SPECIAL 30TH
ANNIVERSARY ISSUE

NE
“EVERYGOHT
THOU OST
I HAD LND”
MY MI N
ICKINSO
BRUCE D

FEAR OF THE DARK

WAS MEANT TO SAVE THEM

INSTEAD, IT TORE THEM APART
FA H
NO MIT
ORE
“WE
S
OURSEHOT
IN THE LVES
FACE”
AN
GE DU
ST
REVISLIT
ED

GHOST CRADLE OF FILTH

ISSUE 362

Papa IV answers
your questions

“We took mushrooms
and saw ghosts”

5FDP

In the studio with
Zoltan Bathory

CHRIS JERICHO
On The Rock, God...
and Bigfoot?!

VILLE VALO • SHOOTING DAGGERS • BLEED FROM WITHIN • TROLLFEST • KREATOR • MALEVOLENCE

EDITOR’S LETTER

Future PLC, 121 - 141 Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, W2 6JR
Web: www.metalhammer.com
Letters: metalhammer@futurenet.com

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 Brock
louise.brock@futurenet.com
Associate Editor Dave Everley
dave.everley@futurenet.com
Contributing Editor Paul Brannigan
paul.branningan@futurenet.com
Staff Writer Rich Hobson
rich.hobson@futurenet.com
Content Director – Music Scott Rowley
Contributors
Steve Appleford, Oliver Badin, Richard Chamberlain, Chris Chantler,
Alec Chillingworth, Joe Daly, Hywel Davies, Remfry Dedman, Alex Deller,
Jerry Ewing, Connie Gordon, Spencer Grady, Stephen Hill, Emma Johnston,
Tyler Damara Kelly, Hannah May Kilroy, Dom Lawson, Elliot Leaver, Dannii Leivers,
Dave Ling, Clay Marshall, Will Marshall, Sophie Maughan, Edwin McFee,
Joel McIver, Matt Mills, Mörat, Tom O’Boyle, Adam Rees, Alastair Riddell,
Liz Scarlett, Rosie Solomon, James Weaver, Christina Wenig, Kez Whelan, Jon
Wiederhorn, Holly Wright, Nik Young
Cover Photography: Iron Maiden Holdings LLP Bleed From Within bundle: Press
Image Manipulation: MagicTorch, Gary Stuckey Design: John Woolford
Photography
Ben Bentley, Justin Borucki, Derek Bremner, Steve Bright, Janson Bulpin, Stephanie
Cabral, Duncan Everson, Nick Fancher, Andy Ford, Mick Hutson, Will Ireland, Simon
Kallas, Tina Korhonen, Marie Korner, John McMurtrie, Kevin Nixon, Katja Ogrin, Jake
Owens, Emma Painter, Tom Russell, Jeremy Saffer, Ester Segarra, James Sharrock,
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IT’S ALWAYS
DARKEST BEFORE
THE DAWN
IRON MAIDEN HAVE released an incredible 17 albums. While you
might think of The Number Of The Beast or Powerslave as the mightiest
in their canon, or be totally in love with last year’s ambitious
Senjustu, others have been heavily significant in shaping their story
– 1992’s Fear Of The Dark chief among them. With confident, topical
songs such as Be Quick Or Be Dead and Fear Is The Key, it was designed
to reposition Maiden as a vital force for the 90s… then Bruce
Dickinson quit, throwing that operation into question.
Ultimately, Bruce’s departure would pave the way for an enthusiastic
return in 1999, alongside guitarist Adrian Smith, and for Maiden’s
triumphant re-emergence on the world stage. Without Fear Of The
Dark, Maiden as we know them today wouldn’t exist
– and we wouldn’t be gearing up to see Bruce and co at
FOLLOW
Download in June. Maiden have played on Donington’s
US
hallowed ground an astonishing six times, and we’re no
less excited for the seventh. Bring on the Eddies!
As this issue went to press, we were saddened to hear
METALHAMMER.COM
of the passing of much-loved music PR Roland Hyams,
a true legend within the industry who worked with
many of the bands you see in Metal Hammer’s pages.
/METALHAMMER
Our thoughts are with his friends and family.

Stay metal,
@METALHAMMER

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ISSN 0955-1190
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@METALHAMMERUK

ELEANOR GOODMAN
EDITOR

@ELEANORGOODMAN

MEET THE BAND

METALHAMMERTV

Metal Hammer (ISSN 0955-1190) July, Issue 362, is published monthly with an extra issue in
April by Future Publishing, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA, UK
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DAVE EVERLEY

Associate Editor
Not only does Dave oversee
Hammer’s presence online, he
also commissions our front
section and wrote this month’s
excellent Fear Of The Dark cover
feature. We’re not sure how
he does it, tbh. Either hard
work… or an evil twin?

ALICE PATTILLO

Writer
We sent Alice to cover
Desertfest as it made a mighty
return to Camden’s venues.
The only thing Alice loves more
than cats and stupid memes
are riffs, and Electric Wizard,
Yob and Orange Goblin brought
some of the best.

UNCLE ALLAN

Photographer
Besides being a veteran of the
extreme metal circuit, Danish
photographer Uncle Allan is
a renowned tattooist with his
own Conspiracy Inc. shop in
Berlin. He dropped his needles
and raised claws and lenses to
capture Oslo’s Inferno festival.

METALHAMMER.COM 3

JULY 2022

10 GHOST

34 IRON MAIDEN

26 SHOOTING DAGGERS

CONT
FRONT ROW

8 STRANGER THINGS is back on our
screens – and it’s metal as fuck.
10 Tobias Forge answers your burning
GHOST questions.
14 What’s on MALEVOLENCE man
Alex Taylor’s Slaylist? Beatdowns,
beatdowns and extra beatdowns.
15 We get in the studio with
FIVE FINGER DEATH PUNCH.
16 Life Lessons from lovable CANCER
BATS dude Liam Cormier.
20 The story behind CRADLE OF
FILTH’s Her Ghost In The Fog.
26 Meet your favourite new queercore
band, SHOOTING DAGGERS.

60 NU GEN
4 METALHAMMER.COM

90 LIVES

FEATURES

34 As the 90s began, Fear Of The Dark
was meant to future-proof IRON
MAIDEN. Instead, it threw them
into chaos…
42 Why FAITH NO MORE risked it all
on the dark and twisted Angel Dust.
48 Wrestler, rock star, podcaster and
all-round legend CHRIS JERICHO
does The Hammer Interview.
54 Older and wiser, Scottish
metalcore heroes BLEED FROM
WITHIN are riding to glory.
60 Welcome to NU GEN: the rising
scene redefining heavy music
for the 20s.

JULY 2022

42 FAITH NO MORE

ENTS
66 Think TROLLFEST are just
a novelty band? Think again!
72 How CAVE IN are honouring their
late brother, Caleb Scofield.

ALBUM REVIEWS

80 Teutonic thrash lords KREATOR
mark a new milestone.
83 BRIDEAR embark on another new
heavy metal adventure.
84 COHEED AND CAMBRIA get
sumptuous with their saga.
86 DECAPITATED send out a missive
from the moral maze.
87 MOTIONLESS IN WHITE reach
new heights.

88 NOVA TWINS make a thrilling
call for empowerment.

54 BLEED FROM WITHIN

SUBSCRIBE
NOW & SAVE
Head to p.32
for details

LIVE REVIEWS

90 GHOST have a devil of a time in
the Midlands.
92 LINGUA IGNOTA, ULVER and
JO QUAIL bring the rapture
to ROADBURN.
94 ELECTRIC WIZARD and
ORANGE GOBLIN cast a spell
over DESERTFEST.
98 DEVIN TOWNSEND casts his net
wide at the Royal Albert Hall.
100 ARCHITECTS build an arenasized sense of awe.

80 ALBUMS

66 TROLLFEST
METALHAMMER.COM 5

THE BIG PICTURE

SYLVIA LANCASTER
REMEMBERED
LAST MONTH, THE alternative

community lost one of our biggest
champions. Sylvia Lancaster, founder
of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation,
passed away suddenly at Blackburn
hospital on April 12.
After her daughter Sophie was
murdered in a brutal attack in
Stubbylee Park in Bacup, Lancashire,
in 2007, Sylvia set up the S.O.P.H.I.E.
Foundation to ‘Stamp Out Prejudice,
Hatred and Intolerance Everywhere’.
Thanks to her campaign for abuse
against people from alternative
subcultures to be recognised as a hate
crime category, multiple police forces
introduced it. She also spearheaded
a programme to educate students and
young offenders about difference, and
the Foundation was a regular presence
at Bloodstock, which named a stage
after Sophie. In 2014, Sylvia was
awarded an OBE for her work in
fostering community cohesion, and
would go on to received honorary
doctorates from the University Of
Bolton and the University Of Surrey.
In a statement, the Sophie Lancaster
Foundation said: “Sylvia was
formidable. She challenged authority
and fought for what she believed in.
She will be sadly missed.”

6 METALHAMMER.COM

ALAMY

METALHAMMER.COM 7

THE HOT TOPIC

STRANGER THINGS
SEASON 4 IS
METAL AF
Demons, Demogorgons and Dungeons & Dragons:
why we can’t wait to go back to Hawkins for
Stranger Things season 4

THE END IS nigh. For once we’re not

talking about the world at large (though
the news cycle makes a compelling
case for the contrary), but Stranger
Things. It’s back for its penultimate
season, teeing up its endgame with all
manner of Demogorgon-featuring,
dimension-hopping, Dungeons &
Dragons-adjacent madness. What’s
more, season 4 of the show is metal AF.
Over the past six years, Stranger
Things has become one of Netflix’s
marquee shows. Set somewhere
between horror, mystery and fantasy,
the show explores the weird and often
horrifying things unfolding in the town
of Hawkins, Indiana – a town that could
well be the setting for a John Hughes
movie if only the teens would stop
getting eaten by eldritch abominations.
With a core cast of D&D-loving
nerds alongside colourful supporting
characters – including David Harbour
as police chief Jim Hopper and
a brilliantly wild-eyed Winona Ryder
as Joyce Byers – the show strikes just
the right balance between The Goonies,

The X-Files and Stephen King’s IT to
create a believable and fascinating
universe. In its first three seasons, we
had everything from (mild spoiler!)
cross-dimensional demons and
possessed kids to psychic powers,
government conspiracies and all-out
Cold War espionage, setting the stakes
high for where the show could go next.
In April, a teaser trailer arrived that
ticked plenty off the checklist (Creepy
lich-demon-thing? Check. Kickass
guitar solo? Check. An eyeless Robert
Englund? *shudder* Check), but the
show’s fourth season also introduces
a metalhead as a new core character
in the form of Eddie Munson – head of
the school D&D club and guitarist in
the band Corroded Coffin.
Excellently portrayed by British
actor Joseph Quinn, Eddie is a perfect
example of how the show’s creators,
The Duffer Brothers, are able to take
a stereotype and flip it on its head. Yes,
he’s an obnoxious, D&D-loving nerd
with a penchant for upsetting the jocks
by throwing devil horns and snarling

NEW CHARACTER EDDIE IS HEAD
OF THE SCHOOL D&D CLUB AND
A METALHEAD GUITARIST
8 METALHAMMER.COM

“SATAN!”, but Quinn’s charm shines
through and Eddie proves to be one
of the most likeable additions to the
cast for its latest season.
It’s a good job really, because Eddie
(with his kickass guitar) has a big part
to play in the episodes ahead. His
shredding skills aren’t just a neat
character quirk, but crucial to fighting
the forces of darkness in the Upside
Down. While the show hasn’t had
a total kvlt makeover, we did spot
a cheeky Maiden shirt and Motörhead
poster in the first volume that gives us
plenty of hope for some full-throttle
distortion by the time things wrap
up in July.
Split into two volumes, arriving on
May 27 and July 1, the show’s fourth
season really highlights the distance
and development its characters have
experienced since season 1 – which
isn’t massively surprising, considering
that was six years ago. Hawkins is still
reeling after the devastation caused by
last season’s big bad The Mind Flayer,
now attributed to a fire at the Starcourt

NETFLIX/PRESS

WORDS: RICH HOBSON

10 THINGS
WE LEARNED
THIS MONTH
What’s been blowing our
tiny brains
RAMMSTEIN ARE BEING TARGETED
BY RUSSIAN TROLL FACTORIES

We don’t fancy their chances considering
Rammstein’s proficiency with pyro, mind.

VERA FARMIGA IS THE METAL HERO
HOLLYWOOD NEEDS

The Conjuring star was filmed singing The
Trooper, with Scott Ian on guitar. Class!

BLOODYWOOD WILL TOUR THE US

The New Delhi crew are bringing their
Nine Inch Naans Tour to the US later this
year. That’s some A-game pun work.

GENE SIMMONS STILL RECKONS
ROCK IS DEAD

Yawn. The sky is blue, water is wet etc.
You’re still wrong, Gene.

METAL IS BACK IN ARENAS!

Ghost, Tool and Architects have all
completed massive arena tours over the
past month. See, Gene? Wrong.

JUDAS PRIEST ARE FINALLY GETTING
THE RECOGNITION THEY DESERVE
The Metal Gods will be inducted into the
Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame. Rob Halford
has even hinted that it might be time
to bury the hatchet with KK Downing,
making it a metal miracle all around.

PRESS

Just your average day
in Hawkins, then…

Mall. Similarly, the cast themselves
are in disarray; Mike (Finn Wolfhard),
Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo), Lucas (Caleb
McLaughlin) and Max (Sadie Sink) are
now in high school, and while Mike
and Dustin remain fringe D&D nerds at
heart, Lucas finds himself increasingly
popular as a rising star in the school’s
basketball team and Max is almost
entirely isolated, still dealing with
the trauma of her stepbrother Billy’s
sacrifice the previous season.
Meanwhile, the Byers family – Joyce
(Winona Ryder), Jonathan (Charlie
Heaton) and Will (Noah Schnapp) – have
relocated to California with formerly
psychic-powered teen Eleven (Millie
Bobby Brown) after the apparent death
of Eleven’s adoptive father Jim Hopper
(David Harbour). Only, we’re barely 30
minutes into the first episode when
things start to go wonky both in
Hawkins and California, bringing both
groups inevitably back together for a big
confrontation with sinister forces.
While we won’t go into any major
spoilers, the first volume of Stranger

Things season 4 does plenty to whet
our appetites and justify why we love
the series so much. Aside from the
brilliant cast, there’s some serious
embracing of classic horror in the first
few episodes, including some loving
A Nightmare On Elm Street references
that fit perfectly considering Freddy
himself has joined the wider cast.
There’s also some clever sociopolitical commentary snuck in for good
measure, discussing the Satanic Panic
through the lens of D&D in a way that
could just as easily be used to describe
heavy metal, while also showing the
mob mentality that can affect fringe
communities. Chuck in songs by Kiss,
Extreme and The Cramps on the
soundtrack and it’s fair to say that
Stranger Things season 4 really is
shaping up to be the most metal
season of the show to date.

STRANGER THINGS SEASON 4,
VOLUME 1 IS OUT MAY 27 VIA
NETFLIX, WITH VOLUME 2 DUE
ON JULY 1

KORN LOVE THE BACKSTREET BOYS

Korn have done a TikTok jam of I Want It
That Way. We’d have gone for Backstreet’s
Back, personally…

WE LOVE COCKA-NU METAL

TikTokker buys metal-loving cockatoo
on Craigslist and our black hearts melt
seeing it belt out Drowning Pool’s Bodies.

FESTIVAL SEASON GETS EARLIER
AND EARLIER

Incineration, Roadburn, Desertfest…
fans have been turning out in their
thousands. Our legs hurt already.

OZZY’S HEALTH HAS BEEN
A ROLLERCOASTER

The same week we heard Ozzy only had
one operation
left, we also
found out he
and Sharon
had caught
Covid.
Here’s
to them
making
a quick
recovery.

Dear Ozzy: get better soon

METALHAMMER.COM 9

HAVE YOU EVER DONE
A SICK IN YOUR MASK?

You asked Ghost’s high priest about horror movies, Glastonbury and vomiting into
his mask. He talked about death metal, unfounded rumours and the genius of Abba
WORDS: DANNII LEIVERS • PICTURES: TRAVIS SHINN

WITH GHOST, TOBIAS Forge has
turned metal into camp and ghastly
ecclesiastical theatre. The Swedish
frontman has imagined a cast of
ghoulish, sassy characters into life;
decapitated anti-popes, squeezed
a sassy cardinal into too-tight velvet
trousers, and taken their 80s-indebted
arena rock into the UK’s biggest
venues, while the band’s fifth album,
Impera, has given them a Top 3 hit on
both sides of the Atlantic. Tobias has
brought the fun back into heavy music,
but with no mitre to hide behind this
time, can he handle your questions?

“We have played a lot of festivals like
Pukkelpop, Rock En Seine, Roskilde –
a lot of festivals where we are one of
the few ‘metal bands’ but the headliner
can be Björk, Primal Scream and
Drake. We played Coachella and
Lollapalooza, lots of festivals like
that… except for Glastonbury.”
Hammer: Is Glasto on your bucket list?
“It would be cool of course, but it’s
never really been one of my most
important ones, so no. I don’t know if
this is the same for Glastonbury, this is
my interpretation, but at Coachella, if
you’re on the bill, you don’t have to
play because no one will watch you
anyway. Everyone is there for the big
hip hop headliner. When we played
Coachella, we went to see Dead Can
Dance there and it was a few people in
a tent. For fucking Dead Can Dance. Are
you kidding me?! That’s why I’m just not
generally all for those big pop festivals.
I would miss a lot of the camaraderie. If
you go to Graspop or Download, you go
in there you know everyone, so many
people. Whereas if you go to a big pop
festival or mixed festival, everyone is
in their own little universe.”

I got into horror movies because of
Ghost. What are your favourite horror
movies, and what horror movies
would you recommend?
@The_Moon_Thief, Twitter

“There’s two branches of horror movies
for me. There’s old classic slasher films,
as in Friday The 13th and stuff like that,
but then you have the really good
horror films, the ones made by really
talented directors who primarily don’t
do horror, and do other films as well.
The best horror films ever made are
The Shining by Stanley Kubrick, Jaws by
Steven Spielberg, Bram Stoker’s Dracula
by Francis Ford Coppola, The Exorcist,
The Omen. But then, you have classic
cult directors. Lucio Fulci was an Italian
director who made a lot of films that
are entertaining. The House By The
Cemetery is a classic one by him. The
horror genre is hurt by the fact you
have these really heavy-hitters who
come in and do these fantastic films,
and then unfortunately a lot of the
genre is a swamp of really bad films.”

Carly Daly, email

10 METALHAMMER.COM

How much does writing new music
go hand in hand with curating the
new designs/‘look’ for new eras?
@haxbourne, Twitter

“They go partly together. It’s always
in the front of my head how a song
will fit into the show or if there’s
anything we can do to turn it into
what we call a ‘gag’. Gag songs tend
to work better in the sets, so I always
have a monocle on for that. For some
people who are wondering why we’re
not doing songs off the new album
already, it’s because there might be
a planned gag for them that we haven’t
been able to present yet.”
How do you feel knowing that many
of your LGBT fans like to personally
interpret/depict your characters as
gay and/or trans?
@sanguinevampyr, Twitter

“Good. Great. If they find solace or
inspiration in what we’re doing, I’m
really happy about that.”
Have you ever done a sick in one of
your masks onstage, either from
a hangover or the smell?
Erin Smith, email

We’re not sure Glasto
is ready for this

“Once on a South American tour,
we had a really bad flu going on with
the band and crew. It was absolutely
fucking horrible. Day after day,
someone new fell apart and people
were lying backstage in the foetal
position with a cork in the front and
a cork in the back, purging. That was
not cool.”

PRESS/ MIKAEL ERIKSSON/M INDUSTRIES

Would you ever play Glastonbury or
other ‘mainstream’ festivals?

Hammer: There are rumours you’re
playing Glasto this year - is there
anything in those rumours?
“No. Not now at least. That’s more
than I know. I might live to regret
what I just said!”

GHOST
Papa wants to tape trade with
you! Who could refuse?

“WOULD GHOST EVER HAVE
A FEMALE SINGER? WHY NOT?
SISTER EMERITUS!”
METALHAMMER.COM 11

GHOST
What’s your favourite Abba song?
@Dorkus666, Twitter
“Right now, I Have A Dream. It involves
three chords, and the third chord
comes in at such a brilliant moment
at the third section of the song. The
first two sections are the same two
chords, back and forth. Then all of
a sudden, the third chord comes in
and… they should be getting a Nobel
Music prize for that one because it’s
so fucking brilliant.”

Tobias had a dream,
and it came true in
the most glorious way

Back when nobody knew who was
behind the mask, what was your
favourite rumour that you heard
about yourself?
Trent Carvalho, email

“That I was tall! Especially in the Papa
Emeritus attire. In the beginning in
underground circles it was a fairly
known fact that I was in the band, so
I never felt 100% anonymous in the
early days.”
Who is your favourite Ghost fictional or otherwise?
Bradley Stratton, Facebook

“I’ve always been fascinated with the
concept of ghosts in Star Wars. They
appear as apparitions that can
converse with you. If the Star Wars saga
had been written a few hundred years
ago, it would have been a religion, it
has all the cornerstones of a religion
and the idea of the elders and your
teachers coming back to teach you
from behind the grave is presented
really well.”

a better career. I’d love to go back and
curate their career because the career
of Misfits, Samhain and Danzig put
together would have been marvellous.”

William Hawks, email

“If I had to wipe them out? Oh, that’s
a hard one. It’s an easy question, but
the answer is hard; I have to be
pragmatic. I’m a humongous fan of
all three bands. The one band I’d
choose to wipe out, and that’s not
a diss, what they did was so great, is
Misfits. My control freakishness and
my managerial inclinations would
love to go back in time and correct
a few things they did wrong. Not
aesthetically, but business-wise.
I would have wished for them to have

“ABBA SHOULD GET
A NOBEL PRIZE FOR
I HAVE A DREAM.
IT’S SO FUCKING
BRILLIANT”
12 METALHAMMER.COM

What weird shit do you collect?
Robbie Gregg, email

What is metal missing in 2022?
Danielle Bull, email

If you had to wipe one of the following
bands from history, which would it
be: Iron Maiden, Kiss, Misfits?

who see that as an inspiration and start
playing drums, bass and guitar.”

“It would be cool if there were newer,
young bands regarded as more than
a novelty, or an underground treasure.
More organic rock bands of 20-yearolds recognised on a little bit more
of a… I hate to say mainstream,
but above the pub level. I’m all
about underground, I come from the
underground, and I worship the
underground music, but for the
resurgence of rock, we need that. I’d
love if there were more bands that
went through a similar recognition
[channel] to Måneskin, actually.
I think they’re really cool. They won
Eurovision because they’re great, but
they’re one of the few exceptions of it
not being the end of their career. That’s
usually what happens if you’re a band.”
Hammer: Have you ever considered
Eurovision or been asked to do it?
“No, not really, but I wouldn’t want to
do it because as I said, it’s usually the
end of your career. If you already have
an established career, then don’t do it.
Although Måneskin proved it could be
done. I hope there’s a lot of 14-yearolds out there in Europe and the world

“I collect demo tapes. Old death metal
demo tapes from the mid-80s to 1992.
Black metal. Death metal. Thrash
metal. Underground music. If anyone
reading this who sits on shit like that…
and if you are owners of original stuff
that you got directly from the band…
please call me!”
Would you ever have a female
lead singer?
@elyssam18, Twitter

“Why not? That could happen.
Sister Emeritus!”
If you could pick one metal song that
changed your life, what would it be?
James Persens, email

“I Wanna Rock by Twisted Sister. That
is probably the earliest song that
I remember being able to sing and rock
out to. That came out in 1984 and I was
three years old at the time. I was lucky
enough to have an older brother and in
1984 he was 16. A lot of who I am, why
I am who I am, and my interests, is
because of him. That’s my first memory
of me thinking, ‘This is who I am.’”

IMPERA IS OUT NOW VIA
LOMA VISTA

Alex is aaall about
the brutality…
and the PMA

THE SLAYLIST

ALEX TAYLOR
Beatdowns, brutality and bangers
– this is the soundtrack to the
mosh-pit in the Malevolence
frontman’s head
WORDS: ALEX DELLER • PICTURE: NAT WOOD

“CHIMAIRA’S THE IMPOSSIBILITY Of Reason is one

of my favourite albums. It’s so good from start to finish,
but Down Again is probably my favourite song. I’m a big fan
of the piano melody and the clean chorus – it’s just a proper
metal anthem.
“TRIVIUM were massively influential in making me want
to be in a band, so having Matt Heafy jump on our new
album [on the song Salvation] was amazing – if you told me
that when I was a teenager I would’ve been bouncing off
the fucking walls. Ascendancy was one of the first properly
heavy albums I got - I think my mum bought it for me.
I don’t know what it is but every time I listen to Drowned And
Torn Asunder I just envisage a circle-pit on that second riff.
“We supported TERROR in Australia and I sang Keep Your
Mouth Shut with them out there, so it had to go on. I’d seen
the song on a DVD and I’d not heard a lot of hardcore by that
point, so seeing dudes in baggy jeans and New Era caps
walking down the subways and standing around with pit
bulls… I was instantly gripped.
“To The Threshold is one of my favourite HATEBREED
songs, and the first one I ever heard. I discovered it round
a friend’s house – he put it on YouTube and it was just, ‘What
is this?!’ [Jamey] Jasta’s way of writing lyrics that motivate
you in a positive but angry way is something that I really
strive for with my own writing.
“Bloodwork by 36 CRAZYFISTS is a bit of a curveball,
but as a teenager I loved all the super-catchy melodies
and how weird and different they were to everyone else.
Brock Lindow’s voice is just so unique, with that whole
‘Yeerrreelurph!’ thing going on. It’s also just a metal classic
– you put it on in the car and everyone’s like, ‘Oh yes!’
“I was a bit late on the uptake with MACHINE HEAD, and
I think Imperium was the first song I heard. I bought Through
The Ashes Of Empires because of the artwork alone, and I was

LISTEN
NOW

Head to
sptfy.com/8eOF
to listen to
Alex’s Slayist

“TRIVIUM MADE ME WANT
TO JOIN A BAND, SO HAVING
MATT HEAFY ON OUR NEW
ALBUM WAS AMAZING”
14 METALHAMMER.COM

just blown away by how heavy the production was. There’s
huge singalong factor, and that whole ‘Hear me now / Words
I vow / No fucking regrets’ part is just so hard. I owned a live
DVD at one point, and just seeing the crowd react when they
came onstage and played Imperium made me want to be in
a band. I thought, ‘I fucking need to do that.’
“No Good At Goodbyes by GRIDIRON is my favourite
hardcore record of the past few years, 100%. It’s super-hard
and ignorant, filled with mosh riffs and motivational lyrics.
That’s my bread and butter, that’s what gets me gassed.
When you’re in the gym something like the title track is
exactly what you need.
“BITTER END are a metallic hardcore band from Texas,
and I saw them play at a community centre in Sheffield. I only
managed to catch half the show because I had to go to work,
but it was so high-energy, and I loved the singer’s voice – he’s
so pissed off. They’ve just got this unmatched aggressive
energy, and Means To An End is an absolute banger.
“NASTY are Germany and Belgium’s OG beatdown
champions! I’ve known the guys for a long time and I’ve
been a fan for even longer. Me and our bassist Wilkie
[Robinson] went to see them on their Never Say Die tour
when they came through Manchester. We hung out a bit
afterwards and have been great friends ever since. I’ve met
their families, we’ve been on tour and we’ve been through
highs and lows together. They’re a great bunch of guys, and
Dirty Fingers has one of my favourite breakdowns of all time.
“COLD HARD TRUTH have been writing some of the
hardest music to come out of the UK for years now. Their
live show is terrifying, and when I first saw them I thought
I was going to get knocked out! But that energy, and that
fear of being injured… I know that’s not for everyone, but
I absolutely love it. Bound By Blood is the soundtrack to that
whole animal, instinctive, fight-or-flight thing.”

