression that is coming with
it… that’s that ‘new tomorrow’.
I’m hoping it continues to get
better and better,” says Anaiah.
That new tomorrow comes
with great ambition and an even
greater push for inclusivity. The
band have already toured the US
with the likes of Show Me The
Body, Jesus Piece and Scowl – but
Anaiah wants more.
“I want to take this worldwide.
That’s the goal. And it’s past just
being a band. It’s past me. I have
goals for my community, and ways
I want to help,” he says. “I want to
spread this message, but also get
younger kids in the generations
to come to shows, get into heavy
music. Specifically kids in LA.
I want them to understand that there
is a place for them in this scene.
Our ancestry carved out this genre
– without Black culture, hardcore
wouldn’t even exist.”
He smiles: “And it would be nice to
take things even further, you know?
If space travel is ever available. Get on
some extra-terrestrial intergalactictype movements!”

PRESS/CHRISY SALINAS

“WITHOUT
BLACK CULTURE,
HARDCORE
WOULDN’T
EXIST”
ANAIAH RASHEED MUHAMMAD

else that can relate is unfortunate,
but that’s just the reality of it."
Anaiah’s favourite track is the
album closer, Who Jah Bless, No One
Curse – the title references Bob
Marley’s Who The Cap Fit, and the
song finishes with a clip of his Small
Axe. It opens with a furious hardcore
drumbeat and, although the vocals
are delivered in vitriolic style, they
promise that the people of the
diaspora can not only survive, but
thrive. In the middle, a beautiful,
meandering guitar instrumental takes
hold, like someone’s changed the
record. If you only listened to this
track alone, you would think it was
another band entirely.
“Lyrically, the idea of A New
Tomorrow is actually encapsulated
in that song,” he says. “It’s a new

METALHAMMER.COM 71

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023

37 VOYAGER

Fearless In Love

SEASON OF MIST

36 MAGGOT HEART
Hunger

SVART / RAPID EYE

Maggot Heart’s third
LP got weird, marking
the Berlin-based trio
unique to a hilarious
degree. Their noisy
post-punk was dunked
in ample buckets of brass (why not?!);
choruses came in with Turbonegro levels
of urgency, dirt under the nails and quips
for days; and tracks like Parasite and Archer
were given space to marinate in their
wonkiness, never losing what initially
endeared Maggot Heart to us: frontwoman
Linnéa Olsson’s knack for a tune and
disregard for convention. What a treat.

35 SYLOSIS

A Sign Of Things To Come

NUCLEAR BLAST

For Sylosis’s sixth
album, mastermind
Josh Middleton pulled
the band away from
their usual progressive
approach, emphasising
songs and hooks. The result was the best
music they’d made in a decade. Deadwood
opened A Sign… with a rampage of
masterfully catchy thrash, before Absent,
Thorns and Eye For An Eye dabbled in more
synths and melodic singing than the
Brits had ever used before. Progressive it
was not, but it offered a collection of
addictive metal songs regardless.

34 WITHIN TEMPTATION
Bleed Out

FORCE MUSIC

Between Russia’s
invasion of Ukraine
and the protests about
women’s rights in Iran,
WT had no shortage of
global events to inspire
them when it came to writing their eighth
studio album. Bleed Out represented the

72 METALHAMMER.COM

MAGGOT
HEART

Maggot Heart:
hangry as hell

When pain pushed Linnéa Olsson to the point of exhaustion,
she wrote her most personal album yet
WORDS: HANNAH MAY KILROY

I

n late 2022, Maggot Heart singer/guitarist
Linnéa Olsson underwent emergency
surgery on her neck to decompress a nerve,
a few weeks before the band were due to
record their third album, Hunger. When she
woke up, she couldn’t feel her fingers on her
left hand, or even lift a glass of water.
“I was worried that was going to be permanent,”
she says. “I was in hospital for 10 days and then
began a recovery process that is still ongoing.
I still have numbness in my hand and arm and
shoulder where the nerve goes, but I have
regained sensation in the fingers I use for playing
and most of the strength.”
In the months before the operation, unexplained
neck, arm and hand pain had been keeping her
up at night, her motivation for Maggot Heart
dwindling as she questioned whether she was
making the correct life choices.
“Living with a mystery pain for almost a full
year does something to you mentally,” she
continues. “That year we also got back into
touring properly after Covid and it was pretty
rough. I was slowly burning out. This
overpowering hunger to reach something,
go somewhere, up until then had served me
well. Now it seemed like I was running on
fumes. When the cards seem to be stacked
against you in that way, you’re forced to ask
the question: ‘Am I doing this right?’”

The driving force behind Maggot Heart,
Linnéa previously played in The Oath and Grave
Pleasures, and started the band as a solo project
in 2016, with bassist Olivia Airey and drummer
Uno Bruniusson joining in 2017. With its unique
blend of gritty post-punk, swaggering rock’n’roll
and even a brass band, Hunger feels like
a statement of defiance.
“Hunger is what keeps you alive. The hunter
hunts for hunger, but the prey also hungers for
survival,” says Linnéa. “I think Hunger is my most
exposed and vulnerable work to date. That shows
up in a number of ways, anger being one of them.”
You can feel that anger on tracks such as Looking
Back At You and The Shadow, which touch on the
experiences of living in a patriarchal society.
“It’s dangerous to be a woman,” Linnéa says.
“We’re being murdered, assaulted, harassed,
oppressed. And constantly perceived, looked
at, on the terms of the voyeur. This systemic
oppression has to be torn down, but one cannot
dismantle the master’s house using the master’s
tools, to paraphrase one inspiration [late US
writer/civil rights activist Audre Lorde].”
But Linnéa also likes to have fun. Opening
song Scandinavian Hunger (Linnéa is Swedish, but
moved to Berlin 11 years ago) is a playful nod to
Norwegian black metal band Darkthrone’s classic
1994 album, Transilvanian Hunger.
“I have a ton of lyrical references to other
band’s songs on Maggot Heart
albums,” she says. “The whole
concept of plagiarism is fascinating
to me, because there is a real skill
in stealing something while still
pushing it forward.”

“HUNGER IS WHAT
KEEPS YOU ALIVE”
LINNÉA OLSSON

PRESS/JOE DILWORTH

Eurovision heroes
Voyager had a helluva
year, finishing ninth
place in Europe’s
favourite talent show
with their progressive
synth hit, Promise. Released soon after
their televised triumph, Fearless In Love
channelled every bit of the Aussies’ love
of pop and stylish 80s synth, wrapping it
around crunchy guitars and proggy hooks.
Also featuring the djenty disco thumper
Dreamer, their 2022 Eurovision submission
kiboshed by a so-called expert panel,
Fearless In Love glistened with glamour,
independence and retrowave energy.

band at their most fired up politically and
sonically, themes of freedom and unity
powering some of the heaviest and most
impactful songs they’d ever written, with
Wireless, Ritual and Entertain You built for
the arenas WT now comfortably inhabit.

33 KEN MODE
Void

ARTOFFACT

Released a year after
companion piece Null,
KEN mode’s ninth LP
was a masterclass in
jarring post-pandemic
psychosis. The band’s
talent for top-tier metallic noise-rock
has been proven time and again, but this
go-around saw them take full advantage
of Kathryn Kerr’s talents as a multiinstrumentalist to explore ever-stranger
terrain. Elements of no wave and
industrial spidered in through the cracks
as the album jolted and spasmed,
colliding to form a challenging slab that
was both exhausting and exhilarating.

32 BLACKBRAID
Blackbraid II

PRESS/MIKE DANN

SELF-RELEASED

Voyager: Eurovision
superstars!

Blackbraid’s second
outing fired an
audacious salvo
across the extreme
metal landscape.
Sgah’gahsowáh, the
prodigious talent behind Blackbraid,
masterfully blended the raw intensity
of Norwegian black metal with nuanced
touches of Native American culture. It
was no rehash of their groundbreaking
debut; Blackbraid II uncorked thrilling
riffs and innovative structural twists,
notably in A Song Of Death On Winds Of
Dawn and The Spirit Returns. Revelatory
and deeply evocative, Blackbraid II
emerged as an indispensable chapter
in this year’s metal narrative.

31 OXBOW

Love’s Holiday

Terror? Demons? Gore?
Here ya go…
WORDS: JOSH WEST. FOR MORE GAMES ACTION, SEE GAMESRADAR.COM

HI-FI RUSH

While the soundtrack leaned
more towards garage rock
than metal (although shoutout
for Nine Inch Nails’ excellent
The Perfect Drug making an
appearance), Hi-Fi Rush used
music better than any other
game this year. It was
a rhythm-based action
game with a lot of spirit.

RESIDENT EVIL 4 REMAKE
Capcom delivered one of the
best horror games of the year

with its remake of the terrifying
2005 classic. Resident Evil 4
Remake (good name, that) was
a wonderfully paced adventure
that you’ll never regret
playing… until you try to sleep.

DIABLO 4

Diablo 4 was undoubtedly the
most heavy metal game of
the year. Its entire focus was
slaying demonic entities by
the thousands across gothic,
blood-soaked environments.
A true delight.

BLASPHEMOUS 2

Blasphemous 2 was a
challenging metroidvania that
had a startling, grotesque visual
design. It was just like stepping
into the album artwork of one
of the best 80s thrash albums.

ALAN WAKE 2

A horror story told across
two unravelling realities,
with the action underlined
by a twisting narrative and
and a killer original soundtrack,
Alan Wake 2 was a triumph.

IPECAC RECORDINGS

Like a butterfly with
impeccable music taste,
San Francisco’s Oxbow
slipped another leg out
of their cult-status
chrysalis on album
eight. Love’s Holiday stacked noise rock
beside empyrean piano ballads and
bluesy flights of jazz and fancy, pulsating,
bludgeoning, hurting. They seemed
intense as ever, Eugene S. Robinson’s
wails and croaks abetting the tone – but
something had changed. More energy
was spent on heart-tugging than nosebreaking, with sorrow – Lingua Ignota
guest vocal, anyone? – and hookiness in
equal measure. Unbelievable.

METALHAMMER.COM 73

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023

30 GRAVE PLEASURES

Enslaved: Norse gods

Plagueboys

CENTURY MEDIA / SECRET TREES

Grave Pleasures had
always partied at the
precipice of doomsday,
but here the scenereviving post-punk
collective let their
undercurrent of anxiety seep to the
surface. If Plagueboys was more rueful
than its predecessors, this was the party
reaching the weary early hours when all
the really interesting conversations take
place. No band could make the wracked,
luminous nature of 80s dancefloor hits
more immediate, but this was a deeply
affecting tour of our parallel age of unease.

29 PERIPHERY

V: Djent Is Not A Genre

3DOT RECORDINGS

28

PUPIL SLICER
Blossom

PROSTHETIC

Pupil Slicer’s second
album saw the band’s
sound mature.
Emerging from the
turbulence of 2021’s
Mirrors into more
sharply drawn, videogame-inspired
atmospheric mathcore, they continued to
push boundaries and instigate excitement
in the heaviest alternative genre spaces.
Vocalist Kate Davies introduced moody
clean vocals and the former abundant
grindcore influences were instead spread
sparsely throughout Blossom. Breakdowns
punctuated the cosmic horror concept,
fusing the personal and the otherworldly
into a viscerally cathartic whole.

27 ENSLAVED
Heimdal

NUCLEAR BLAST

As with 2020’s Utgard,
Enslaved’s 16th album
found new ways to map
Norse mythology onto
the deepest realms of
the human psyche.
Themed around the titular keeper of
the rainbow bridge and harbinger of

74 METALHAMMER.COM

stringy gobbets of prog. The results were
as compulsive as they were gruesome;
odd, silvery melodies illuminated the
album’s sticky crevices while patches
of unnerving spaciousness made the
stagnant air almost breathable.

Ragnarok, Heimdal was a rite of passage
into the unknown, steeped in the belief
that magic happens in the places in
between. That sense of openness to
possibilities pervaded the album as
vast sonic vistas lurched into urgent,
psychedelic quests with an adventurism
undimmed over three decades.

25 DØDHEIMSGARD

Black Medium Current

PEACEVILLE

Ever since 1999’s
landmark International
666 album,
Dødheimsgard have
been at the vanguard
of black metal’s lurch
into the avant-garde. With Black Medium
Current, band mastermind Yusaf ‘Vicotnik’
Parvez revealed what a deeply personal
endeavour it had become. Segueing from
spidery incantations to industrial beats
and Pink Floyd-style washes, this was
a finely tuned emotional barometer whose
scope and ability to surprise and resonate
at every turn was a mark of Vicotnik’s
fearless approach to self-examination.
A singular artistic statement.

26 TOMB MOLD

The Enduring Spirit

20 BUCK SPIN

Tomb Mold’s journey to
the top of the death
metal dung pile has
been steady and
grotesque, like the
inexorable crawl of
plump white maggots squirming from
the bin you kept forgetting to empty.
Rather than wallow in fetid familiarity,
The Enduring Spirit saw the Canadians
inject their savage OSDM with sticky,

The shorter releases that
lingered in our minds
WORDS: STEPHEN HILL, RICH HOBSON, DANNII LEIVERS, JONATHAN SELZER

BETTER LOVERS

Better Lovers
The ETID/Dillinger/End supergroup that lived up to the hype.
Better Lovers’ debut EP felt fresh
and exciting, yet beautifully
familiar of the members’
sublime previous work.

GHOST

Phantomime
Ghost going full ham on covers
of Iron Maiden, The Stranglers
and Genesis? What’s not to love?
Papa and co. approached the

source material with a typically
brilliant sense of panache.

JO QUAIL

Invocation / Supplication
Collaborating with Heilung’s
Maria Franz, Italian vocalist
Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari and
a choir, the cellist forged a suite
of imperious and ageless magic.

SWOLLEN TEETH

Swollen Teeth
Produced by Slipknot DJ Sid
Wilson, the filth-encrusted,

deranged nu metal from
this masked US quartet was
every bit as grim as their
name suggests, and ripe
with skin-crawling promise.

SPIRITBOX

The Fear Of Fear
Confirming their position
as one of the most majestic
bands in our world, on The
Fear Of Fear Spiritbox took
the dreamy and ass-beating
extremes of their sound to
new heights.

PRESS/ROY BJØRGE

Whether it’s a genre or
not, Periphery had long
been the frontrunners
of all those associated
with the scandalous ‘d’
word. The Washington
DC natives’ super-technical playing,
haphazard delivery and knack for catchy
hooks were again writ large over album
seven. Wildfire, Atropos and Everything Is
Fine! delivered a sense of fun in a style that
is often too serious for its own good, while
Dying Star and Thanks Nobuo revealed
beauty to go with the boisterousness.

THE VERY BEST OF THE
ULTIMATE METAL MAGAZINE!

Celebrate the best in metal with this collection from the last 12 months of Metal Hammer.
Packed with awesome interviews and behind the scenes with some of the biggest acts in
metal, the last year has been like no other, so what are you waiting for?!

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Ordering is easy. Go online at:
Or get it from selected supermarkets & newsagents

24 BLOOD COMMAND
World Domination

Skindred have been making us
smile for years, but now the
rest of the world is catching on

HASSLE / LOYAL BLOOD

23 OBITUARY
RELAPSE

Dying Of Everything

“You can enjoy it
without having to think
too much about it,” was
the amusingly modest
self-assessment of
much-loved frontman
John Tardy. While that’s been true of
every Obituary record, Dying Of Everything
packed more substance than 2017’s
eponymous LP – a return to form advanced
on the Floridian death gods’ 11th offering.
Refreshingly simple riffs were dispatched
with blunt-force groove, breaking down
into sludgy realms of atmospheric horror.
Obituary remained masters of their
time-honoured MO after 35 years.