MALICIOUS INTENT IS OUT ON NOW VIA
NUCLEAR BLAST

Ivan Moody in the
studio, making sure it
all runs like clockwork

IN THE STUDIO

FIVE FINGER
DEATH PUNCH
Sixties vibes? Futuristic sounds?
Psychedelic revolutions? Vegas’s
finest are shaking things up
WORDS: MATT MILLS

STICK ON A Five Finger Death Punch
album and you know what you’re in for:
radio-ready metal anthems with Ivan
Moody grunting out the most abrasive
of earworms. However, the times they
are a’changin’ for the Las Vegas quintet.
The pandemic killed touring for 2020’s
F8 album, and they’ve added new lead
guitarist Andy James to their ranks to
replace Jason Hook. According to band
founder and rhythm guitarist Zoltan
Bathory, the new world has inspired
a more eclectic ninth album, taking
from the 60s and modern science alike.

PRESS

What’s the timeline for new music?
Zoltan Bathory: “We’ve finished the
record. I don’t have a solid timeline. I’m
so confused about time. What day is it?
Ha ha! I’m thinking end of July, maybe
August, [when the album comes out].”
The pandemic started very shortly
after your last album, F8, came out.
What was the mood in the band at
the start of lockdown?
“We always wanted F8 to
have its own cycle, but it
was T-boned. Originally,
we didn’t want to record
a new album, because we
didn’t get to tour that
record. We wanted to wait,
but then it kept going on
– two weeks to two months
to two years. It was maybe
a year into the pandemic
when we realised, ‘Man,

THE FACTS
ALBUM:
9

PRODUCER:

Kevin Churko

STUDIO:

The Hideout,
Las Vegas

EXPECT:

5FDP’s anthemic
rock tapping
into all-new
influences, from
60s psychedelia
to futuristic
technology

who knows how long this is gonna go
on for? Let’s go back to the studio.’”

other, they tell a story. It sounds like
a coherent band.”

What was it like making music
during the pandemic?
“The fact that we couldn’t go anywhere
forced us to be even more focused. We
live in Las Vegas, which can be the
most motivating and most distracting
place in the world. Ha ha! It’s usually
24/7, but it wasn’t 24/7 anymore. We
were wondering, ‘What else is there to
do but write songs?’ It focused us even
more on the music and the writing.”

What do you mean by a 60s and 70s
vibe? How are the songs ‘futuristic’?
“When you listen to music from the
60s and 70s, there was a specific vibe.
If you look at the world now, and what
happened in the last couple years, there
has been a paradigm shift. Compare
the 50s with the 60s – they were very,
very different. There was a psychedelic
revolution: an explosion over what the
world is and what’s important. That’s
happening now and this record,
sonically, fits perfectly. We also have
the metaverse and cryptocurrencies –
what do they mean? People look at what
freedom means very differently, so
how do you put a soundtrack to that?”

What did Andy James bring to
the album?
“We love his British sense of humour.
We’ve spent the last two years together
and he is hilarious. He was a legitimate
guitar hero before he joined this band;
he had, like, six solo albums. I was a fan
of his work. So it was like, ‘Let’s let him
loose!’ He’s very easy to work with.”

Zoltan Bathory: no idea what
day it is, but man, can he play

How does the new album
compare with F8?
“We have a lot of unexpected
stuff on the record. We’d be
working on a song and
something comes out, and
we’d go, ‘That almost sounds
70s’ – this late 60s/early 70s
vibe. There are other things
that are super-modern and
almost futuristic. When you
put these songs next to each

You’re also re-recording 5FDP’s debut,
The Way Of The Fist. How’s it going?
“That’s how this whole thing came
about: ‘We don’t wanna do a new album
because we just did F8.’ We were like,
‘Let’s re-record The Way Of The Fist’,
because it was literally recorded in my
living room. We’re still probably gonna
do it. But, after the first couple of songs
[on the new album], we were like, ‘This
is so special; this is amazing. Let’s not
interrupt this flow.’”

5FDP’S NINTH ALBUM IS
EXPECTED THIS SUMMER
VIA BETTER NOISE
METALHAMMER.COM 15

FOR AROUND A decade and a half,

Liam Cormier has been one of metal’s
most reliable party-starters. The Cancer
Bats frontman exudes righteous energy,
boundless enthusiasm and an infectious
lust for life. Whether it’s onstage barking
out raucous hardcore anthems or excitedly
fidgeting around on his sofa talking to us
via Zoom about his love of nature, Beastie
Boys or his karaoke skills, Liam is a muchneeded dose of positivity in a scene that
often takes itself way too seriously. Here’s
what he’s learnt from it all so far.

Canadian bands, regardless of style, seem
to have that thing, and I’m not entirely sure
where it comes from.”

A BIT OF DIVERSITY MAKES
YOUR SCENE SO MUCH MORE
INTERESTING

“We’re all from the same little chunk of
Canada, and there isn’t much overlap to
what we do. A band like [genre-blurring
punk provocateurs] Fucked Up are going
to do their thing, but you wouldn’t start

AC/DC WERE MY FIRST LOVE

“I remember buying an AC/DC live double
cassette as one of my first ever albums.
It was the sickest – it had this fold-out of
the band playing onstage in front of, like,
a million people. When I was really, really
young, I thought they were the sickest
band. My dad was into Rolling Stones and
Allman Brothers, and that was the music
that we listened to together, but I liked
AC/DC! I’d go to hockey practice, at like six
or seven in the morning and I’d get myself
going shouting ‘TNT!’,
which, looking back,
was kinda intense!”

BEASTIE BOYS
TAUGHT ME TO
BE MUSICALLY
OPEN-MINDED

“I think there is a Canadian sound,
especially for heavier things. When
you listen to Neil Young records,
there are heavy tones and heavy
vibes to those records. It’s a vibe
that has always existed in heavy
rock that has influenced us as
Canadian bands, which means
that whether you’re playing
metal or punk or hardcore or just
rock, you have that weight. All

16 METALHAMMER.COM

“The pie chart of all of our influences would
be huge, for sure! I feel like we’ve always been
into the heavy stuff; all those metal influences
from our youth are there. How could we ever
deny our love of Sabbath? But we also have
that punk spirit in us as well, and we come
from that underground scene, so that’s also
such a big part of what we do. And all the
alternative rock and the touches of rap…
I could be here for days naming bands that
I think we’ve tried to borrow from.”

I LOVE GIVING PEOPLE THE
LIAM SHOW

LIFE LESSONS

“I’m not sure when I felt fully comfortable
onstage, but I’ve always just tried to be myself,
and I’m a positive and upbeat person. I said
something onstage once, some quip, when
our amps cut out or something and people
laughed, and I liked that feeling, so I carried it
on. Now, it’s some of my favourite parts of our
show. I love the between-song banter. I love it
being the Liam show for a little bit. You have
to be honest when you’re playing music. I can’t
get up and be this badass,
that isn’t me. What you see
up there is 100% me.”

LIAM
CORMIER

“Beastie Boys have always
been my guiding light in
my life. Being really young
in the 90s, you weren’t
meant to listen to all these
styles of music – you had
to figure out whether you
were into grunge or rap
or whatever. Then here is
this band who were into
everything. They were into
jazz, they were into punk,
it was hip hop, they
skated. I felt like those
guys were the gateway
into being more confident,
like, ‘Oh, I can be into everything and
it’s totally cool.’ Because they were the
coolest guys on the planet. Beastie Boys
were like a shield; if they liked it then
I could do what I want.”

CANADIAN BANDS LOVE
HEAVY VIBES

THERE ARE A LOT OF SLICES TO
THE CANCER BATS PIE

WE AREN’T ROADSICK ANYMORE

“We’ve drastically had to
change the way we tour.
A lot of it is down to Mike
[Peters, drums] having
kids. We never tour for
more than three weeks now
– those days of being on
the road in a van for three
months are gone, because
it makes you… weird. You
go a little nuts, and when
you’re young that’s
awesome. When you have
nowhere to live, you’ll go,
‘Hell yeah, I’ll sleep on the
floor!’, but we’re not those
young road dogs anymore.
The most important thing
is that the shows are better these days.”

The Cancer Bats frontman on
Beastie Boys, sleeping on rocks and
screaming Miley Cyrus songs
WORDS: STEPHEN HILL • PICTURES: SID TANGERINE

a band who sound like that, because people
would just say, ‘I’m not going to see your
Fucked Up rip-off band!’ You’d go to a gig
and know that all the bands were doing their
own thing – Alexisonfire were doing their
own thing, Billy Talent are doing their own
thing. No one looked at those bands getting
successful and thought, ‘Oh, let’s change
our band to do that!’ A great scene should
be like that.”

WE WILL NEVER GET TIRED OF
PLAYING OUR COVER OF BEASTIE
BOYS’ SABOTAGE

“When we put out Bears… [Bears, Mayors,
Scraps & Bones, 2010] and Sabotage was the big
song, I felt really proud of that. Especially the
video, because we didn’t do too much with
the song. We just made a heavier version, so
I wanted to do something supercreative just to show people that
those were heroes of mine. Just so
people knew that we got it, that
we wanted to go for the same vibe
as them or Spike Jonze would have
put out. It was our offering to
them. And we’ll always play that
song, we’ll never be too cool to

“HANGOVERS SUCKED,
BARFING IN A BATHTUB
SUCKED, IT WAS ALL
VERY OVERRATED”

CANCER BATS
Liam Cormier: positive,
upbeat, and a massive
Beasties fanboy

METALHAMMER.COM 17

CANCER BATS
“All together now! ‘Oh, I’m just
a girl, what’s my destiny?’”

pretend that this wasn’t a huge moment in our
career. It’s one of the best songs ever, and why
wouldn’t I play it to make people happy and
have them party super-hard every night?”

FILL YOUR SPARE TIME
WITH ADVENTURES

“Now when I get time off, I tend to spend it
going on these gnarly motorbike trips. I still
appreciate that side of things, trying to push
myself on a heavy, multi-day trip. Your hands
are all beaten up and you’re sleeping on a rock
– there is still that part of me that craves that.
I think I’m trying to figure that out still: why
is there this constant need to explore and be
ripping? Brain, what’s up?! I don’t think that I’ll
ever be able to sit still – that’s where I find joy.”

STRAIGHT EDGE HAS HAD
THE MOST POSITIVE IMPACT
ON MY LIFE

“A lot of people find out about straight
edge when they’re really young, but

18 METALHAMMER.COM

I partied and I did all that stuff. I became
straight edge at the age of 21, so I already
knew that hangovers sucked, barfing in
a bathtub sucked, it was all very overrated.
When I met all these people who cared more
about music and wanted to do that more
than anything, have band practice on a Friday
night instead of going to the bar, I was way
more into that. Instead of partying I was
doing street art, that is always what kept me
excited about that.”

I AM HAPPY TO BE THE SOBER
DESIGNATED DRIVER

“By the time Cancer Bats started touring I was
about 26, so the idea of drinking just wasn’t
a thing for me. But you really see the worst
side of partying on tour at that age. I was
always the person who would drive; everyone
would party, jump in the van, be superannoying and I’d just drive all night. That
just became part of the way our band worked.
It was key to our well-oiled machine.”

BEWARE THE KARAOKE

“I love karaoke, but I had to stop doing it on
tour. I wouldn’t lose my voice doing the Cancer
Bats set, I’d lose my voice doing karaoke. This
is about 2005, 2006, and they’d say that there
was going to be karaoke after the show, and I’d
be there screaming Just A Girl by No Doubt and
it would fuck me up. Because you’re singing
songs you’re not used to singing, so you’re
screaming whatever comes up: Johnny Cash,
screaming, Miley Cyrus, screaming. People
get too excited and it fucks you up. So, I have
to hang back and look after myself.”

DON’T EVER TAKE YOUR
SURROUNDINGS FOR GRANTED

“Where I grew up and went to high school
I lived on the edge of town, and so I was really
into mountain biking through the woods and
the forest and going and sitting by a stream
and listening to Björk! So mellow! But then
you get the call to leave the town when you’re
a little older, every 18- or 19-year-old wants
to do that. But over the last couple of years,
having to be back home, I’ve realised that
I love seeing those same places again. I still do
those rides, it’s just that I’m on a dirt bike now.
It’s important to take note of those things.”

CANCER BATS’ PSYCHIC JAILBREAK IS
OUT NOW VIA BAT SKULL RECORDS/
NEW DAMAGE RECORDS

PRESS

“I WOULDN’T LOSE MY VOICE
DOING THE CANCER BATS SET,
I WOULD LOSE MY VOICE
DOING KARAOKE”

THE STORY BEHIND

HER GHOST
IN THE FOG
CRADLE OF FILTH
WORDS: MATT MILLS

IT’S A BEAUTIFULLY sunny day

in the summer of 2000, and Cradle Of
Filth are tripping balls in a field in East
Sussex. The band have temporarily
relocated from their native Suffolk to
the town of Battle, and are currently
standing in the exact spot where, 934
years prior, William The Conqueror
and King Harold II waged The Battle
Of Hastings. As they bake in the
sweltering heat, they see long-dead
soldiers trooping past them.
“We had taken some magic
mushrooms,” Cradle Of Filth singer
Dani Filth recalls today. “We saw
ghosts and all manner of things.”
Dani reflects on these psilocybininduced apparitions with the air of
someone talking about visiting their
nan for tea. That’s because it wasn’t
out of the ordinary. For Cradle Of Filth,
that summer was routinely insane.
Holed up in Parkgate Studios in
Battle, Cradle were animals. They were
young and their stock in the metal
scene was rocketing. They partied
hard. They drank. In Dani’s carefully
selected words, they “fraternised”
with locals. At one point, their friend,
horror director Alex Chandon, dropped
in and promptly started terrorising
pensioners in the nursing home down
the road. “I remember him going

20 METALHAMMER.COM

THE FACTS
RELEASED:
2000

ALBUM:
Midian

PERSONNEL:

Dani Filth (vocals),
Sarah Jezebel Deva
(vocals), Paul
Allender (lead
guitar), Gian Pyres
(rhythm guitar),
Robin Graves
(bass), Adrian
Erlandsson
(drums), Martin
Powell
(keyboards)

HIGHEST CHART
POSITION:
N/A

next door and pretending that he’d
lost his grandma so he could do some
filming,” says Dani.
Yet amid all the shenanigans, Cradle
Of Filth managed to write one of the
most pivotal and enduring songs of
their career, Her Ghost In The Fog. The
track, from 2000’s Midian album, laid
down the musical template they’ve
followed ever since. A minor MTV hit
at the time, two decades on it’s the
most-played number in the band’s
setlist, aired more than 500 times.
“I wish we’d never written the
bloody thing,” says Dani drily. “You’re
going through the setlist, going, ‘We
should really play this! We haven’t
played this for a while! Oh wait, we’ve
got to play Her Ghost In The Fog. That
puts paid to that, then!’”
The track didn’t quite turn Cradle
into superstars, but it did mark the
point where they well and truly left
the underground behind. The band
were already in the ascendency by that
point. Having made their name as
black metal malcontents infamous
for their blasphemous ‘Vestal
Masturbation’ t-shirt, they had taken
their first steps towards something
approaching respectability when
they bagged a deal with influential
independent metal label Music

For Nations, formerly the home of
Metallica and Anthrax. Their first two
albums on the label, 1996’s Dusk And
Her Embrace and 1998’s Cruelty And The
Beast had turned them from corpsepainted outsiders into music press
darlings, while their the video that
accompanied the title track of 1999’s
From The Cradle To Enslave EP even got
a few plays on MTV – something that
would have been unthinkable a few
years earlier.
Despite a series of line-up changes
during and after the EP, band morale
leading up to Midian was high.
Founding guitarist Paul Allender
was back following a four-year hiatus,
and they’d also tapped drummer
extraordinaire Adrian Erlandsson,
famed for his work in melodeath
speed freaks At The Gates.
“It was like a fresh beginning, but
we were reuniting old friendships at
the same time,” Dani remembers.
“Everybody wanted the band to be
successful. Everyone wanted to work
hard and play hard.”

TO WRITE HER Ghost In The Fog and
the rest of Midian, Adrian Erlandsson,
Gian Pyres and keyboardist Martin
Powell moved in together. The Cradle
House, as the singer now calls it,
was in the band’s stomping ground
of Ipswich. “It was at the bottom,
funnily enough, of Cemetery Road,”
he says. “It became quite synonymous

PYMCA/UNIVERSAL IMAGES GROUP/GETTY

How a summer of drinking, psychedelics and bothering
pensioners helped create an operatic black metal classic

CRADLE OF FILTH

Cradle Of Filth kissed goodbye to the
underground with Her Ghost In The Fog

with debauchery. You can use your
imagination: three single lads in quite
an established band partying a lot.”
In late June 2000, the whole band
decamped to Parkgate to record
Midian. For a young extreme metal
outfit – Dani was only 25 at the time –
the residential studio was the height of
opulence. “It was down near Hastings,
a beautiful part of the world, and
everyone had their own chalet,” he says.
“We had a cook there! It was gloriously
hot, so we took trips down to the beach.
It just felt like you were on holiday!”
Dani still found time to write lyrics
for the album amid the ceaseless
partying. The album itself was named

after the cemetery in horror author
Clive Barker’s 1988 novel Cabal and its
later film adaptation, Nightbreed. Just
as the Midian of Barker’s book was
a hub for all manner of monsters, so
the album was about “an amalgam of
mythical beasts”, with Her Ghost In The
Fog ticking the ‘Victorian ghost story’
box. Specifically, Dani drew on the
inspiration of Tim Burton’s 1998
movie Sleepy Hollow, itself based on
Washington Irving’s 1820 short story
The Legend Of Sleepy Hollow.
“It was a continuation of my love
affair with the gothic romance,” Dani
explains. “One would assume it takes
place in a mythical 18th-century

“WE HAD TAKEN MAGIC
MUSHROOMS. WE SAW GHOSTS
AND ALL MANNER OF THINGS”

village. Someone’s wife has tendencies
towards witchcraft and she’s preyed
upon by religious folk, although it’s
more for the fact that she’s a beautiful
woman. She’s attacked and murdered,
and the narrator wreaks his revenge.
It was a rape/revenge story.”
Musically, the track strayed further
from black metal than Cradle ever had
before. They’d never fully been at home
in the genre to begin with, but Her Ghost
In The Fog drastically dialled up the
melody. Paul Allender and Gian Pyres
laid down a web of high-flying guitar
harmonies, while Dani and back-up
singer Sarah Jezebel Deva traded shrill
barks and operatic croons respectively
during the chorus. It’s in this space –
somewhere between black metal,
melodeath and classic British metal –
that Cradle continue to live to this day.
Cradle’s epic new sound was matched
by its sonic sheen, courtesy of producer
John Fryer, who had previously worked
with Depeche Mode and Nine Inch
Nails. It was a direct response to their
last album, Cruelty And The Beast, the
final mix of which was so awful that,
upon hearing it, Sarah Jezebel Deva
apparently ran out of the room in tears.

METALHAMMER.COM 21

CRADLE OF FILTH
Dani Filth: working hard
and playing hard

“Cruelty… was basically one member
really wanting his drum kit to have
a particular sound,” says Dani,
referencing former member Nick
Barker. “And when you get a sound like
that, you can’t have massive guitars
on top; it’s like elephants walking over
a rope bridge.”
Also helping to make the number
a standout was its opening narration,
which sat somewhere between the
poetic and the ridiculous. “The moon,
she hangs like a cruel portrait,” boomed
actor Doug Bradley, aka Pinhead
from the 1987 movie Hellraiser (itself
directed by Clive Barker). “Soft winds
whisper the bidding of trees / As this
tragedy starts with a shattered glass
heart.” It marked the start of a fruitful
relationship between Cradle and
Doug – the actor would later return
on the Godspeed On The Devil’s Thunder
and Existence Is Futile albums. Yet
Dani has no clue how the collaboration
came about.
“I think our manager at the time
contacted him,” he guesses. “I think
the conversation started with, ‘There
isn’t much money in the budget,

22 METALHAMMER.COM

but…’ I remember he came down
kind of early to the studio. They were
still setting stuff up, so we just said:
‘Pub?’ Ha!”
As quintessential as Doug Bradley
and the increasingly polished Cradle
sound were, Dani believes the secret
to Her Ghost In The Fog’s success was
its video. The OAP-bothering Alex
Chandon directed the clip, which cast
the band against a snowy backdrop
with jagged trees. It was reminiscent of
classic silent-era German Expressionist
horror movie The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari.
“It was at the end of that era where
loads of big gothic horror movies were
being made,” Dani states. “We’d just
had Sleepy Hollow and, before that,
Bram Stoker’s Dracula and Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein. There were continental
films like Dracula Rising; Brendan
Fraser’s The Mummy had a huge gothic
vibe to it. People were spending a lot of
money on horror movies at that point
and I think that sort of cinematic line
filtered through.”
Cradle’s musical shift also coincided
with the increasing eclecticism of some
of black metal’s other leading lights.

Cradle’s one-time touring partners
Emperor had vastly expanded their
sounding, Mayhem were making the
Nietzsche-inspired Grand Declaration
Of War, Enslaved were becoming
more prog, and Ulver had embraced
atmospheric experimentalim. As Dani
puts it: “Black metal was being superseded by a more avant-garde form.”
Her Ghost In The Fog may have failed
to chart, but it became a regular
staple on MTV. It also marked the
beginning of Cradle’s time as a
genuine commercial force in metal,
something that continued through
the follow-up albums Damnation And
A Day and Nymphetamine.
“As with most things, Her Ghost In
The Fog was a case of the right place at
the right time,” Dani says. “You have
a massive success with one thing and
then the record company are like, ‘That
worked – replicate it!’, but you can’t.
Her Ghost In The Fog was conjured up
by the circumstances. You can’t predict
it, you can’t replicate it.”

CRADLE OF FILTH HEADLINE
DOMINION FESTIVAL ON JULY 29

MARTYN GOODACRE/GETTY

“THE LABEL WERE LIKE, ‘THAT
WORKED – REPLICATE IT!’, BUT
YOU CAN’T. IT WAS CONJURED
UP BY THE CIRCUMSTANCES”

YOUR SHOUT

THERE’S
MORE THAN
ONE MEMBER
IN HALESTORM

HALE YEAH

Bought the Halestorm issue to
frame the Lzzy cover [issue #361]
to go alongside my Lzzy cover
from way back in 2017! Five years
is too long between covers for
such an amazing band but I’m
glad I could add to my collection!
Erin, email

We’re glad you approve! Lzzy
is one of the most beloved and
iconic figureheads of the modern
rock scene, and with good
reason. She rules. Halestorm
rule. End of. Thanks for picking
up the magazine.

FAILSTORM

Do Metal Hammer even know that
there is more than one member
in Halestorm? I love them but
I love all of them. Arejay, Joe and
Josh deserve some recognition
too - hopefully the next cover
will reflect this. It was a great
article, though.
Gemma Opie, email

You’re right: Halestorm are a unit
and, quite literally in the case of
Lzzy and Arejay, a family. That
said, last issue’s cover feature felt
very much to be predominantly
Lzzy’s story, and so we gave her
the spot. That said, we did also
do a limited online run of issues

24 METALHAMMER.COM

#TWEETS
Lzzy and Halestorm:
sorry, just Halestorm

with Arejay, Josh and Joe on the
cover too, plus a signed print,
so hopefully plenty of people
looking for more Halestorm for
their buck got to pick that up!

POSITIVE METAL HEALTH

It’s so great to see Lzzy Hale being
so open and vulnerable about
her mental health struggles. As
someone who has also struggled
that didn’t have bands talking
about this kind of stuff when
I was a youngster, it’s a breath of
fresh air.

many of us, Jason was the man in
Metallica in the 90s.
Bill Roberts, email

We love Jason, and we’re glad he
feels comfortable enough to
open up on such a huge time in
his life and career. Plus, we’re big
Load and Reload defenders here,
so there isn’t much from his time
in Metallica we won’t stand by!

IN THE GENES

Can people stop asking Gene
Simmons whether rock is dead
now, please? We get it, the
Grant Smith, email
music’s passed him by and he’s
not plugged into the scene any
One of the greatest things Lzzy
more. We don’t need him
has done for the rock
tarnishing all the great
scene is bringing
Gene Simmons: when
bands around right
the conversation
he gets an idea,
he runs with it
now. Someone
about mental
show this man
health right out
Spiritbox,
into the open,
Jinjer and Zeal
where it needs
& Ardor and
to be. As the
tell me rock is
saying goes,
dead or boring
it’s OK to not
at the moment.
be OK.

’STED-Y AS
HE GOES

Jason Newsted is
clearly happy to talk about
his time in Metallica now [The
Big Interview, issue #361]. It was
an excellent read to be able to
see his brains being picked about
such a crazy time for the band.
Rob Trujillo is a killer bassist
and Cliff Burton is a god, but for

Tom Derbyshire,
Facebook

Asking Gene to
stop talking about
something is like asking The
Joker to stop chuckling at stuff.
Humanity will die out, global
warming will blow up the planet
and we will all return to the
stardust from whence we came
before Gene Simmons stops
giving his opinion on things.

Know what’s
hilarious? We spent
50 years laughing
at people who ‘saw
a UFO’ and then
the US government
admitted they’re real.
Gama Bomb

(@gamabomb)

Nothing great ever
comes from staying
in your comfort
zone. Are you brave
enough to discover
that greatness in
yourself by diving into
the fire? Everything
in this life is Hard.
Choose your Hard…
and do your best.
I believe in you.
Lzzy Hale, Halestorm

(@LZZYHALE)

I’m very proud to
have played a big
part in broadening
the horizons of
alternative rock (or
whatever you’d want
to call the scene in
the broadest sense).
The variety of
textures & vibes that
heavy bands are now
“allowed” to include
is providing us with
some brilliant art.
Rou Reynolds,
Enter Shikari

(@RouReynolds)

KISS: DENIS O’REGAN/PRESS

…and other
blindingly obvious,
pleasantly insightful
and downright
excellent opinions
you lot shared with
us this month

LETTERS

BIG DEBATE

When Killswitch Engage’s Jesse
Leach told us that the metalcore
scene was “over-saturated” in
the wake of KSE’s early success, it
prompted a lot of conversation…
HE SAID

surprised magic was made when
they teamed up?

“There was an over-saturation of bands who were
churning out this big riff, heavy verse, melodic chorus
thing. It felt tired, like labels were looking for those
bands because they sounded like a band who were
becoming successful.”

RAMM IT DOWN

YOU SAY

Rammstein: in a metal mag?! Shocker!

HOPE FOR THE FEST

Dare I actually hope we’re going
to get a full festival season this
summer? It seems like too much
to ask for, but with only a few
cancellations (Distillers at Download
fest, etc), everything seems to be
going ahead?
Carly Sanders, Facebook

We have every single possible digit
crossed at once. Just think how good
that first drink at UK Tech-Fest/
Slam Dunk/Download/Hellfest/
Wacken/Dominion/Bloodstock/
ArcTanGent (delete and add as
appropriate) is going to be!

DUO WIN-GO

Love the Ibaraki album and I think
it’s great to see two unique metal
personalities like Matt Heafy and
Ihsahn come together like this.
I hope we get more meetings of
great minds like this one in the near
future. Great interview!
James Peplow, email

We also love it when a plan comes
together! Ihsahn helped to define
an entire genre and continues to
innovate with everything he does,
while The Heaf remains one of
the most vital metal minds of the
modern era. Who can really be

Just when I thought Metal Hammer
were finally done ramming Ghost
down our throats, it looks like
they’re now gonna be throwing
Rammstein at us until we’re all sick
of it. There are other bands out there.
Just saying.
Chris Bone, Facebook

Shrine

“All the
heavyweight
metalcore
anthems”
PRESS

ELEANOR GOODMAN
EDITOR

JO QUAIL

The Cartographer

Blessthefall, Atreyu, We Came As Romans, Miss May I,
Pierce The Veil, Of Mice & Men… I disagree, many of
those bands soundtracked my youth… and they still do!
Jessica Meacher, Facebook

KILLER COVER

Every scene has ‘weak bands’ but when you look at the
bands that came up with Killswitch - Chimaria, Shadows
Fall, God Forbid, Poison The Well etc - how many of
those bands are still here now compared to bands like
Architects, Bring Me The Horizon and Bullet? Those later
bands are obviously doing something right.

Was so glad to see that it was the
Killswitch Engage issue that made
it to my local Barnes & Noble when
the Innovators covers finally hit
the States [issue #360]. One of my
favourite bands of all time and
finally on the cover of my favourite
metal magazine!
Jared Smith, email

We know our lovely US readers have
to wait a little longer than most to
get their hands on Hammer, so we’re
glad it did the business for you!

I like Killswitch but they can hardly be the first band to
accuse others of being derivative. When was the last time
Adam D didn’t recycle a riff?
James Bryant, Facebook

Jami Hill, Facebook

Killswitch Engage pretty much perfected metalcore in
two albums so the only way is down from there.
Tom Simpson, Facebook

JOIN THE BIG DEBATE AT FACEBOOK.COM/
METALHAMMERREADERS

What’s been blowing our office speakers

CAVE IN

Heavy Pendulum

“A genuinely
transformative
journey through
uncharted,
vivid territory”

“Fat, meaty riffs
and grungy,
groovy, spacey
goodness.
Love it!”

JONATHAN SELZER

VANESSA THORPE

REVIEWS EDITOR

Josh Willert, Facebook

It’s almost like we’re a metal
magazine and the Ghost and
Rammstein albums were two of the
biggest metal releases of 2022 so far,
or something. IT’S ALMOST LIKE
THAT, ISN’T IT, CHRIS? ALMOST?!

HAMMER STEREO
BLEED FROM
WITHIN

Jesse is right. There were practically no metalcore bands
who came after KSE that were half as interesting, good at
songwriting or even as heavy. It was a weak scene.

PRODUCTION EDITOR

COHEED AND
CAMBRIA

BLEED FROM
WITHIN

“Consistently ace,
C&C never
disappoint”

“A huge step up –
it should see BFW
get the acclaim
they so deserve”

Vaxis II: A Window Of
The Waking Mind

LOUISE BROCK
ART EDITOR

CANDY

GREG PUCIATO

Shrine

“Deconstructed
hardcore for
guaranteed
shredded
eardrums”

“So good you
could almost
stop mourning
Dillinger’s demise”

RICH HOBSON

DAVE EVERLEY

CONTRIBUTING
EDITOR

STAFF WRITER

Heaven Is Here

ASSOCIATE EDITOR

Mirrorcell

PAUL BRANNIGAN

METALHAMMER.COM 25

NEW NOISE

SHOOTING
DAGGERS

The queercore band taking the fight to the misogynists
WORDS: DANNII LEIVERS

26 METALHAMMER.COM

IN SHORT
SOUNDS LIKE:

The balls of
the patriarchy
being stamped
on by a steel
toe-capped boot

FOR FANS OF:
Sharptooth,
G.L.O.S.S,
Bikini Kill

LISTEN TO:

Manic Pixie
Dream Girl

Bea, arching an eyebrow. “And I’m
always like, ‘Why wouldn’t you expect
us to be heavy?’”
Sal and Bea formed the band in
London in 2019, releasing their debut
demo EP that October with a different
drummer. After a line-up change,
Raquel, a long-time London resident
and band booker on the local scene,
joined the ranks in November.
“I’ve noticed people are more open
to booking different bands,” says
Raquel of the progression she’s noted
since she started working at shows
15 years ago. “At least you have some
representation on the stage. It’s
changing, really slowly, but now there
are a lot of bands speaking up with
their views. When I was younger, you
wouldn’t see a black metal band that
was anti-fascist, or a queer doom band
like Vile Creature.”
“But even though hardcore is a safe
space for us, there is still a lot of work
to do,” Bea cuts in. “It’s still very white.
It’s still very misogynistic. A lot of girl
and queer bands still don’t have a space.
You still need to have male respect:
when men respect and like you, that’s
when other people like you too. Men
for sure still own the scene and they
decide who is cool and who is not.”

WITH THE NEW line-up secured,
the band headed into Crow’s Nest
Studios in Croydon during lockdown,
to record their new EP, Athames. Its
seven tracks burn with disgust, fury
and injustice. “[Opener] No Exit is

Shooting Daggers are
breaking down barriers

about the high standards of beauty
that kill women mentally,” says Sal.
“If you don’t reach the standards, you
don’t exist.”
“If you’re pretty, you’re someone;
if you’re not, you’re less valuable, and
that’s just the reality,” adds Bea. “You
don’t get representation if you’re fat.
Even if you’re a lesbian and you don’t
give a shit about men, still society will
judge you for your appearance.”
Elsewhere, the nihilistic Liar tackles
sexual abuse (“It’s a rape revenge song”
,
explains Sal), while Missandra, a song
that the band have reworked and
rewritten from their debut EP, seethes
with hatred for patriarchal systems
which belittle and oppress.
“‘Misandry’ is a word men’s activists
made up to insult feminists, like
‘Feminazi’”
, adds Raquel, explaining
that the lyrics aim to “take back”
the word from those who brandish it
as a weapon to diminish feminism.
“Women didn’t make up that word

PRESS

‘WE ARE QUEER, and we’re gonna
live!’ roars Shooting Daggers’ singer Sal
Salgado Pellegrin, on We Will Live, the
penultimate call-to-arms on the
band’s fearless new EP, Athames.
It’s a lyric that sums up the steely
eyed attitude behind the band’s
brutal, yet triumphant, hardcore punk.
Heavy music is a place where people
can find a home, when they feel they
don’t belong anywhere else. But for
a community that prides itself on
inclusivity, metal and hardcore can
still be unwelcoming spaces for
women, the LGBTQ+ community
and people of colour.
It’s those intolerances that the trio
– made up of French vocalist and
guitarist Sal, Italian bassist Bea Simion
and Spanish drummer Raquel J Alves
– are determined to eradicate. Inspired
by the riot grrrl movement, G.L.O.S.S
and Black Flag, alongside queercore
peers Sharptooth and Pupil Slicer,
they’re fiercely and noisily taking their
own space in metal’s traditionally
white, cishet male scene.
“We’re vegan, we’re feminist, we’re
women, we’re queer, we’re political, so
we’ve got a lot to say,” says Sal. “Our
music shares our perspective on our
place in the scene, and in the world.
I feel like you still have to prove you’re
worth something and you’re not a poser
when you’re a woman in the scene.”
“Sometimes people come to us,
and they say, ‘When I saw you going
onstage, I didn’t expect you to be
that hardcore, that heavy,’” adds

SHOOTING DAGGERS

to say, ‘We hate men, we call
ourselves misandrists.’”
The song is one of the most
incendiary three minutes of music
you’ll hear this year. Over a frantic
battery of ugly guitars, Sal bellows,
“This is our reality/ They gatekeep our
individuality… I AM SOMEONE!”

“It’s quite radical,” the vocalist says.
“Anger is a sentiment that gives you
power. It makes you do something.”
The band’s ferocity and empowering
messages have struck a chord. In
November they played the biggest
shows of their lives so far, supporting
Aussie punks Amyl And The Sniffers

“WE’RE VEGAN, WE’RE
FEMINIST, WE’RE WOMEN,
WE’RE QUEER, WE’RE POLITICAL,
SO WE’VE GOT A LOT TO SAY”
SAL SALGADO PELLEGRIN

over two nights at a sold-out Electric
Ballroom in Camden.
“People were taking selfies with us
and posting pictures of them with me,
as though I was a rock star!” laughs
Sal, clearly relishing her first taste
of notoriety.
As that suggests, the band have got
wide-scale ambitions that extend way
past the boundaries of genre and the
scrappy pubs and venues usually
reserved for punk.
“We want to hit the mainstream!”
exclaims Bea. “As long as you’re real,
and you don’t change your ethics, you
can become a big band, make money
off music, become professionals.
We don’t think punk bands can’t
go mainstream.”
“To play out of our bubble is a good
thing,” continues Raquel. “We want to
spread a message and the more people
who can listen to it the better.”
That message is palpable on the
cathartic EP closer, You Can’t Kill Us,
an aural assault that Bea describes as
a “pure queercore anthem”.
“It’s pure rage that says, ‘We are
here. We’re not going anywhere,” they
say triumphantly. “We’re going to take
our space.”

ATHAMES IS RELEASED ON MAY
20 VIA NEW HEAVY SOUNDS
METALHAMMER.COM 27

NEW NOISE ROUND-UP

NEW NOISE

CALLOUS DAOBOYS
Violin-wielding mathcore mavericks love
crazy songtitles and hate religious cults
WORDS: MATT MILLS • PICTURE: OLIVIA KEASLING

COME TO GRIEF

Savage sludge miserablists using
extreme metal as therapy
WORDS: ALEX DELLER

WHAT’S IN A name? With Come To Grief, the answer’s

Regarding Time Loops, the latter their
pigeonhole the Callous Daoboys.
current single. Their next album,
“It’s always cool when someone
Celebrity Therapist, continues the
compares us to Converge or The
trend. Due later this year, its title takes
Dillinger Escape Plan,” the Atlanta
a jab at cults, especially Scientology,
band’s frontman Carson Pace
and the manipulative behaviour they
tells Hammer on a video call.
use to ensnare people.
“But, also, we get Panic! At
“It’s a title I’ve had in my
The Disco comparisons. It’s
head for years,” Carson
SOUNDS LIKE:
the weirdest thing.”
explains. “Scientology has
Mathcore, noise
Give them a spin and you’ll
that celebrity centre, of
and tech-metal
understand why people
course, and the idea of
teaming up
and getting
struggle, as the band’s
someone like Tom Cruise
really pissed
manic hardcore darts off
going to therapy tickles me.”
at each other
the walls à la Botch and
The singer elaborates:
The Chariot. However,
“The record is basically about
FOR FANS OF:
Botch, Respire,
they’ve also filled out
losing your loved ones to
Pupil Slicer
their ranks with synth
cults, as I have in various
and violin players to add
different ways. I was raised
LISTEN TO:
A Brief Article
discordant background
in a Christian cult, so when
Regarding
noise. Baroque pop
it comes to anti-vaxxers,
Time Loops
intermittently lifts you from
QAnon and the alt-right, it’s
their polyrhythmic hell, while
a bummer to see a lot of people that
spoken-word samples come thick and
I really love falling into stuff like that.”
fast. Long story short: they’re
It’s a good thing the Callous Daoboys’
beautifully batshit.
name and music have staying power,
Despite the restless genre-hopping,
since Carson wants to make a sceneCarson admits, “I’d never say that I’m
wide splash. “I hope this band inspires
a good songwriter. I pride myself on
a hundred great bands,” he declares.
titling things.” Fair enough. Not only is
his band’s name genuinely memorable,
A BRIEF ARTICLE REGARDING TIME
he’s penned songs called Flip-Flops At
LOOPS IS OUT NOW VIA MNRK
A Funeral, This SimCity Ain’t Big Enough
HEAVY. CELEBRITY THERAPIST IS
For The Both Of Us and A Brief Article
EXPECTED LATER THIS YEAR

IN SHORT:

28 METALHAMMER.COM

IN SHORT

WHEN THE WORLD DIES IS RELEASED ON MAY 20
VIA TRANSLATION LOSS

PRESS

NOBODY KNOWS HOW to

a lot. Not only is the negative sentiment entirely justified,
but the band feature two members of legendary 90s sludge/
doom progenitors Grief – and the rotten apple certainly
hasn’t fallen far from the tree.
“The running themes are, as usual, pain, betrayal,
depression, despair, world annihilation and eternal
suffering,” says Jonathan Herbert (vocals/guitar) of the
band’s first full-length album, When The World Dies.
“As Jonathan says, there’s a lotta pain,
anxiety and hopelessness,” agrees Terry
Savastano (guitar/vocals). “I see this
SOUNDS LIKE:
world through a very dark lens, and
A sludge metal
the bullshit and assholes I deal with
shitpit of fear,
on an hourly basis inspired this record
emptiness
and despair
no end.”
As with fellow sludge survivors
FOR FANS OF:
Eyehategod, there’s a real sense of
Grief, Noothgrush,
Eyehategod
sickness running through Come To
Grief’s material, and Terry in particular
LISTEN TO:
has witnessed some turbulent times.
Life’s Curse
“In 2012 I was committed to a mental
institution for a little while and the only thing that got me
through was my family and my music,” he says. “This is
pure therapy for me.”
Therapy it might be, but the struggles are real and
ongoing, with Terry admitting his anxiety and depression
are worse than ever. Between them the band suggest
spending time outdoors and nixing social media as partial
coping strategies, but with an album titled When The World
Dies you have to wonder whether they think there are any
positive outcomes for humanity.
“I do feel we’re heading further and further in the wrong
direction,” concludes drummer Chuck Conlon. “Can we ever
come back from the mess we’re in? I’m really not so sure.”

NEW NOISE ROUND-UP

BLACK VOID

Solefald vocalist flips the script
on his melodic side-project
WORDS: RICH HOBSON • PICTURE: JØRN VEBERG

IN SHORT
SOUNDS LIKE:

Bilious black
metal being
played by nihilistic
crust punks

FOR FANS OF:
Darkthrone,
Anti Cimex,
Hellhammer

LISTEN TO:

Reject Everything

IT’S BEEN BARELY 12 months

since Lars Are Nedland unveiled his
art-metal act White Void, but rather
than returning to his day job as vocalist
for avant-garde BM expansionists
Solefald, Lars has again assembled
a motley crew of musicians to explore
the ying to White Void’s yang.
“I found myself needing a contrast,”
Lars says of his new project, the fittingly
named Black Void. “Something raw
and hard. Uncomfortable and unruly.
A flipside of the coin if you will.”
Joined by drummer Tobias Solbakk
(of Ihsahn’s solo band) and guitarist
Jostein Thomassen (who plays
alongside Lars in Borknagar), Black
Void’s debut album, Antithesis, finds
them reaching into the noisesome
swamp of first-wave black metal
to find the crossover points with

bilious hardcore punk. This wasn’t
just a stylistic choice either – it
was ideological.
“To obtain the right vibe, I told
Jostein that he could only play
downstrokes,” Lars explains. “He had
to beat the strings rather than picking
them. It did wonders to the aggression
of the guitars, even if it meant him
bleeding all over the place.”
The resultant blood, sweat and tears
are almost palpable in the visceral

snarls of Antithesis, an album whose
bleakness is underpinned by the
Nietzschean nihilistic philosophies
espoused in its lyrics.
“Question everything,” Lars says.
“The foundation of our knowledge, the
basis of morality; Nietzsche tells us
to think and to be critical. I think that’s
a virtue.”

ANTITHESIS IS RELEASED ON
MAY 27 VIA NUCLEAR BLAST

IN THE KNOW

ONI

What your favourite
bands are listening to

One-man visionary
enlists a punk
legend and metal
icons for celebstudded project
WORDS: DAVE EVERLEY • PICTURE: TRAVIS SHINN

IN SHORT
SOUNDS LIKE:

The New New
Wave Of American
Heavy Metal

FOR FANS OF:

Lamb Of God,
Chevelle, Blindside

LISTEN TO:
Secrets

THERE ARE MANY benefits to
growing up in the Cayman Islands, but
a lesser-known one is having Iggy Pop
as your parents’ neighbour. “I’ve known
Iggy since I was 14 years old,” says Jake
Oni, frontman and mastermind behind
the project that bears his name.
Jake enlisted the punk godfather
to appear alongside another friend of
his, Lamb Of God’s Randy Blythe, on
Secrets, the impactful first single from
Oni’s upcoming second album,
Loathing Light. “Randy’s a huge Iggy
Pop fan, so it was cool to get them both
on the same track,” he says.
That track was co-written by LOG’s
Mark Morton, while another song, War
Ender, features aggro-hip hop duo City

Morgue, but Jake is much more than
a dude with a great contacts book. Oni
has been his brainchild since 2014,
releasing their djenty debut album,
Ironshore, in 2016, but this is a complete
reboot. “The only similarity is that I’m
doing the vocals, and it’s the same
name,” says Jake. “But besides that, it’s
a completely different thing.”
This latest iteration swaps knotty
complexity for a more direct assault
inspired by 00s nu metal and hardcore.
“I want to make the music that I want
to hear,” says Jake. “I just want to leave
something cool behind.”

LOATHING LIGHT IS RELEASED
ON JUNE 17 VIA IRONSHORE

HANGMAN’S
CHAIR
“THEY’RE A FRENCH

band.
It’s like, doooom doom
– Type O Negative-ish,
in a way. I’ve known
them since the
beginning, as we have
common friends.
They’ve played in
French hardcore
bands for a long
time, and I knew
all their previous
bands!”
CARPENTER
BRUT

METALHAMMER.COM 29

HOARD
ALMIGHTY

BAPHOMET T-SHIRT
£28.99

Despite looking like a scary mofo, Baphomet’s
all about cosmic balance. So, let a feeling of
calm serenity wash over you with Blackcraft
Cult’s super-soft tee, and rest safe in the
knowledge that you look bloody awesome.
tinyurl.com/bapho-tee

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

SOULFLY BOX SET
£169.99

Hefting this eight-LP box set could prove
as harmful to your health as one of Max
Cavalera’s detuned riffs. Comprising the first
four albums, a stack of rare tracks and a book,
this is a serious return to the primitive.
tinyurl.com/soulfly-box

BLEED FROM WITHIN
SHRINE: ULTIMATE BUNDLE
NUCLEAR BLAST
£159.50

SOUNDING GRANDER, BALLSIER and downright sturdier than ever,
Bleed From Within are marking the release of sixth album Shrine with a deluxe
package that’s as hefty as the bounce on new songs Stand Down and Flesh And Stone.
You get the feeling the Scots’ triumphant open-top bus parade is imminent, and
although this mammoth bundle won’t get you a seat to watch it on Pall Mall, it
includes everything else. Your choice of orange or orange/silver marbled double
vinyl and digipack CD cover the physical music side, with a wall flag for extra
decoration. And when it comes to clothes you’re spoiled for choice, with three
different t-shirts to choose from, a longsleeve, snapback, and either a tie-dye
hoodie or natty windbreaker. Pharaohs have been entombed with less.
tinyurl.com/bleed-bundle

30 METALHAMMER.COM

CONJURER HOODIE
£30

Yes, yes, we all know that a band called
‘Conjurer’ should really be making cloaks
spangled with stars and moons by way of
merch, but there’s no denying that this
Páthos zip-up is also pretty special.
tinyurl.com/pathos-hoodie

HOARD ALMIGHTY

LONDON’S LOST VENUES VOL.2

VEGAN LEATHER JACKET

OCTOPUS DOOR HANDLES

More than just a history lesson, this fact-rich
tome documenting the capital’s lost music
venues is also a call to arms. Get to a gig if you
can, and help stop more iconic venues turning
into luxury flats!

This super-sweet, skull-emblazoned biker
jacket sure looks the part. The best bit?
It’s 100% cruelty-free, and didn’t have to
be peeled off a cow’s bum just so you could
look good.

Turn your pad into a cephalopad with these
magnificent octopoid handles. Sure, the
whopping price tag might make you feel like
a sucker, but what’s few squid for something
so unique?

tinyurl.com/lost-venues

tinyurl.com/vegan-leather

tinyurl.com/octo-doors

ELDER SCROLLS COOKBOOK

FRIDAY THE 13TH SNEAKERS

BLEEDING INTERNALLY BOOK

Whether you eat as daintily as an elf or
go up to your snout like a barbaric orc,
there are delicious treats aplenty herein
to satisfy the appetite of any diehard
Skyrim fan.

The lightweight design of these swish kicks
makes chasing down promiscuous teens at
Camp Crystal Lake a cinch, while the sturdy
treads mean you won’t slip in any pools of
blood. Now, where’s that machete?

Jason Christopher – go-to musical accomplice
for the likes of Corey Taylor, Prong and
Ministry – has lived, as your nanna would say,
‘a life’. This witty, pithy, memoir recounts
some of his tremendous highs and lows.

tinyurl.com/skyrim-feast

tinyurl.com/jason-walks

tinyurl.com/bleeding-book

METAL BIRTHDAY CARD

MUNICIPAL WASTE SHIRT

POWERWOLF VINYL SET

What better way to send birthday hails to
your metal-loving brethren than with this
delightfully spiky greeting card? We’ll bet
you a stick of gum that you won’t find
anything this cool on sodding Moonpig.

If you think subtlety’s overrated and want
to charge up your wardrobe, get a load of
this! It’s a mind-fryingly awesome shirt
celebrating the latest album from everyone’s
favourite crossover thrash revivalists.

Not content with simply watching Powerwolf’s
audacious Monumental Mass production? Get
yer hairy paws on this limited box set, which
features said event on wax alongside the
band’s towering 2019 Wacken performance.

tinyurl.com/necro-greets

tinyurl.com/brain-tee

tinyurl.com/mass-box

£14.99

£18

£3

£25

£41.99

£16

£594

£11.37/£14.99

£59.59

METALHAMMER.COM 31

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IRON MAIDEN HOLDINGS LLP.

WORDS: DAVE EVERLEY

Released in May 1992, Iron Maiden’s ninth album, Fear Of The Dark, was designed to future-proof Britain’s
biggest metal band for the decade ahead. Ironically, it ended up putting the band’s entire existence in jeopardy

IRON MAIDEN

IRON MAIDEN

IRON MAIDEN
n August 28, 1993, the decapitated
head of Bruce Dickinson was
shoved onto a metal spike in
front of several hundred Iron
Maiden fans by the band’s
deathless mascot, Eddie.
The symbolism was hard to
miss. This wasn’t just the climax
of the final show on the tour in
support of the previous year’s
Fear Of The Dark album, it was also
the last show of the singer’s 12year tenure with the metal icons.
The gig was being filmed at
Pinewood Studios near London
for an MTV special titled Raising
Hell. It was part rock concert, part magic show – the latter
courtesy of illusionist Simon Drake, who provided suitably
schlocky interludes involving audience members being
burned alive in coffins and semi-naked women having their
hearts torn out while tied to a rack.
The gory finale, involving Bruce being shoved in a ‘iron
maiden’ torture device before Eddie lumbered out to
separate the singer’s ‘head’ from his body, was the
culmination of a journey that had begun several months
earlier, with Bruce’s realisation that he no longer wanted to
be the singer in one of the world’s biggest metal bands.
Speaking to US TV journalist Charlie Rose in 2017, the
singer laid out his reasons for leaving. “I was having my
little artistic dark night of the soul,” he said. “I was thinking,
‘I am in an institution, and I will die in this institution if
I don’t do something about it.’”
His decision was as unexpected as it was drastic. Fear Of
The Dark hadn’t just righted the Iron Maiden ship after an
uncharacteristically wobbly period, it had updated their
musical and lyrical approach, jettisoning some of the
musical excesses of the past and bringing the band more in
line with changing contemporary musical tastes. Maiden’s
career didn’t exactly need saving, but Fear Of The Dark had
set them up for a new decade.
Now everything was in turmoil.

M

aiden started the 1990s in an unfamiliar
position: with their backs against the wall.
1988’s Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son was heavy
on proto-prog metal epics, and the band’s
first headline appearance at the Monsters Of Rock festival
and subsequent tour had seen the East London quintet
playing in front of an impressive wall of fake icebergs. But
as the new decade dawned, those kind of musical and visual
excesses were starting to feel outdated.
That problem, as bassist Steve Harris saw it, would be
easy enough to solve: they would go back to basics. Maiden’s
commander-in-chief had recently converted a barn on his
Essex estate into a studio, christening it Barnyard Studios,
and the band would convene there to record a new album
that stripped away the flab.
Their plans were thrown into chaos when guitarist Adrian
Smith left the band just before they were due to start
recording. He had become increasingly unhappy with life
in Iron Maiden, and the decision to record in Steve Harris’s
barn was the final straw. “Adrian wasn’t fired, but he didn’t
quit entirely willingly,” Bruce Dickinson later said.
There was a ready-made replacement at hand. Hartlepoolborn guitarist Janick Gers was a veteran of the 80s rock
scene, and had appeared on Bruce Dickinson’s debut solo
album, Tattooed Millionaire, released in May 1990.
Unfortunately, Maiden’s first album of the 90s was
underwhelming. Released in October 1990, No Prayer For The

36 METALHAMMER.COM

Dying lacked fire and energy. Even longtime Maiden artist
Derek Riggs’ cover seemed uninspired - Eddie bursting
out of a grave had been done bigger and better on 1985’s
Live After Death.
“No Prayer For The Dying was a huge backwards step,” Bruce
later acknowledged. “The fact is that it sounded terrible.”
The album didn’t impact drastically on Maiden’s career,
though its chart positions in the UK and US were lower
than its predecessor (No.2 and No.17 respectively, compared
to No.1 and No.12 for Seventh Son…). Steve Harris, ever
the staunch defender of all things Maiden, refused to
acknowledge any significant dip in quality.
“The album surprised quite a lot of people, but there are
a few good things on it,” he told a French magazine in 1996.
“I don’t really have many good memories of the tour, though.
Bruce was bored out of his brains, that much was obvious.”
“When Bruce came back from his solo tour, in 1990,
I realised then that he didn’t have the same fire onstage
with Maiden as he did with his own band,” said Steve.
“It seemed like he was going through the motions a bit.
So I asked him, ‘Are you still happy? And he assured us that
he was totally, 100% still there.”