22 TWIN TEMPLE
God Is Dead

PENTAGRAMMATON

Devilish doo-wop
couple Alexandra
and Zachary James
revelled in their roles
as Old Nick’s slinkiest
emissaries on their
second collection of songs for swingin’
Satanists. Gloriously retro vamps Burn

76 METALHAMMER.COM

Your Bible, Let’s Have A Satanic Orgy and
finger-snapping empowerment highlight
Be A Slut were diabolically good fun, as
provocative as any metal band and made
all the more alluring by the periodimmaculate Wall Of Sound production,
right down to their vintage, dust-on-theneedle sound.

21 VEXED
NAPALM

Negative Energy

Following on from
their 2021 debut,
Culling Culture, Vexed
ruthlessly amped up
the vitriol on Negative
Energy. This H-bomb
of alt metal fury saw vocalist Megan
Targett condemning abusers to the
gallows with guttural urgency, bolstered
by brutal djent-tinged breakdowns and
scraping distortion. In their refusal to
sugarcoat trauma, Vexed wrenched
skeletons out of closets, drowning
listeners in the resulting malice that
each memory evoked. Scathingly
intense, Negative Energy cemented the
Hertfordshire harriers as a resolute new
voice in modern metal.

20 PRIMORDIAL
How It Ends

METAL BLADE

There’s something
about Primordial’s
world-weary anger,
dirt and sorrow that
only seems to get more
profound and intense
with the advent of middle age. That was
all here in spades on their ominously
titled 10th album, but it shared space
with some of their most gorgeous, upbeat
melodies and good old-fashioned heavy

metal heroics. Viewing contemporary
traumas through the prism of historical
tragedy has been Primordial’s stock in
trade since the mid-90s, but How It Ends
proved we need them more than ever.

19 KATATONIA
NAPALM

Sky Void Of Stars

More than three
decades of making
music together hadn’t
sparked a drop of
complacency from
these sullen Swedes.
Indeed, the past 10 years produced some
of Katatonia’s most confident material to
date, with Sky Void Of Stars no exception.
Elegantly yanking on heartstrings and
soulfully weaving in intricate melodies,
the album defined another chapter in
their post-progressive era, where big
choruses and skin-tingling pop leanings
featured effortlessly alongside Jonas
Renkse’s entrancing missives, resulting
in a relaxed, rock-driven and reliably
moping act of smouldering wonder.

18 SKINDRED
EARACHE

Smile

The UK’s most reliable
party-starters dug
deep into their reggae
roots for Smile,
bringing Jamaicanstyle sunshine while
not skimping on the riffs to craft
anthems worthy of the arena venues the
band increasingly appear in. Narrowly
missing out on a UK No.1, Smile was
nonetheless an affirmation of everything
brilliant about Skindred: distinct, fun,
catchy and unafraid to address tough
subjects, inviting everyone to party under
a banner of unity. In 2023, was there
a more desperately needed message?

PRESS/DEANCHALKLEY

For 15 years, Blood
Command had made
eclecticism their
calling card, but the
Norwegians’ fifth
album considerably
upped the ante. Even by previous
standards, World Domination’s mix of
grindcore, G-funk, hardcore punk, thrash
metal, shoegaze and dreampop was
a ridiculously wild ride. It could have been
an absolute mess in the hands of lesser
bands, but Blood Command had such
a strong grasp of all genres that they easily
nailed every style they tackled. One of
2023’s weirdest, but most exciting albums.

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023
Wytch Hazel:
keeping the faith

WYTCH HAZEL

Driven by a love for 80s metal and Jesus Christ, the Lancashire foursome made
a surprisingly universal record
WORDS: CHRIS CHANTLER

B

“I have pretty standard, Protestant beliefs, nothing too wild,” laughs
ringing a sweet sunbeam of English eccentricity to the
the frontman (of the specifics, he gnomically advises, “Ask C.S. Lewis”).
scene, Wytch Hazel have been growing to full bloom on the
“But the reason for starting the band is because we loved heavy metal,
Lancashire coast for 12 years, honing their craft over four
that’s as simple as it gets. We found it wild that there were new, young
increasingly gorgeous albums that take their cues from
bands making early 80s metal. We were very enamoured with that idea!
metal circa 1978-82. The fashion police might take a dim
“We loved Pagan Altar and Iron Maiden, and I was listening to Tull and
view of their devotional Christian lyrics and gleaming white
Thin Lizzy. We liked the idea of a HM band that was melodic and folky,
tights, but luckily founding singer/guitarist Colin Hendra knows, as
so we came up with the name and I started writing. My faith naturally
Adam Ant knew, that ridicule is nothing to be scared of.
came out in the music; you write about what’s important to you.”
“We don’t take ourselves too seriously,” smiles Colin, a gentle and
Their fourth album, IV: Sacrament, weaves a rich
thoughtful dad of two in a Wytch Hazel jumper.
tapestry of sound around timeless riffs and choruses,
“Anyone who doesn’t understand what we’re doing
WYTCH HAZEL
from glittering, jubilant headbangers like Angel Of
will probably continue to ridicule these things, and
IV: Sacrament
Light and Strong Heart to the brooding emotional
that’s fine. I wore a cape at the last show!
BAD OMEN
drama of Time And Doubt and Digging Deeper.
“I like the flamboyant idea, when bands put that
With their
However, notions of faith are explored in far darker
effort in. I want it to be fun and optimistic, so
fourth album,
ways, grappling with doubts and fears.
everything’s very light and bright. My main impetus
tunic-clad
“It’s reflective of where I was mid-pandemic when
for wearing crosses was Black Sabbath, to be honest,
Lancastrians
it was written,” agrees Colin. “I’m definitely someone
but even bigger, bolder, larger than life. If I’m ridiculed
Wytch Hazel
who struggles with doubt. But it’s very Biblical. We
for that, so be it. I don’t really care what people think
made one of
see that in Psalms, there are so many scriptures that
– I’ll continue to be a Christian and wear Spandex!”
the best records of 2023 and
are crying out to God: ‘What is going on?’ It’s a natural
In the sinful netherworld of metal, Colin’s faith is
1983. IV: Sacrament felt like a
human question. It’s definitely a more introspective
an inevitable talking point – but it wasn’t the guiding
visitor from a vanished age, one
album; it’s a lot more of a bummer!”
light behind Wytch Hazel.
that placed a premium on the
Despite this, IV: Sacrament is a comforting and
genre’s most traditional values:
uplifting listen, whether you’re a believer or not
rich, melodic songs and soaring
– something Colin is proud of.
harmonic guitars. But this was
“There’s a study on this: when you’re feeling down,
no Campaign For Real Metal
it’s unhelpful to listen to happy music. You don’t feel
throwback; songs such as Angel
like the writer understands you, you feel emotionally
Of Light and A Thousand Years
dismissed,” explains Colin. “When you’re down and
were a battleground between
you listen to dark, sad music, you feel understood,
mainman Colin Hendra’s
and you actually feel better. Music has this incredible
Christian beliefs and a cruel,
power to do that. There’s value to being honest.”
COLIN HENDRA
unforgiving modern world.

PRESS/SAM SCOTT-HUNTER

17

“I’LL CONTINUE
TO BE A
CHRISTIAN AND
WEAR SPANDEX!”

METALHAMMER.COM 77

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023
Myrkur: forsaking the folk

16 GODFLESH
Purge

AVALANCHE RECORDINGS

Amalie Bruun upended convention once again, on a poppier
album that explored social bonds
WORDS: RICH HOBSON

A

fter abandoning black metal for Nordic
folk on 2020’s Folkesange, Mykur
made another left turn this year with
Spine, embracing grandiose, alt pop
sensibilities – with the odd blastbeat,
of course.
“Someone said to me it sounded like ‘if Enya
caught fire’, and I can’t stop thinking about that,”
she says with a chuckle, speaking to Hammer days
after debuting her new material live at London’s
Rough Trade East.
Ever since the black metal experimentation of
her debut, M, in 2015, Myrkur – real name Amalie
Bruun – has pushed stylistic boundaries, and
admits Spine was a reaction to the minimalism
of Folkesange.
“I needed amplification!” she exclaims. “For
the longest time, I didn’t even want to pick up an
instrument. It’s something I’ve experienced to
some extent on every record. Not quite writer’s
block, I just wasn’t thinking creatively.”
Stirred by picking up an electric guitar for
the first time in months, the first song Amalie
worked on – “basically a black metal ballad” –
didn’t actually make the final record, not
fitting in with the vision she had for Spine.
But what a vision it is: expansive, luscious and
filled with a sense of wonder, Amalie admits

“BILLY CORGAN
HELPED ME
GATHER MY
THOUGHTS”
AMALIE BRUUN

78 METALHAMMER.COM

many of its lyrics are a response to becoming
a mother in 2019.
“Every aspect of my world has been turned
upside down. It would be weird if that didn’t affect
my record,” she says.
There’s much more to Spine than motherhood,
however. My Blood Is Gold explores Amalie’s
connection to her father, who passed away shortly
after her son was born.
“It was really tough,” she says. “He was also
a songwriter, so it was a real comfort to me to
think about his music living on in the universe
and living on through me. That helped me cope.”
Further still, she began writing during the social
isolation of the pandemic, and Spine is as much
a response to current “inhuman” and “unnatural”
developments such as AI and the metaverse.
“They say it takes a village to raise a child, but
suddenly that village was completely cut off,” she
bemoans. “The song Like Humans was about feeling
so much longing for that human connection – we
can’t live happily if we live soullessly.”
Thankfully, Amalie found a friend to help her
through: The Smashing Pumpkins frontman Billy
Corgan, who had taken her out on tour in 2018.
“Billy actually ended up being a little involved
in this record,” Amalie reveals. “He helped me
through some personal struggles and has been
a close friend. He wasn’t quite a producer or
songwriter, but his input helped me gather my
very chaotic thoughts.”
Spine has been so fulfilling that Amalie’s keen
to take it on the road in 2024.
“Anyone who knows me knows I hate touring,”
she admits. “But I’m actually quite excited to play
these songs. I will definitely play black metal in
my sets – but I don’t think you’ll get folk songs
any time soon!”

15 VV

Neon Noir

SPINEFARM / HEARTAGRAM

Ten years after Him’s
final album, frontman
Ville Valo returned
with a record that
sounded… well, like
Him. Good job, then,
that nobody does this shtick quite like
Ville. Neon Noir was a yearning, gothrock injection to the heart and loins,
covering everything from upbeat
bangers to strung-out, doomy epics. The
velvet-red thread? Your boy Ville Valo:
crooning, undulating, going ‘uh!’ in that
goosebump-inducing timbre. The king of
Love Metal was back, and it felt so good.

14 EMPIRE STATE BASTARD
Rivers Of Heresy

ROADRUNNER

We always knew Simon
Neil had a penchant for
awkward noise, but no
one was prepared for
the sheer extreme
metal viciousness of
Empire State Bastard. The project was
birthed through late-night chats on the
Biffy Clyro tour bus between Simon and
live guitarist Mike Vennart. Add Slayer
legend Dave Lombardo on drums and the
result was a suitably towering skyscraper
of a debut album, falling somewhere
between Converge and Fantômas but
with its own unique flavours.

13 URNE

A Feast On Sorrow

CANDLELIGHT

The London trio’s 2021
debut album, Serpent
& Spirit, was incredibly
promising, but surely
no one could have
seen the gigantic leap
in quality to A Feast On Sorrow coming.
The riffs were more complex, the

PRESS/GOBINDER JHITTA

MYRKUR

Summoning the
iconoclastic dystopia
of 1992’s Pure for their
latest wasn’t what
Godflesh fans were
expecting, but it was
what the field medic ordered. Polar-cold
mechanised beats with equal ties to
classic hip hop and industrial wastelands
set the table for a chest-caving bass thump
and guitars that drove a shoegazing stake
into doom metal’s heart, as mainman
Justin Broadrick tersely spilled his guts.
Kudos all round for making a 30-plusyear-old blueprint work to stunning
effect on Purge.

production from Gojira’s Joe Duplantier
sharpened their attack, but it was
vocalist Joe Nally’s emotional
performance, palpably channelling
the confusion and frustration of grief
and loss, that was the key element.
Heartbreaking and crushing in equal
measure, A Feast On Sorrow was the
perfect modern metal album.

Empire State Bastard took
everyone by surprise

12 CATTLE DECAPITATION
Terrasite

METAL BLADE

Cattle Decapitation
hadn’t played pure
grindcore for ages,
yet there was
something just as
extreme about their
eighth album, Terrasite. Teetering
between tech-death, black metal, grind,
and whatever Travis Ryan had lodged in
his throat, it furthered the fucked-up
foundations established on latter-day
records The Anthropocene Extinction and
Death Atlas. Terrasite caterwauled with
strangled anthems, destructive
breakdowns, and even some bleak-asthe-news clean vocals punctuating the
coda Just Another Body. Harrowing but
insanely catchy, Terrasite sounded like
nothing on Earth.

11 MYRKUR
RELAPSE

Spine

Clocking in at a mere
34 minutes, Spine
arrived like a star
shooting across the
skies in a short yet
magical moment of
cosmic wonder. An ode to the joys and
anxieties of motherhood, the album
saw Amalie Bruun range through
a spectrum of sounds both old and
previously uncovered, lacing together
black metal and Scandic pagan folk
with flashes of classic metal and even
glimmering synth pop. Celestial and
wonderfully ethereal, Spine birthed
a host of new sonic possibilities.

10 ROYAL THUNDER

Rebuilding The Mountain

PRESS

SPINEFARM

With broken
relationships and
substance abuse all
but ending the band
following their last
album, 2017’s Wick, the
fact that Royal Thunder were still going
in 2023 was a cause for celebration in
itself. Yet in typical fashion, the Atlanta
natives used the fuel from their uncertain
times to craft yanother stunning addition
to their perfect discography. While the
band’s emotional songs have always had

8 GREEN LUNG

This Heathen Land

NUCLEAR BLAST

a knack for hitting the sweet spot, the
tales of hope, redemption and healing
spread across Rebuilding The Mountain
were given that much more clout.
Josh Weaver’s gorgeous melodies
painted the most perfect landscape
for Mlny Parsonz to break your heart
with the honesty and darkness of Pull,
Drag Me and Live To Live.

9 BARONESS
Stone

ABRAXAN HYMNS

Breaking away from
their established
colour-coded
nomenclature,
Baroness carved out
a seminal moment
with their sixth studio offering, Stone.
Its name signalled more than simply
evolution, but a decisive intent. While
listeners found an ineffable homage
to the lavish textures of 2019’s Gold
& Grey, Stone daringly charted new
landscapes, melding sludge, prog and
the undeniable swagger of late-70 classic
rock. Tracks like Last Word and Shine
thundered with driving riffs, while
Under The Wheel teased brooding
post-hardcore menace. Frontman John
Baizley’s dynamic vocal range, paired
with Gina Gleason’s lush harmonies,
offered a riveting contrast, bridging
potent metal anthems and spectral
acoustic ballads. More than a mere
throwback, Stone boldly reaffirmed
Baroness’s commitment to innovation,
and critics responded with high praise
and horns raised high.

After igniting the
underground with two
albums of folk-tinged
stoner/doom, Green
Lung dared to dream
bigger on album
number three. Approached with the
theatrical bombast of your average
Marvel movie, This Heathen Land was an
epic worthy of the big screen, weaving
a lyrical narrative around British folklore
and tales of the occult, while writing
some of the catchiest doom-adjacent
songs since Tobias Forge stuck a pope
hat on and demanded everyone call
him Papa. Between its galloping riffs,
towering hooks and flamboyant keys,
This Heathen Land made the rooms Green
Lung previously packed seem impossibly
small – the likes of Mountain Throne,
Maxine (Witch Queen) and One For Sorrow
suggested their own apotheosis into bona
fide metal gods must surely be at hand.

7 TESSERACT
War Of Being

KSCOPE

When Tesseract
released their fifth
album in September,
it was their first in
more than five years.
Fortunately, the Brits
compensated for the half-decade dry
spell with their most all-encompassing
material to date. War Of Being summarised
every era and evolution they’d been
through since their 2011 debut album.
While the 11-minute behemoth of a title
track reintegrated the progressive scope
of One and Altered State, the likes of The
Grey – with its skull-caving seven-string
riffing and meticulously honed melodies
– maintained the accessibility of their
later material. With the addition of singer
Dan Tompkins belting out the vocal
performance of his life on top, War Of
Being saw the UK’s prog metal kings
reclaim their throne.

METALHAMMER.COM 79

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023

6 SVALBARD

The Weight Of The Mask

Sleep Token lured us
all into their world

NUCLEAR BLAST

Svalbard have never
been afraid to veer into
the darkness. While
they’ve been no
strangers to looking
outward at the realities
of an unjust world, album number four
instead saw the band focusing inward
via this devastatingly beautiful
untangling of what it means to live
with poor mental health. Intricate and
gorgeously intense, The Weight Of The
Mask felt as viscerally raw as an open
wound, flushed with sweeping blackgaze guitars, juddering percussion and
lyrics so richly emotional that tears
almost pooled on our cheeks. Bleak
though it may have been, this album
was proof of that innate human ability
to find beauty in the things we often
leave hidden in the shadows.

5 METALLICA
72 Seasons

Conceived and largely
created during the
dark times of the
pandemic, Metallica’s
much-anticipated
11th album was
the last word in lockdown records:
a sprawling, self-lacerating, soul-baring
journey that actively challenged the
listener not to flinch during its epic
77-minute running length. Joyous
throwback single Lux Æterna was a red
herring; the rest of 72 Seasons veered
between the merely intense and the
downright harrowing, James Hetfield
mining his own childhood traumas
to deliver something that was both
universal and ultimately cathartic.
Yet for its length, 72 Seasons was the
most musically focused Metallica had
been since The Black Album. The likes of
Shadows Follow, Crown Of Barbed Wire,
unheralded gem Too Far Gone? and
11-minute closer Inamorata showed
that, 42 years after they started, the
band were still blazing with creativity.

4 SLEEP TOKEN

Take Me Back To Eden

SPINEFARM

Sleep Token were one
of the most talkedabout bands in heavy
metal before Take Me
Back To Eden even
came out this year.
When the masked cult’s third album
dropped in May, it only deepened
everybody’s love for the rising stars.
Anthems like Chokehold and the
ultra-viral The Summoning not only

80 METALHAMMER.COM

ANDY FORD

BLACKENED RECORDINGS INC.

GIGS OF THE YEAR

All the stuff that made
us go hard in the pit

WORDS: ELEANOR GOODMAN, RICH HOBSON, JONATHAN SELZER

SABATON /
BABYMETAL / LORDI

WEMBLEY ARENA, LONDON
The monster magic of Lordi,
a bombastic, dazzling display
from Babymetal, and Sabaton
bringing all the explosive
ordnance… The Tour To End
All Tours lived up to its name.

AC/DC

POWER TRIP, INDIO
From Brian Johnson’s return to
a setlist full of rarities and fan

faves, AC/DC’s first show in seven
years was amazing.

SPIRITBOX

ROUNDHOUSE, LONDON
This pair of shows crowned
Courtney and co.’s welldeserved rise, and featured
a blinding appearance from
Architects’ Sam Carter.

LIMP BIZKIT

GUNNERSBURY PARK, LONDON
As if their Wembley Arena show
earlier in the year hadn’t been

fun enough, the Bizkit returned
for this party in the park. The
nostalgia was flowing, the red
caps were plentiful, and Break
Stuff was off the charts.

GOJIRA

ALEXANDRA PALACE, LONDON
Making their ascent into bigger
venues, Gojira were always
going to be spectacular, but
the expanse and weight of
their sound felt unifying and
necessary – a counterblast of
hope for a world in crisis.

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023
broadened the band’s eclectic palate
– featuring djent, pop, rap and funk
– but carried an emotional authenticity
even listeners outside the metal sphere
could relate to. Frontman Vessel’s
croons about love, loss and remorse
were both beautifully written and
gorgeously sung, giving the inevitable
chunky riffs that followed an extra,
cathartic heft. No doubt, Take Me Back…
will be remembered as an essential
work in the Sleep Token canon as they
continue to ascend.

3 CODE ORANGE
The Above

BLUE GRAPE MUSIC
Code Orange could not
give less of a shit what
anyone else thinks

CODE ORANGE

Pittsburgh’s metallic hardcore crew took their second shot
at a breakthrough record
WORDS: STEVE HILL

I

PRESS

n 2020, Code Orange were on the verge of
releasing their fourth album, Underneath,
when their launch show was cancelled due
to the pandemic. The Pittsburgh sextet
turned it into a livestream, setting a trend
in the process. Steadfast and focused, they
continued grinding with more virtual and
real-life shows, a live album (Under My Skin)
and a remix album (What Is Really Underneath?)
– before finally hitting us with this year’s
uncompromising follow-up, The Above. It took
their stuttering, electronic metal attack and laced
it with gorgeous alt rock and shoegaze melodies.
“We had a lot building up inside of us, and
I think that’s the reason why the album came out
the way it did,” says guitarist/backing vocalist
Reba Meyers. “We got to do so many different
types of releases in the last few years, so we got
to dig a little deeper and learn about what it is
that we really wanted to make.”
Not all fans approved. Some thought they
were leaning into melody at the expense of their
hardcore roots, while others took issue with The
Smashing Pumpkins’ Billy Corgan guesting on
NIN-influenced track Take Shape. Frontman Jami
Morgan isn’t the kind of man to listen to other
people’s opinions, though…

“IT WOULD BE
AWESOME IF
THIS ALBUM
BLEW UP”
JAMI MORGAN

“People always have a lot to say, but we’re doing
what we think we should be doing. We did it in
hardcore and we did it in metal, now we’ve done
it in, for want of a better word, rock,” he explains.
“We want to challenge ourselves. We’re naked
and we’re willing to walk through that door first.”
The Mask Of Sanity Slips is rage combined with
beauty – a bullet with butterfly wings – while
Mirror showcases Reba’s soulful vocals. Meanwhile,
I Fly flirts with grunge harmonies and Splinter The
Soul boasts a singalong chorus.
“I think this record has some of the most
accessible songs we’ve ever recorded,” explains
Jami. “I think they could really reach a lot of
people if they were given the chance. But equally,
I think it has all of the intelligence and emotion
of what we’ve done before, in terms of the layers
of the onion. It would be awesome if it blew up.”
Having said that, their aggressive side punches
you in the face on the stabbing Theatre Of Cruelty,
and the early-Deftones adjacent Grooming My
Replacement. It’s still a heavy record, then…
“Oh, hell yeah!” says Jami. “It’s still raw – it’s
recorded by fucking Steve Albini!”
This year might have seen recognition for
rising hardcore bands such as Zulu, Militarie
Gun, Drain, Scowl, Gel and more, but Code Orange
have barely noticed. They’re their own unit,
doing their own thing, and The Above is another
bold step in their evolution.
“We don’t really pay that much attention to
whatever else is going on now to be honest,”
admits Reba. “Our intention with this band is for
us to create and explore and grow, and I’m glad
people are doing well, but we don’t compare
ourselves to other bands. We’re on our path,
and that’s what we focus on solely.”

Following the
brilliance of Forever
and Underneath, and
the nu metal vibes of
surprise standalone
single Out For Blood,
everyone had to once again prepare for
the unexpected on Code Orange’s fifth
effort. And once again, the Pittsburgh
collective met the massive expectations
they had set for themselves, further
delving down the rabbit hole to
uncover all manner of new ideas before
seamlessly tying them all together
into a whole that was unmistakably
them. The alt metal anthems Take Shape
(featuring Billy Corgan) and Circle Through
sat next to the exhilarating rush of
Snapshot, with multi-instrumentalist
Eric ‘Shade’ Balderose utilising an even
bigger bag of tricks. Right through to
the title track’s closing string-led
descent, The Above was another defiant
statement of a band light years beyond
the competition.

2 AVENGED SEVENFOLD
Life Is But A Dream...

WARNER

Inspired by a profound
existential crisis and
its DMT-fuelled
aftermath, Avenged
Sevenfold’s eighth
album was one of the
weirdest records ever made by a huge,
mainstream band. A decade ago, they
were riding high with Hail To The King’s
on-the-nose homages to Metallica
and Guns N’ Roses. In stark and
wondrous contrast, Life Is But A Dream…
had more in common with Disco
Volante-era Mr. Bungle and the multigenre madness of hyperpop icons 100
gecs than any conventional metal band.
From opener Game Over’s scattershot
circus thrash and the lurching, industrial
grind of Nothing, to (O)rdinary’s beatific
funk-pop and the title track’s florid
piano epilogue, it unfolded as a single,
53-minute blizzard of joyous, liberated
creativity. The dream lives.

METALHAMMER.COM 81

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023

1
CREEPER
Sanguivore

Creeper: bloody brilliant

SPINEFARM

Vampires never get old, and
Creeper know it. The cryptdwellers’ third album was
a charismatic, be-fanged gothpunk rock opera high on blood
and its own vaulting ambition.
Running counter to modern
metal’s prevailing wear-yourtrauma-on-your-sleeve trend,
Sanguivore was defiantly dramatic, swooningly romantic,
frequently over-the-top and full of the kind of old-school,
air-punching tunes that most other bands who aren’t
called Ghost have apparently forgotten how to write.
The headline news was that this tale of undead beloveds
Spook and Mercy channelled the genius of the late Jim
Steinman, the visionary behind Meat Loaf’s Bat Out Of Hell
and a man who was to restraint what cows are to Olympic
high jumping. Death-or-glory nine-minute opener Further
Than Forever and showstopping piano ballad closer More
Than Death lived up to that billing – epic tunes that didn’t
so much lean into the ridiculous as embrace it and wrestle
it naked on the floor. There were other reference points,
too, such as The Sisters Of Mercy (Black Heaven), Danzig
(Lovers Led Astray), The Damned (Chapel Gates) and even
Billy Idol (dancefloor banger Cry To Heaven), not to mention
classic 80s and 90s fang-flicks Near Dark, Fright Night and
Interview With The Vampire. So far, so eldritch.
Yet Sanguivore was more than just a copy-and-paste
homage to an era that none of the members of Creeper,
or most of their audience, are old enough to have seen.
Frontman and blood-drinker-in-chief Will Gould – aka
William Von Ghould to give him his full nom de vampire
– and his bandmates had taken the anything-goes spirit
of their illustrious forebears as much as their sound and
turned it into something fresh and new. This was no
dumbly reflexive attempt to ape the past. Every
skyscraping chorus, every throbbing, black-hearted
bassline, every dramatic vocal that sounded suspiciously
like it was being sung through fanged incisors was
perfectly considered and even more perfectly executed.
Ironically for a record centred around the undead,
Sanguivore felt alive. It’s no coincidence that Will had held
up The Rocky Horror Picture Show as a key touchstone – not
the latterday, middle-aged-accountants-dressing-asFrank-N-Furter-on-a-Friday-night, but the original’s
gleefully freaky, wilfully transgressive spirit. It was
a circus of vampires, with the singer as ringmaster in
midnight-black shades and a leather biker jacket.
It all sounded cartoony, but part of the joy of Sanguivore
was that it was cartoony. However, there was another, less
flippant story lurking beneath the recently disturbed soil
on its surface. Just as Spook and Mercy’s story was one of
redemption and healing, so was Creeper’s. The band’s
last album, Sex, Death & The Infinite Void, was recorded
amid guitarist Ian Miles’s well-publicised mental health
struggles, a situation that couldn’t help but impact on both
the band and his relationship with them. Appropriately,
Sanguivore was the sound of a band resurrected.
In a world that’s stuck in a spiral of shittiness, it’s the
job of music now more than ever to provide escapism. With
Sanguivore, Creeper offered a way out of the grimness of life
and into an altogether more alluring darkness. Listen to
them, the children of the night. What music they make.

82 METALHAMMER.COM

CREEPER
With its high-concept vampire story,
Jim Steinman worship and overriding
sense of fun, the quintet united the critics
WORDS: RICH HOBSON

L

et’s face it: in a year where
Metallica, Avenged Sevenfold
and myriad heavyweights
have unveiled new albums,
nobody could have predicted
Southampton goth-punks
Creeper taking Metal Hammer’s Album
Of The Year spot with their vampire
rock opera, Sanguivore. Least of all the
band themselves.
“[Creeper guitarist] Ian Miles’
favourite band is Metallica, so he feels
like he’s committed some kind of
crime,” admits Creeper frontman Will
Gould, grinning like the Cheshire – or
perhaps more accurately, Hampshire
– cat. “It’s so humbling, especially for
the type of record we’ve made, as the
reference points we are drawing from
aren’t really cool records.”
Within the swirling mix of goth, punk,
heavy metal and classic rock’n’roll that
is Sanguivore, 1977’s debut Meat Loaf/
Jim Steinman album Bat Out Of Hell casts
a delightfully OTT winged shadow.
“Bat… was pretty much always on
when I was a kid because my parents

loved it, so I honestly can’t say when
I first heard it,” Will admits. “But
I revisited it when I was around 11.
I knew all the songs from the distant
haze of youth, but I just had a different
appreciation for how insane they were.”
But then, Will has always been
attracted to theatricality. A selfconfessed “cartoon goth”, he lives in
a converted church in Manchester, the
shelves lined with pumpkins all year
round. When Hammer calls him over
Zoom, we even get a jump-scare as
we’re greeted by a pair of yellow eyes
staring out of a ghostly pale face. No,
it’s not Will in dress-up – though we
wouldn’t put it past him – but his cat.
“Sorry, Tofu loves gatecrashing
meetings,” he laughs.
For Creeper, business is booming.
Formed in Southampton in 2014, the
band have traded in mystique and
mystery as far back as their 2015 EP
The Callous Heart, weaving narratives
around heartbreak and tales of the
paranormal. Their early EPs and 2017’s
debut album, Eternity, In Your Arms,

STEVE BRIGHT

established a goth-punk sound in line
with AFI and Alkaline Trio, but with
2020’s Sex, Death & The Infinite Void
the band ditched it all in favour of
brighter colours and a poppier sonic
palette. Even as that album hit No.5
in the UK charts, Will was laying plans
for its follow-up.
“We always knew we were going to do
a darker, vampire-themed album for
our third record,” he explains. “I had
the whole story written long before we
began writing the music. I must’ve
finished just before the pandemic.”
As grandiose as Sanguivore’s songs
are, they couldn’t live up to their full
Steinman potential without a rock
opera narrative to match. Drawing
inspiration from films such as Carrie,
Let The Right One In and Interview With
The Vampire, Will crafted a story about
a couple, Mercy and Spook – albeit
with a twist.
“We’ve done the doomed romance
to death!” he says. “Looking at the
stories we’d already written, I realised
we’d got a lot of traditional love stories

between a man and a woman and
I didn’t really want to repeat that.”
Thus, he played with gender roles
and perceptions.
“So often in horror movies, the
woman’s the one being chased, tortured
and killed, but that’s not the case in
ours,” Will explains. “We named Mercy
after Mercy Brown – this real-life
vampire story that is really crazy
and gnarly [in 1892 in Rhode Island,
a woman’s body was exhumed as her
family believed she was undead and
causing tuberculosis – Vampire Ed].
We first see her with the Ghost Brigade
– this vampire gang à la The Lost Boys
– and think she’s innocent, but she’s
the most ferocious of all and the oldest.
It’s this idea of looks being deceiving.”