B

ruce Dickinson may have been all-in on Iron
Maiden for now, but he knew something still
needed to change for the band to regain the ground
they’d lost with No Prayer For The Dying. Metallica’s
The Black Album, Nirvana’s Nevermind and Soundgarden’s
Badmotorfinger had been released within a two-month
period in the autumn of 1991, instantly reshaping the rock
landscape and leaving Maiden in danger of becoming
irrelevant, Bruce Dickinson feared.
“I was starting to think, ‘Well, I’d better have a serious
word with the chaps, and find out how far they are prepared
to go to take a chance with the band’s reputation in order to
try and do something artistically that’s really, really new,’”
Bruce told Metal Hammer in 1992. “So I had big chats with
Nicko [McBrain, drums] and with Dave [Murray, guitar]
and Janick and everybody, basically just playing devil’s
advocate the whole time, saying the world is really changing
– not like a bit, but a lot.”
Getting Iron Maiden to change overnight was like trying
to pull a handbrake turn in an oil tanker. Despite the
disappointment from some quarters at the way No Prayer
For The Dying had turned out, Steve Harris was adamant that
the band record the follow-up in Barnyard Studios too, this
time with Martin Birch as co-producer.
Happily, Maiden’s new songs were better. Breathless
opener Be Quick Or Be Dead – co-written by Bruce and Janick
– captured the energy of vintage Maiden, but drew its
inspiration not from fantasy, history or the supernatural but
from current hot-button news subjects – in this instance,
corporate corruption in general and recently deceased media
tycoon Robert Maxwell in particular.
The singer’s attempt to drag Maiden into the 1990s was
further evident on Fear Is The Key, which addressed the
public’s hypocritical reaction to the AIDS epidemic. It had
partly been inspired by the death of Queen frontman
Freddie Mercury in November 1991. “There’s a line that
goes, ‘Nobody cares ’til somebody famous dies’,” Bruce told
Hard Force magazine. “As long as the virus was confined
to homosexuals or drug-addicts, nobody gave a shit. It’s
only when celebrities started to die that the masses began
to feel concerned.”
Another Dickinson/Gers song, Wasting Love, could be
viewed as a companion piece of sorts. “It’s about those who
jump from one bed into another, those who sleep with
whoever comes their way, without giving or receiving
whatever they’re looking for, because they are very lonely,”

IRON MAIDEN

GETTY

Iron Maiden at 1992’s
Monsters Of Rock (left to
right): Steve Harris, Dave
Murray, Bruce Dickinson,
Janick Gers, Nicko McBrain

“FEAR OF THE DARK WILL
MAKE A HUGE IMPACT,
WE’RE GOING STRAIGHT
INTO THE 90s”
BRUCE DICKINSON

METALHAMMER.COM 37

IRON MAIDEN
said Bruce of the song. The slowburning track was the
closest Maiden had come to writing a ballad since 1980’s
Remember Tomorrow.
Even Steve Harris was updating his approach. The
bassist’s Afraid To Shoot Strangers was a seven-minute,
prog-tinged anthem inspired by the first Gulf War, which
had taken place at the beginning of 1991. The song centred
around the dilemma faced by a soldier who doesn’t want
to kill enemy soldiers, but knows he has to or someone
could kill him.
Afraid To Shoot Strangers was one of only two songs on
Fear Of The Dark that called back to past Maiden epics.
The other was the title track: seven minutes of building
malevolence reputedly inspired by the bassist’s own
nyctophobia that would instantly become a live favourite
and remain a staple of the band’s set to this day.
Of course, Maiden were too savvy to throw the baby out
with the bathwater. The album was bulked out with tracks
that wouldn’t have sounded out of place on their earlier
albums. Some were great (The Fugitive, the Charlotte The
Harlot-referencing From Here To Eternity), some less so –
The Apparition was forgettable at best, while the woeful
football hooligan anthem Weekend Warrior was more
Vauxhall Conference than Premier League.
Tellingly, Bruce and Steve didn’t write any new songs
together. The bassist put it down to circumstances, but it
meant there was little room for this pair of alpha dogs to
iron out any issues that were brewing.
In interviews at least, Bruce was in full cheerleader
mode. Fear Of The Dark, he insisted, was the album that
would reposition Maiden as a vital force for the 1990s,
a band that could go hold their own with the younger acts
they had inspired.
“There’s a break between Fear Of The Dark and the old
Maiden albums,” he told Hard Force magazine in 1992.
“I really believe that it will make a huge impact, we’re going
straight into the 90s, this time. When they’ll listen to it,
I hope they say, ‘We thought that the last Metallica was
good, but check this out, now!’”

F

ear Of The Dark was released on May 11, 1992. The
idea that this was the start of a new era for Maiden
was underlined by the cover. In a major break with
tradition, the band’s management invited artists to
submit illustrations for the album sleeve – until that point
the sole preserve of Derek Riggs, who had created Eddie and
whose artwork had adorned every Maiden cover since their
debut single, Running Free.
The image they opted to go with came from illustrator
Melvyn Grant, who reimagined Eddie as a feral forest-spirit
glaring malevolently from the bough of a tree as a full
moon hung in the sky behind him. They didn’t completely
dispense with the services of Derek Riggs – one of his
illustrations graced the cover of the album’s first single, Be
Quick Or Be Dead, but that would be the last time his artwork
appeared on any Iron Maiden sleeve.
These musical and visual shifts didn’t harm the album’s
chart positions. It returned Maiden to No.1 in the UK charts,
and reached No.12 in the US. The subsequent tour, too, was
a success. It included their second headlining show at the
Monsters Of Rock festival at Castle Donington, four years
after their first. That gig featured a guest appearance from
Adrian Smith during the encore of Running Free, a fleeting
glimpse of the three-guitar line-up that Maiden would
employ in the 21st century.
Significantly, it also included five dates in South America
(a sixth, in Chile, was cancelled due to pressure from
religious groups). Maiden had played a one-off show in
Brazil at 1985’s Rock In Rio festival, but this was the first

38 METALHAMMER.COM

Dave and Steve onstage at
Vorst Nationaal, Brussels,
Belgium, on August 17, 1992

time they’d properly toured the continent. The rabid
reception that greeted them showed there was life beyond
North America, Europe and Japan.
The first leg of the Fear Of The Dark tour ended in
November 1992, after which Bruce Dickinson flew to Los
Angeles to work on a second solo album, but something
was nagging at him. He’d tried to raise his concerns during
the tour about Maiden’s unwillingness to address what the
singer saw as the band’s flaws.
“Everyone looked at me as if I had lost my mind,” he wrote
in his 2017 autobiography, What Does This Button Do?. “Maybe
I had, or maybe we were on the slow trajectory to a luxurious
creative extinction.”
It was while he was in Los Angeles that he picked up
a copy of the LA Times that was lying on the floor. Flicking
through it, he came across the Quote Of The Day section,
featuring an epigram from the 19th-century author Henry
James: “All growth is a leap in the dark, a spontaneous
unpremeditated act without the benefit of experience.”
The quote resonated with him on a deep level. “At that
moment, I decided to leave Iron Maiden,” he recalled.
Stepping away from one of the world’s biggest metal
bands was easier said than done. He had to inform his
bandmates, of course, but Maiden’s stalwart manager Rod
Smallwood was due to visit Bruce in the studio imminently,
and it made sense for the singer to inform him first.
“I said, ‘I’ve got some good news and some bad news,’”
Bruce told the manager. “The bad news is that I feel I have
to leave the band, so I thought I’d tell you first. The good
news is now you have a whole new solo artist to manage.”

IRON MAIDEN

Writer Jason Arnopp recalls
the mounting tensions on
Bruce Dickinson’s ‘farewell’
tour with Iron Maiden

“I TOLD
ROD, OUR
MANAGER,
‘I’VE GOT
SOME GOOD
NEWS AND
SOME BAD
NEWS…’”
GETTY. JASON ARNOPP: PRESS/JASON ARNOPP.

BRUCE DICKINSON

The singer offered to tell Steve Harris himself, but
Smallwood blocked that suggestion. “I’m sure his mind was
already spinning damage limitation and making plans to
avoid rock’n’roll Chernobyl in the media.”
One complicating factor was that Maiden were due to kick
off the second leg of the Fear Of The Dark tour in March 1993.
Bruce agreed to honour his commitments, though Steve
Harris later claimed that the rest of the band only found out
about his decision relatively late in the day.
“I said, ‘How can we go out and tour and look people in
the eye and know there’s someone up there that doesn’t
want to be there?’” the bassist said in Iron Maiden’s official
biography, Run To The Hills, in 1999. “But Rod said, ‘He says
he’s up for doing it and he’s just gonna leave at the end,
and it’ll be like a nice sort of finale,’ and all that. And I said,
‘OK. If it’s taken in that light, then that’s OK.’ Of course,
I totally regret it now.”

T

he Iron Maiden that kicked off the Real Live
Tour on March 25, 1993 in Faro, Portugal were
in a peculiar position: a major band playing
a high-profile tour with a singer who wanted out.
Publicly, both parties adopted a grin-and-bear-it approach.
Behind the scenes, though, things were less than rosy.
Tensions quickly grew as the tour progressed. Steve claimed
the singer would step up to the plate at key shows, but phone
it in when the stakes weren’t as high.
“He may as well have not turned up at all some nights,”
Steve said in Run To The Hills. “And that’s when we all really
began to feel bitterly towards him. Not because he was

On April 16, 1993,
Metal Hammer
writer Jason
Arnopp joined
Iron Maiden
in Bremen,
Germany, on
what had been
billed as Bruce
Dickinson’s
farewell tour
with the band.
The escalating tension between the
outgoing vocalist and his soon-to-beformer bandmates was immediately
obvious. While admitting to feeling
a mixture of disappointment, sorrow,
and anger at Bruce’s decision to quit,
Steve Harris insisted, “If he can’t give
Maiden 100%, we don’t want him in
the band,” adding, “I think he’s maybe
made a mistake.” Speaking to Jason
at 2am in a hotel bar, a ‘refreshed’ and
unguarded Nicko McBrain, unaware he
was being recorded, was less diplomatic,
suggesting that the singer had his head
turned by US music industry “wankers”:
“He’s going his way, we’re going ours,”
the drummer said. “Fuck ’im, let’s get
a new singer… What I feel, although
in a positive way rather than a hateful
one, is good riddance.”
“This on-the-road feature gave me
a rare opportunity to interview a band
when they’re at a genuinely pivotal
moment,” Jason recalls.
“I don’t regret secretly recording Nicko
McBrain’s conversation,” he insists. “I do
wonder whether he was actually fully
aware he was being taped and didn’t
care. A few months later, I went to an
Iron Maiden party, where the drummer
grabbed me around the throat, and
pinned me against a wall. It was an
initially scary moment, until I realised it
was all in fun… Behind him, Steve Harris
stood with a beer, laughing. He told me
he thought it was a good feature. It did,
after all, display how passionate the
remaining members of Iron Maiden
were about their band and their future.
“I tend to think that rock bands
really are like marriages. After a while,
someone has a mid-career crisis, and
goes off to play around. Nine times out
of 10 they’ll come back for some torrid
make-up sex.”
TO READ THAT CLASSIC IRON MAIDEN
INTERVIEW, AND ENCOUNTERS WITH
METALLICA, KORN AND MORE, GRAB
A COPY OF JASON ARNOPP’S FROM
THE FRONT LINES OF ROCK BOOK
AVAILABLE FROM JASONARNOPP.COM

METALHAMMER.COM 39

IRON MAIDEN
Scream for me, Wembley!
Bruce giving it some
welly in May 1993 on
the Real Live Tour

Meet the man who gave
Eddie a makeover…

Given that Derek Riggs’ iconic artwork
was almost as integral to Iron Maiden’s
early success as Steve Harris’s galloping
basslines, the band’s decision to invite
other artists to pitch ideas for the cover
of Fear Of The Dark was a bold, and
potentially alienating, call.
“We just wanted to see if we could do
something new with Eddie,” Steve Harris
explained at the time. “It didn’t mean we
didn’t want Derek involved again, we just
thought for the album sleeve itself we
would try and go for something a bit
different this time.”
Derek actually tendered his vision
for the artwork, with a ghoulish Eddie
looming over an oblivious, sleeping,
victim-in-waiting, but the group’s
management opted to go with a more
surreal depiction of Maiden’s cadaverous
sixth member, a half-tree, half-sinewy
night demon.
“My approach… was to see how
sinister I could make Eddie,” Londonborn artist Melvyn Grant told the Italian
fanzine Eddie’s. “We’ve had all the
physical violence with the blood and
sharp things, now let’s instil something
more psychological.”
The striking, unsettling imagery was
well received by the Maiden faithful
and the band’s notoriously fastidious
manager Rod Smallwood, and the artist
went on to collaborate with the band on
the Virtual XI, Death On The Road and The
Final Frontier album sleeves.

Leg up! Steve Harris, Dave Murray and
Janick Gers on the Wembley stage

40 METALHAMMER.COM

IRON MAIDEN

“WE BEGAN TO
FEEL BITTERLY
TOWARDS BRUCE,
HE REALLY FUCKED
THAT LAST TOUR
UP FOR US”

STEVE HARRIS

leaving, but because he really fucked that last tour up for us
by not giving it everything he could have, which he promised
us he would.” The bassist later expressed a desire to “kill”
the singer for his alleged behaviour.
The private acrimony occasionally spilled out into public.
When an English journalist asked Nicko McBrain if their
singer had “shat” on his soon-to-be-ex bandmates, the
drummer couldn’t contain his anger.
“He’s fucking leaving the band, you dipshit!” he ranted.
“He’s said, ‘Fuck you, I’m off!’ If that ain’t shitting on you
then what the fuck is?”
“Everybody was saying how sad it was, but by then we
couldn’t wait to get rid of the guy, to be brutally honest with
you,” Nicko admitted in Run To The Hills. “We just wanted
to get it over with.”
Bruce gave one final interview as a member of Iron
Maiden on the day of the Raising Hell show. Speaking to
French magazine Rock Hard, he made his disillusionment
at the state of contemporary rock and metal scene clear.
“They’re not really interesting anymore,” he said of
traditional rock gigs. “Rave parties are exactly what the
rock concerts represented in the 1970s,” he said. “That’s
where you find drugs, girls and the freedom to react the way
you really want.”
He also found time to get in one last dig at his bandmates.
“Steve is Iron Maiden,” he said. ‘It’s his thing, his creature,
nobody else but him can claim the tiniest part of the band.
He’s got his own recording studio, makes us rehearse and
record the albums at his place. The other members of the
band are delighted to work in such conditions, good for
them. As far as I’m concerned, I thought a band was
a collective thing.”

T

GETTY

he aftermath of Bruce’s departure was predictably
bitter. Both sides took jabs at the other in the press:
Bruce wrote Maiden off as outdated and Steve
Harris as dictatorial, Steve all but called the singer
a traitor for leaving in the manner he did.
The weight of Bruce’s history with Maiden didn’t
necessarily mean he was guaranteed success as a solo star,
and so it proved. His first two post-Maiden albums, 1994’s
Balls To Picasso and 1996’s Skunkworks, touched on everything
from funk rock to Soundgarden-inspired quasi-grunge, but
the public was unconvinced. Even a shift back to more
familiar territory with 1997’s Accident Of Birth did little to
restore his profile to pre-split levels.
Maiden themselves didn’t fare much better. The X Factor
and Virtual XI, the albums they recorded with Bruce’s
replacement, former Wolfsbane singer Blaze Bayley, were
laboured and uninspiring. When the inevitable happened
and Bruce Dickinson rejoined Maiden in 1999 – bringing
Adrian Smith back with him – their fans breathed
a collective sigh of relief. Not least because the singer
came across as a man with his hunger renewed.
“I don’t want to equal people’s expectations,” he stated,
“I want to exceed them. This band is far better now than it
was at its supposed peak… We’re going to be unstoppable.”
And what of Fear Of The Dark 30 years on? While it’s
nowhere near as beloved as classic collections such as The
Number Of The Beast or Powerslave, it stands as a pivotal
album for the band – a valiant attempt to navigate
a changing world that would ultimately be overshadowed
by subsequent events. It was the record Iron Maiden had
to make to move forwards.

IRON MAIDEN HEADLINE DOWNLOAD FESTIVAL
ON SATURDAY JUNE 11 – FOR TICKETS HEAD
TO DOWNLOADFESTIVAL.CO.UK. THEIR LATEST
ALBUM, SENJUTSU, IS OUT NOW VIA PARLOPHONE
METALHAMMER.COM 41

GETTY

FAITH NO MORE

FAITH NO MORE

Having sold one million albums with 1989’s The Real Thing
album, Faith No More were poised for superstardom.
Then they released the dark, twisted and hateful Angel Dust,
and the world wasn’t ready
WORDS: PAUL BRANNINGAN

FAITH NO MORE
xl wasn’t angry, just disappointed.
“Why do you hate me?” the Guns
N’ Roses frontman asked, a note of
genuine hurt in his voice. “It’s like
I went away and came back home
to find you guys fucked my wife.”
Standing beside the singer in
GN’R’s backstage compound at
Orlando’s Citrus Bowl stadium, the normally easy-going
Slash was equally forthright. “If you don’t like it here,
just fucking leave,” the guitarist told the three sheepish,
shame-faced musicians standing before him. “It can’t
be like this.”
Mike Patton, Bill Gould and Roddy Bottum knew this
confrontation was coming, given that almost every day
for the past three-and-a-half months the trio had been
bad-mouthing the Los Angeles hard rock superstars both
onstage and in the media. Most of their peers would have
been thrilled to be hand-picked to open for Guns N’ Roses
on the spring/summer 1992 European stadium tour booked
to promote the quintet’s epic Use Your Illusion albums, but
Faith No More had always been a particularly contrary,
perverse and antagonistic unit. From day one of the trek,
which launched at Slane Castle in Ireland on May 16, the
San Francisco band had made no attempt whatsoever to
disguise their disgust and disdain for the “circus” they had
willingly signed up to.
Just one month before the September 2 face-off with Axl
and Slash in Florida, Select magazine had published Bill
Gould’s scathing, scornful critique of the GN’R roadshow,
a brutally honest assessment the bassist knew full well would
soon enough come to the attention of the headline act.
“Every band in the world might think they want to
open for Guns N’ Roses,” Bill told English journalist Mark
Putterford, “but lemme tell you, it’s been a real ugly personal
experience, having to deal with all the shit that surrounds
this fuckin’ circus. I’ve always hated that aspect of rock
music and I’ve never wanted to be part of it, so to find myself
being associated with a tour this big kinda sucks.”
Just hours before their scheduled summit with their
understandably pissed-off hosts, Faith No More had actually
taken a group vote to determine whether or not they would
walk away from the tour. Today, speaking from his home in
San Francisco, Bill Gould won’t share exactly how that vote
broke down, but does admit that his personal preference was
to withdraw. Having been out-voted by his colleagues, being
subjected to Axl and Slash’s hour-long dressing-down was
as embarrassing as it was excruciating for the bassist. Before
dismissing the trio, Axl asked Bill directly what exactly he
had hoped to achieve with his incendiary diatribe in Select.
“We just try to stir up as much shit as we can,” came the
reply. “We feel like that’s our job.”
There was a beat of silence before the ridiculousness of
the situation caused Axl and Slash to burst out laughing.
The show would go on.
o be fair, Faith No More had never fitted in to any scene
or movement. Formed soon after Bill and Roswell
Christopher ‘Roddy’ Bottum, his best friend from
childhood, and neighbour in the upscale Hancock Park
district of Los Angeles, moved to San Francisco to attend
college in Berkeley, the group drew inspiration from the Bay
Area thrash scene, the city’s fecund punk community and its
long-established psychedelic rock communes, but always
had issues with the conventions and orthodoxies that defined
each genre. Such was their desire to avoid categorisation
that, in their earliest incarnations, the group elected to step
out with a different singer (among them a young Courtney
Love) and different setlist for every show they played.

44 METALHAMMER.COM

“We were having fun being stupid kids,” Bill told this
writer in 2002. “It wasn’t so much music, as just expression.
We just played whatever came into our heads. And that
felt kinda good.”
By accident more than design, however, the mercurial,
maverick quintet began to develop a loyal and diverse cult
following, swelled in 1985 by the success of their sarky,
signature anthem, We Care A Lot. Sacking charismatic
frontman Chuck Mosley in 1988 following a rehearsal room
fist-fight with Bill - “Having a working relationship with
him became really impossible,” the bassist insisted - seemed
suicidal at the time, but the group re-emerged the following
year with a new vocalist, 21-year-old Mike Patton, and
a slick, if subversive, third album, The Real Thing, with
genuine crossover appeal. It took well over a year for the
record to connect at radio and MTV, but having sold just
45,000 copies in its initial six months on sale, in 1990 the
album caught fire when rap-rock single Epic charted, going
on to sell one million copies in America.
“It was like a sick joke,” Bill recalled. “For the past 12
months we’d worked our asses off and everyone had been
telling us how great we were, but we weren’t selling any
records and we were fucking broke. And then just as the label
told us that the record was effectively dead, it all kicked off,
and we had to start all over again. By the end we hated those
songs so fucking much.”
Such was the group’s enhanced profile, that when they
regrouped in San Francisco’s Coast Recorders studio in
January 1992 to work on their fourth album, MTV sent
a film crew along to document what was expected to be
the decade’s next blockbuster hit. But when the frontman
told an interviewer “The only way to really progress is to be
ashamed of what you’ve just done”, it was evident that Faith
No More had no intention of pandering to expectations.
“Patton spoke for all of us,” says drummer Mike Bordin
today on a Zoom call from San Francisco. “Our attitude was:
the past is the past, and we’re not going to live on it, and
we’re not gonna fucking try to recreate it. Because that’s
bullshit, it’s dishonest. We were never going to be a vending
machine, serving up the same product. That’s just not what
this band was built to do.
“Part of the mythology around Angel Dust is that we were
trying to do this or that, trying to alienate people. We
weren’t trying to do fuck-all except make a really fucking
good record.”
As both Bill and Mike Bordin recall, their early weeks at
Coast Recorders were spent jamming and “fooling around”
,
experimenting with sounds and samples and song
structures. “We were united in wanting to do something
different,” recalls Bill, “but everyone had their own ideas of
what ‘different’ looked and sounded like.”
“And, remember, at this point, we still didn’t know Patton
that well, so it took a while figuring each other out. And it
was clear from early on that our guitarist, Jim [Martin], wasn’t
gravitating to the new songs in the way the rest of us were.”
In Faith No More’s definitive biography, Small Victories,
producer Matt Wallace recalls that Jim’s exact description
of Faith No More’s new material was “gay disco”. Inevitably,
tensions between the metal-loving guitarist and his
bandmates grew.
“I respect Jim as a guitar player, and the stuff he added to
the group has always been really good,” says Bill, “but we
had a hard time communicating. It was a struggle, it was
antagonistic, absolutely.”
“The feeling was that Jim was intentionally subverting
the record,” Matt Wallace revealed.
For his part, Jim told a UK rock magazine that making the
album was “very unpleasant”. Bill’s memory is that, even
as he was coaxing/bullying contributions out of Jim, the

FAITH NO MORE
Faith No More in New York City
on July 28, 1992 (L-R): Mike
Bordin, Bill Gould, Mike Patton,
Roddy Bottum, Jim Martin

“NO ONE COULD
UNDERSTAND WHY
WE WERE FUCKING
WITH THE FORMULA”

GETTY

BILL GOULD

METALHAMMER.COM 45

FAITH NO MORE
guitarist was telling anyone who’d listen that his band’s new
songs “sucked”.
“We knew we were making a challenging record,” says
Bill. “And so we had to be really, really solid among
ourselves, that what we were doing was the right thing to
do. More than Angel Dust being a ‘fuck you’ to anyone, it was
like, ‘If this is our shot, and it might not work,then let’s all
feel good about it.’ And it was obvious that Jim didn’t. And
by the end of the tour cycle, it was clear that Jim had to go
for us to continue.
“But it was a complicated time. The Real Thing did really
well, and that was the first time, personally, that I ever got
any professional validation in my life for what I did. People
were taking what we were doing somewhat seriously, and it
meant a lot to me for us to really drive that home. So any
kind of energy that diluted from that really got to me.”
aith No More previewed their new album for their
record company president Bob Biggs at the end of
February 1992. Bob could not disguise his unease with
what he heard. It’s now part of the mythology of the album
that he delivered the brutal line “I hope nobody bought
houses” when the playback ended, though the band’s
manager is also credited, in some tellings of this anecdote,
with this zinger.
Angel Dust was no one’s idea of a hit record. Dark and
twisted, and occasionally almost unlistenable, it was shot
through with self-loathing and disgust and paranoia and
misanthropic spite. Beneath its surface sheen, The Real
Thing had its trangressive moments - the easy-listening
Edge Of The World was written from a paedophile’s
viewpoint, The Morning After outlined the aftermath of
a murder - but there was a genuine sense of revulsion
running right through its follow-up, from the mocking,
viciously sarcastic opener Land Of Sunshine through to
the white trash ramblings of RV, from the nightmarish
screeches of Malpractice and the unhinged, edge-ofbreakdown Caffeine through to the deceptively perky
Be Aggressive, Roddy Bottum’s graphic take on sub/dom
fellatio (‘You’re the master and I take it on my knees’) and
on to Jim’s brutal composition, Jizzlobber. There were
moments of great beauty too - the melodic majesty of
Midlife Crisis, the hooky Everything’s Ruined, a haunting
take on John Barry’s Midnight Cowboy - but the pervading
impression was that Angel Dust was a knowing, wilful act
of self-sabotage.
“No one could understand why we were fucking with the
formula,” Bill told this writer in 2002. “The key phrase from
the label was ‘commercial suicide’.”
“We were challenged at every turn,” recalls Mike Bordin.
“Management were like, ‘Are you sure you wanna do this?
This is weird.’ The label basically said,
‘What the fuck are you doing? This
is not frat boy goodtime music!’ And
I want to say clearly, that yes, we were
challenged at every turn, sometimes
internally, sometimes externally, but
we made the fucking record that we
wanted to make.”
“One early review said, ‘This
is possibly the least commercial
follow-up to a hit record in the history
of recorded music.’ And we took pride
in that, 100%, everyone loved that shit. But also, deep down
you knew, it wasn’t going to work for a mass market.”
Released on June 8, 1992, Angel Dust entered the UK
album chart at No.2, and debuted at No.10 in America, where
it racked up 500,000 sales in just three months. But the
perception was that Faith No More had fucked up, big time.

Just a few more steps
to your left, Jim…

“We over-compensated by saying we didn’t give a shit,”
recalls Bill. “It was like, if we were gonna get shot in
the face, we’ll pull the trigger ourselves. It was a bit of
a juvenile way of going at it.”
Certainly, from the outside, pushing the record first
to Guns N’ Roses’ audience seemed a typically perverse
move. Today Mike Bordin point-blank
refuses to see the GN’R tour in Europe as
anything but a wonderful opportunity
- “I love Guns N’ Roses, and I’m
eternally fucking grateful to them for
putting us on their stage, and allowing
their audience to get a two by four right
across the teeth every fucking day” but admits that opening for GN’R and
Metallica on their co-headline US
stadium tour was “difficult”.
“You had Metallica playing The
Black Album, and Guns playing the hits from Appetite [For
Destruction] and Use Your Illusion, and we’re out there playing
Be Aggressive and it didn’t come across. People were like, ‘Get
off, I wanna hear Enter Sandman!’ We were standing between
these two massive redwood [and] sequoia trees, and they’re
300 feet tall and 1,000 years old, massive and eternal, and we

“ANGEL DUST WAS
ALWAYS PERCEIVED
AS US GOING IN THE
WRONG DIRECTION”

46 METALHAMMER.COM

BILL GOULD

FAITH NO MORE

GETTY

Bill Gould on Angel Dust’s
most provocative track,
Be Aggressive

were a tiny fern on the ground that needed some sunshine…
and that may not have been forthcoming.
“But look, we didn’t expect to be Whitesnake or Bon Jovi,
we didn’t go into this band wanting to own 15 houses and
three Learjets and have 17 supermodels on speed dial,” he
laughs. “We knew we were a challenge because we were
selling something that people didn’t know. If you’re dealing
with unknown quantities, it can be tricky. Maybe 30 million
people didn’t buy that record, but it meant something to
those who did.”
Bill sighs when asked to evaluate Angel Dust three
decades on.
“Angel Dust was always perceived at the time as us going
in the wrong direction,” he says after some reflection.
“On The Real Thing, it kinda felt like we were attractive to
people, but on Angel Dust, it just didn’t feel that way. It felt
like we had to take a beating for the way we ran our show,
so it was never that gratifying.”
“We made a lot of stupid mistakes,” he admits. “But we
were real, we were honest. I really like it and when we signed
off on it, we were happy; I thought, I can live with this,
however things go. And, you know, honestly, I can still live
with it. People tell me that it’s a record that changed their
lives, that opened their minds. I think we did well.

“No other rock band would dare
write a song like Be Aggressive,”
Faith No More’s longtime producer
Matt Wallace once said, and the
man had a point; in the 30 years
since its release, the track’s mix of
perky cheerleader chants, dirty
metallic guitar and lyrics detailing
sado-masochistic gay sex has yet to
be replicated. So outside-the-box
was Roddy Bottum’s masterpiece
that even the usually unshockable
Bill Gould thought his best friend
had gone too far.
“When I first heard the lyrics Roddy
wrote, I thought, ‘Why the fuck
would you do that?’” Bill admits.
“But not because it was a homoerotic song. It was more that, where
I came from, writing songs about sex
was a cheap way to go. Madonna
does shit like that, not Faith No
More. So that was my initial reaction,
but I let it go, because it was Roddy’s
song and it was important to him.
“Now, of course, I think it’s an
absolutely brilliant song,” he laughs,
“and I’m completely happy that we
did it. Sometimes you have to trust
other people. But we’re a weird
group of people and that’s not always
easy. Roddy was my friend since
we were kids and he never told me
he was gay. I found that out reading
a magazine. Roddy and I connect
on so much, but on some basic
things, like communication, we have
some real flaws!”

METALHAMMER.COM 47

PRESS/ADRIENNE BEACCO

CHRIS JERICHO

CHRIS JERICHO

THE HAMMER INTERVIEW

CHRIS
JERICHO
From WWF and WWE wrestling champion to gold-plated
rock star and controversy-inciting podcast presenter, Fozzy
frontman Chris Jericho has had a storied and stellar
life that shows no sign of slowing down
WORDS: STEPHEN HILL

CHRIS JERICHO

W

hen Christopher Keith Irvine
was born on November 9 1970,
no one could have foreseen that
he would go on to amass one of
the most eclectic and impressive
CVs of… well, pretty much anyone
you care to mention. Today you know him as Chris Jericho,
one of the greatest professional wrestlers ever to grace the
sport, frontman of the increasingly successful heavy metal
band Fozzy, actor, author, and host of the hugely popular
Talk Is Jericho podcast. It’s incredible that the young man who
grew up listening to rock’n’roll and consuming professional
wrestling on cable television in Winnipeg, Canada, has gone
on to achieve iconic status in so many fields.
“People often ask me when the music started getting
a look-in after the wrestling,” he smiles. “The truth is, it
was always there – I was always doing it. It’s just that I got
recognition as a wrestler first. People would say when Fozzy
started, ‘Oh, when did you first want to be in a band?’ And
I’d say, ‘Oh, I dunno, about 20 years ago!’ I’ve never been
one to limit myself to one thing, I always wanted it all.”
It’s fair to say he got it all. We sat down with one of
metal’s most charismatic characters, to find out how
his story unfolded.
What are your memories of
your childhood?
“Well, my father [Ted Irvine] played in
the NHL, the hockey equivalent of the
Premier League, from 1967-1977. So,
my first few years we moved around
a lot. We started off in New York City,
St. Louis, and then ended up in Winnipeg
in Canada, which is where he was from.
I had a famous father who was a pro
athlete; that maybe rubbed off on me in a little bit of
a way. But, I remember, I always only ever had two goals:
I wanted to be in a rock’n’roll band and I wanted to be
a wrestler, and I just worked on how to manifest those
two things.”

have helped, but definitely, literally and figuratively, he
certainly gave me a lot of support. Which made it easier for
my mom to accept, too.”
When did music first come into your life?
“My dad was really into rock’n’roll – he had the big stack
of LPs, and the Beatles were the ones that stood out to me.
I became a huge Beatles fan by the time I was 10 years old,
and I don’t mean I knew the words to Yellow Submarine –
I mean I knew everything about the acid trips and who
[inventor/friend] Magic Alex is and the concept behind the
[music-hating characters] Blue Meanies. That was the first
band I really got into. But when I went to elementary school,
nobody liked the Beatles! Instead, I just saw all the girls
wearing the cut-off rock shirts with Maiden, Priest,
Scorpions and Ozzy. He was the main one: Ozzy, Ozzy, Ozzy.
So, I thought that if I was going to be able to talk to the girls
then I needed to know what music they liked. I bought
a cassette tape of Blizzard Of Ozz and it was a complete
game-changer. Then I became a heavy metal fanatic.”
How about the wrestling?
“My grandmother was a really big wrestling fan, and
I remember watching it with her. She passed away in 1978,
so I was seven, I had been watching it that long. She loved
the good guys and hated the bad guys, and I secretly loved
the bad guys. There was a wrestler
called Jesse ‘The Body’ Ventura, and she
just hated him. I thought he was cool as
shit; he had all the feathers and a jewel
in his chin and I thought he was fucking
great. That was kinda how that all
started. Early on I loved music and I loved
wrestling, and that’s just kept on being
cultivated throughout my entire life.”

“FOZZY WERE LIKE
THE ORIGINAL
STEEL PANTHER”

How big an influence was your father on your life
and career?
“Your dad is just your dad, right? I remember not really
realising that it was a big deal he was a pro athlete until
I got to about 16 or 17 years old! ‘Whatever, it’s just my dad!’
What was important was my dad’s attitude towards
me, because when I expressed these goals I had with
wrestling and with the band, he recognised that same
thing he had been through. So, subliminally, it might

50 METALHAMMER.COM

How about the first gig?
“About 1989 in Winnipeg. My high school band was called
Scimitar, the sword that Sinbad The Sailor uses, and the ‘T’
in the name was the sword on our logo. It was a battle of the
bands; you had to play one original and one cover. Our cover
was Peace Sells… by Megadeth. We were a three-piece band,
and when the guitar was meant to come in, the cable fell out
of the guitar and we had to stop and start again. The worst
thing you could do! Never stop, you gotta go!”
The 90s was an incredible time of flux for both the music
and wrestling industries. What was it like to be in the
middle of all of that for you?
“It was certainly an interesting period. In the early part
of the 90s a lot of my wrestling career happened abroad,
and the music was changing a lot in the States. Honestly,
if it weren’t for Pantera, there wouldn’t have been a metal
band to hang your hat on at that time. I could kinda get with
grunge, but when it became the nu metal thing, I just didn’t
get it. Limp Bizkit? What the hell is that? I still don’t get it.

PRESS/ADRIENNE BEACCO

How hard was it growing up in a country as vast
as Canada?
“When you’re a kid, it’s not so much about what is around
you, you don’t know what’s out there. That’s one of the
things I loved about wrestling; you could see wrestling
from Florida or New York or wherever, and then you start
looking at rock magazines and seeing all these bands from
around the world: ‘Wow! There’s a heavy metal band from
Japan! I guess rock is this universal language!’ That’s
cool. There was also a big British influence in Canada,
because we’re part of the Commonwealth and we’re
brothers, don’t ya know! So, I would watch all these
classic British shows on CBC, kinda the sister to the BBC.
I remember watching The Goodies, then it turned into
Monty Python and onto Fawlty Towers, so I just had this
huge influence of British rock’n’roll and comedy in my life
from 10, 11 years old. We just had a cool sense of a worldwide
flavour where I grew up.”

Do you remember your first wrestling match?
“Oh, sure. October 2, 1990 in Ponoka, Alberta. The venue
was called the Moose Hall, there were only 125 people there,
but it felt like Madison Square Garden or The O2, people
screaming and going crazy. It was me and a guy I was training
with, Lance Storm, who has also gone on to have a fantastic
wrestling career. It was a 10-minute draw and I got paid $30 in
a white envelope. At the time I had been working in a deli for
five bucks an hour, and I worked out that I got paid almost as
much money in 10 minutes as I did in an eight-hour shift!
I was rich! Hearing the crowd cheer and react, and getting
paid to do something you love to do was the greatest feeling.”

CHRIS JERICHO
I was in places like Europe and Japan, though, where the
bands I loved were still respected. You could still see
Helloween and Dio and Maiden in arenas in Japan, for
example, so I’m not sure in the early 90s I appreciated just
how hard it was for metal bands in the States. It wasn’t
really until Avenged Sevenfold came along that I really
found a newer metal band that I understood.”

Chris Jericho: he interrupted
The Rock and lived to
tell the tale

But wrestling really thrived in that era…
“It did. I joined WCW in 1996 and, it was funny, the main
event scene there wasn’t great but the undercard was
incredible. Hulk Hogan vs Roddy Piper wasn’t such
a great match in 1998, but it drew big crowds, and under
it was us – me, Dean Malenko, Eddie Guerrero, Booker T,
Rey Mysterio – having these great matches. WWE had
a terrible undercard but the main event was Bret Hart
vs Shawn Michaels or Steve Austin or whatever. Those
matches were incredible! It took me a while to realise
that my position was of a place where I was never going
to break through, and that’s when I joined WWE in 1999,
which is when I went to the next level. But wrestling as
a whole was so popular from ’98-2002, it was a boom
period. Those four or five years were like being in a heavy
metal band from ’82-’88. You could do amazing things
because the culture was geared towards it.”
You made your debut in the middle of one of The Rock’s
promos as well…
“Yeah, it was before the millennium and I used the Y2K thing,
changed it to Y2J, and had this clock counting down. The
countdown ended while The Rock was in the ring during
Monday Night Raw and I came out and interrupted him;
it doesn’t get much bigger than that. It set the tone for my
time in the WWE. I was one of the first guys to make the
switch from the WCW, so it was a great start and it was
indicative of my time in that company.”
Did you feel there was some suspicion towards you when
Fozzy first came about?
“Oh, for sure. Because it was Chris Jericho the wrestler,
people thought it was just a gimmick band at the start, and,
to be fair, back then it kind of was. It all started because I met
Rich Ward from Stuck Mojo backstage at a WCW show and we
just hit it off. So, there was a little bit of suspicion, but that’s
how Fozzy started. We were just doing covers but we wanted
to do more and, not a lot of people know this, but our first
record deal was signed by Johnny Zazula, who recently passed
away, but who signed Metallica and Anthrax to Megaforce
Records. Fozzy were the last band he ever signed.”
You certainly evolved from the more tongue-in-cheek,
early incarnation of Fozzy
“Yeah, we were this kind of Blues Brothers thing. We
had fake names and this whole backstory, a Travelling
Wilburys-type thing [an 80s supergroup featuring Bob
Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Roy Orbison and
Tom Petty]. We were sort of like the original Steel Panther;
we did a kind of mockumentary thing that was on MTV,
so we had a lot of steam straight out of the gate. We wanted
to do more and we decided to start trying to write our own
stuff; that gimmick rode its course pretty quickly. It took
a long time to get people’s respect, but it feels like such
a long time ago now.”
The UK really took to Fozzy. How big of a deal was it
to finally achieve that first Main Stage slot at Download
festival in 2014?
“Well, we’d played there a few times over the years, and
I knew that we were pretty low down on the bill, but by the

METALHAMMER.COM 51

CHRIS JERICHO

Fozzy… or is it Steel Panther?

time we got onstage the place was fucking packed; there
were 30,000 people there. It felt like we were making a mark
and really getting to people. Every Download experience has
been better than the last – we have a great connection with
the UK audience. I’ll never forget our first UK show was at
Nottingham Rock City, and I walked out onstage and thought
I had walked onto the wrong stage because it was so packed.
I just couldn’t believe that many people had come to see us,
and the UK has always been so good to us from day one, and
we continue to build and build.”
How did the Talk Is Jericho podcast come about?
“I used to do a radio show on SiriusXM, and I’d play music
and do 10-minute interviews. That show ended, and then
one day Steve Austin called me to be on his podcast. The
people that were putting it together were looking for other
people to host their own shows. I really enjoyed doing Steve’s,
so I said, ‘Sure, but it can’t just be a wrestling podcast. I love
music, comedy, the paranormal…’ You know, I’m curious,
I want to ask people about all this stuff. That’s always been
my model; if I find it interesting, I want to do it.”
How quickly did you take to it?
“Well, at first, I didn’t really know what they were. I thought
it was some college radio thing, podcasts weren’t the known
entity that they are now. Luckily, I stuck at it and got
a foothold, eight-and-a-half years later, and I’ve been able

52 METALHAMMER.COM

to make a good go of it, and built up a great fanbase of people
that trust my judgement and who I have on the show.”
You’ve had a few pretty controversial guests on as well…
“Yeah, I am not saying I agree with everyone on the show,
but I am interested in conspiracy theories. I’ve had a few
on the show, but it makes for a great story. I had a guy who
believed he was attacked by a family of Bigfoot. Now, we
can laugh, but he believed it, and for 60 minutes it was
a riveting story. I like that side of things. If you think you’re
going to be influenced by my show… you got a lot more
problems to worry about.”
You’re a committed Christian. How much has your faith
been a motivating factor in your career?
“It’s huge. Because, I don’t want to get too philosophical, but
if all these achievements are just random chance, then what
is it all for? I have to believe in something. What, I’m just such
a cool fucking guy that all this just happens? I don’t think so.
I have to believe in a higher power. I feel that knowing
someone has your back and is pulling for you, and is guiding
us, helps me to get to where I need to be.”
Did you still think you’d be wrestling in your 50s?
“I don’t know, man. Look, I never went into anything
casually – I never went into wrestling to be the 716th best
wrestler! So, looking back at all the hard work, I am pretty
proud, of all of it. Fozzy just got certified gold for [seventh
album] Judas! This band, a gold record…? After all these years
there is still more to achieve, so, yeah, it’s definitely an
achievement, but I’m too busy still looking ahead.”

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BLEED FROM WITHIN

PRESS

WORDS: RICH HOBSON

BLEED FROM WITHIN

Slated as the next Lamb Of God before debt and naivety
brought them crashing down, the Scots are older, wiser
and ready to seize their second shot at the big time

BLEED FROM WITHIN
ial the clocks back to 2013, and it looked like
Bleed From Within had the world at their feet.
They had signed to Century Media and their
third album, Uprising, was being met with
acclaim. In a glowing 9/10 review, Hammer
reviewer Nik Young described it as “vicious,
driven, and irresistibly headbang-worthy.”
To top things off, they were on tour as the main support
for Megadeth, where they hoped to learn some lessons
from the thrash legends. Chief among them: don’t piss
off a rock star’s bodyguard, particularly when they can
bounce you off the walls like a ping-pong ball. “Dave
Mustaine requested we go to his dressing room…” BFW
vocalist Scott Kennedy starts, a grin lighting his face up
like the sun. “Ali [Richardson, drummer] burst in with
a bottle of [caffeinated fortified wine] Buckfast and
almost threw it in Mustaine’s face! Like, ‘’Ey lad, you ever
tried this?’”
Ali sinks into his seat with the look of a man who has
heard this story a million times and never gets any less
embarrassed. Scott forges ahead undeterred, hooting with
laughter as he recounts Dave Mustaine – the man who
reportedly made Megadeth’s debut album on a diet of
hamburgers and heroin – had to explain there wasn’t much
he hadn’t tried. “Aye,” Scott says, “But have ya tried this?”
The story speaks volumes about the band’s enthusiasm
and inexperience at the time. This was evident almost
18 months later, when a deal-gone-wrong plunged the
band into over £20,000 worth of debt. For a bunch of
20-somethings whose finances were – at that point at least
– predicated on them being able to drop tools and go on
tour for weeks on end, it seemed like a death sentence.
Luckily, the music saw them through. “It was too much to
just walk away from, especially given what we’d already
achieved,” Ali says.

Scott Kennedy:
reality has hit

“I’D HAVE EIGHT
CANS BEFORE
GOING ONSTAGE”
Bleed From Within started life in 2005 as a jam project
while its members were still teenagers. Based out of a local
community centre in Hamilton – a town 15 miles southeast
of Glasgow – its members would cover bands such as Lamb
Of God and Pantera. “Ashes Of The Wake was my holy grail,”
Scott enthuses, while Ali professes that “the four-count
at the start of Fucking Hostile was the moment I put the
clarinet in the bin and picked up drumsticks.”
Over time, they began writing their own songs and
bringing individual influences into the mix – a touch of
Gothenburg here, shades of The Black Dahlia Murder there.
They played anywhere that would host them, and when
the local gigs dried up, they hit the road. “We’d be thinking
we’d fuckin’ made it because we were going out in a 15-seat
minibus, gear all over the seats around where we’d sleep,”
Ali says with a scoff. “You’d have eight cans before going
onstage; if I could see some of that footage back, I’d be
embarrassed beyond belief.”
Still, their efforts paid off, and in 2009 they released their
debut record, Humanity. Aware that riches weren’t about to
drop into their laps, the band held down part-time jobs at
restaurants, bars and car washes to keep cash coming in.
They soon realised that wasn’t going to work out, however.
“Every time we went on tour, we’d come back not knowing
if we still had jobs,” Scott admits.

56 METALHAMMER.COM

PRESS

SCOTT KENNEDY, VOCALS

BLEED FROM WITHIN
To remedy this, the members built careers outside Bleed
From Within to ensure they had some level of financial
stability – three members now own a company that
specialises in motion graphics. “The paths we’ve chosen are
based on keeping the band going, essentially,” Ali explains.
It wasn’t the rock’n’roll fantasy of sex, parties and
swimming pools of Irn-Bru they might have hoped for, but
it kept the dream alive. Now they just had to get past the
next obstacle: gatekeepers. In the early 2010s British metal
scene, bands such as Bring Me The Horizon and Asking
Alexandria were raked over the coals for everything from
the way they dressed to the bands they toured with. Bleed
From Within didn’t escape unscathed.
Haters didn’t care that Bleed From Within were fusing
turn-of-the-millennium Gothenburg with the neckjuddering groove of Pantera and Lamb Of God, or that their
sound owed as much to classic thrash as it did to metalcore
or deathcore. What they cared about was that Scott ‘looked
like Oli Sykes’ (he had a fringe), and that the band weren’t
grizzled veterans of the metal scene (despite the fact they
had been touring relentlessly for years by the time they
started appearing on big bills). In their eyes – and to use their
words – Bleed From Within were ‘a cookie-cutter shitty
metal band for angsty teenage kids’.
“I’ve not bothered my arse with what people say about
our band,” Ali says sagely, sounding like the Scottish Dalai
Lama. “It was always our appearance that seemed to get
judged above all else – especially because we were a group
of small guys going out on these huge stages where you’d
have folks like Dave Mustaine, Gene Hoglan or Chuck Billy.
We’re wee guys compared to them!”

Ali Richardson: marked
safe from MegaDave’s
bodyguards, May 2022

orced to take a three-year break from touring while
they resolved their myriad legal and financial issues,
Bleed From Within re-emerged in 2018 as a band
reborn. With both Era and its 2020 follow-up, Fracture, they
reasserted their place alongside the likes of While She Sleeps
and Architects as one of the hottest metal bands in the UK.
Appearances at Download Pilot and Bloodstock over the
summer saw them greeted as conquering heroes, crowds
chanting their name and singing along.
Then, as if to prove just how far they had come, those
scenes repeated later in the year when Bleed From Within
played some of their biggest shows to date, supporting
Bullet For My Valentine in UK arenas before embarking on
a sold-out headline tour in their own right. “The crowd were
singing so loud every single night, for every single song,”
Scott says. “It left me speechless.”
“Each show seemed to be more wild than the last,” Ali adds
excitedly. “Crowdsurfers, pits and sing-alongs the whole time.
In Glasgow they had to stop counting the surfers after track
three. The next few years are going to be fucking mental.”

The songs that have defined Bleed From Within’s career
THE HEALING
(2010)
Back when they
played the Metal
Hammer Razor tour
in 2011, this was
the song that really
ripped, and saw
While She Sleeps’
Mat Welsh front-flip
off the barrier on
the London date.

UPRISING
(2013)
The title track from
their third album,
and first for Century
Media, Uprising was
a PMA metalcore
statement of intent
– ‘We will rise to our
feet, there’s nothing
holding us back,’
they roared.

AFTERLIFE
(2018)
Returning after
a five-year gap,
Bleed From Within
took their template,
polished it up with
help from Adam
‘Nolly’ Getgood,
and dropped in
a punch-yourself-inthe-face breakdown.

THE END OF ALL
WE KNOW (2020)
Fracture’s bombastic
opener announced
they were not
fucking around.
Made for sing-alongs
and fist-pumps, it’s
become an anthem
representing the
band’s triumphant
bounceback.

I AM DAMNATION
(2022)
Can Bleed From
Within continue
their winning streak?
Yes, yes they can, as
the lead-off single
from Shrine shows.
Absolutely immense,
we can already see
the pyro going off
on a massive stage.

METALHAMMER.COM 57

BLEED FROM WITHIN

Haters gonna hate.
BFW couldn’t care less

“I PUT THE
CLARINET IN
THE BIN”
ALI RICHARDSON, DRUMMER

attack victim, although sadly in vain. “It really made me
reflect on my mortality and what I do with the time I’ve got,”
he admits.
And then there’s the music. With industrial beats,
electronica and full symphonies courtesy of the Parallax
Orchestra – who’ve worked with BMTH and Architects
– Shrine could well be a modern British classic, up there with
chart-raiding epics such as You Are We, Sempiternal, or For

58 METALHAMMER.COM

Those That Wish To Exist – a record that topped the UK charts
in February 2021. “Bands like Architects getting to No.1 in
the charts is so exciting,” Scott enthuses.
“It’s exciting to have any guitar music in the charts, even
if it’s not metal,” Ali adds. “Just look at Bring Me The Horizon
– playing to thousands of people around the country and
collaborating with Ed Sheeran. One of the biggest artists
on the planet collaborating with a heavy band.”
Like the spider in Scottish folklore that wouldn’t give
up its attempts to weave a web, inspiring Robert The Bruce
to fight for – and ultimately win – Scottish independence,
Bleed From Within have faced their setbacks and obstacles
with a sense of perseverance and pragmatism. With
Shrine on the horizon, at this point the sky’s the limit –
but the band aren’t about to get ahead of themselves.
“The bad situations we’ve got in as a band have come
from chasing a dream and not living for the reality,”
Scott says soberly.
That doesn’t mean they’ve lost their sense of ambition,
though. “When bands like Rammstein, Iron Maiden and
Metallica are no more, we’ll see a real change. Bring Me
The Horizon will be headlining festivals those bands
would usually do and everybody else will jump up, too,”
says Ali. “The naysayers are going to be fucking furious,
but they have to deal with it. The new wave of metal is
already in front of them. Get your head out of your arse!”

SHRINE IS DUE FOR RELEASE ON JUNE 3 VIA
NUCLEAR BLAST

PRESS

As if to illustrate that point, the band’s sixth album, Shrine,
is their most ambitious to date. Lead single I Am Damnation
set the stage in November by boasting some of the biggest
riffs and hooks of the band’s career, but that’s just a small
taste of what is to come. The characteristic PMA that has
powered the band through dark times thus far is still present
and correct, but is joined by musings on the nature of
mortality that naturally come with age.
Levitate’s soaring symphonies are at odds with its lyrical
content concerning dementia, based on Scott’s experiences
with his grandmother. Elsewhere, Killing Time was inspired
by an incident where Ali attempted to resuscitate a heart

NU GEN

There’s a new wave of artists tearing genres to shreds
and reshaping alt culture for the next generation.
Meet nu gen: the scene everyone is talking about

CASSYETTE: PRESS/JAMIE WATERS

WORDS: LIZ SCARLETT AND MERLIN ALDERSLADE

NU GEN
Cassyette calls her
sound ‘grit pop’

NU GEN

Mimi Barks: making music
without boundaries

“WE SPEAK
OPENLY ABOUT
TRAUMAS”
MIMI BARKS

t’s also a scene in which we are seeing better
representation for non-binary and LGBTQ+ artists
- reflecting a rock landscape that is finally starting to
come to grips with its historical image as a chest-beating
boys’ club.
“I feel like, now, the audience feels [better] represented by
musicians, because you can always find somebody that looks
like you, whereas you couldn’t before,” suggests Cassyette.
“I also see a lot of queer artists coming through, myself being
one of them. It’s an exciting time, because where there’s more
diversity, there’s better music and it’s only going to make
these sounds more futuristic. Rock is becoming redefined.”
The nu gen movement is flourishing into something huge,
saturated by an eclectic and extensive range of artists that
are storming across the UK and US with growing numbers

62 METALHAMMER.COM

of fans. They’re bagging support
slots with A-listers (Cassyette is
supporting My Chemical Romance
at Milton Keynes’ Stadium MK
this year), collaborating with
mainstream heavyweights
(Siiickbrain recently teamed up
with Willow daughter-of-Will
Smith) and dominating the online sphere (after joining
TikTok to promote her music in 2020, Mothica’s song Vices
got more than five million views). It’s pushing alternative
music into new spaces to reach millions of ears for the first
time - “from my experience on TikTok, I’d say alternative
music is now the norm,” suggests Mothica, “which I think, in
the long run, is a great thing for the genre to evolve.”
While nu gen may only now be starting to grab headlines,
the truth is that it represents a natural endgame for
a generation of artists raised on streaming and social media.
For Cassyette, it’s been years in the making.
“I think it’s been like bubbling under the scene for a really
long time,” she confirms. “A lot of these musicians have
been making music for years, it’s just becoming popular.”

MIMI BARKS: PRESS/AARON HEATHER

he ‘rock is dead’ conversation
just won’t die. In this year alone,
rapper-gone-rocker Machine
Gun Kelly suggested that
the genre was in need of
a “defibrillator”, while Kiss’s
Gene Simmons reasserted his
notorious 2014 statement,
declaring in a recent interview
with Metal Hammer, “I stand by
my words: rock is dead.” Most metalheads would baulk at
such melodramatic claims, but the truth is that rock’s place
on the wider music spectrum is certainly in question; 20
years ago, contemporary metal was shifting millions and
dominating the charts. In recent years, heavy music has
struggled to make an impact outside of its own bubble.
One movement looking to change that is nu gen - a new
generation of musicians who are propelling the genre back
into the mainstream, flooding the scene with new sounds
that meld together everything from metal and punk to
R’n’B. It’s a clash of styles unlike anything we’ve seen before,
and it’s being championed not by bands, but by individual
singer-songwriters who look like they’ve stumbled straight
out of a Hot Topic in 2004.
“This genre is obscene, ruthless and there are no
boundaries in lyrical or visual output anymore,” says Mimi
Barks, whose self-proclaimed ‘doom trap’ fuses big riffs
with hip hop hooks. “You can self-publish and don’t need to
please a third party such as a label, publisher or record store
to sell your music.”
Mimi is one of a seemingly endless wave of emerging nu
gen artists, united less by sharing one specific sound and
more by having a shared attitude – an approach to making
music where there are no restrictions based on genre, image,
or even having an actual band to write with.
“There are more solo artists in the scene now because
of bedroom production and the internet,” offers Mothica,
who creates shadowy alt-pop with EDM and emo leanings.
“You can record a live, full band sound in a home studio,
so musicians have more room to try out new things.
I also think a lot of these artists, myself included, are
incorporating music they might have grown up with into
their own sound.”
Alongside Mimi Barks and Mothica there are the likes of
Cassyette, who mixes rock, emo and pop in a blend she
labels ‘grit pop’; Dana Dentata, writing industrial-singed,
hell-raising rap metal; and Bambie Thug, whose trap-goth
stylings could see them as equally at home on a stage with
Nine Inch Nails as Megan Thee Stallion. There’s plenty more
where they all came from, too: Siiickbrain, Lilith Czar, Zand,
Lil Lotus, AlienBlaze, Nascar Aloe… their music might not all
sound exactly the same, but they represent a generation of
artists doing alternative music differently.

NU GEN
Dana Dentata: shattering
mirrors and glass ceilings

Ten tracks that have helped
define a movement
POPPY
I Disagree
While Poppy is something of a precursor
to nu gen, her dizzying mixture of
metal, pop and EDM is a major influence
on the scene.
CASSYETTE
Mayhem
Nu gen’s foremost breakout star shined
even brighter this year with this
emotionally driven rocker with an
angsty, arena-worthy chorus.
MIMI BARKS
Suicide
The self-professed ‘doom-trap’ artist
is at her best on this grinding slice of
dark rap, which even manages to make
autotune sound sinister.
MOTHICA
Buzzkill
‘Holy motherfucker, do you have something
to say?’ With this bassy, emotionally
heavy tale of abuse, it’s clear that
Mothica certainly does.
DANA DENTATA
Pantychrist
This crunching slab of sneering trap
metal could work just as well on
a festival stage as at Torture Garden
in the wee hours.
SIIICKBRAIN
Purge
Siiickbrain’s collab with Willow manages
to throw out anthemic pop, slick r’n’b
and crunching heavy metal in less than
three minutes.