“THIS MUSIC HAS
BEEN CREATED
BY OBSESSIVES”
WILL GOULD

But with all this talk of vampires and
seduction, who would Will turn, if he
were a vampire?
“My girlfriend,” he says without
hesitation. “Nobody else would put up
with me for eternity!”
Looking for “the UK’s answer to Jim
Steinman” to produce, Will found
a kindred spirit in Tom Dalgety, who
had plenty of experience wrangling
spooky bands such as Grave Pleasures
and Ghost. Tom also arranged a few
surprises for the band when they set
off to Rockfield Studios in Wales to
record Sanguivore.
“Where they recorded Bohemian
Rhapsody!” Will exclaims, agog. “Tom
had this hook-up that meant we could
talk to people who were there when
The Damned recorded The Black Album
and Iggy Pop recorded with David
Bowie popping by… this incredible
amount of history.”
Sanguivore certainly doesn’t cower in
their shadow. Grandstanding and epic,
it combines the bombast of heavy
metal with the strutting slickness of

METALHAMMER.COM 83

THE 50 BEST ALBUMS OF 2023

classic rock’n’roll, with a gothic streak
that adds a dash of sensuality – lines
like Cry To Heaven’s ‘This cannibal baby,
she wants a taste of what’s inside / She’s
handcuffed to my backseat so she can take
him for a ride’ proving Sleep Token
weren’t cornering the market on
sexiness in metal in 2023.
“One of our big influences is Type O
Negative, who made some of the
sexiest albums of all time,” Will
admits. “Well, hopefully we get more
horny metal songs in 2024.”

all these people in make-up. People
turn up to Creeper gigs now in vampire
make-up, which is rad!”
For a moment, Will’s enthusiastic,
witty repartee drops.
“People are going through a lot at
the moment,” he says. “It’s hard not
to feel like the world is a tricky place,
so it’s just so gratifying to hear from
people who tell us how much of an
escape this band is. That’s always quite
touching, and I keep a lot of fans’
letters in the drawer here so that when
things get tough, or money’s tight, it
reminds us that it’s all worth it.”
Will is unsurprisingly tight-lipped
about what Creeper have planned for
2024 beyond a nebulous mention of
tour dates, following the band’s
sold-out UK headline shows in
November. But he admits there’s
plenty they would like to do, if they had
an infinite budget. Like: “The Bat Out Of
Hell musical version of Sanguivore,” he
says hungrily. “For years we’ve been
wanting to do a full orchestra show,
but doing Sanguivore like that would
be so cool too.”
There’s also the matter of certain
other spooky sensations Will hopes to
someday tour with.
“A Ghost and Creeper tour would
be the dream!” he enthuses. “We saw
them last year and it was one of the

I

n 2023, no rising sensation – metal
or otherwise – is complete without
a rabid fanbase to call their own.
Just as Slipknot have their Maggots,
Creeper have the Creeper Cult. Will
sees it as a reflection of the band’s own
obsessive nature.
“Creeper offer fantasy,” Will muses.
“Our music rewards you the more you
listen and go on. This music has been
created by obsessives, and if you see
our fanbase… you won’t often find
a casual fan.”
When Creeper announced they’d
play a special show at London’s
600-capacity Lafayette, two days
after Sanguivore’s release, it was
unsurprisingly a sellout. The band
added a matinee, which also promptly
sold out. Taking the stage on Sunday
October 15, they were greeted by
energetic fans already singing every
word of their new songs.
“It was so cool, turning up and
having all these young kids screaming
our songs,” Will admits. “I always
remember seeing footage of Ziggy
Stardust when I was a kid, and seeing

84 METALHAMMER.COM

“A GHOST TOUR
WOULD BE THE
DREAM!”
WILL GOULD

coolest shows I’ve been to. What a band
to fly the flag for metal of the future.”
In the meantime, Creeper will still
be plotting world domination from
a more humble setting.
“We’re currently rehearsing the show
in my kitchen,” Will says with a laugh.
“No matter how well things go, we’re
always operating on zero budget and
painting gravestones in the kitchen.”
But then, considering where that got
the band with Sanguivore, we can’t help
but wonder if he’s already coming up
with ideas for the next album.
“That’s the big question, isn’t it?!”
he says, eyes glinting mischievously.
“It’s hard one to answer, because we
try to keep our cards close to our chest.
We’ve been overwhelmed with how
happy we’ve been with this record.
I feel like this is the record we’ve been
building towards, that maybe we didn’t
have the balls to do when we were
younger. I’m glad we didn’t too, because
we wouldn’t have done it as well.”
He pauses to reflect.
“Sanguivore represents Creeper
better than any of our previous
records. The first had the trappings of
this pop-punk world we were never
really part of, just lumped in with. The
second was brilliant, but had so many
songs that we couldn’t really play live
because they were too soft. Sanguivore
is a real representation of this band
and what we’re about. So right now
we’re living with it, and loving what we
can do. There’s plans in place for the
future, but considering this record was
almost called ‘European Vampires
– A True Story’, you never know what
we’ll bin off next!”

BEN GIBSON

Another ghoulish gig

STEVE BRIGHT

Jim Steinman would
be so proud

METALHAMMER.COM 85

THE REVIEWS

94

DAMNATION
FESTIVAL

Electric Wizard, Katatonia and Anaal Nathrakh storm Manchester

88

HEALTH

LA’s industrial trio tune into their darkest instincts

88 ALBUM REVIEWS
90 ATREYU
90 FULL OF HELL AND NOTHING
92 DIMMU BORGIR
94 LIVE REVIEWS
96 ELECTRIC CALLBOY
97 BEYOND THE REDSHIFT
98 EMPLOYED TO SERVE
99 WATAIN
100 MALEVOLENCE
101 CREEPER
102 CAVALERA
104 NEX_FEST
EDITED BY: JONATHAN SELZER • PICTURE: SABRINA RAMDOYAL

METALHAMMER.COM 87

ALBUM REVIEWS
Health: back with
a brutal sonic attack

88 METALHAMMER.COM

ALBUM REVIEWS

HEALTH
Rat Wars

LOMA VISTA RECORDINGS

LA’s ever-evolving industrialists tune in to their
darkest instincts
NEARLY TWO DECADES into their

career, LA’s experimental electronic rock
trio Health have arguably completed
their stealth-like climb from
underground, art noise clubs to an
essential component
of the modern metal
scene. Where the
band’s Disco4 pair of
albums gave them
a greater presence in
the world of heavy
music and saw them
collaborate with the
likes of Full Of Hell
and Perturbator, Rat
Wars feels very much
like the completion
of their evolution
into a full-blown,
destructive industrial metal powerhouse.
The band themselves have admitted as
much in the build-up to Rat Wars, with
the record being framed as the most
personal, cathartic and brutal of their
career. Certainly, it all points that way on
paper. Lamb Of God’s Willie Adler brings
a trademark groove riff to Children Of
Sorrow, which sits somewhere between
Ministry at their most acidic and
Deftones really leaning into their more
ethereal influences. The use of a sample
from Godflesh’s
signature track,
Like Rats,
dominates the
sound and feel
of Sicko, and it’s
a fantastic nod
to the feeling of
a broken man
butting heads
with cold,
inhuman
machines that
Rat Wars is trying
to capture. In practice, both of those
songs work as well as you’d hope they
would, too.
Of course, Health haven’t completely
retreated from the brooding, creeping,
atmospheric soundscapes of previous
material. First track Demigods gently
eases us in with a soaring vocal and some
Tangerine Dream-style luscious, synthladen darkness. The closing song, Don’t
Try, utilises cold, singular chords with

acres of space between them in the same
way that Talk Talk did on their classic
Spirit Of Eden album.
But as that initial opening fizzles away,
both Future Of Hell and Hateful enter with
crushing, propulsive
industrial metal that
sets the tone for
much of the album.
The beat that closes
the latter, and
continues through
into (Of All Else),
feels particularly
oppressive, and only
heightens in both
pace and intensity as
the superb Crack Metal
comes rushing on in
like a modern retread
of Nine Inch Nail’s Wish – albeit one with
a far more melodic vocal. In fact, Jake
Duzsik’s vocals are one of the few
elements of Rat Wars that remain
melodious throughout. His breathy, sleek
and disconnected style manages to wrap
some wonderfully instantaneous and
catchy hooks throughout. The KMFDMaping thump and thud of DSM-V could
have been pure meat’n’potato industrial
filler in the hands of lesser bands, but
with Jake’s ghostly sneer being pushed
to the very
forefront of
the song, it’s
absolutely
mesmerising.
Obviously,
metal doesn’t,
and has never
had, the
monopoly on
‘heavy’ music,
and Health have
always been an
emotionally and
tonally weighty band, but on Rat Wars
they’ve upped the ante in terms of the
pure brutality of their sonic attack.
If you’re a pure metalhead and you’ve
ever been intrigued, but unsure, about
whether or not Health are for you, now
is the time to investigate.
■■■■■■■■■■

PRESS

HEALTH HAVE
BECOME A
FULL-BLOWN,
INDUSTRIAL
METAL
POWERHOUSE

FOR FANS OF: Nine Inch Nails, Godflesh,
Ulver
STEPHEN HILL

BJØRKØ
Heartrot
SVART

Amorphis axeman goes on
a guest-laden set of diversions

Amorphis guitarist Tomi
Koivusaari has taken 15
years to make his debut
solo album, and each of
Heartrot’s nine songs
contains vocals and lyrics
from a different singer.
It sounds like a recipe for
a disjointed listen, and it is.
Heartrot fails to truly
pinpoint its mood, lurching
from extreme metal to
post-punk or post-rock
arbitrarily, although some
of the tracks are worthwhile
curiosities. The Heartroot
Rots pairs Carcass’s Jeff
Walker with slower,
groovier death metal than
usual, and Värinvaihtaja
is a classy rocker with
Finnish polymath Ismo
Alanko’s solemn voice.
These standouts together,
however, don’t amount to
a sonic adventure that you
can truly get lost in.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Amorphis,
Sólstafir, Nightwish
MATT MILLS

COBRA SPELL
666

NAPALM
Dutch all-female hard rockers get
ready to party like it’s 1989

Where Steel Panther are
a knowing pastiche of 80s
hair metal, Cobra Spell play
it straight. They could have
been one of the also-rans
declaring they were going
to be stars in The Decline Of
Western Civilization Part II
– the looks and attitude are
present but the X factor is
not quite there. They can

certainly play and singer
Kristina Vega has an
impressive wail, but opener
S.E.X. is all front and no
hooks while Fly Away is
tepid power balladry. The
sax-imbued Love = Love and
infectious The Devil Inside Of
Me are far better, dancing
gleefully over the fine line
between big dumb fun and
throwaway trash. In the
80s they’d have been
strictly second division,
but in 2023 the throwback
novelty might just win out.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Battle Beast,
Reckless Love, Warrant
PAUL TRAVERS

DEATHCODE SOCIETY
Unlightenment

OSMOSE PRODUCTIONS
An extravagant return from Gallic
symphonic black metal showmen

Eight years since their
debut, Deathcode Society’s
return shows they’ve lost
none of their potency or
pomposity. From the
opening maelstrom of
Scolopendra onwards,
Unlightenment displays
a sophisticated amalgam
of strings, screams and
tumultuous black metal,
while still exuding plenty
of melodic hooks. While
lacking the budget and
bombast of the leaders of
symphonic extremity, the
Frenchmen still conjure
a formidable wall of sound
on the nefarious La Nuée
and the labyrinthian epic
of À La Néante. While such
a long wait deserves more
than the seven tracks on
offer, there’s plenty to
unpick, with the album’s
zenith coming in the
closing moments of
Narcosis’s dizzying rush
and startling if somewhat
ostentatious theatrics.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Dimmu
Borgir, Anorexia Nervosa,
Carach Angren
ADAM BRENNAN

METALHAMMER.COM 89

ALBUM REVIEWS

FULL OF HELL
AND NOTHING

When No Birds Sang
CLOSED CASKET ACTIVITIES

Grindcore and shoegaze champions
prove that opposites refract

ATREYU

The Beautiful Dark Of Life
SPINEFARM

California’s metalcore mainstays chase too many balls

‘MAY WE ALL get a little lost sometimes,’
Brandon Saller screams on the reflective
anthem Come Down, and it’s a sentiment
that seems threaded throughout
metalcore quintet Atreyu’s ninth studio
album. The Beautiful Dark
Of Life both compiles this
year’s trio of EPs – The Hope
Of A Spark, The Moment You
Find Your Flame and A Torch
In The Dark – and serves
as the culminating
chapter with three new
tracks. But while Atreyu’s
introspective musing
masquerades as
a confident melding of
metal and post-hardcore, here it feels
more like a wavering search for identity.
In their heyday, Atreyu were tastemakers. Their first few records serve as
definitive examples of 00s metalcore:
hooky but with an exhilarating, screamladen authenticity. The Beautiful Dark
Of Life, on the other hand, is less of an
innovator and more of a caricature of the
modern metal scene. Every song comes
as a new attempt to recapture lightning
in a bottle; from the tech-y inflections on
God/Devil, to the buoyantly introspective
Dancing With My Demons, Atreyu
consistently change pace, tapping into
90 METALHAMMER.COM

a plethora of sonic clichés. Despite its
polished sound, there’s no denying it
dances in the shadows of their peers,
from the dramatic emo and grit of The
Used to the recent melodic sensibilities
of Asking Alexandria.
That doesn’t mean this
record lacks strengths.
Good Enough is more
than that – a brilliantly
catchy banger – while
Gone boasts buoyant
riffs fully capable of
urging an arena into
motion. The theatrically
tinged mystique of
Insomnia is also
noteworthy, and Forevermore boasts
striking orchestral qualities.
However, in its wild attempt to spin
so many plates, it never quite manages
to clarify exactly who the modern Atreyu
truly want to be. That may in large part
be due to the patchwork nature of its
creation, but although the varying
soundscapes of The Beautiful Dark Of Life
contain stellar moments, it ultimately
fails to add up to a coherent whole.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: The Used, Bullet For My
Valentine, Killswitch Engage
EMILY SWINGLE