DANA DENTATA: PRESS/AMINA GOLD

Despite an early career in the club scene as a DJ, Cassyette
has always had one foot planted in electronic pop and one in
rock. She grew up listening to Paramore, Korn, Black Sabbath
and Mötley Crüe from the age of 13, but ventured away from
her teenage heroes once her DJing career took off. Now, she’s
become one of the forerunners of her generation of artists
and believes that the rock scene’s fresh approach to blending
styles is the secret to lengthening its shelf life.
“It’s important for me to make two sides of music, so that
you always leave the door open for people,” she explains.
“If you can get more people listening to and loving your
music on the pop side of things, they’re going to listen to the
heavy stuff. That’s how you keep [rock] alive.”
hile the hype around Cassyette and her peers
might seem excessive to some - as well as the MCR
dates, she landed BBC Radio 1’s Hottest Record In
The World with Behind Closed Doors (feat. Kid Brunswick) and
performed with Frank Carter during his headline set at last
year’s Download Pilot - she’s in no two minds about having
earned her seat at the table. “I’ve worked my ass off to be
here,” she states. “I’ve been really focused on making

BAMBIE THUG
P.M.P
Driving goth-trap brimming with sex
and spit, P.M.P (that’s Pussy. Money.
Power) may not be subtle, but it’ll be
stuck in your head for days.
ALIENBLAZE
Romantically Dead
This bouncy rock banger sounds like
someone took the skeleton of a glam
metal song and washed it in grungey
gunk. Lovely.
ZAND
I Spit On Your Grave
Big beats, spooky ambience and swathes
of sultry electronica bathed in screams
and screeches make this a delightfully
unhinged treat.
NASCAR ALOE
Angry Car
Snotty rap bars spat out over
a claustrophobic EDM track that sounds
like it could comfortably sit on some of
Aphex Twin’s more abrasive material.

METALHAMMER.COM 63

NU GEN

“ALTERNATIVE
MUSIC IS NOW
THE NORM, AND
IT’S EVOLVING”
MOTHICA

music that I love, and
I feel like it’s something
new and fresh.”
Another common
theme within nu gen is
that, much like certain
elements of nu metal
and emo, it’s a scene
that encourages people
to be more open about their mental health and be their truest
selves, offering an outlet for fans to express themselves
unapologetically. “I think that a lot of kids can relate [to us],”
suggests Mimi Barks, “as there’s never been a time in history
before where we could speak so openly and shamelessly
about depression, anxieties, traumas, drugs and sex.”
“The direct connection from artists to the fanbase creates
a different kind of passion,” adds Dana Dentata. “Being able
to say whatever we want in our songs, kids are getting to
hear exactly how they feel now. It’s extremely important to
me to keep in contact with the people who reach out to me
that are affected by my music.”
Mothica, meanwhile, suggests a combination of rock’s
natural disposition to emotion and the pure, batshit insanity
of the last 10 years on Planet Earth may have something to
do with it. “I think rock music, heavy music with darker

64 METALHAMMER.COM

lyrics, has always appealed to fans that are more in touch
with their emotions,” she argues. “Maybe with people who
have experienced traumatic things in their lives. I think the
collective trauma we’ve gone through the last few years has
turned a lot more people onto this style of music, and even
the way people dress. I’m older than a lot of my fans, and this
style of music wasn’t as embraced when I was growing up.”
It’s certainly being embraced now. Nu gen is more than
a scene - it’s the sign of a sea-change in heavy music. The
barriers are down. There are no limits. And it could just be
the spark that helps rock take over the world again.
“Rock is very much alive,” insists Cassyette. “It’s been very
much alive this entire time because the core fanbase has
always been there and has always been listening. I just think
it’s getting a chance to come back and have its own revival
and it’s turned into something else. It’s getting really
interesting; I actually think that this is going to be what
carries it right to the top… and it will be right at the top.”

CASSYETTE’S MAYHEM SINGLE IS OUT NOW VIA
DEVIL LAND. DANA DENTATA’S PANTYCHRIST
ALBUM IS OUT NOW VIA ROADRUNNER.
MOTHICA’S SINGLE LAST CIGARETTE IS OUT NOW
VIA HEAVY HEART/RISE/BMG. MIMI BARKS’
SINGLE RAD IS OUT NOW VIA SILENT CULT

MOTHICA: PRESS/LISSYELLE LARICCHA

Mothica believes our collective
trauma has turned many people
onto heavier music

www.classicrockmagazine.com

TROLLFEST

NORWEGI
First impressions pin Trollfest as folk-metal jesters celebrating
Big Dumb Fun. But look beyond the pink flamingo costumes
and a more intriguing story emerges

PRESS

WORDS: CHRIS CHANTLER

66 METALHAMMER.COM

TROLLFEST

AN WEIRD

METALHAMMER.COM 67

TROLLFEST
ven by the fabulous, outrageous,
unapologetically over-the-top standards
of the Eurovision Song Contest, Trollfest’s
January 15 performance at the Melodi
Grand Prix, Norway’s televised
pre-selection tournament to select
the nation’s entry for the annual festival
of song, was A Moment.
Introduced by Rammstein-style jets of flames, on a stage
decorated with inflatable palm trees, a squad of burly
musicians sporting pink flamingo costumes pranced
around in circles to parping folk-metal as their frontman
encouraged the audience to get their “freak on” on the
“dancing floor” and “dance like there’s no tomorrow”.
Fuck knows what the live audience at the H3 Arena in
Fornebu made of this endearingly ludicrous spectacle,
but when footage of the performance was posted online,
The Internet was charmed and captivated: “Why on earth
wouldn’t you pick this one?” reads the first comment
underneath the clip. “It has everything you can ever ask
for from a Eurovision hit.”
Sadly, for our plucky, feathered heroes, it was not to be:
voted through to the competition’s Last Chance Gold Duel
eliminator - don’t ask us, it’s complicated - Trollfest
ultimately lost out to Maria Mohn’s Fly for a place in the
national final, at which the good people of Norway duly
elected Subwoolfer - two men in black suits sporting yellow
wolf head masks singing Give That Wolf A Banana - as their
Eurovision 2022 ambassadors. What a time to be alive.
It’s entirely possible, though, that the average viewer
assailed by the gleefully batshit Dance Like A Pink Flamingo
may have written off the Oslo-based nine-piece as a gang of
camp wackaloons making novelty pop-metal for children’s
parties. And entirely possible too, that lyrics such as ‘Like
parasites we infest, Bleed all resources dry / No hope, no change
will come / Power sits in comfort’ may have gone unheard
amid the visual chaos, so that the true meaning of the song
- a cautionary tale about the cynical machinations of an evil
ruling elite, and how tyrants thrive on apathy - may not
have been immediately obvious to all.
It remains to be seen, too, whether those investigating
Trollfest’s Napalm Records debut, Flamingo Overlord, will
choose to delve beneath its dizzying blend of upbeat,
catchy sing-alongs to uncover dark reflections on themes
of addiction and indoctrination. Those that do may
increasingly come to view the album’s novelty pop-metal
sheen as rather sinister, if not downright perverse.
“If you’re having a shit time and the person right next to
you is having the time of his life, it’s even shittier,” observes
vocalist Jostein Austvik, aka Trollmannen. “Particularly if
the guy next to you knows you’re having a shit time and he’s
still enjoying his ass off!
“Hopefully - if people haven’t written us off completely
- when they get the album and see the lyrics, all the
happy-go-lucky party songs will have to be revisited with
another perspective. You could even take it as a bit of a kick
towards the shallowness of our culture; people take one
quick look and think they’ve sussed everything out, but you
only have to take half a look more to realise that your
assumptions are completely wrong.”
Be honest: who saw that coming?
ormed in 2003 by Jostein and guitarist John Espen
Sagstad, aka Mr. Seidel, Trollfest have inarguably put
in the hard yards before emerging as a 2022 buzz
band. Self-proclaimed pioneers of True Norwegian Balkan
Metal, the group’s first seven records were written and sung
entirely in ‘trollspråk’ - a kind of grammar-free amalgam
of German and Norwegian, hardly conducive to chasing

68 METALHAMMER.COM

a global audience. 2019’s Norwegian Fairytales dropped this
convention to focus on the band’s native tongue, and finally,
with Flamingo Overlord, we monolinguist English speakers
have Trollfest songs we can sing along to. It feels like an
album the collective, whose eclectic, restless compositions
and overactive imagination actively mitigate against
boredom and stagnation, have been building up to for a long
time. Liberated from any internal or external pressures to
remain ‘on brand’ in this new phase of their career, in the
group’s concept album about a flamingo-based tyrannical
dystopia, the troll lyrics of yore are nowhere to be seen.
“I don’t know if it was an active decision or if it just turned
out that way,” ponders Jostein. “Lyrically it was certainly
freeing to write in English this time around. It made it a lot
easier to say exactly what I wanted to say. Similar thing with
the trolls, it was freeing to set them aside for a bit. I felt like,
trying to become a dictator in the troll world, I don’t think
that would work. There’s too much anarchy amongst the
trolls to ever accept one ruler!”
Though cartoonish imagery and eccentric flamboyance
have always been part of Trollfest’s DNA, these elements
are underscored by serious talent, discipline and hard work.
The absurdist genre-mashing isn’t just undertaken for its
own sake either – these often breathtaking arrangements
are radiating with sheer passion for music in all its forms.
Almost 20 years into their career, Trollfest have seen

TROLLFEST
Slayer, they ain’t

“THE MUSIC
INDUSTRY IS SO
LITTLE ABOUT
MUSIC THESE DAYS”

PRESS/JULIA MARIE NAGLESTAD

TROLLMANNEN

massive change in the industry in which they operate,
and there’s no trace of humour in their frontman’s voice
when he says, “The music industry is so little about music
these days.”
“There’s so much about the image, the video, the
accompanying merchandise, the newly brewed beer, the
bar of soap with the band logo on, just so much fucking
shit,” he spits. “As a bit of a ‘Fuck you’ to all of that, we’ve
always been 110% serious about the music we make.”
Balancing a sense of humour with a conscientious,
committed and ethical approach to art and industry can be
a difficult line to tread for musicians. For Jostein, who cites
Devin Townsend and Mr. Bungle as artists who continue to
inspire his band, the two approaches were never separate;
his initiation into heavy music was inextricably bound up
with the act of laughter.

“My dad’s an old 70s metal dude,” he reveals. “The thing
I remember most was Hocus Pocus by Focus, the Dutch band,
with the yodelling. That made me giggle for fucking hours!
My dad had a live version on cassette, I rewound it so many
times it broke. Frank Zappa is also a wonderful example of
how serious music and comedy can go very well together.”
Maintaining this equilibrium can be even harder to pull
off in the metal scene; back in the 80s, Anthrax copped
a load of flak when they stopped trying to look mean in
leathers and started smiling in Bermuda shorts, and there
is still a sense that it’s not cool for metal bands to goof off.
One can only imagine just how much Trollfest’s surrealist,
subversive approach to their art has ruffled feathers - no
pun intended - among some of the more committed, kvlt
doom lords in the Norwegian metal community.
“We’ve met our fair share of those guys,” Jostein laughs.
“Sometimes we see them at shows, away in the back with
their arms folded, shaking their heads. One of my favourite
things to see is those guys start off like that, and by the end
of the show they’re jumping around grinning and having
the time of their life! To me that’s a very beautiful thing to
see, and one more dig at these people who need everything
to be serious the whole time. I find that so fucking boring.
And I do wonder, how serious do you need it to be? Do you
only listen to death metal made by murderers? Do you believe
black metal bands sacrifice humans and drink their blood?

METALHAMMER.COM 69

TROLLFEST

Sometimes you just have
to flamingo mad

TROLLMANNEN

How come those lies are serious and our lies are not serious?
It’s fine, if you wanna be one of those serious people, fair
enough. But the black metal bands with long nails and
spikes, prepared for war, sacrifice for Satan, all that stuff,
you meet them and they’re just nerds like the rest of us.”
urovision glory may have eluded Trollfest, but there
is much for the Oslo band to look forward to as their
profile continues to swell, and a deep catalogue for
newcomers to their Flamingo Secret Society to uncover.
And if Trollfest aren’t the escapist fantasy troupe their
image might suggest, this intriguing, idiosyncratic collective
are seemingly relaxed and accepting of the fact that not
everyone who signs up for the journey ahead will be looking
to them to provide a moral, intellectual and spiritual
roadmap for a future yet unwritten.
“It seems to me that’s what’s going on in the democracies
of the western world, a lot of people are signing off from
politics and societal interests and just going on a bender,”
Jostein muses. “Probably all of us should pay more attention,
and actually know a little bit about politics so we can make
informed choices, maybe even improve stuff? But it turns
out that we’re way too fond of the bottle and the party.”

TROLLFEST’S FLAMINGO OVERLORD ALBUM IS
RELEASED ON MAY 27 VIA NAPALM
70 METALHAMMER.COM

TROLLING
IN THE DEEP
A beginner’s guide to the Trollfest catalogue,
courtesy of frontman Trollmannen
THE BEST ALBUM
Brumlebassen (2012)
“This is the most metal one! There’s great
variation on it, but as a whole this is the
heaviest and most intense. I feel it’s a very
good representation of the Eastern European
folk music combined with extreme metal,
that’s one of the things I’m really happy we’ve
done, and this is the one where we did it the best.”
THE WORST ALBUM
Willkommen Folk Tell Drekka Fest! (2005)
“This is really tough! We had a lot of fun
making the first one, but I feel we didn’t really
start smelling our own stuff until the second
album, and we were making our own stuff by
the third album. So I guess this one is the
furthest away from what we’re doing now.”
THE WILD CARD
Kaptein Kaos (2014)
“I guess that’s the closest to the new album;
it’s pretty experimental with a lot of jumping
around from genre to genre, and a lot of
very different-sounding songs that still sound
a bit similar in some sense! It’s very hard to
get bored when you put on that album, each
song is a thing unto itself.”

PRESS

“THE BLACK METAL
BANDS WITH NAILS
AND SPIKES ARE
JUST NERDS LIKE
THE REST OF US”

CAVE IN

REQUIEM
FOR A
DREAM
WORDS: MATT MILLS • PICTURES: JAY ZUCCO

CAVE IN

The shock death of Cave In bassist Caleb Scofield in
2018 left the New England hardcore/metal community
reeling. But with masterful album Heavy Pendulum,
Cave In are keeping their friend’s memory alive

CAVE IN

O

n March 28, 2018, Cave In’s
Caleb Scofield was killed in
a freak road accident. The
39-year-old bassist was
driving towards a toll booth
in Bedford, Massachusetts,
when he attempted to change
lanes, and his pick-up truck
collided with a concrete
barrier: he died almost
instantly as the burning wreck rolled along the highway.
Survived by his wife, Jen, and the couple’s two children,
10-year-old Desmond and seven-year-old Sydney, Caleb also
left behind a distraught extended musical family in the closeknit New England hardcore/metal scene, having served in
Cave In for two decades. Fans crowdfunded more than $45,000
to cover his funeral expenses within two days of his death,
while friends and former bandmates - Cave In, Pelican, Old
Man Gloom, Isis - arranged benefit gigs, the latter ending an
eight-year-long hiatus to pay tribute. Within this supportive,
fecund community there were months of mourning,
celebration and productivity, all swirling simultaneously.
“It was crushing,” Cave In’s drummer, John Robert ‘JR’
Conners, says of Caleb’s death, speaking four years on,
via a video call with Hammer. “When you’ve had as long
a relationship with someone as we had with Caleb, it’s like
dealing with a family member. If you really love that person,
if you love spending time with that person, if you’re creative
with that person, then it’s devastating. Each person needed
to figure out how to cope with that.”
“For Cave In, we just put so much work into the benefit
shows,” singer/guitarist Stephen Brodsky continues, picking
up where his bandmate of 27 years left off. “In the heat of
doing that stuff, we were just really wrapped up in all the
logistics, rehearsing and making appearances. In a way,
having all the work kept us from spiralling about the effects
of the grief.”
By all accounts, Caleb was a devoted parent and a loyal,
loving partner. “His love for music was almost equal to his
desire to be a good dad,” his cousin, Kaitlyn O’Connor, was
quoted as saying by local press. Isis added on social media:
“He was a great father [and] a loving husband, and his loss
will be most deeply felt by his family.” Cave In stated in their
tribute to him: “He was one of a kind, our best friend and an
unfathomable world of inspiration.”
On a musical level, to know the mark that Caleb stamped
on heavy music is to know the restlessly eclectic journey Cave
In enjoyed with him, and are now continuing in his honour.
Stephen, JR and lead guitarist Adam McGrath – three middle
school chums from Methuen, Massachusetts – added Caleb
to their ranks in early ’98 after meeting him on Cave In’s first
American tour. Although the four-piece initially raged their
way to prominence in the same Boston hardcore scene that
birthed Converge, they fearlessly dabbled with grunge and
prog in the early 2000s. Their six albums form a sliding scale
between apoplectic hardcore and hypnotically melodic rock.
And with Converge’s Nate Newton stepping in to help his
friends as they continue to process their loss, the impending
Heavy Pendulum once more pushes their capabilities.
The quartet’s first album for their new label, Relapse,
Heavy Pendulum is Cave In’s monolith. At 70 minutes in
length, it’s easily the grandest undertaking of their career,
and it justifies every second as it weds the quartet’s metallic
and melodic leanings in hitherto uncharted ways. Lead-off
single New Reality doesn’t fuck about with dishing out the
heaviness, flaunting a guitar riff that’s as hellishly low as it
is precious to its creators.
“It’s a variation on an open G [tuning] with a drop C
wildcard in the mix,” explains Stephen. “It’s a tuning that

74 METALHAMMER.COM

“CALEB’S DEATH
WAS CRUSHING…
IT WAS
DEVASTATING”
JR CONNERS

Caleb (far left) was
part of the Cave In
family for two decades

CAVE IN
Cave In (left to right):
Adam McGrath, Nate Newton,
JR Conners, Stephen Brodsky

“THEY MISS THEIR
B R O T H E R …”

KKURT BALLOU: FUTURE OWNS/OLLY CURTIS

Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou produced Cave In’s debut album and also
their latest. He tells Hammer of the close friendship between the two bands
HEAVY
PENDULUM
IS CAVE IN’S
FIRST
RECORDING
WITHOUT
CALEB: WHAT
WAS THE
ATMOSPHERE
LIKE IN THE STUDIO?
“It was redemptive, optimistic
and joyous. They miss their
brother, but they’re extremely
happy that they get to
continue making music.
Caleb would have loved what
they’re doing now; he’d have
wanted them to move on.
It was more of a celebration.
Even at Caleb’s funeral, we
were mourning his passing,

but it was a celebration of his
life. I never cried as hard or
laughed as hard. I’m about to
cry right now…”
CONVERGE AND CAVE IN
ARE INCREDIBLY CLOSE.
WHAT BROUGHT YOU
GUYS TOGETHER?
“They’ve always been a part
of that [Massachusetts
metalcore scene]. I see all of
them fairly regularly, whether
it’s at a show, at one of our
shows, or JR just stops by to
borrow a tambourine. There
are times where I’m driving
home from work and I’ll see JR
with his kids in the park on my
commute. We’re kind of always
around in each other’s lives.”

PERSONALLY, WHAT’S THE
DYNAMIC BETWEEN YOU LIKE?
“We’re family. We argue about
how many times to do a chorus
or if a song needs a bridge, or
where we should get lunch. Ha
ha ha! All normal family stuff.
But we’re friends and we love
each other.”
NOW THAT IT’S FINISHED,
WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS
ON HEAVY PENDULUM?
“It’s a great record and I’m really
excited about it. I think that new
life breathed into the band.
Coming out of tragedy, I think,
was a big motivator for them to
reconnect with each other, and
create what I feel is important,
vital music at this time.”

METALHAMMER.COM 75

CAVE IN
Caleb came up with called the ‘Secret C’.
It reminds me of Caleb, so it’s nice to
continue writing stuff in that tuning.”
Speaking about the complete body of
work Stephen says, “It’s one of the most
focused writing efforts that we’ve done in
a long time. We were on such a roll with
writing that we just kept going and going,
cranking out songs and ideas, which
probably explains why the record’s so
long. We could really sink into this sonic
world and see what came out of it.”

I

t’s almost alien to hear Cave In feel
musically comfortable… anywhere.
When Stephen humbly plays down
their 1998 debut, Until Your Heart Stops,
as “Converge worship”, that drastically
undersells its innovation in the thenimmature metalcore space. Converge
may have had an obvious influence on
its jagged licks and nonstop screams Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou produced
the album, as he did with Heavy Pendulum
- but the avant-garde song structures
were exclusively Cave In’s, breaking the
The video for New Reality.
Good to see Cave In aren’t
rules in a genre that didn’t even know
conforming any time soon
what its own boundaries were yet.
Just two years later, Jupiter emerged.
Rather than seeking to refine their metalcore origins, or to
iron out any of the quirks Until Your Heart Stops had, instead
it pulled a 180, calming Cave In’s soundscape. Wails were
replaced by gentle singing, metalcore grids became horizonfree space rock, squealing riffs were supplanted by grooving
post-hardcore chords. With hindsight, Stephen attributes
the shift in focus to the band’s youthful members hearing
grunge dominate the airwaves.
“When Pearl Jam’s shit was hitting, we were super-young
and impressionable,” he recalls. “I just wanted to dive through
my TV and leave Methuen and wake up in Seattle.”
“We also grew up with bands like the Beatles, Led Zeppelin
and Pink Floyd,” JR adds. “They weren’t afraid to mess with
their sound and try different, experimental things.”
As you’d imagine, cries of “Sellout!” followed Cave In as
they eased off away from Full On Attack Mode . The decision
to sign to RCA Records – then-home of Foo Fighters, The
Strokes and Kelly Clarkson – and the even mellower alt-rock
of 2003’s Antenna only amplified those dissenting voices.
“That came a lot from the elite world of hardcore,” Stephen
recalls. “But playing rock bars in Boston that were 18-plus or
21-plus, a lot of people told us that was selling out. And the
thing is that Boston is such an underdog town. The Red Sox
went almost 100 years without winning the World Series.
So I think a band like Cave In getting major label interest,
people had never seen anything like that before.”
The glitz and glamour didn’t linger. Touring off the back of
Antenna was instant and incessant. Desperate to add colour
to the monotony of life on the road, the band reintroduced
tracks from Until Your Heart Stops to the setlist. As a result,
the demos for their fourth album, Perfect Pitch Black,
reintegrated the sound of their hardcore roots, darting
between unflinching aggression and soothing segues using
what Stephen jokingly dubs “good-cop-bad-cop vocals”.
“When we handed in the demos for Perfect Pitch Black,
RCA were not stoked about it,” says JR. “I think that started
the process of the label being like, ‘What the fuck are you
guys doing?! You’re not a metal band; you’re supposed to be
a space rock band!’ I don’t think they understood where we
were coming from.”

76 METALHAMMER.COM

“AFTER CALEB’S PASSING,
EVERYTHING WE DO HAS
TAKEN ON A GREATER AIR
OF IMPORTANCE”

STEPHEN BRODSKY

Cave In willingly retreated to the underground, re-signing
to their old home of Hydra Head so that they could follow
their own muse. There they made both Perfect Pitch Black and
its 2011 follow-up, White Silence; the six-year gap between
the two necessitated by the members starting new projects
and spreading out across the country to prioritise family life.
Their swansong for the label was 2019’s Final Transmission.
Released 15 months after Caleb’s passing, it was a collection
of professionally mastered demos that the band made
immediately prior to his death. It was on a trip home after
a weekend of jamming Final Transmission material with his
bandmates that the bassist had his fatal accident.
“I haven’t listened to Final Transmission since we were
preparing to play shows [in 2019],” JR admits. “I listened to
it when we were mixing and mastering and that’s all I can
take with it. It’s got a lot of heavy emotion attached to it.”

I

f there’s even a sliver of a silver lining to this narrative
arc, it’s that Cave In did not die with Caleb Scofield.
If anything, preserving his memory has given the band
new purpose. Both Stephen and JR describe nothing
but joy in the entire process of making a new album, even
extending this to the often-numbing commitments to doing
promotional and filming music videos.
“We are able to connect to Caleb’s memory now through
the band,” says Stephen. “It’s all taken on a greater air of
importance, and it helps us continue forward. It gives us a new
reason to do it. There’s a new meaning behind everything.”