Nothing’s wistful shoegaze
and Full Of Hell’s grind
cataclysm collide on this
experimental but accessible
album. Born of a friendship
cultivated at shows in the
2010s, FOH screamer Dylan
Walker and Nothing’s
Domenic Palermo shared
ideas over the years before
both outfits finally
converged in the studio.
Swaying from shoegaze
to sludge, the bands’
respective hallmarks
are recontextualised in a
refreshing departure. Spend
The Grace epitomises their
vision: the atmospheric
swell of post-rock riffs
landing with a harsher
crunch, and Domenic’s
croons desecrated by
Dylan’s screams. When
No Birds Sang is a dreamlike
collaboration with
a nightmarish capacity.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Jesu,
The Body, Deftones
TOM O’BOYLE

FUTURE STATIC
Liminality
WILD THING

Australian modern metallers make
their presence felt

Liminality is a fierce debut
from this Melbourne band.
Lead singer Amariah Cook
has an impressive range,
from ethereal to ferocious,
finding vocal chemistry
with bassist Kira Neil. Roach
Queen is wildly hooky, Iliad
is fast and breathy, Will I? is
quirky, stripped down and

dreamy with a soaring
guitar solo. Plated Gold
should please Paramore
fans, with effective guest
vocals courtesy of Make
Them Suffer’s Sean
Harmanis. The Embers
provides a brutal close due
to Amariah’s deeper roars.
This fusion of progressive
metal, poppy overtones,
alt rock and theatrical flair
does Future Static proud.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: The Last
Martyr, Jinjer, Tura Satana
NIK YOUNG

GNAW THEIR TONGUES
The Cessation Of Suffering
CONSOULING SOUNDS

Dutch cult miserablist takes
another trip beyond despair

Serial party pooper Maurice
‘Mories’ De Jong continues
his seemingly inexhaustible
one-man hate campaign
with another devastatingly
misanthropic meld of power
electronics, mutant sludge,
bastardised black metal
and Silent Hill-style horror
soundtracks. Mories’s
unrelenting bleak worldview
permeates a hellish zone
of shamelessly unedifying,
noise-laden assaults.
Warring textures of misery
compete for dominion on
the pulsating Mensenlucht
and the blasphemous
church-organ-led filth
of Vengeful Spit, broiling
in existential odium, as
blood-curdling howls
alternate between frenzied
scorn and despairing
petitions for deliverance.
The album’s title is totally
misleading: suffering
appears endless here,
with Mories pushing
despond to unsurpassed
depths, his terrifying antimusic effecting a soul purge
through total evisceration.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: The Body,
Chaos Cascade, Bastard
Noise
SPENCER GRADY

PRESS/MICHALA AUSTIN

Atreyu refuse to let their
momentum stall

ALBUM REVIEWS

HARMAGEDON

Dystopian Dreams
SVART

Martyrdöd bassist tests out some
new filth-slinging techniques

This Swedish power trio’s
debut album is doused in
liberal amounts of piss and
vinegar, with raging anticapitalist anthem Reptilian
kickstarting the record on
a particularly vicious note.
Featuring Martyrdöd’s Tim
Rosenquist on guitar and
vocals, Harmagedon have
plenty of his other band’s
crusty vitriol, but also hints
of old-school death metal
and modern sludge. They’re
at their strongest when
locked into crust mode,
with the energy dipping
during slower tracks like
Controlled Chaos, but when
this combination comes
together, it makes for an
invigorating listen. The
Reckoning sits at the
intersection between
vintage rock’n’roll heroics,
oozing DM filth and
bludgeoning sludge.
Boasting a crisp production
from Cult Of Luna’s Magnus
Lindberg, it’s easy enough
to look past Dystopian
Dreams’ shortcomings
when it sounds so
convincingly pissed off.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Martyrdöd,
High On Fire, Entombed
KEZ WHELAN

INCULTER

Morbid Origin
EDGED CIRCLE

Norway’s thrash atavists uncover
a sinister undertow

Hailing from the Nordic
scene that birthed the likes
of Deathhammer, Condor
and Nekromantheon, this

Fenriz-approved quartet
have been at the forefront
of vicious vintage thrash for
a full decade. Inculter’s third
album represents a slight
gear change, however;
while there’s still plenty
of the band’s Kreator-onsteroids thrash assault,
the songs are mostly longer
and more elaborate, with
more room for soaring
guitar leads amid their
more complex structures.
Don’t worry, they haven’t
exactly gone prog, but the
extra breathing room in
songs like the curiously
melancholic Age Of Reprisal
really broadens out their
sound. The title track is an
eight-minute-plus epic that
allows tight, chugging riffs
to blossom into yearning,
Maiden-esque harmonies.
Morbid Origin may not be
Inculter’s most ferocious
record, but it reveals
a sinister depth beneath
their rambunctious barrage.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Aura Noir,
Kreator, Nekromantheon
KEZ WHELAN

LEONOV

Procession
VINTER

Oslo post-metallers unlock the
combination of poise and firepower

Leonov have been releasing
music at a glacial pace, their
stately post-metal tending
towards solid rather than
stellar. Procession, however,
sees the Norwegians carving
out an album that possesses
more grace – and more grit
– than anything previous.
After the Godspeed!-like
blip of Rem the quintet
enter a more individualistic
space: stark, cinematic and
seemingly informed by life
in a land endlessly riven
and reshaped by the whims
of slowly shifting ice.
While Leonov are adept at
moving from faint flickers
to hugely satisfying riff
avalanches (check out the

title track for proof) it’s in
steady restraint and the
slow release of tension
where Procession’s strengths
are really displayed. The
propulsive pulse of Mesos,
say, or closer Son, which
hinges on the subtle ache
of Tåran Reindal’s spectral,
shimmering voice.
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FOR FANS OF: Year Of No
Light, Bedhead, Blodet
ALEX DELLER

LITHA
Litha

SMALL MERCIES
Where EP is short for ‘Epic Potential’

CELESTE

CONTINENTS

NUCLEAR BLAST

SELF-RELEASED

Epilogue(s)

Lifeline

These cuts from 2022’s
Assassine(s) sessions further
explore the smouldering
bombast of that album.
It’s an amalgam of crisply
produced black metal and
hardcore, by turns
gracefully contemplative
and blisteringly punitive.
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Lifeline is awash in vitriol
from the off. Gaslighter
lobs a Molotov cocktail of
hardcore-tinged metalcore
that grows in magnitude
throughout a blistering
howl of an EP confronting
the agonies of mental
health issues.
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TOM O’BOYLE

EMILY SWINGLE

DEAD ICARUS

INSOMNIUM

MNRK HEAVY

CENTURY MEDIA

TARTARUS
Mizmor collaborator charts his own
bleak, blackened path

Litha’s eponymous debut
is a brooding, tempestuous
journey into the psyche of
Andrew Black – an ambient
composer and integral
component of Mizmor
and Hell. Rising from the
wooded recesses of Salem,
Oregon, Andrew’s evolution
from his band, Sorceress,
into the ambient realm
has now arrived at this
melancholic symphony
of melodic black metal.
Unlike his previous efforts,
Litha channels the rawness
of anger, depression
and dark, unsparing
introspection. The album
paints a tumultuous aural
landscape, coloured by the
agonised blackened shrieks
of Hunger and Wearing Away,
and disarmingly beautiful
interludes that feel like
a slow waltz through a fog
of sorrow. Litha is very
much catharsis for Andrew
– an attempt to grapple
with buried misanthropy
and pain. This is a
deeply arresting aural
experience that demands
commitment, but it’s worth
it. Just be prepared for an
intense, emotional odyssey.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Agalloch,
Wolves In The Throne
Room, Winterfylleth
JOE DALY

Ad Infernum

Songs Of The Dusk

After leaving Atreyu,
vocalist Alex Varkatzas
craved more aggressive
waters, and this is his
project’s debut EP. The
murky brutality and heavy
riffs here do justice to his
screams, and So I Set Myself
On Fire is particularly fun.
■■■■■■■■■■

Despite being recorded
during the same sessions
as last February’s Anno
1696 album, this threesong EP is no mere
collection of dregs,
boasting the same
grandeur and excellence as
its full-length predecessor.
■■■■■■■■■■

NIK YOUNG

MATT MILLS

MUGSHOT

STENGAH

PURE NOISE

MASCOT

Cold Will

Downward Mechanic

Across five tracks, this
hyper-aggressive LA-based
metalcore crew mix the
sleek, shiny sound of
modern metal with nasty,
crunchy old-school
hardcore. It’s a simple
formula, but, in the main,
very effective here.
■■■■■■■■■■

The French collective
named after a Meshuggah
song unsurprisingly bring
a technical intensity to
proceedings. A year on
from their debut, Soma
Sema, this EP offers up
more melodies and even
a radio-friendly chorus.
■■■■■■■■■■

STEPHEN HILL

ADAM BRENNAN

METALHAMMER.COM 91

ALBUM REVIEWS

Grief Is No Ally
ARISING EMPIRE

Metalcore debutants cover the
spectrum of internal anguish

Dimmu Borgir: Silenoz
and Shagrath get back
to their roots

DIMMU BORGIR
Inspiratio Profanus
NUCLEAR BLAST

Symphonic BM veterans compile their covers songs for their 30th anniversary

THERE ARE TWO basic approaches

to covering other people’s music. One is
to play it more or less straight, retaining
all the elements that made it great in the
first place; the other is to turn it into
something new. When
Cradle Of Filth covered
Venom’s seminal Black
Metal on a special edition
of Cruelty And The Beast,
they turned it into
a Cradle song – Dani
Filth’s piercing shrieks,
orchestral augmentation
and all. A couple of
injected blastbeats aside,
Dimmu Borgir stay much
closer to the original as they tackle the
song here. It’s suitably raw and sounds
fantastic without bringing anything new
to the party.
They continue their unadulterated
worship of the gods of rock’n’roll,
fanboying through Bathory deep cut
Satan My Master and Celtic Frost’s
Nocturnal Fear (twice) with little more
than naked aggression and a deep
appreciation for the music that shaped
the scene that birthed them. Elsewhere,
they dip into more traditional elements
of rock and metal, with a heavier and
downright evil run through Twisted

92 METALHAMMER.COM

Sister’s Burn In Hell, a rasping take on
Accept’s Metal Heart, and a bash at Deep
Purple’s Perfect Strangers that actually
suits their symphonic bombast better
than you might expect. The outlier is
a creepily pulsing cover
of Dead Men Don’t Rape
– a study in violent
vigilantism by US
industrialists G.G.F.H.
rather than the more
recent feminist rage
anthem of the same
name by Delilah Bon.
It’s a neat package, but
longtime fans might be
forgiven for expecting
a little more for a 30th anniversary
present. The fact that all these tracks
have been previously released in
various guises makes it all slightly
underwhelming, and you can’t help
wishing that the Norwegians had at least
bashed out a couple of new covers for
the occasion. It works as a celebration of
Dimmu Borgir’s own influences, though,
and summons the spirit of the Old Gods
while we wait for that new studio album.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Cradle Of Filth, Satyricon,
Bathory
PAUL TRAVERS

Mavis’s debut album sees
the German quartet
intertwining metal with
pulsing beats and sparkling
soundscaping in a way that
fits neatly into metalcore’s
electro-happy zeitgeist.
Songs pivot from Insight
and Reflections’ rumbling
lamentations on the nature
of grief to the contrastingly
soft Limerent – a hooky duet
dominated by clean vocals.
While Grief…’s mix of dark
and lighter textures doesn’t
reinvent the wheel, there
are some interesting
moments. ISOTO’s jagged
breakdown slowly
transforms into wistful
synth-infused reflection,
culminating in perhaps
the finest embodiment of
Mavis’s potential.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Northlane,
Erra, Silent Planet
EMILY SWINGLE

NYRST
Völd

DARK ESSENCE
Elemental black metal from the
volcanic wastes of Iceland

Written and recorded in
the shadows of an active
volcano, Völd is a soaring
and chaotic tribute to
Iceland’s elemental heart.
Inspired by the country’s
roaring streams of lava,
cutting through its rocky
tundra and windswept
fields, the album translates
to ‘Force, power or might’
– and aptly so. Völd is
a grim, blackened
symphony that blends

FOR FANS OF: Almyrkvi,
Misþyrming, Helfró
JOE DALY

ORPHANED LAND

A Heaven You May Create
(Live In Tel Aviv)
CENTURY MEDIA

Recording of a once-in-a-lifetime
show from the Israeli peacemakers

For more than three
decades, Orphaned Land
have used their music to
crusade for peace in the
Holy Land. They must be
in despair right now. These
13 songs were recorded
onstage at Tel Aviv’s
Heichal HaTarbut back in
2021, the band’s delicate
fusion of Middle Easternflavoured doom, death, folk
and progressive sounds
enhanced to overflowing by
a 60-piece orchestra. With
Kobi Farhi’s voice flitting
between growls and a
soothing, cleaner delivery,
the symphonic element
emphasising their graceful
ebb and flow, this is the
way that Orphaned Land
must have wanted Mabool
(The Flood), Like Orpheus
and Birth Of The Three to
have sounded all along.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Amaseffer,
Myrath, Melechesh
DAVE LING

PRESS

MAVIS

Nyrst’s previous outings
with strains of doom and
even death on Hrímvíti
and Eilíft Eldhaf. While the
album captivates with
its raw energy and
atmospheric layers,
invoking some truly
exhilarating moments,
it somewhat falters in
its quest for innovation.
Rich in homage to both
its homeland and its
musical influences, Völd
unfortunately lacks the
adventurousness to truly
carve new paths in black
metal, leaving it in the
sonic slipstream of
its predecessors.
■■■■■■■■■■

ALBUM REVIEWS

RAGE BEHIND

Eminence Or Disgrace
ATOMIC FIRE

Masked Frenchmen add gravitas to
their groove

With only a few singles and
shows under their belt, it’s
to Rage Behind’s credit that
they’ve landed on the
burgeoning Atomic Fire
label for their debut. Even
though you’ve probably
heard most of the riffs
before, guitarists Jerry Ho
and Max Liva dole out at
least one memorable chug
per each of these 12 tracks
of thrash-tinged groove.
The hulking stomps of
Hourglass And Revenge and
The Hands Of Revenge, as
well as the frantic Don’t
Break, are highlights, with
gang vocals backing up
Vitali Lukas’s barks. Most
noticeable are the synths
and haunting vocals that
add a threatening aura to
Worldwide Hostility, setting
Eminence Or Disgrace up as
a foundation stone of more
exciting things to come for
the French quintet.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Bleed From
Within, Lamb Of God,
Bury Tomorrow
ADAM BRENNAN

TORRENTIAL RAIN
Digital Dreams
SELF-RELEASED

PRESS/ESTER SEGARRA

German metalcore unit prove their
ultra-modern bona fides

The new studio album from
this German progressive
metalcore band is melodic
and catchy throughout.
They’re releasing monthly
music videos until the
album drops and, true to
their album title, created
them with the help of AI.