HEAVY PENDULUM IS OUT ON MAY 20 VIA RELAPSE

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THE REVIEWS

90

GHOST

Sweden’s Satanic emissaries bring the
sweet smell of sulphur to the Midlands

80

KREATOR

Teutonic thrash linchpins reassert their ruling class

80 ALBUM REVIEWS
82 BLEED FROM WITHIN
83 BRIDEAR
84 COHEED AND CAMBRIA
87 MOTIONLESS IN WHITE
88 NOVA TWINS
92 ROADBURN FESTIVAL
94 DESERTFEST
96 INFERNO FESTIVAL
98 DEVIN TOWNSEND
100 ARCHITECTS
EDITED BY: JONATHAN SELZER • PICTURE: KATJA OGRIN

METALHAMMER.COM 79

ALBUM REVIEWS

KREATOR
Hate Über Alles
NUCLEAR BLAST

WHEN KREATOR HEADLINED

Bloodstock for the first time last summer,
many people seemed surprised by how
effortlessly they conquered such a big
occasion. In reality, the Germans have been
in imperious form for the entirety of this
century, and their stature and popularity have
steadily grown as a result. As that Bloodstock
set proved, Kreator are serious heavyweights
with a ridiculous number of unstoppable
metal anthems. From seminal early bursts
of primitive chaos like Flag Of Hate and

Pleasure To Kill through to the razor-sharp
sophistication of recent crowd-pleasers Satan
Is Real and 666 – World Divided, frontman Mille
Petrozza has always been a great songwriter,
with an intuitive sense of what works. The
fact that he is also one of metal’s certified
good guys, albeit one armed with a deathless
screech that would scythe through any stupor,
is an added bonus. With all that in mind, Hate
Über Alles feels like an important milestone,
despite being Kreator’s 15th studio record.
Well-established as one of Europe’s biggest

HATE ÜBER ALLES FEELS LIKE
AN IMPORTANT MILESTONE
80 METALHAMMER.COM

bands, the quartet could easily tread water and
get away with it. But from the laugh-out-loud
intensity of its title track onwards, Hate Über
Alles absolutely screams commitment to the
cause and to the noble yet visceral art of heavy
metal songwriting.
That title track is the perfect starting
point. With its ferocious thrash gait and
a gargantuan scream-along chorus, it’s
a perfect encapsulation of Kreator’s ageless
powers. Just in case anyone remains
unconvinced, Killer Of Jesus (again, Mille gives
great title) repeats the trick, delivering
another exhilarating extreme metal assault
with at least two colossal hooks. Kreator are
on top form at mid-pace, too; both Crush The
Tyrants and Strongest Of The Strong strike

PRESS

Triumph and spite from Germany’s kings of thrash

ALBUM REVIEWS
Kreator: still vicious,
still victorious

BATTLELORE

The Return Of The Shadow
NAPALM

Symphonic Finns make an epic
return to Middle Earth

It’s been 20 years since
Battlelore’s first album,
and 11 since their last.
That alone suggests this
Tolkien-mad fantasy metal
septet are seasoned
professionals, re-energised
after a long lay-off and
fizzing with new ideas
honed and arranged for
maximum impact. This is
arguably Battlelore’s most
consistently engaging,
fully realised work. They
have always reached for
epic immensity but could
be stymied by ill-fitting,
over-modern influences
or ideas stretched too
thinly. This time the
combination of experience
and hunger bring the
Finns to the summit of
symphonic beauty-andthe-beast metal, artfully
balancing light and shade
whilst maintaining
resonant atmospheres.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Epica,
Amon Amarth, The Lord
Of The Rings OST
CHRIS CHANTLER

a sublime balance between nails-hard
heaviness and melodic finesse, with
perennially underrated guitarist Sami
Yli-Sirniö delivering a particular
jaw-dropping solo on the latter. As if to
prove how malleable his band’s sound
continues to be, Mille revels in oldschool nostalgia on the Priest-like
Become Immortal, before delivering
the mother of all thrash minisymphonies on Conquer And Destroy.
With ethereal female vocals,
syncopated, tech-death precision and
yet another giant chorus, Midnight Sun
is an instant classic. Demonic Future is
every bit as sinister, savage and smart
as its title suggests.
Another sign that Kreator are feeling
invincible, Mille’s clean vocals on the
otherwise monstrous and haunting
Pride Comes Before The Fall are a gentle

revelation. Finally, the epic cautionary
tale of Dying Planet tells us everything
we need to know about how fucking
pissed off Mille is with the state of the
world right now. Closer to symphonic
black metal than traditional thrash,
it’s the perfect, pitch-black conclusion
to an album created in the midst of
global chaos.
One intro, 10 genuinely fantastic
songs, absolutely no fucking about. They
may have nothing to prove after nearly
four decades of active service but Hate
Über Alles proves it anyway. When it
comes to hitting the heavy metal nail
on the head with maximum conviction,
Kreator are firmly top of the bill.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Slayer, Arch Enemy,
Machine Head
DOM LAWSON

BLACK VOID
Antithesis

NUCLEAR BLAST
Rotting Christ and Taake frontmen
join a riot of inverted antagonism

Highbrow nihilism is
dragged through the filthencrusted gutter on Black
Void’s debut. The counterpoint to grandstanding
rock project White Void,
both are the brainchild of
multitalented Borknagar
keyboardist/Solefald

drummer Lars Are Nedland.
He contributes vocals and
bass with a Lemmy-like
quality. Opener Void is a riot
of black metal buzzsaw
guitar and gruff, punk
attitude, evolving into
solemn grandiosity. The
prize-fighter swagger of
Death To Morality features
vocals by Taake’s Hoest,
while anthemic closer
Dadaist Disgust features
Rotting Christ’s Sakis Tolis.
A middle finger clad in a
spike-encrusted glove,
Antithesis is the sound of
Nedland having fun –
no matter how anti-fun
he might want you to
believe he is.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Darkthrone,
Midnight, Deathhammer
TOM O’BOYLE

BRUTALITY
Sempiternity

EMANZIPATION PRODUCTIONS
Florida’s turbulent death metallers
reach a high-altitude precipice

Brutality are a lesser-sung,
but still crucial element of
the Floridian death metal
scene. Even the line-up
troubles and personal
dramas that have plagued
their 35-year career
haven’t overshadowed the
brilliance of their first
three albums, released
during the scene’s 90s
heyday. After their
umpteenth split, they’ve
reunited just for this and
are now leaving “the door
open”. Sempiternity may
be hybrid in nature with
two new songs, two oldies
rerecorded and four live
tracks, but the recent
addition of Jarrett Pritchard
on lead guitar has propelled
them to new heights. If this
is their swansong, at least
they’ll leave on a high.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Monstrosity,
Resurrection, Malevolent
Creation
OLIVIER BADIN

METALHAMMER.COM 81

ALBUM REVIEWS

Servants Of Violence
SELF-RELEASED

Death/hardcore mayhem from the
Milton Keynes stomping grounds

Bleed From Within
keep searching for the
ultimate breakdown

BLEED FROM WITHIN
Shrine

NUCLEAR BLAST

Glasgow’s metalcore bruisers get closer to the knockout blow

FOLLOWING A STUDIO drought

after the breakthrough of 2013’s Uprising,
Shrine is the third album from this
Scottish mob in a fertile five-year period.
And while its two predecessors provided
well-aimed uppercuts
to the mush, this is the
closest Bleed From
Within have come yet
to a knockout blow.
Just as Parkway Drive’s
Reverence seemed to take
the Aussies’ well-honed
metalcore to more
glorious, ambitious
realms, here the extra
strings, keys and spokenword passages between stomping opener
I Am Damnation and majestic closer
Paradise add more drama and character
to the album. The violin-led Levitate is
another track that revels in the pomp of
its regal leads and towering peaks, with
ample opportunity given for guitarist
Craig Gowans to display his chops. Flesh
And Stone follows suit before heading into
the dirt with a guttural thud.
Crucially, it’s this wrecking-ball
groove that makes Bleed From Within
stand apart from generic metalcore
bands. When they unleash it live, as
on their recent Bullet For My Valentine

82 METALHAMMER.COM

support slot or own headline tours,
they solidify bonds with longtime fans
and win new admirers. The swagger of
Sovereign and Stand Down, the thrashy
Shapeshifter that’s propelled with gusto
by Ali Richardson’s
percussion, and Killing
Time’s expertly needed
groove, swells of strings
and anthemic burst all
provide solid platforms
from which Scott Kennedy
and Steven Jones can
unleash their dual-vocal
commands.
Yet again this an album
boasting muscle, class
and the righteous enthusiasm that the
quintet exude during all their
endeavours. What isn’t apparent,
however, is whether it contains that one
BFW-imprinted, genre-defining song or
chorus that can elevate the band from
homegrown heroes to leaders on the
international stage. Even if that truly
galvanising moment is yet to arrive, Shrine
provides plenty of sturdy psalms to help
them continue to spread the gospel.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Parkway Drive, Bury
Tomorrow, While She Sleeps
ADAM REES

Casket Feeder’s debut
album takes the guitar
tones and furious riffing of
Swedish death metal and
marries it to the violent
mosh grooves of hardcore.
It’s hardly the most original
pairing, but the UK quintet
have enough ideas, speed
and brutality to stand out
from the pack. Occasionally
they take their foot off the
accelerator, as on the epic
intro to Tyranny Begins and
the title track, but you’re
never far away from filthy,
thrashing metal madness.
A little more variation in
pace and more lead work
might have made this
a stronger release, but
Servants Of Violence does
more than enough to
warrant your attention.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Venom
Prison, Extreme Noise
Terror, Morbid Angel
REMFRY DEDMAN

CROBOT
Feel This
MASCOT

Hair-tossing, hard-rocking fervour
from the Pennsylvania heartlands

Four albums in and Crobot
are still proudly flying
the flag for the kind of
groove-laden rock that’s
never gone out of fashion.
Feel This is an exhilarating
no-nonsense attack that
draws on all the right
influences – Led Zeppelin,
Monster Magnet, The Cult
– then reboxes it for a
modern audience. Vocalist/
harmonica-blaster

FOR FANS OF: Wolfmother,
Monster Magnet, Greta
Van Fleet
DAVE EVERLEY

DAMPF

The Arrival
GRAMOPHONE

Bombastic power metal from the
unlikeliest of sources

Dampf are the brainchild
of Swedish producer Bo
Martin ‘E-Type’ Erikson,
who has worked with
everyone from Max Martin
(the man who wrote
…Baby One More Time) to
members of Ace Of Bass.
Quite the unique CV for an
artist in Hammer, but he’s
teamed up with members
of Sabaton and Bathory
with the goal of creating
a mix of all of the
participants’ previous
work. So, if you’ve been
waiting for a pop hookfilled, bombastic power
metal album with a
proto-black metal stomp…
it’s finally here. Broad
influences aside, it’s hard
not to get caught up in the
sheer, balls-out lunacy of
The Arrival. It might not
always work, but when
Twilight Eyes’ brutal AOR
chorus comes in, you’ll be
unironically sold.
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FOR FANS OF: Cradle Of
Filth, Powerwolf, Roxette
STEPHEN HILL

PRESS X2

CASKET FEEDER

Brandon Yeagley goes
full-throttle on Electrified
and Golden, a song whose
ever-rising chorus needs
scraping off the ceiling by
the time it finishes. Even
that sounds restrained next
to the brilliant hand-clap
blow-out of Dance With The
Dead. That they sustain
the pace over 12 songs is
impressive, even if they
don’t mix things up quite
as much as they could. But
playing this stuff in 2022
is a dirty job, and Crobot
are doing it admirably.
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ALBUM REVIEWS

DEATHWHITE

Grey Everlasting
SEASON OF MIST

Pittsburgh’s doom metal enigmas
hand out the heartache

Abandon all hope, ye who
enter here because this
faceless four-piece are out
to make melodic doom
metal miserable again. On
their third album you’ll
find none of the pop-tinged
pomp of Ghost, nor the
grandeur of Candlemass –
just sadness seasoned with
a dollop of gloom. ‘Your
hands will never be clean/
Even when you wash the
blood away’ opener proper
Earthtomb croons with
sullen vocals. White Sleep
is similarly joyless as its
bridge roars ‘I fear nothing!
I am no one!’ Musically,
switching from smooth,
sad arpeggios to louder –
but still sad – choruses is
Grey Everlasting’s bread and
butter. Although formulaic
at times, it offers jolts like
Blood And Ruin’s post-metal
climax and the guitar lead
of Formless. Deathwhite
may specialise in sorrow,
but the Pittsburgh trio use
just enough variation to
motivate you past the
finish line.
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FOR FANS OF: Katatonia,
Dawn Of Solace,
Paradise Lost
MATT MILLS

DRAGGED UNDER
Unright Animals
MASCOT

Upbeat punk rockers keep an edge
beneath the exuberance

This is a deeply fun release
and worthy follow-up to
Dragged Under’s 2020
debut album, The World Is In

Your Way. The Seattleites
have harnessed the same
combination of upbeat
punk rock and feisty
metalcore as before, but
continue to challenge and
finesse their songwriting
and vocal delivery. The
success is evident in their
recent singles including the
highly energetic All Of Us;
persuasively anthemic, the
Architects-esque Crooked
Halos; and fast-paced gem
Brainwash Broadcast, which
features brilliantly raucous
vocals from Underoath’s
Spencer Chamberlain.
The rest of the album has
powerful hooks and
melodies aplenty, too.
Tracks like Words For Hire,
the title track and the
catchy Never Enough prove
Dragged Under can
safeguard enough snarl
beneath the smile to set
them apart from their
melodic punk peers.
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FOR FANS OF: Sum 41,
Rise Against, Beartooth
NIK YOUNG

DRUIDS

Shadow Work
PELAGIC

Progressive sludge wizardry from
within the ley lines of Iowa

Iowan trio Druids have
peddled their shamanic
sludge for 13 years, yet
Shadow Work is only their
fourth album. Reminiscent
of the progressive sludgesplosion that birthed the
likes of Mastodon and
Baroness, Druids aspire
toward similar heights.
The ritual chants of Aether
lead to Path Of R, a psych
jam that builds to
mountainous riffing and
jazzy solos. Single Ide’s
Koan is a pensive trip that
builds to an explosive
climax without really
representing what’s best
about the record. The
raucous and esoteric Hide
does a better job, with huge

riffs and a great chorus.
With most songs clocking
over six minutes, the
album’s pace may be
ponderous, although the
songwriting is anything
but. Whether drifting
enticingly through
kaleidoscopic instrumental
cornucopias or hitting hard
with big hooks, Druids
crush with a charisma that
keeps their sludge fresh.
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FOR FANS OF: Kylesa,
Intronaut, Om
TOM O’BOYLE

Bridear school their peers
in the art of power metal

BRIDEAR
Aegis Of Athena
SETSUZOKU

Japan’s metal magicians embark on another
exhilarating adventure

OVER A DECADE in,

DVL

Hush

WORMHOLE DEATH
Glaswegian newcomers offer too
many hails to the kings

DVL sound like Avenged
Sevenfold in the same way
that the Really Hot Chili
Peppers sound like Red
Hot Chili Peppers, or
Fred Zeppelin sound like
Led Zeppelin. The question
is, of course, if the
Glaswegians can pull
enough tricks out of
the bag to at least put
a permeable stamp of
themselves on their sound.
Hush does evoke the
ready-for-Broadway
sensibilities that made A7X
so captivating in the first
place, the moody noir
stylings of The Pitch and
snarling latter stages of
Dread standing out in
particular. But each of the
songs on Hush delivers flair
and musicianship that is
exactly the kind of highadrenaline excitement
modern metal benefits
from. But without a more
distinctive flavour of their
own, they’ll forever
languish as pretenders to
a throne that was claimed
more than a decade ago.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Avenged
Sevenfold, Ice Nine Kills,
Avatar
RICH HOBSON

the technicolour blitzkrieg
these high-octane Japanese
mavens ply their trade
in continues to explode.
Bridear’s fifth full-length,
Aegis Of Athena, showcases
J-metal with a sonic
grandeur that’s lovingly
offset by its endearing
charm and lyrical sincerity.
Possessing the same exploratory verve of last year’s
Bloody Bride album, Aegis Of Athena immediately
conjures its storytelling magic through the spokenword intro of nine-minute opus Side Of A Bullet, before
quickly dialling up the prog and balancing shreds with
symphonic bombast and Kimi’s sweetly soaring singing.
As the opening melodrama leads into insatiable pop
hooks, blistering leads and the blues-soaked riffery
of crushing single Ray Of Chaos, the ambitious balance
of what inspires this band – namely the NWOBHM
tastefully laced with modern metal characteristics –
is most apparent.
The intensity throughout, from displays of six-string
magnificence through Helloween-esque power metal
pomp and jazzy interludes to regular on-a-pinhead
tempo shifts (Past In Emerald), is consistently startling.
The album’s other grand monolith, Brave New World
Revisited, is undeniably dizzying in its versatility and
technical wizardry, but Bridear’s melodic intelligence
is never compromised as a result of these lofty goals.
As comfortable with the twinkling restraint of Lodestar
and the succinct hard rock bluster of Greed as they are
with their more overtly elaborate material, Bridear
seem to be doing this all by a combination of instinct,
virtuosity and wild-eyed passion.
The result is an album that not only flows beautifully
but punches equally hard, and it’s those genre-splicing
curveballs that convince you to repeatedly venture
deeper down the rabbit hole. In terms of its musical
exports, the Land Of The Rising Sun currently burns
brighter than ever.
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FOR FANS OF: Helloween, Amaranthe, Lovebites
SOPHIE MAUGHAN

METALHAMMER.COM 83

ALBUM REVIEWS

Run

ARISING EMPIRE
Sonic highs and emotional lows
from German post-hardcore trio

Coheed And Cambria are
back in the hot seat

COHEED AND CAMBRIA
Vaxis II: A Window Of The Waking Mind
ROADRUNNER

New York’s prog maestros return to their sci-fi saga

AFTER A MERE ONE-album break,
2018’s The Unheavenly Creatures saw
Coheed And Cambria delve back into the
Amory Wars story that had dominated
the majority of their
recording career. This is
the second part of what is,
according to the band,
a five-act storyline from
that universe, and
concentrates on a couple
running from tyrannical
forces.
That alone may be
enough to make those
who never connected with
the band’s brand of emotional prog
want to sprint for the hills. But, while
Vaxis II is a typically bombastic,
sprawling set, the beauty of Coheed has
always been that even if you don’t give
two hoots about the lore, they pen songs
that can stand alone without knowledge
of their sci-fi-based melodrama. Take
the album’s first single, Shoulders, for
example. Critical plot device or essential
character development it may well be,
and all power to you if that’s what you
take from it, but ultimately, it’s a hell of
a riff, has a chorus that clings to you like
a particularly needy puppy and is full
84 METALHAMMER.COM

of disco handclaps that are cooler than
Polar Bear poo. Big. Tune.
Structurally, Vaxis II does follow
a fairly well-trodden path for Coheed;
fill the first half of the
album with absolute
bangers like the
modern pop strut of
A Disappearing Act and the
punky chug of Comatose
before really flexing
those creative progressive
muscles toward the end
of the album. The eightand-a-half-minute-long
closing title track is so
bloody grandiose it makes Guns N’
Roses’ November Rain sound like an
early Misfits demo.
Ten albums into a stellar career, and
with standards remaining incredibly
high, it might be easy to start taking
Coheed And Cambria for granted these
days. Shame on you if you do; even taken
in isolation, Vaxis II is a superbly realised
vision from a band whose ambition
knows no bounds.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Rush, Muse, The Devin
Townsend Project
STEPHEN HILL

Future Palace are brimming
with aspiration. The posthardcore trio’s second
album combines pop hooks
with soaring vocals and
breakdowns as they explore
the aftermath of a toxic
relationship. Expertly
produced, songs like recent
single Flames and Loco Loco
jump out the speakers.
Vocalist Maria has one hell
of a voice too. Not all of it
hits, such as the electronic
middle-eight of A World In
Tears, but Future Palace
have built well on their
2020 debut, Escape. A band
to keep an eye on.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Bring Me
The Horizon, Holding
Absence, PVRIS
ELLIOT LEAVER

GWAR

The New Dark Ages
PIT

Guardians of the grotesque feign
interest in human affairs

Gwar are kings of
outrageous costuming,
opportunistic, non-linear
storytelling and ruining
generations of white
clothing during their live
shows. It’s amazing and
admirable how their
gimmick has survived
triumph, tragedy and time.
Thirty-eight years of spaceage satire and fart jokes
continues with the
collective’s second postDave ‘Oderus Urungus’
Brockie offering.
Truthfully, few salivate
over Gwar’s musical

FOR FANS OF: Ghoul,
The Mentors, Lordi
CONNIE GORDON

HEART ATTACK
Negative Sun
ATOMIC FIRE

Gallic groove metallers keep hitting
the right note

Groove metal bands live
and die by the quality of
their riffs. A good job, then,
that Frenchmen Heart
Attack have them in
spades. The lovechild of
early Metallica, Sylosis and
a hefty dose of Machine
Head, this third album
distils the appeal of those
influences into one
package. Septic Melody
packs a searing guitar solo
as well as neck-snapping
groove, setting the tone
for the remainder of the
album. There’s nothing
particularly groundbreaking in what Heart
Attack do, but the
execution is certainly
compelling. With cuts like
World Consumption that
balances tremolo fury with
frenetic thrash and guttural
growls and a title track
that draws in progressive
and classical influences,
the lack of originality is
easily forgiven.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Machine
Head, Metallica, Sylosis
WILL MARSHALL

ALEXANDRA GAVILLET/PRESS

FUTURE PALACE

prowess, but the
subtraction of Dave’s
distinctive vocals and
cantankerous humour
continues to leech even
more energy. Melodic
rager Berserker Mode,
novelty smile-inducer
Completely Fucked and the
prog-rock density of Rise
Again stand out, but these
are the minority on an
hour-long album that
otherwise sounds like
a bar band playing for
disinterested weekend
pub crawlers.
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ALBUM REVIEWS

THE HERETIC ORDER
III

MASSACRE
Dark theatre and banging anthems
from London’s horror metallers

Metal and horror’s
symbiotic relationship
may have produced nastier
offspring than The Heretic
Order, but the UK crew’s
bug-eyed boisterousness
continues to take some
beating. Steeped in the
quasi-gothic pomp of early
80s metal, but delivered
with choking doses of
contemporary oomph, III
gets the balance between
style and substance just
about right. The opening
Children Of The Sun is
a majestically unhinged
anthem, equal parts King
Diamond, Ghost and
Kreator. Spirits Of The Night
takes a more theatrical
approach to exploring the
shadows, while a cover of
Motörhead’s Deaf Forever
has all the snot and
swagger of the original.
Peaking with the epic
crypt-crawl of Spiders and
Invictus’s sacrilegious, splitpersonality speed metal,
III puts fun into fear.
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FOR FANS OF: Deathless
Legacy, King Diamond,
Powerwolf
DOM LAWSON

HOLLOW FRONT

The Price Of Dreaming
UNFD

Predictable yet memorable
metalcore from US upstarts

Despite a deceptively
soothing start, the followup to 2020’s Loose Threads is
packed with serious energy
and highly memorable
tracks. The haunting yet

heavy Self Sabotage is
particularly special, as is
Comatose, with its heady
mesh of cleans, yells,
wickedly hooky fretwork
and electronic
enhancements. For the
most part, this Michigan
metalcore band’s sound
doesn’t stray far from the
expected but, aided by
some smooth production,
it’s grown more
atmospheric and anthemic.
They may occasionally get
a little trigger-happy with
the effects – Two Worlds
Away and Dear Sons fall flat
among edgier tracks – but
the emotive vocals in The
Price Of Dreaming and
angular guitarwork,
menacing growls, and
sticky melodies of Heritage
prove HF are ones to watch.
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Anaia), there’s a deceptive
complexity to the
arrangements that keeps
you breathlessly perched
on each movement, wholly
unprepared for what might
follow. Meticulously
produced and layered
with subtle hooks, Sunir
demands multiple spins
to reveal its brilliance.
■■■■■■■■■■

SMALL MERCIES

FOR FANS OF: Sigur Rós,
Wardruna, Radiohead

A Vision Of The End

FOR FANS OF: Of Mice
& Men, Our Hollow Our
Home, Dayseeker

VENERATE INDUSTRIES

NIK YOUNG

IANAI
Sunir
SVART

Out-of-this-world offerings by
pan-global folk collective

The conceit of Ianai is that
their music emanates
through Trevenial –
a time- and dimensiontravelling entity relaying
messages between worlds.
The reality is far more
exciting – an eclectic postfolk collective helmed by
Swallow The Sun singer/
keyboardist Jaani Peuhu
that includes appearances
from members of Massive
Attack, Him, Client, Sisters
Of Mercy, The Rasmus and
others. Think Sigur Rós
joining a band of African
percussionists at a full
moon psychedelic ritual.
Seamlessly weaving ancient
tribal instrumentation into
ethereal showers of dream
pop (Samovela), or conjuring
mesmerising atmospheric
sacraments (Vasariah,

JOE DALY

KRAUSE

Where EP is short for ‘Epic Potential’

BURNER

INRETROSPECT

CHURCH ROAD

SELF-RELEASED

Current State

Burner deal in
death’n’roll-infused
hardcore that pulls no
punches. This is an
Entombed and Converge
mash-up that routinely
hits the best spots of both
those brilliant bands.
Well worth your time.
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Wielding blistering riffs,
serene clean vocals,
devastating screams and
turbulent grooves, this
Leeds metalcore crew
unleash their debut EP with
groundshaking aplomb as
harmonious soundscapes
clash with primal noise.
■■■■■■■■■■

STEPHEN HILL

SOPHIE MAUGHAN

LORD OF THE LOST

LYONESS

NAPALM

SELF-RELEASED

The Art Of Fatigue
Greek noise rockers rev up their
antagonism engine

Despite this third fulllength’s moniker, Greek
noise-rock squad Krause
sound anything but
fatigued. In addition to
this being their swiftest,
punchiest album to date,
their burly, antagonistic
riffing sounds even more
thoroughly pissed off.
Songs like Crowdfunded
Assassination and
Stressworld are some of
Krause’s brashest and
meanest offerings to
date, with Nick Prapas’s
furious drum fills keeping
energy levels in the red
throughout. Even brooding
cuts like The Stuff Of Tired
Eyes and the tense, seething
Ceremonial Aspects Of
Everyday Bloodbaths still
sound like they’re just one
furtive glance away from
decking you and storming
off in a huff. Krause may
not be doing anything
drastically different to the
legions of Amphetamine
Reptile Records-obsessed
noise fiends out there, but
they perform this style
with such a palpable vigour
it’s difficult to remain
unmoved by it.
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The Heart Of The Devil

Fools Gold

A well executed, pre-tour
EP from this German
industrial/gothic outfit. It
features a piano version
of a track from last year’s
Judas album and three
excellent covers: Iron
Maiden, Lady Gaga and
a gay/trans movie anthem.
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Despite its bluesy, hard
rock base, there’s an
occasional, smouldering
Tool-esque undertow to
this UK band’s debut EP,
most notably in the
smokey vocals of Gigi Gold:
part bar-room badass,
part searching siren.
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ELLIOT LEAVER

JONATHAN SELZER

MOTHER OF MILLIONS

SHOOTING DAGGERS

VICISOLUM PRODUCTIONS

NEW HEAVY SOUNDS

Orbit

Athames

FOR FANS OF: Unsane,
Whores, Wasted Death

MOM’s first release since
the loss of keyboardist
Makis Tsamkosoglou
is understandably raw.
The Greek quartet’s
progressive rock-metal
melee is particularly
atmospheric with deeply
vulnerable vocals.
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With six shit-kicking cuts
of DC hardcore-cum-punk
grind delivered with
generous amounts of
vein-popping hatred and
fevered disdain, Shooting
Daggers are storming the
barricades at maximum
volume on their debut EP.
■■■■■■■■■■

KEZ WHELAN

NIK YOUNG

SOPHIE MAUGHAN

METALHAMMER.COM 85

ALBUM REVIEWS

Crushed
SEEING RED

New Hampshire debutants ooze
across the sludge spectrum

Decapitated return
to face the music

DECAPITATED
Cancer Culture
NUCLEAR BLAST

Poland’s disputed death/groove metallers
make their case

WELCOME TO THE

greyest of the grey zones.
In September 2017, Poland’s
then-cause célèbre death
metallers Decapitated were
arrested after a gig in Santa
Ana, California and charged
a month later with second
and third degree rape. After
the defendants pleaded not
guilty to the charges, the case was dropped in January.
Prosecutors stated they had dropped the charges “in
the interests of justice” and for “the well-being of the
victim”, while the bandmembers’ attorneys stated it was
a result of various witness testimonies in their defence,
and at the behest of the accuser. If you still don’t know
how to feel about Decapitated, then at least you’re still
engaged in a moral dialogue, because outside those
directly involved, no one knows, and to come down firmly
on one side risks an injustice to the other.
No one’s going to listen to Cancer Culture unless they
at the very least entertain the possibility that the band
are innocent. And the rub is that, sonically, it’s such the
epitome of what death metal should sound like in 2022
that you can’t just squirm your way through it. If the
insistent, Lamb Of God-esque, groove-driven title track
doesn’t address the aftermath directly, the lines ‘Opinions
like opiates… Comments like convictions’ are surely a knowing
parallel. But the imperious sound isn’t down to rage or
defensiveness, it’s a celebration of Meshuggah-level
precision, aerated with atmospheric leads.
Since their reformation after the death of drummer
Vitek and the incapacitation of former vocalist Covan,
Decapitated have, more than any other band, planted
old-school roots firmly in the modern age, and here to
breathtakingly fertile ends. From No Cure’s cavernous
detours, through Hello Death’s sushi-chef riffing and
Tatiana Shmayluk’s spellbingingly speculative vocals,
and Robb Flynn’s guest turn on the absurdly exhilarating
Iconoclast and beyond, however you approach Cancel
Culture, it’s an album that’s near-impossible to ignore.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Meshuggah, Lamb Of God, Dyscarnate
JONATHAN SELZER

86 METALHAMMER.COM

This US quartet’s debut
may only be a few minutes
longer than their 2017
EP, but it’s a much more
well-realised experience.
Their sound is a blend of
styles under the sludge
umbrella, leaping from
crushing Cult Of Luna-style
misery on Crown Of Thorns
to more minimal fuzzy
grooves on Dead Swan.
Loving You Was Killing Me
recalls Mastodon’s spacier
moments, and there’s even
an industrial flavour to
stark interlude Old. Whilst
Magnatar are still wearing
their influences on their
sleeves, Crushed excels in
its eclectic approach and
admirable disdain for
sludge clichés.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Yob, Cult
Of Luna, Slomatics
KEZ WHELAN

MEMPHIS MAY FIRE
Remade In Misery
RISE

Lone Star metalcore veterans boost
their radio-ready credentials

These Texan metalcore
staples aren’t messing
around here. Heavy and
urgent from the get-go,
the powerful riffs and
captivating chorus of Blood
& Water offer a thrilling
taste of what’s to follow.
This is an album packed
full of passion, energy,
and belters. Death Inside
may be a touch polarising
and the production overly
polished for some, but the
increased aggression and

WORLD
SERVICE

FOR FANS OF: Asking
Alexandria, Miss May I,
Volumes

Dafan

NIK YOUNG

Heavy metal uprisings
from around the globe

AARLON
ASPIRATION

This Indian metalcore
band’s latest grows with
each listen. The diverse
influences, pacing and
mix of melancholy and
aggression makes Dafan
uniquely emotional
and immersive.
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NIK YOUNG

MISERY INDEX
Complete Control
CENTURY MEDIA

Baltimore’s militant grind squad
seethe the day

Still the musical equivalent
of a radioactive brick thrown
through your window,
Misery Index are the angryas-fuck grindcore wrecking
crew we need right now.
Understandably, the band
sound more pissed off
than ever here, and their
merciless, militant attack
has mutated accordingly.
Switching from monochrome blasting to epic
grandeur with ease, The
Eaters And The Eaten and
Rites Of Cruelty are exercises
in militant fury and
calculated, explosive
violence, while Conspiracy
Of None’s mid-paced
punishment ritual is as
heavy and commanding as
anything MI have recorded.
The slithering, abyssal
brutality of Reciprocal
Repulsion showcases the
nonchalant assimilation of
black metal majesty, before
Now Defied! is hellbent on
smashing anything and
everything in its path. We
all have days like that.
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FRIENDS FROM MOON
Astray

SELF-RELEASED

This solo project from
India’s Ritwik Shivam
emulates Devin Townsend
at his most carefree. You’ll
hear serene psychedelic
pop, goofy histrionics, and
a touch of Strapping Young
Lad chug for good measure.
■■■■■■■■■■
ADAM REES

SIJJEEL

Salvation Within Insanity
COMATOSE MUSIC

FOR FANS OF: Aborted, Pig
Destroyer, Napalm Death

Led by Saudi Arabian
guitarist Hussain Akbar,
Sijjeel play a terrifying
strain of ultra-brutal death.
Grotesque, dissonant and
deranged, Salvation… raises
the bar and then beats
you to death with it.
■■■■■■■■■■

DOM LAWSON

DOM LAWSON

PRESS

MAGNATAR

experimental layers do
justice to strong songwriting and emotional
vocals. Fire From The Gods’
AJ Channer guests on Only
Human and the soaring
cleans and well-timed
breakdowns in Bleed Me
Dry will keep live crowds
happy. It’s little wonder
they released so many
singles – they certainly
have enough radio-friendly
fodder to choose from.
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ALBUM REVIEWS

NONSUN

Blood & Spirit
DUNK!