Some songs like Lighthouse,
with its soaring vocals and
stadium rock feel, are more
atmospheric, while others
like standouts Meant To
Be and Aporia are more
ferocious. The Escapist has
a Fall Out Boy feel, Count
On You juggles groove and
breakdowns with ease, and
Faults Are Thick Where Love
Is Thin is a true earworm.
The vocals might be too
squeaky clean for some,
but interwoven with fierce
screams, djent fretwork,
and a dystopian electronictinged vibe, it adds up to
an intoxicatingly emotive,
hyper-modern sound, and
there is no denying their
songwriting skills.
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singalongs. Considering
this quartet are about to
support Tesseract across
the continent as well,
expect their stock to
skyrocket in 2024.
■■■■■■■■■■

FOR FANS OF: Chaosbay,
Avalanche Effect, Atreyu

Avant-black adventurers
streamline their sonic overload

NIK YOUNG

This London-based
multinational collective
have been unhurriedly
eking out a career in black
metal’s deep underground
since 1999, when their
quirky cacophony tended
toward the millennial
cyber-industrial end of the
spectrum. 2021’s The Hollow
Man let tremolo-picked
Norwegian BM purism
run amok across a Requiem
Mass on an alien penal
colony, disparate parts
dovetailing like crossed
frequencies in
eerie sync. With founding
guitarist Matt Jarman
assembling an all-new
line-up in the subsequent
two years, sounds and styles
are layered more sparingly
on Jadjow, forswearing
orchestral bells and whistles
with a greater focus on the
stripped-back basics of
guitar/drums/voice. It’s
still wonky black metal,
frequently at lightning
speed, but contemplative
and playful rather than
mercilessly antisocial,
with a clean, bright sound,
mellow/sedated vocals,
beguiling melodies, plus
orthodox touches of
Viking-era Bathory – and
this newfound accessible
approach works a treat.
■■■■■■■■■■

UNPROCESSED

...And Everything In Between
SELF-RELEASED

Progressive up-and-comers find
the soul to complement the skills

Being a progressive metal
‘shredder’ is a pretty
surefire way to find fame
on TikTok and Instagram.
However, when it comes to
translating their talents
into original songcraft, a lot
of guitar virtuosos can’t
resist the urge to show off
rather than write melodies
or accessible riffs.
Unprocessed leader Manuel
Gardner Fernandes has
undeniably dodged this
trap, boasting not just
lightspeed fingers, but also
impressive vocals and an
onstage rock star charisma.
Now, his band’s new album
represents some of their
heaviest, most memorable
material. Hell, Die On The
Cross Of The Martyr and
Blackbone especially
balance chops that any
other guitar player would
(rightfully) sell their soul
for with urgent metalcore
breaks and mighty

FOR FANS OF: Tesseract,
Animals As Leaders,
Polyphia
MATT MILLS

Helga offer a communion
with nature and the
modern world

VOID

Jadjow
BRUCIA

FOR FANS OF: Fleurety,
Dødheimsgard, Enslaved
CHRIS CHANTLER

HELGA

Wrapped In Mist
SEASON OF MIST

Ethereal, folk-infused majesty from across the
Viking strongholds

EMANATING FROM
THE forests of Sweden

and echoing through the
cobblestone lanes of their
eponymous founder’s
adopted home, York, Helga’s
debut unveils a profound
lyrical odyssey, masterfully
intertwining the rich
tapestry of nature, the
weight of cultural heritage and the poignant undertones
of human connection. As a solo artist, vocalist Helga
Gabriel effortlessly navigated the channels of post-rock,
folk and dreampop before forming Helga by placing an
advertisement that attracted a group of musicians who
were childhood friends. Her metamorphosis into the
pulsating core of a vibrant ensemble is profoundly
evident throughout the album’s narrative arc, shifting
from the ageless allure of unspoiled landscapes to the
frenetic rhythms of contemporary urban life.
Opener Skogen Mumlar creates an eerily beautiful
tableau, with a jangly introduction drawn straight from
Ennio Morricone. As the track builds, it unveils a soulful
fusion of folk and prog, woven into plush layers of
shoegaze and pop. The band flaunt serious chops in the
versatility department too, seamlessly segueing from
ambient dreamscapes to scything waves of black metal,
as in the enthralling Farfäl and the soaring splendour
of Som En Trumma. Contemporary metal is awash with
bands throwing dabs of black metal into virtually every
genre possible, but Helga incorporate the style with deft
subtlety, guided by the frontwoman’s ethereal voice and
propelled by powerful drums and seductive fretwork.
The latter half of the album synthesises gauzy
introspection with ripping salvos of metal, fusing
dreampop and folk on Mountain Song and ending with
the stark pastoral beauty of the title track.
Wrapped In Mist brims with both a profound sense
of maturity and raw vulnerability, laying bare the
profound depths of Helga’s collective soul. If this is
their launchpad, a fantastic voyage surely awaits.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Myrkur, Alcest, Sylvaine
JOE DALY

METALHAMMER.COM 93

LIVE REVIEWS

LIVE REVIEWS

DAMNATION
FESTIVAL 2023
BOWLERS EXHIBITION CENTRE, MANCHESTER

Electric Wizard and Anaal Nathrakh shatter the senses at the UK’s biggest underground metal fest
FRIDAY

Now in its second year since moving
to Manchester, Damnation Festival is
indisputably the biggest celebration
of underground metal in the UK. The
weather outside might be frightful, but
the fist-to-the-face crossover thrash
of INHUMAN NATURE remains oh-so
delightful, their old-school grooves
and frenetic riffs getting the blood
pumping. BOSSK offer the first
‘exclusive set’ of the weekend, playing
their 2016 debut, Audio Noir, in full to
transcendent effect, as drifting
melodies and crushing heft lend
a sense of otherworldly presence.
Not all album-in-full sets are created
equal. In its best moments, the mixture
of teeth-gnashing black metal and
swirling melodies within ENSLAVED’s
Below The Lights feel as though they
could pierce the heavens, but pacing
issues mean the set often feels
overwrought. Flaming katanas and
bibles announce SIGH, whose theatrics
go back 30 years to the Scorn Defeat
album. It’s an evocation of pure
second-wave darkness as the riffs of
At My Funeral howl like spirits around
a disturbed grave.
HERIOT are arguably the most
captivating band of the day so far.
Frontwoman Debbie Gough is an
entrancing force of potent rage,
stomping, high-kicking and swinging
her hair around between screams
so piercing it’s as though they cut
through your ear drums with a blade.
LEPROUS’s presentation of Coal marks
the point where they went from
protégés to the prog-pop greats we
know today, but with metallic screams
from a besuited Einar Solberg that now
seem quite quaint and nostalgic.
No one is having more fun right now
than DEADGUY frontman Tim Singer,
as he frantically yells with an everpresent grin over what he dubs “the
best kind of violence” while revisiting
the classic album Fixation On A Coworker,
and it’s pure chaos. Damnation

94 METALHAMMER.COM

Heriot: Debbie Gough
fights power with power

THE SET

ELECTRIC WIZARD
Witchcult Today
Supercoven
Black Mass
Return Trip
Satanic Rites Of
Drugula
Time To Die
The Chosen Few
Funeralopolis

favourites AKERCOCKE celebrate 20
years of their Choronzon album by
causing Satanic carnage amid a crowd
tripping over themselves to roar every
blasphemous proclamation in extreme
anthem Leviathan. It remains every bit
the monument to perversity it was
back in 2003.
KATATONIA’s playthrough of 2012’s
Dead End Kings is a no-frills, gentle
repose from the festival’s earlier, more
high-spirited performances, ushered
in via the sleepily gorgeous vocal
tones of Jonas Renkse and a dusting
of kaleidoscopic riffs, to end day one
on a blissfully poignant note.

SATURDAY

KHEMMIS have waited until they’re
underground stars in the US to finally
make their UK debut. They haven’t
built the same reputation here, but
their Flying V guitar heroics and heavy
metal poise stand out on a day of more
usual grimness. With a foot on the
monitor and a tin of lager held aloft
– later a plastic sword – HIGH
COMMAND vocalist Kevin Fitzgerald
is the vision of quintessential thrash,
thunderous crossover grooves ensuring
their UK debut is a triumphant and
incendiary experience. Unearth’s
playthrough of 2004’s The Oncoming
Storm is a belligerent attack to the
senses, before a thick haze provides

the perfect setting for STRIGOI’s
oppressive death-doom. Greg
Mackintosh headbangs with surprising
vigour as he growls and snarls like
a tortured beast.
“Ten years is a good run. Here’s more
songs!” Thus encapsulates the nononsense attitude OHHMS approach
even their final show with. They do it
with a career-best album in Rot, but
those direct rock bangers giving way
to their gliding out on The Anchor is
testament to the breadth they’ve
achieved. Startling and otherworldly,
JULIE CHRISTMAS makes jagged
movements across the main stage
like a haunted rag doll, emphasised
all the more by her sweetly strange
pixie-like vocals. It’s a bewitching
experience. DOWNFALL OF GAIA’s
crowd is so large it spills out into the
bar area separating stages, the band
providing a suitably epic and visceral
set of seething, at-times grandiose,
post-black metal. AMENRA are both
meditative and suffocating, as walls
of sound swell into emotionally
charged sonic avalanches to
transcendent effect.
Sound issues severely curtail
KATATONIA’s Saturday set, but it’s
still a powerful showcase of their sonic
diversity, from Forsaker’s calamitous
crashing riffs to Nephilim’s gothic
melancholia. The wailing guitars
of Behind The Blood end the set on
a triumphant note. At the other end of
the sonic spectrum, Finnish grindcore
kings ROTTEN SOUND have everyone
in a chokehold as they battle through
their calamity of noise. It’s like being
stuck inside a time-looped car crash,
as metallic masses relentlessly hurl
into each other with titanic force.
Flanked by glowing runes and
playing their debut, Vikingligr Veldi,
in its entirety, ENSLAVED feel
especially potent as they hit an
imperious stride. Vocalist Grutle
Kjellson sounds like he’s gargling
glass, while Håkon Vinje’s keys loom

LIVE REVIEWS
Electric Wizard summon
up a doom sermon

Enslaved: still opening
new gateways for
extreme metal

SABRINA RAMDOYAL

Bossk go out in
a blaze of glory

large in the mix, leaving us itching
for a re-recording of the album to
showcase these refined sensibilities
almost 30 years on from release.
“We’re going back to the core values
of punching the fuck out of everyone
else,” declares ANAAL NATHRAKH’S
Dave Hunt. Twelve months from what
could have been their final gig, the
band are on unassailable form as they
bludgeon the ever-loving shit out of
Damnation. From the apoplectic
barrage on the senses that is Unleash
to The Age Of Starlight Ends’ bizarrely
power metal-appropriate chorus,
they remain one of the UK’s most
distinctive and undeniably brilliant
peddlers of extremity and (literal)
cock-eyed filth.
South West England’s archfiends of
doom, ELECTRIC WIZARD, close out
Damnation with an hour-long sermon

Anaal Nathrakh: still
on hand to brighten
up your doomsday

Sigh replenish the
roots of black metal

Julie Christmas: a rapt,
unworldly presence

of riff worship, each downtuned groove
a sensual lashing onto the mortals
gathered. While there’s nothing
unfamiliar about their performance
tonight, fans can be spotted heavily
rocking their heads, arm in arm,
passing around well-hidden doobies
in euphoric delight, leaving the festival
to close on a genuine high.
PERRAN HELYES / RICH HOBSON / LIZ SCARLETT

METALHAMMER.COM 95

LIVE REVIEWS
QUICKSAND

Electric Callboy bust
out the moves

ISLINGTON ACADEMY, LONDON

AS EVERYTHING UNFOLDS / MONUMENTS
O2 ACADEMY, LEEDS

easily become metal’s biggest novelty. Their
irresistible, EDM-splattered take on metalcore,
and wig-tastic videos, have established them
as one of the silliest bands around. But none
of it would mean anything if the band didn’t
have the technical proficiency and, more
importantly, the tunes to justify their
skyrocketing popularity.
MONUMENTS’ progressive metalcore
contains plenty of melody too but, unlike the
headliners, it reveals itself coyly, unfurling
between techy glitches and huge hammering
grooves. It’s a meaty, riveting sound, but this
crowd are hankering for a payoff that’s more
instant. They get it with High Wycombe’s
AS EVERYTHING UNFOLDS, whose
anthemic post-hardcore contains shades
of Architects, Bring Me The Horizon and
Crossfaith’s rave-y tendencies. It’s an apt
appetiser for tonight’s main event, but the
party really kicks off as soon as ELECTRIC
CALLBOY appear and tear into a rampant
Tekkno Train in the first of many neon confetti
hailstorms. From then on it’s bedlam. A group
of fans perform the dance routine for metalised
trance banger Everytime We Touch, with
a fervour that would put boyband *NSYNC
to shame. A constant churn of bodies
fly over the barriers during Parasite and

96 METALHAMMER.COM

MYRKUR

ROUGH TRADE EAST, LONDON

Mindreader, the darker edge of those songs
contrasting with the relentless fizz elsewhere.
Meanwhile, the crowd bellow every single
word to every single track thrown at them,
even a cheesy cover of The Backstreet Boys’
I Want It That Way and Castrop X Spandau…
which is completely in German. In fact, the
singalong is so loud during cruise-ship
deathcore ‘Schlager’ track Hurrikan, that
singer Nico Sallach declares the sold-out room
must be “at least 10% German now” – resulting
in an echoing chant of “Scheiße! Scheiße!”
“That’s lovely,” smiles co-vocalist Kevin
Ratajczak approvingly.
What’s really striking about tonight, though,
is just how slick the band have become.
They’ve been performing pretty much the
same setlist – and between-song patter – for
months, but they have the charm to ensure it
never feels anything less than authentic, plus
they play every song like they’re performing
it for the very first time. It’s that boundless
energy that will take them to the next level.
As techno-metal closer We Got The Moves
brings things to a rabid close, the room carries
on singing the chorus long after the band
disappear. When they return to these shores,
we wouldn’t be surprised if they’re playing to
packed arenas.

The world’s changed since we previously
heard from Amalie Bruun, aka Myrkur –
and so has she. She last emerged from the
Danish woodland to share March 2020’s
acoustic Folkesange album. Mere days after
its release, everything got locked down,
live music was paused, and Amalie found
herself navigating new motherhood in
isolation, with a potentially fatal pandemic
wreaking havoc outside. Her new album,
Spine, not only deals with that experience,
but sees the former black metal songstress
add another arrow to her quiver: solemn
pop-noir. During her intimate release
show at this London record shop, four
new songs enchant a sold-out audience.
Lead single Like Humans opens, starting a
stripped-back half-hour of just Amalie
on vocals and keys alongside live guitarist
Andreas Lynge. The simplified
soundscape lets the singer’s voice soar,
her ethereal pipes during this first song
feeling like an induction into a gorgeously
windswept Scandinavian landscape.
Mothlike, Valkyriernes Sang and Spine’s title
track round out the setlist, the closer
proving itself to be another hypnotic high
as Amalie croons over her piano with
zero frills. From metal to folk to pop-noir
and now a two-piece set, Myrkur’s
versatility seems endless.

DANNII LEIVERS

MATT MILLS

Germany’s electro-pranksters spur the Midlands into mayhem
ELECTRIC CALLBOY COULD have

STEPHEN HILL

FRANK RALPH

ELECTRIC CALLBOY

New York post-hardcore legends
Quicksand are celebrating 30 years of
their debut album, Slip, this evening by
playing it in its entirety. It’s an undeniable
masterpiece and every single person
squeezed inside the Academy is
practically frothing at the mouth as the
band walk onstage and plough straight
into the magnificent, dexterous rhythms
of opening track Fazer. Vocalist/guitarist
Walter Schreifels doesn’t stop to address
the crowd, preferring to let this
magnificent music do the talking, with
Head To Wall, Dine Alone and the title track
completing one of the strongest opening
four-song runs imaginable, flashing by in
a blur. Much like their music, Quicksand
don’t appear to have aged at all. Walter is
still rake-thin with model good looks;
former Deftones bassist Sergio Vega still
throws himself around like he’s made of
Flubber; drummer Alan Cage remains a
pummelling human metronome; and the
addition of Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky as a
second guitarist gives the songs a sprinkle
of his manic special sauce. Post-Slip,
Quicksand give us a brief greatest hits set,
culminating in Thorn In My Side, Landmine
Spring and Delusional from Manic
Compression. It cements this evening as
perfect, post-hardcore nirvana.

LIVE REVIEWS
Cult Of Luna trip
the light fantastic

GGGOLDDD enter
a state of grace

Napalm Death
lead another
grindcore charge

BEYOND THE REDSHIFT
THE FORUM / THE DOME, LONDON

Umeå’s post-metal pioneers re-curate a day of dark wonders

DEREK BREMNER

AS THE LEAVES turn the colour of

blood, a comforting darkness envelops
a stretch of north-west London as the
return of the Cult Of Luna-curated
Beyond The Redshift gathers together
a raft of fellow sonic explorers.
The magnificent GGGOLDDD wear
their hearts on their sleeves as they
debut tracks from their new PTSD EP
alongside 2022’s This Shame Should Not
Be Mine. Emotion visibly takes over
singer Milena Eva during Spring, in
a moment of vulnerability that
resonates with the whole room.
She carries on their gorgeous set with
remarkable poise and determination,
culminating in a hypnotic rendition
of On You.
Belgian heavy shoegazers
SLOW CRUSH play songs from the
melancholic Aurora album. Through
a haze of pink smoke, frontwoman
Isa Holliday is barely more than
a silhouette, her voice a whisper

among the dense wall of sound and
shimmering riffs. SVALBARD’s Serena
Cherry is maybe the only person in
metal who can’t help grinning from
ear to ear while playing songs about
being “really fucking depressed”. She
wields her axe like a true guitar hero
during a furious rendition of Faking It,
and the Redshift crowd joining in with
the likes of Eternal Spirits and To Wilt
Beneath The Weight in moments of
catharsis that sometimes only heavy
music can provide. LLNN don’t deal in
bullshit. Even for a post-metal band,
the Danes sound oppressively dense
and stunningly direct, cramming their
set with naught but riffs. Heads nod in
unison throughout this 40-minutelong bludgeoning.
Grindcore gods NAPALM DEATH are
outliers today, in that there’s no ‘post-’
in front of their genre descriptor.
However, the Brummies earn their
place by simply being themselves.

Their rapid-fire songs leave London
with no room to breathe, and any
space in between is filled by Barney
Greenway rightfully calling the outside
world out on some of its far-right and
transphobic bullshit. Although BIRDS
IN ROW emerged as hardcore darlings
in 2012, latest album Gris Klein
dramatically broadened their canon.
Tonight only proves the Frenchmen’s
range, as the oddly danceable postpunk of Noah is contrasted with their
shorter, seething songs.
A dense fog descends over the Forum
before CULT OF LUNA’s arrival and,
over the ensuing two hours, the only
things to escape it are hellish postmetal and a dazzling light show that
complements every riff change of
tracks like Cold Burn and In Awe Of.
Claustrophobic, acerbic and hypnotic,
the Swedes dominate even on a day of
their own hand-picked competition.
MATT MILLS / CATHERINE MORRIS

METALHAMMER.COM 97

LIVE REVIEWS
Justine Jones, now
employed to surf

DESTRUCTION

WHIPLASH / ENFORCER
GARAGE, LONDON

Pupil Slicer follow the
way of the Wario

EMPLOYED TO SERVE
PUPIL SLICER / GOING OFF
DEVIL’S DOG, BIRMINGHAM

dressed as Super Mario characters unleash
chaotic mathcore while a zombie Elvis does
karate in the pit, but when you’re at a metal gig
on Halloween, all bets are off.
After a hale helping of hardcore from openers
GOING OFF – singer Jake Huxley dressed as
a clown and stomping with enough fury to
give Pennywise nightmares – PUPIL SLICER
commit to the bit as they take to the stage to
the Mario theme, singer Kate Davies offering
her own take on 00s Nintendocore as she yelps
‘Yoshi!’ right before No Temple’s breakdown.
It’s daft, but doesn’t detract from the sheer
bedlam and brilliance of the band onstage,
No Temple’s more melodic tendencies buried
beneath glitchy, pummelling beats. Blossom
feels like an outlier, a post-punk-style beat
and clean vocal hooks betraying the sonic
transformation the band have undertaken since
they first started touring in 2022. Another
helping of Mario stage music – Dire, Dire Docks
from Mario 64 – and Pupil Slicer depart on The
Song At Creation’s End, serene melodies giving
way to post-black metal blastbeats that have us
itching for more.
EMPLOYED TO SERVE started 2023 playing
arenas with Gojira. While there’s an undeniable

98 METALHAMMER.COM

GAMA BOMB

BOSTON MUSIC ROOM, LONDON

thrill at seeing the band conquer such massive
stages, the necessity for short-but-sweet sets
left a lot of gold on the cutting room floor.
There’s no such problem with the band’s
headline tour; ETS lurch to life with the
malicious grooves of Void Ambition and leave no
stone unturned as they remind everyone just
how many massive anthems they’ve got in
their arsenal.
The Hawaiian shirts and tropical blow-ups
can’t mask the fact that this is metallic
hardcore at its brutish best, The Mistake even
chucking a bit of Entombed-style early Swedish
death metal into the mix as the band lock into
grooves with bulldog tenacity. ETS certainly
have no shortage of impressively infectious
hooks. We Don’t Need You, Eternal Forward Motion
and Twist The Blade are quality mosh-starters
with anthemic prowess, with Justine Jones
snarling like a furious drill sergeant. For all
the surf gags they embrace – even getting
a member of the crew to crowdsurf in an
inflatable rubber dinghy – closers I Spend My
Days (Wishing Them Away) and Mark Of The Grave
prove they’re still an undeniable force of nature,
conquering whatever they behold, whether on
arena stages or not.

Could there be a more appropriate opening
to a Gama Bomb gig than a lightspeed
metal song about an obscure 80s action
cop movie? “They are no regular
supercops!” singer Philly Byrne squeals
over scurrying guitars. “They are…
MIAMI SUPERCOPS!” After all, these
lads have always been the most chaotic
geeks in the 21st-century thrash revival.
They’ve mixed the beer-swilling
shenanigans of Municipal Waste with
odes to Arnie and Star Wars since 2002,
and tonight’s London headliner is
a celebration of their own silliness.
In between his band’s musical mash-ups
of speed metal with Judas Priest-ish
melodies, Philly chats endearing shit
about once, to his shame, enjoying
Megadeth’s Risk. Later – in the lead-up to
She’s Not My Mother, Todd – he throws out
Terminator 2 in-jokes. The arrival of
costumed mascot Snowy is pre-empted
by narration about the yeti’s lack of
genitalia, and even the boys’ Irish heritage
gets saluted: Pogues singer and “honorary
Irishman” Spider Stacy rocks up to sing
an expeditious If I Should Fall From Grace
With God. Blending batshit antics with
legitimate musical prowess, Gama Bomb
continue to offer some of the most fun
nights out in underground metal.

RICH HOBSON

MATT MILLS

Woking’s metallic hardcore furies embrace some hallows humour
IT’S NOT EVERY day you watch a band

ALASTAIR RIDDELL

KATJA OGRIN

Going Off: no, we
definitely don’t want
fries with that

It may well be a Tuesday in north London,
but ENFORCER play every gig as if it were
Monster Of Rock 1985. From the opening
roar of Destroyer to the closing anthem
Midnight Vice, every note is delivered with
absolute Spandex-clad conviction. Even
the ballad Nostalgia is 1000% heavy metal.
Last year WHIPLASH were unfocused
and ramshackle supporting Razor. Back
with a revamped line-up, they’re an
entirely different proposition: tight and
precise, yet also savage and feral. NYC’s
nastiest blast through a set of, if not
greatest hits, then greatest punches to
face, including Last Man Alive and Power
Thrashing Death. Having managed 40
years of uncompromising thrash,
Schmier leads DESTRUCTION through
a set heavy on early classics. Curse The
Gods? Death Trap? Mad Butcher? Total
Desaster? It’s everything the patch-jacketand-white-hi-tops crowd could ask for
and more. There is an argument that the
Teutonic 4 were every bit the equal of
the US Big 4, one made forcibly tonight
as the fearsome quartet level Highbury
with a blistering set to match any of their
transatlantic competition. They close
with Thrash ’Til Death, which is exactly
what they plan to do.

LIVE REVIEWS
After a quarter century,
Watain still reign supreme

WATAIN
KONSERT & KONGRESS, UPPSALA

Uppsala’s black metal torchbearers mark 25 years of blood, fire and death

ESTER SEGARRA

THE SLEEK, MODERNIST

Konsert & Kongress complex, with its
long escalators leading up to the main
auditorium, isn’t the first place you’d
imagine to be hosting the bowels of
Hell. Watain are no strangers to this
venue, though; 15 years ago they
marked their 10th anniversary here,
having to stop the show mid-set
because they set all the fire alarms
off. Back then, they were already
regarded as black metal’s heirs
apparent, and, for two nights, they’re
commemorating their quarter-century
as the scene’s (literal) torchbearers –
the one band able to translate its
unruly, underground ethos into an ever
more ambitious Grand Guignol vision,
now one of the most spectacular and
immersive experiences you’ll find
anywhere across the metal world.
Tobias Forge and Opeth’s Mikael
Åkerfeld and Fredrik Åkesson are
here tonight, along with hardcore

followers in Watain Disciples leather
jackets, international pilgrims and the
more casually attired. But as soon as
the stage curtain drops to reveal
a set that suggests you’ve entered
Hell’s VIP 10th ring, everyone here is
unified in awe. Elements from all
their eras are represented: the new,
hieroglyph-bearing metal columns,
Roman columns, burning tridents,
burning racks, chalices, chains, an
ossuary’s worth of bones and skulls,
and more.
From the band’s ritual descent to
the stage onwards, the set is clearly
calibrated to the occasion, too. They
begin with an instrumental cover of
Veadtuck by Von - the US proto-black
primitives from whom Watain took
their name – before launching into
the rarely played Hymn To Qayin,
sounding like an army storming out
of a inter-dimensional portal. As ever,
Erik Danielsson is an incensed seer,

Erik Danielsson
gives warning to
the gods above

both elegant and beholden to currents
of whiplash energy, and it’s the strains
of vast, baleful melody being forged
in Hymn…’s core that become the
dominant theme.
Watain might not get enough credit
for this, but their music is fucking
beautiful, lashing heavens-churning,
wraith-riot grandeur only Emperor can
sniff at with an invocation of luminous
wastelands - a primordial birthright
both yearned for and reasserted.
Receiving a hero’s welcome, Farida
Lemouchi’s appearance for We Remain
is a breathtaking memoriam, Attila
Csihar joining the band for a cover of
his Tormentor band’s Beyond is another
furious nod to roots, and Waters Of Ain
is a turbulent yet vastly affecting
summation, its flurry of lead breaks
charting a freedom that’s been wrested
from a journey through realms most
others fear to tread.
JONATHAN SELZER

METALHAMMER.COM 99

LIVE REVIEWS

Sylosis are at
the peak of
their powers

MALEVOLENCE

CLOWN CORE
THE FORUM, LONDON

It seems unlikely that anyone has ever
wondered what would happen if you took
the music of John Zorn, early Carcass, 100
gecs, Mr. Bungle, Four Tet, Anal Cunt, 70s
game show theme tunes and children’s
party music, put it all into the bodies of
a pair of men dressed as clowns – one
with a drumkit, one with a saxophone,
both with keyboards – and let said men
loose in a pop-up tent erected on the stage
of London’s 2,300-capacity Kentish Town
Forum while videos of raw meat, human
innards, porn stars and dogs having sex
play behind them. But, just on the
off-chance, Clown Core have answered
that very specific question. Tonight is
comfortably the weirdest gig of 2023…
probably the entire decade… potentially
the millennium… made even more
confusing by the fact that the not sold out
but still impressively busy Forum seems
to be going mad for every second of it.
Is it any good? How do you even judge?
If Clown Core’s intention is to create
something genuinely unique, disturbing
and unforgettable, then job done, but it’s
hard to shake the looming spectre of that
dreaded word ‘wacky’. Certainly, they’re
worth witnessing once, for the WTF of it
alone, but this kind of meme-y shtick
surely has limited shelf life.
STEPHEN HILL

SYLOSIS / GUILT TRIP / JUSTICE FOR THE DAMNED

HELLRIPPER

Sheffield’s A-grade aggressors shake the foundations of the Forum
known for, and they delve right back to
2008 with The Blackest Skyline sending people
wild. The overwhelming amount of strobe
lighting onstage makes it hard to see much
else, but it’s the only drawback to an otherwise
stellar, headline-worthy performance.
Sirens blare, lights rove over the room and
suddenly, the floor is a seething mass of bodies
as Malicious Intent and Life Sentence detonate on
the Forum. MALEVOLENCE
draw on seemingly every metal cliché in the
book with synchronised moshing during
breakdowns and cries of “Somebody scream
for me!”, but it’s all delivered brilliantly, and
the band are clearly having just as good
a time as the rabid fans before them.
Above All Else and Self Supremacy deliver the
hardest snare bombs on the planet, while,
in a surprise twist, Espera, the three Sleep
Token backing vocalists, join them for an
emotional Higher Place. “This is fucking
amazing,” vocalist Alex Taylor grins in
response to the mass of crowdsurfers, the
sold-out, 2,000-plus-strong audience
testament to his band’s prowess at melding
primal heaviness, gruff melodies and tracks
as at home in dingy clubs as massive arenas.

If you’re disappointed that a support
band billed as Gormless Chunder aren’t
actually playing tonight, vigilant
metalheads will have already worked
out that it’s a pseudonym for CELESTIAL
SANCTUARY. Playing both Rid The
Gormless and Glutted With Chunder, their
death metal diatribes are rooted in
old-school murk, but they’re diced up
with a precise modern sheen, and an
affable presence that makes even the
deepest dives into the abyss feel like
a playground where everyone’s invited.
As Midnight proved last summer, there’s
a still a voracious hunger for merciless,
goat-bothering filth, and the baby-faced
James McBain, aka HELLRIPPER, has
become a figurehead, able to make
Venom-injected, speed metal mayhem
relatable for a new generation. Tonight’s
gig sold out quicker than you can type
‘Nunfucking Armageddon 666’, and from
the moment he and his band launch into
the scabrous, steroid-overdosed Spectres
Of The Blood Moon Sabbath the entire
room kicks off. James is held aloft
over a sea of riff-worshippers as metal’s
most atavistic, comic-book tropes are
unleashed in all their rampaging,
in-the-moment potency. All hail!

WILL MARSHALL

JONATHAN SELZER

THE FORUM, LONDON

AFTER A DECADE grinding in the

underground, Malevolence have finally got
their big break, and this triumphant run of
shows has them pulling out all the stops.
Replete with unique, limited-run merch per city
alongside their usual humorous designs and
a giant movie poster-esque wrap on their
double-decker tour bus, they’ve swung for the
fences, with three brilliant supports in tow.
Aussie beatdown bruisers JUSTICE FOR THE
DAMNED sport a sizable crowd for their early
set, as moshing starts almost immediately.
It’s a short, sweet lesson in violence and
thuggish riffs. Signed to Malevolence’s MLVLTD
imprint, Manchester’s GUILT TRIP embrace
chest-beating metallic hardcore with a hefty
dose of groove, bringing almost as much fury
as the pits that threaten to take over the venue.
With a retina-searing light show and a frantic
Poison For The Lost, SYLOSIS announce
themselves to a room more than ready to lose
their minds. They’re phenomenally tight,
delivering the titanic groove of Pariahs and
cataclysmic Sands Of Time and making it look
easy. “I need your phone lights out,” frontman
Josh Middleton calls during I Sever’s emotional
crescendo, which goes mostly answered before
it’s back to the towering riffs they’re best

100 METALHAMMER.COM

CELESTIAL SANCTUARY
THE BLACK HEART, LONDON

JAKE OWENS

Malevolence offer
an almighty jolt
for the jaded

LIVE REVIEWS
Creeper deliver an epic
and eldritch spectacle

CREEPER
SAVE FACE /
THE NIGHTMARES

SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE, LONDON

Southampton’s cult horrorpunks enter
the Twilight zone

BEN GIBSON

THE AIR IS thick with expectation for

Creeper tonight, but there’s a healthy
turnout for openers THE NIGHTMARES.
Not exactly Hammer fodder, this Welsh outfit
with a penchant for 80s goth rock still pack
a punch with their lofty, synth-driven sound.
Taking things to another level, though, are
New Jersey’s SAVE FACE, who are so over-thetop thanks to larger-than-life frontman Tyler
Povanda that you can’t help but love them
a little bit by their emphatic end.
It’s the attention to detail that often sets
CREEPER apart, and tonight is no exception,
as a Vincent Price-like voice warns punters
seeking a pint and a pee that they have 15
minutes to get settled before the show kicks
off. It’s most certainly a nod to the band’s
latest release, Sanguivore, a lavish ode to all
things vampiric. After an in-person intro
from vampire familiar/social media maven
Darcia, Further Than Forever – the first of eight
tracks from Sanguivore – opens the show.
A nine-minute Jim Steinman-inspired epic,
this tale of Spook and his ‘bloodlust baby’
might be a newbie, but its rock-opera
grandiosity marks a new ambitious chapter
in Creeper’s career, providing a thrilling
start to the show.
Poised centre stage in a leather jacket and
vampiric make-up, singer Will Gould spends
a good chunk of the setlist alternating
between new songs and excerpts from their
blistering horrorpunk debut, Eternity, In Your
Arms, including Black Rain, where Will
triumphantly punches the air to the song’s
anthemic strains. Crickets and I Choose to Live
also prove that album’s longevity, defining
the night’s most emotive moments.
The second part of the show starts with
a thundercrack, as Will appears in a bloodsoaked shirt and sinks his teeth into a lifeless
girl in his arms. Right on cue, a double
whammy of fan faves, Cyanide and Annabelle,
gets the crowd in party mode. Cyanide’s
sinister slide-guitar steer might be more
Americana than AFI, but its euphoric reception
validates Creeper’s adept versatility. It’s the
songs from Sanguivore that truly resonate,
though. From the Nick Cave-esque brilliance
of The Ballad Of Spook & Mercy, featuring
a resplendent guitar solo by Ian Miles, to
the gothic disco of Black Heaven, where the
dancefloor bounces as one entity, the new cuts
dazzle like they’ve been around for decades.
Channelling Billy Idol and Sisters Of Mercy,
Cry To Heaven rounds off a flawless show from
a band who just keep getting better.
HOLLY WRIGHT

METALHAMMER.COM 101

LIVE REVIEWS
Max Cavalera has
lost none of his
morbid vision

Iggor isn’t blowing smoke
when it comes to reclaiming
the old-school spirit

CAVALERA

It’s both testament to the enduring
popularity of the stoner/psych scene
and the affection London’s STEAK have
garnered over the past 13 years that the
Ballroom’s teeming when they hit the
stage. The warmth percolating through
their bluesy riffs, building up into states
of lead-break-aerated nirvana go down
a storm. Norway’s SLOMOSA are keepers
of a groove that feels like you’re constantly
being punched in your pleasure centre,
a bass sound so phat you want to straddle
it, while keep-on-truckin’ headshakers
like There Is Nothing New Under The Sun,
steered by Benjamin Berdous’s nasal,
momentum-driven vocals, answer the
age-old question, what would the Ramones
sound like if they played desert rock?
Such is ELDER’s reputation for exploring
the most prismatic reaches of the psych
rock spectrum that the anticipation in
the room is electric, and as Catastasis
splays out like a sunbeam-dappled solar
sail, the room is filled with a communal
sense of awe. Reaching back past last
year’s Innate Passage album, songs
like Lore remind us that even at their
heaviest, there’s a swirling, open-ended
Utopian magic at work that transports us
to imaginary, more noble ages.

Although both men will always be known
for their part in far more lauded, classic
material, the chance to dive back into these
songs feels like a real treat; Crucifixion,
Necromancer, Show Me The Wrath, Escape To
The Void – taken from 1987’s Schizophrenia
– all of them are greeted like rare, lost gems
that many people here thought they’d never
get to experience live.
If the deep cuts aren’t enough of a boon,
it’s also the most energised the pair have
seemed in an age. To be fair, Iggor has always
been an absolute beast behind the kit, never
dropping his standards over the years, but
Max is the real surprise here. The frontman
has obviously been working out, looking
younger, leaner, more energetic and able
to sustain his voice and his guitar playing in
a way that he had previously struggled with
somewhat over the last decade. Here he’s back
to his rabble-rousing, headbanging, throatripping best. They end with a jaw-dropping
three-song run of Refuse/Resist, Territory and
Troops Of Doom, and leave with Shepherd’s
Bush eating out of their hands. Forever the
originators, still the very best.

It’s been hard being a Fear Factory fan of
late. Rumours of a reunion with the classic
line-up swirled in the mid-to-late 2010s
before ultimately being crushed under
a quagmire of miscommunication and
lawsuits, resulting in vocalist Burton C.
Bell quitting in 2020 and leaving guitarist
Dino Cazares the only original member.
After an audition process that reportedly
included 300 different vocalists, Milo
Silvestro of Italian ‘nu metal electronic
core’ band Dead Channel was appointed
to fill the spot and this DisrupTour marks
the first opportunity for UK fans to see
him. While Milo may lack the experience
and charisma of his predecessor, it’s clear
from opener Shock that he can replicate
the barks and croons of FF’s studio
material flawlessly, something even
Burton himself struggled to do live. His
voice might lack power, as demonstrated
during a surprise guest appearance from
Svalbard’s Serena Cherry on Edgecrusher,
but at least the songs now sound like
their recorded counterparts. A sold-out
Ballroom laps up a setlist heavily
weighted towards 90s classics Obsolete
and Demanufacture, but the real test will
come once Fear Factory write and release
new material with Milo on the mic.

STEPHEN HILL

REMFRY DEDMAN

TINA KORHONEN

ELECTRIC BALLROOM, LONDON

Sepultura’s core brotherhood go back to their coruscating roots

102 METALHAMMER.COM

ELECTRIC BALLROOM, LONDON

FEAR FACTORY

SHEPHERD’S BUSH EMPIRE, LONDON

in the capital tonight to take us all the way back
to the very, very beginning of their illustrious
career. Max and Iggor Cavalera have come
armed with their recently rerecorded versions
of the first-ever material they conceived of,
this Morbid Devastation tour concentrating
on Sepultura’s 1985 EP Bestial Devastation and
debut album Morbid Visions from 1986. First
though, Max’s son Richie’s band, INCITE, open
proceedings with some absolutely fine groove
metal. They pass the time without being either
inspiring or awful, but are almost entirely
forgettable the second they leave.
“This is the real Sepultura!” screams Max
at the start of the CAVALERA brothers’ set.
It might seem like egotistical bravado on the
page, but it’s hard to argue against this being
the most authentic version of the songs we get
to hear tonight, especially considering none of
the current Seps line-up played on the original
versions of the majority of the setlist. Casual
fans expecting Roots Bloody Roots will be
disappointed, as this is a run-through of the
roughest, nastiest, most brutal and extreme
songs from the early thrash and death metal
days of Sepultura. And it is wonderful.

SLOMOSA / STEAK

JONATHAN SELZER

INCITE

A PAIR OF metal’s most iconic siblings are

ELDER

LIVE REVIEWS
Bring Me The Horizon
bring Nex_Fest
to the boil

NEX _FEST
MAKUHARI MESSE, TOKYO

Bring Me The Horizon and Babymetal join forces for a futuristic thrillride

years but postponed due to the pandemic,
Nex_Fest Tokyo is the inaugural, Bring
Me The Horizon-curated all-day event,
bracketed by smaller Nex_Fest Extra
shows around Japan. HANABIE draw a huge
early crowd, setting the festival’s tone for
fusing Eastern and Western sounds into
something larger than the sum of its parts.
Metalcore riffs hit with galvanising force,
Tousou’s Eastern melodies have a Maidenmatching scope, and Warning!!’s brazen mix
of styles are given a madcap thrill-ride
urgency that’s embodied by frontwoman
Yukina’s hyperactive, crowd-goading
presence. Their first European and US shows
have clearly helped them up their game.
From Zeni Geva through Boredoms to
Merzbow, the country has a long history
of senses-scrambling ‘Japanoise’ artists,
and VMO, aka Violent Magic Orchestra are
possibly the most chaotic example yet.
Sporting corpsepaint and overlapping
male/female vocals like a demonic brawl,
their black-metal-meets-gabba mash-up
goes beyond the rational into states of
bewildering euphoria.
Although this is I PREVAIL’s first visit
to Japan, much of the crowd already know

104 METALHAMMER.COM

their songs well enough to sing
along. Even for those unfamiliar
with the Michigan (live) sextet, their
combination of metalcore aggression
and anthemic pop sensibilities, passed
between vocalists Brian Burkheiser and Eric
Vanlerberghe, clearly finds an affinity here.
The bond between BABYMETAL and
Bring Me was already clear before 2020’s
Kingslayer collaboration, and as their sci-fi
saga video intro leads into the juddering
riffs of Babymetal Death, the newly expanded
trio appear beneath beams of light looking
thrilled to be there. It’s a hit-filled
performance, as Gimme Chocolate!! has
everyone moshing all the way to the back
of the venue, latest song Metali!! gets fans
jumping on cue, and Road Of Resistance
ends a stellar set in suitably anthemic,
arm-waving fashion.
Even just in terms of audience reaction,
tonight is a huge step up for BRING ME THE
HORIZON in Japan. Their sci-fi themed
intro (“Scanning for moshpits…”) gives way
to red LED strips across the stage and their
backdrop of hellishly gothic windows before
Can You Feel My Heart sends the crowd into
a frenzy. Joined by Yungblud, Obey forms
one large pit after another, but, inevitably,

Babymetal: the triumph
of the triumvirate

Hanabie’s Yukina
marshalls the mayhem

the centrepiece is the electroshock of
Kingslayer, performed with Babymetal, as
Oli Sykes and Su-metal trade vocals to an
ecstatic response. A closing Throne has the
floor shaking as Nex_Fest makes Tokyo the
future’s epicentre once more.
TAKAHIDE OKAMI / AYAKO UEDA (TRANSLATION)

BMTH & BABMYMETAL: PRESS/@MNP.HOTO. HANABIE: PRESS/@YUKUBO

REPORTEDLY PLANNED FOR several

Have you had much push-back on
Bleed Out’s more political content?
“We got a lot of media attention
that we were surprised about, a lot
of news channels even talking
about the record because of its
political content. There used to be
loads of bands like U2 and Bob
Dylan who were all about politics,
but apparently that’s not really the
thing anymore. To us, it’s less politics
and more about thinking about the
kind of world we want to live in and
how we can see that happen. A lot of
people think, ‘Well, it doesn’t affect
me’, but everything will affect us
ultimately. We need to communicate
with each other.”

SHARON
DEN ADEL

For all the political talk, Ritual has been
described as WT’s ‘kinky’ song,
inspired by From Dusk Till Dawn…
“I mean, I’d say more ‘sensual’ than
kinky! Ha ha ha! It certainly raised
a few eyebrows. It’s basically the Barry
White version of Within Temptation.”
What can we expect from the Bleed
Out tour next year?
“Well, we need to plan out the stage
and make it really spectacular. We do
everything ourselves, so it takes a few
months at least to really plan all the
concepts and figure out how they work
on different stage sizes. We’re going to
South America, which we haven’t done
for a long time, so we’re really excited
for that. But we’re not doing festivals,
so if you want to see us, you need to go
to those headline dates!”
In the early 2000s, nu metal was the
big thing. Was there any pressure to

“RITUAL IS
BASICALLY THE
BARRY WHITE
VERSION OF
WITHIN
TEMPTATION”
106 METALHAMMER.COM

FIVE MINUTES WITH

trade corsets and orchestras for
hoodies and turntables?
“No, but we always felt pressure from
within to reinvent ourselves with each
new album. We definitely took some
elements from nu metal – not to sound
like it, but to find ways that it could fit
in with what we were doing. But how
we sound and look is such a vital part
of our DNA – we’re not going
to wear hoodies onstage!”

WITHIN
TEMPTATION
The iconic frontwoman
talks fungi fashion, sexy
Within Temptation songs,
and how the band are plotting
world domination in 2024
WORDS: RICH HOBSON

Will Within Temptation ever
do another covers record?
“Yeah, absolutely! When we did
our last one, it was actually
done bit-by-bit for a radio
station [Qmusic in Belgium],
while we were also writing for
[2014 album] Hydra, so it was
very full-on. It was crazy, but
fun at the same time, because
you really learn stuff from
working on covers of other
artists’ songs.”

You travelled around a lot when you
were growing up. Where was your
favourite place to live?
“I have beautiful memories of all the
countries I lived in, but if you really
twisted my arm I’d say Suriname.
The people there were so sweet and
colourful. It was easy to make friends
there; I actually had more difficulty
when I came back to the Netherlands.
Everybody was always outside, doing
things, and that’s how I felt too,
wanting to go out and meet friends,
go on adventures.”
Outside music, how do you relax?
“I play a lot of tennis. I’m a tennis
addict – I go to lots of games too, and
when we’re on the road we always try
to watch it on TV. We even get coaches
in to give us lessons. My dream is to
have our own Within Temptation
tennis tournament with the crew.”
What does 2024 hold for you?
“I’m working on a new project
actually, but it’s still related to Within
Temptation. I’ve always been
fascinated by fashion and there is
a company near me that are making
clothes using mushrooms, which
means they’re biodegradable. I’m
working with them on a 3D corset
and some clothing for the next tour,
which also means there will be less
waste. It looks like a mix of plastic and
leather, but it’s all mushrooms!”

BLEED OUT IS OUT NOW
VIA FORCE MUSIC. WITHIN
TEMPTATION’S UK TOUR
STARTS IN CARDIFF ON
NOVEMBER 15, 2024

TIM TRONCKOE

How has 2023 been for you?
“Intense! We came back from
Christmas last year and Robert
[Westerholt, guitar, and Sharon’s
husband] was like, ‘So 9am tomorrow,
our producer is coming and he’s going
to stay here for the next two weeks.’
I was like, ‘Oh, OK… I wish I’d known
– I’ve not even finished the lyrics yet!’
That sums up how the year has
been, though: constantly moving
to the next thing. Now I can finally
look back and admit that yeah, it’s
been an amazing year.”

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