Doom-laden Ukrainians strike
a resonant tone

Hailing from Lviv, Ukraine,
Nonsun continue their
exploration of introspective,
instrumental doom soundscapes, but find themselves
tragically unable to
celebrate their second opus.
All of the revenue for preorders was given to the
band and their families by
their label to support them
as they endure life in a
warzone. The record melds
post-rock atmospherics
with droning resonance to
accentuate the huge riffs.
The maelstrom of Guilt,
Disgust, Disaster feels like an
aftermath, as disembodied
howls beset saxophone
lamentations, while In Your
Eyes, I’m A Cripple makes
for a defiant conclusion.
Currently the vile overture
of war dominates the
interpretation of this work,
but in any context Blood
& Spirit is a tumultuous
display of defiance in the
face of despair.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Year Of No
Light, Insect Ark, Sumac
TOM O’BOYLE

THE OKLAHOMA KID
Tangerine Tragic
ARISING EMPIRE

PRESS/ROCKCANDY

German metalcore newbies draw
from a deep well

Tangerine Tragic sees The
Oklahoma Kid switching
deftly between different
sonic personas. Nineties
Neue Deutsche Härte
nuances (Pale Tongue) sit
alongside huge choruses
while elsewhere glass-

gargling vocals take centre
stage. Bursts of progressive
noodling emerge from
Replaced while the hairraising outro of Waldsterben
is a stand-out moment.
Wandering into the clubhouse where Landmvrks
and Polaris hang out, the
Germans assimilate the
modern take on sprawling
anthemics. Almost every
track succeeds, ranging
from harmonically
complex riffs to pitinducing breakdowns.
Here, everything feels
bigger, with twists and
turns at every corner, all
the way to Ohnmacht. Its
melee of electronic swells
and delicate keys closes
off this second effort in
suitably brooding fashion.
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Flitcroft’s voice is the
band’s trump card across
a versatile collection.
He shares some raw,
delicate expression with
Anathema’s Vinnie
Cavanagh, while also
belting out venomous
shrieks and epic high notes
as the material demands.
■■■■■■■■■■

FOR FANS OF: Landmvrks,
Polaris, Imminence

TRANSCENDING OBSCURITY

SOPHIE MAUGHAN

SERGEANT
THUNDERHOOF
This Sceptred Veil
PALE WIZARD

Bath-based LP stoner/psych
quartet get serious on album three

British stoner/psych bands
often saddle themselves
with goofy names that
quickly become
incongruous when the
facetiousness is outgrown.
Hence, eight years since
putting their first songs
on Bandcamp, Sergeant
Thunderhoof’s third album
strikes far more enigmatic
moods, resonant emotions
and melodic nuances than
you’d expect from such
a cartoonish moniker.
There’s still plenty of
bellbottom-flapping
woofer-blowing, wig-out
vibes, but this isn’t just
a retro call-back to the
Man’s Ruin roster of 1998.
There’s a subtle but
dextrous progressive flow
at work, and although
stoner vocals can be a bit
of an afterthought, Dan

Motionless In White prepare
for a big leap

FOR FANS OF: Kyuss,
Orange Goblin, Pink Floyd
CHRIS CHANTLER

MOTIONLESS IN WHITE
Scoring The End Of The World
SISYPHEAN

Colours Of Faith

Lithuanian black metallers further
their adventures into altered states

ROADRUNNER

Industrial metal mainstays look set for their big leap

BY BLENDING
METALCORE with

If you’re after orthodox
black metal, you’ll want to
take a pass on the second
release from this grim
Lithuanian five-piece.
Sisyphean’s 2017 debut
featured a pointedly wicked
fusion of ice-encrusted
BM and old-school death
that transported your
consciousness into dark
and fascinating realms.
Here, they resume their
alchemical pursuits with
an absorbing foray into
pure aural chaos. At its
withered heart is the
collision of doomy
atmospherics and the
unholy swell of Norwegian
BM. Though not without
the occasional foray into
a straightforward, modern
style, it’s delivered with
spitfire and rage, due
in large part to the
cacophonous blasts and
unerring precision of
drummer Mantas D.
Ultimately, Colours Of Faith
deals more in refinement
than revolution, but in an
increasingly cluttered
genre, Sisyphean have done
more than enough to stand
out for all the right reasons.
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chugging industrial riffs,
synths, and the dark subject
matters of goth and horror,
Motionless In White have
grown into an outfit that’s
much-loved in multiple
corners of the alternative
world. However, one thing
remains elusive: an album to propel them to the level of
peers such as Bury Tomorrow and Asking Alexandria,
and to see them headlining some of the bigger
academies on these shores. Sixth album Scoring The End
Of The World might just be the key to unlocking the next
stage in the Pennsylvanians’ career.
In the past, Motionless In White’s biggest issue with
albums has been consistency. Each release, they always
craft a handful of excellent tracks that inevitably make
it into their live shows, but the difference in quality
between those and the ones that don’t is sorely
noticeable – often because their influences are too
blatant. This time, though, that issue has been rectified.
From the explosive Meltdown – arguably the best
opening track the band have written – to the slinky,
synth-laden Werewolf and the nu metal-tinged Red,
White & Boom (featuring Beartooth’s Caleb Shomo), for
the first time MIW have given us a record where every
track could feature in future setlists.
As for the charismatic Chris Motionless, recent single
Masterpiece is indicative of his vocal performance here,
and it’s easily his best to date, whether he’s giving us an
emotional rollercoaster during Red, White & Boom or the
menacing snarl he generates on Slaughterhouse alongside
Knocked Loose’s Bryan Garris. A big step up from
previous efforts, Scoring… could be the moment that
Motionless In White finally realise their potential and
rocket up through the metal ranks.
■■■■■■■■■■

FOR FANS OF: Deathspell
Omega, Raven Throne,
Blut Aus Nord

FOR FANS OF: Ice Nine Kills, Asking Alexandria,
Black Veil Brides
ELLIOT LEAVER

JOE DALY

METALHAMMER.COM 87

ALBUM REVIEWS

SOREPTION
Jord

UNIQUE LEADER
Swedish tech-death troupe get
their groove back

NOVA TWINS
Supernova
MARSHALL

London’s rock revolutionaries make a rallying cry for freedom

BY RIGHTS, NOVA Twins’

technicolour 2020 debut, Who Are The
Girls?, should have transformed them
into modern-day rock superstars. With
their exhilarating blend of Day-Glo
punk, gnarly bass, metal
and electronic euphoria,
guitarist and vocalist Amy
Love and bassist Georgia
South seized the zeitgeist,
smashing boundaries and
preconceptions of what
rock music should be.
Given the pandemic
scuppered some of the
momentum that record
deserved, second album
Supernova should be their moment,
blowing everything that makes the duo
so special up to widescreen proportions.
Written almost entirely during lockdown, it’s laced with darkness and
triumph, more a celebration of freedom
than a ‘pandemic’ record, rippling with
stir-crazy, combustive energy. Musically
too, it’s a tech-head’s dream, heavily
indebted to the bone-shaking techno of
The Prodigy. But without a single synth
in the studio, the Twins manage to
hotwire an array of electronic, buzzsaw
effects from their bass and guitar. Any of
these tracks could be a single. Thrilling

88 METALHAMMER.COM

opener Antagonist hits like a primordial
punch to the gut, its garish riffs fizzing
with life, K.M.B is a playful tongue-incheek gothic murder-rap, while Fire And
Ice and Choose Your Fighter capture the
incendiary energy of their
live shows.
Increasingly, fans are
craving bands who have
something to say, and
Supernova’s statements of
revolution and empowerment loom large.
Cleopatra, written at the
height of the Black Lives
Matter movement, rallies
for unification as it calls for
POC to unapologetically claim their place
within heavy music: ‘When I was a kid they
always called me a freak / And now them
little bitches want to look like me’. Later,
Puzzles is an empowering metal take on
an r’nb boner jam that flips misogyny on
its head. Inspirational, innovative and
genuinely capable of moving the genre
forward, Nova Twins are spearheading
the move towards a more inclusive scene
and a future that’s very bright indeed.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Bring Me The Horizon,
Cassyette, Wargasm
DANNII LEIVERS

Having parted ways with
guitarist Mikael Almgren,
six-string duties on Jord
are handled by Ian Waye
of Canada’s Thanats, who
does a fine job of executing
the fiddly fretboard
acrobatics the Swedes have
become known for. This
clinical expertise has
garnered them admirers,
but their fourth album
seems weightier and more
urgent than 2018’s
Monument Of The End. The
gnarly opening one-two
The Artificial North and The
Forever Born show Soreption
at their catchiest,
brimming with fiendish
staccato riffs and groove
that holds together the
frantic tempo changes.
Atmospheric synths are
again deployed to break up
the maelstrom of notes,
clearing the way for the
payloads of The Chasm and
Each Death More Hollow to
fully detonate.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Decapitated,
Archspire, Beneath
The Massacre
ADAM REES

STATIC ABYSS

Labyrinth Of Veins
PEACEVILLE

Slow-flow horror from Oakland’s
death metal denizens

Despite having dedicated
his entire adult life to
producing deeply horrible
music, Autopsy’s Chris
Reifert is nowhere near to
running out of ideas. One
of the most gruesome and

unsavoury things the
legendary drummer has
put his name to since
Mental Funeral in 1991,
Labyrinth Of Veins is
a freshly foul collaboration
with Greg Wilkinson, now
also a member of Autopsy.
You may reasonably infer
that Static Abyss aren’t
inclined to make wild
detours into jazz-funk.
Songs like Nothing Left To
Rot and Jawbone Ritual
proudly belong in the same
revolting sonic realm as
both Autopsy and Reifert’s
other high (as fuck) profile
band Abscess, but
somehow nastier, slower
and more deliriously
disgusting than either.
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FOR FANS OF: Autopsy,
Coffins, Phrenelith
DOM LAWSON

THORNHILL
Heroine
UNFD

Aussie metalcore mob hitch a ride
on the greats

Thornhill’s second album
shows some serious
ambition. The reference
points as Heroine unfolds
are routinely massive arena
or stadium acts like Muse,
Tool or even, in the middle
of Leather Wings, dance
superstars Faithless. But
one name stands out above
all others, and we just have
to be blunt about this:
Thornhill have been
listening to a lot of
Deftones. Maybe a little
too much. Whilst aiming
for the skies is a noble
pursuit, it’s unfortunate
that these Aussies never
really reach the lofty
heights of their influences.
These songs aren’t bad, but
their attachment to White
Pony is Single White
Female-level stalking.
■■■■■■■■■■
FOR FANS OF: Deftones,
Thrice, Muse
STEPHEN HILL

PRESS X2

Nova Twins: the
revolution starts here

ALBUM REVIEWS

TROLLFEST

Flamingo Overlord
NAPALM

Norway’s madcap folk metallers
add a new twist to their tomfoolery

Although retaining this
chaotic mob’s Balkan
madness, Flamingo Overlord
is a long shot from
Trollfest’s traditional
corpus of ridiculous (yet
technical) oompa-fiddly
music, riddled with the
scent of musty drinking
taverns. This is slick, party
fun in neon – a caffeinated
conga drenched in heavy
riffs, reggae and Latin
undertones like an
Offspring/Gogol Bordello
mash-up. With all-English
lyrics and more clean
singing than ever, their
backing off from their trad
folk leanings might be as
divisive as the signature
dance moves in Dance Like
A Pink Flamingo or the saxaddled rap in Twenty Miles
An Hour, but it’s fun beyond
belief. If the ragtime pep
of Flamongous or the
infectious carny anthem
Flamingo Libre doesn’t get
you power-jigging, nothing
will. Flamingo Overlord is
everything a metal party
album should be.
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FOR FANS OF: Korpiklaani,
Gogol Bordello, Alestorm
HOLLY WRIGHT

VENUS PRINCIPLE
Stand In Your Light
PROPHECY PRODUCTIONS

Aching grandeur from former
Crippled Black Phoenix members

Formed by ex-Crippled
Black Phoenix members,
Venus Principle take
an undeniably similar
approach to their former

band on their sumptuous
debut. As showcased via
sprawling opener Rebel
Drones, Stand In Your Light is
built from slow crescendos,
widescreen post-rock
bluster and delicate, wistful
melodies, with vocalists
Daniel Änghede and Daisy
Chapman sharing a hazy
spotlight and At The Gates’
guitarist Jonas Stålhammar
delivering an absurd
number of sublime solos.
There are occasional
deviations from that
atmospheric red line, most
notably the spiky and
austere The Lord He Giveth
And He Taketh Away. But
Stand In Your Light’s default
setting is lush and
languorous melancholy,
as showcased on the
sax’n’synth-laced Drag Nets
and the gorgeous, uplifting
title track. You may weep.
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Legion Of The Seas, Pirates is
a confident deployment of
their epic mission. Michele
and Clémentine’s chemistry
is undeniable and for a band
who’ve suffered an identity
crisis for the last decade
thanks to a revolving door
of members, it’s refreshing
and reassuring to see
them settle into this
current line-up.
■■■■■■■■■■

FOR FANS OF: Anathema,
Crippled Black Phoenix,
40 Watt Sun

Maryland death metal trio master
the art of shredding

DOM LAWSON

VISIONS OF ATLANTIS
Pirates
NAPALM

Long-running symphonic Austrians
make avast improvement

Fronted by the dual vocal
force of Michele Guaitoli
and Clémentine Delauney,
Austrian symphonic outfit
Visions Of Atlantis are
renewing their adventurous
spirit with eighth album
Pirates. Newish recruit
Michele’s silken and gutsy
vocal tone, drawing
parallels with ex-Kamelot
crooner Roy Khan, is the
dramatic shift this band
needed and although
there’s still a way to go
with the album’s overall
memorability, it offers
up some real promise.
Whether it’s the Nightwish
whimsy of Clocks, the
climatic arrangement of
Master The Hurricane or
the symbiotic vocals of

RESURRECTIONS
Unearthing the latest metal reissues
The artist
formerly known
as ‘Walls’ Jansen

FOR FANS OF: Nightwish,
Sonata Arctica, Epica
HOLLY WRIGHT

YATRA

ONE OF A FEW disproportionately influential power

FOR FANS OF: Carcass,
High On Fire, Deicide

trios from the New Wave Of British Heavy Metal’s
heyday, TANK debuted with 1981’s Don’t Walk Away EP
(High Roller) [9]. It’s still a crucial nugget of rambunctious
energy and attitude, powered by the untrained snarls
and propulsive four-string of ex-Damned bassist Algy
Ward. Power Of The Hunter [7] emerged barely six months
after their 1982 debut LP; inspiration was stretched a bit
thin, but there were some great, forward-moving songs,
with much-tightened interplay. 1983’s This Means War
[8] introduced a second guitarist and spacey keyboards,
expanding the palette and sharpening the songwriting
to create a NWOBHM classic. On 1984’s Honour & Blood [6]
Tank’s militaristic obsession felt decidedly overstated,
its repetition sinking in on overlong songs that
nevertheless retained enough wildness of spirit to
maintain interest.
Also that year, LA quintet ARMORED SAINT’s debut
March Of The Saint (High Roller) [7] was launched to the
world on major label Chrysalis, with hopes high for an
80s US metal success story. The LP was more solid start
than stellar smash, but they had a highly coveted singer
(John Bush, headhunted by Metallica and Anthrax) and
a classy, classic HM style that beat its own path through
an era dominated by the thrash vs glam wars. On 1985’s
Delirious Nomad [8] they were growing in confidence,
their arrangements getting more distinctive and
adventurous, yet 1987’s Raising Fear [6] sounded more
tentative and unsure of itself. The best songs are the
heaviest (natch), but some lightweight fillers betray
the band’s identity crisis.
In the early 90s, Chicago veterans TROUBLE had
successfully reinvented their weighty, apocalyptic
doom with an upbeat psychedelic groove. 1995’s Plastic
Green Head (Hammerheart) [7], their overlooked but
inconsistent sixth LP, lollops a little too far down this
flowery path, the band even blissed-out enough to
throw in a Monkees cover.
AFTER FOREVER’s self-titled final album [9] still
sounds dynamite with a laser beam after 15 years,
zeroing straight into the dramatic essence of symphonic
power metal. Floor Jansen’s fearless conviction and
masterful precision still drop jaws, hammering home
what a loss this band was when Floor fled to Nightwish.

MATT MILLS

CHRIS CHANTLER

Born Into Chaos
PROSTHETIC

Sometimes you just want
an Incredible Hulk of a riff
to smash you in the face.
Yatra’s fourth album
has been genetically
engineered for when you’re
in such a mood. Born Into
Chaos is equal parts sludge
and tech-death, laying
intricate yet pummelling
licks down over
comparatively simple
rhythms. Terminate By
The Sword rockets from
open-string chugs to
ear-splitting screeches,
before Reign Of Terror
worships Floridian death
metal with its thunderous
tremolo picking. The title
track broadens the colour
palette even further with
its insidious black metal
melody. Granted, axes
notwithstanding, this is far
from a diverse endeavour,
as Dana Helmuth’s vocals
and Sean Lafferty’s drums
stay locked in the same
‘brutal’ mode throughout.
The six strings lead the
charge over these 38
minutes, so it’s a blessing
that they pull their weight
as mightily as they do.
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METALHAMMER.COM 89

LIVE REVIEWS

LIVE REVIEWS

GHOST
UNCLE ACID & THE DEADBEATS/TWIN TEMPLE
RESORTS WORLD ARENA, BIRMINGHAM

Bringers of the light and the heavy form an unholy, exhilarating triumvirate

90 METALHAMMER.COM

Papa Nihil swings
back into action

the PA, before the rest of the band roar to
life with the utterly exhilarating Kaisarion.
Joyous and unbridled, the track is a perfect
summation of the transformation Ghost
have experienced since the release of
Square Hammer, loading their albums with
undeniable pop-metal bangers that can
convert the masses in a single fell swoop.
Not that there’s any converting needed
tonight, of course. The audience voraciously
roar through colossal renditions of Rats, From
The Pinnacle To The Pit and Mary On A Cross,
Papa Emeritus IV summing it up best with
a pithy one-liner: “It makes my motor run,
how about yours?” For all the charisma and
captivating energy of Papa, however, the
Nameless Ghouls are truly coming into their
own on this latest run.
Hand gestures, posturing and general
panto-theatrics keep a massive smile on
Birmingham’s collective face throughout
the set. A guitar duel during Devil Church
turns into an impromptu snippet of Iron
Man (when in Brum, after all). In fact, the
Ghouls exhibit so much showmanship
that you can’t help but wonder if there’s
some dissent with the Devil, as they
occasionally steal thunder from Papa
himself (getting the occasional boot up the
ass for comedic effect in the process).
Ghost’s mythos isn’t
contained within bios,
booklets and YouTube
videos – it’s something
active and alive at every show
they play, an infernal jukebox
musical that is continually

evolving. From the colossal Metallica riffs of
Cirice to the Abba-like keys at the start of
Spillways, Ghost are armed to the teeth with
enthralling, invigorating anthems that define
the very best of what heavy metal has to offer,
grabbing some primordial, instinctual sense
and giving it a good tickling until you’re left
basking in the afterglow.
The surprise resurrection of Papa Nihil
feels entirely appropriate for a Good Friday
Ghost show and, after some Frankenstein’s
Monster-style throttling of Papa IV, we enjoy
the best sax-meets-rock solo since Tim
Cappello wailed on the beach to some soonto-be vampire fodder in The Lost Boys. Though
Impera makes a strong showing in the setlist,
the lack of Watcher In The Sky and Twenties
feels surprising given just how all-conquering
those songs are. We take some solace in
seeing Call Me Little Sunshine and Hunter’s Moon
proving to be just as addictive as Rats or Square
Hammer before them, at least.
From blasts of flame during Year Zero to
Papa dancing like he’s in the Beelzeblues
Brothers, Ghost strike the perfect balance
between production and performance to
cement the sense they are firmly on track for
the top tier of the rock and metal pantheon.
Papa’s blackened snarls during Mummy Dust
might harken back to Ghost’s roots in extreme
metal, but the keytar solo during that same
song betrays their true stadium-sized
ambitions. By the time Square Hammer kicks in
there can be no denying Ghost have captured
heavy metal heart and soul. It’s only a matter
of time until they conquer the world at large.
RICH HOBSON

KATJA OGTIN

GHOST’S ASCENSION IS almost
complete. A decade-plus journey from
‘everyone’s favourite cult sensation’ to
‘everyone’s favourite’ has seen them
established as a viable arena (and festival)
headline act with a sense of branding and
devotion matched only by the likes of Iron
Maiden. Granted, the arena isn’t entirely
sold out – the back wall subtly curtained off
– but it doesn’t take away from the fact that
Tobias Forge truly has built an empire off
the back of some great songs and a cheesy
Satanic shtick.
Speaking of which, TWIN TEMPLE’s
Satanic doo-wop proves to be a nearirresistible lure. Fifty years ago, these sounds
might have emanated from a San Francisco
basement bar or ultra-trendy New York attic,
but transposed to an arena in Birmingham
they prove no less seductive or stylish.
Serpentine rhythms coil around brass wails
while vocalist Alexandra James commands
total attention throughout the set, and she’s
charismatic enough to spawn a cult following
of her own. Judging by the crowd’s reaction,
they won’t remain on the fringes for long,
however, and by the time the set closes (with
a ritual, naturally), Twin Temple have set the
mood sky-high.
Sabbathian riffs intermixed with fuzzedout psychedelia is still a solid draw in the
home of heavy metal (just look at God Damn,
Black Mekon or Table Scraps), but sandwiched
between Twin Temple and Ghost UNCLE ACID
& THE DEADBEATS fall into a personalityless void. The riffs are plenty nice, at times
feeling like the grandchildren of the grave,
but a lack of interaction and low ambient
lighting makes it feel like Uncle Acid
are willing themselves back to
basement bars.
GHOST may have
kicked off their 2022
schedule in the US, but
the Impera cycle hasn’t
truly taken hold until
the band have returned
to the UK. Arriving
onstage like a Satanic
Peter Pan, Papa’s
silhouette emerges
behind a curtain as
Imperium plays over

LIVE REVIEWS
Come to Papa: Ghost revel
in the power and the glory

METALHAMMER.COM 91

LIVE REVIEWS

Lingua Ignota:
your guide
through
purgatory

Jo Quail maps out an
enthralling new vision

Ulver trip the light fantastic

ROADBURN 2022
VARIOUS VENUES, TILBURG

IF YOU’VE FOUND yourself dreaming of
other, better worlds over the past few years,
Roadburn is a four-day window into what
could be. Aside from the deep sense of
community that’s returned after three years,
there’s something genuinely magical about
watching so many of our most exploratory
and immersive artists play host to thousands
of rapt devotees, where each performance
feels like a calling. That’s particularly
apparent with BIG | BRAVE, who fill out the
vast Terminal hall. Robin Wattie’s fragile
yet wilful vocals claw their way through the
tectonic, push/pull birth throes of the riffs,
and her humbled, awed speech about the
crowd and occasion resonate perfectly with
the spirit of the festival.
At the main 013 venue, steadily building
dread gives way to pitch-nastiness, sludge
and post-metal blurring as VILE CREATURE
& BISMUTH celebrate the heat death of the
universe in sonic form before giving way to
beautiful, ethereal melodies that drift beyond
the void. Playing songs from their new, third
album, Close, MESSA’s set on the main stage
showcases their innovative doom as it verges
from ambient to jazzy with added sax. Spring
may be in the air in Tilburg, but 40 WATT SUN
92 METALHAMMER.COM

deliver a sense of autumnal wistfulness that
perfectly underpins their contemplative new
album, Perfect Light.
No strangers to Roadburn, Iceland’s
SÓLSTAFIR are back on the main stage, this
time playing their 2011 album, Svartir Sandar,
in full. It’s a big draw – rarely heard live
songs like Sjúki Skugginn, gorgeous imagery
featuring music videos as well as artwork by
Kim Holm – but sadly, it’s not their night.
Technical issues halt the pace, and once these
gremlins hit the band struggle to retain their
confidence. One of the heavier bands at
this year’s Roadburn, Belgium’s black
metallers WIEGEDOOD’s main stage set is
a pummelling sensory overload of flashing
lights and juddering black metal.
GGGOLDDD give one of the most moving
performances of the weekend as they play
new album This Shame Should Not Be Mine
in full. The album explores vocalist Milena
Eva’s experience of sexual assault, and the
set focuses heavily on her voice: where we
can hear every word and feel every emotion.
RUSSIAN CIRCLES’ mesmerising
instrumental post-rock is elevated to another
level with a hypnotic light show that
complements the music perfectly. Whether

heavy swirling strobes or soft twinkling
lights, it makes their main stage set feel like
a journey into another dimension. Back to
earth with the force of a megaton bomb. Kevin
Martin, aka THE BUG, and MCs Flowdan
and Logan turn the second stage into an
apocalyptic, red light-bathed fever dream as
foundation-rattling beats create both urban
hellscape and last-rave-on-earth abandon
around the room.
Day two’s main stage starts with another
visionary, dystopian experience, as JAMES
KENT aka Perturbator adds layers of Vangelisbaiting atmosphere to Cult Of Luna frontman
JOHANNES PERSSON’s skin-ripping roar
and stricken adventurism. It’s a symbiotic,
transportive pairing under a stunning light
show and a backdrop of floating particle webs
like an AI neural network. There are plenty
of low-end lurkers on Roadburn bill, but
PRIMITIVE MAN make them sound like
they’re paddling in the kiddie pool. Abyssal
sludge replete with blastbeats and a sense of
tension so tight it could garrotte an elephant,
their set is a masterclass in sludge’s most
punishing capabilities.
For all the anticipation in a packed
Terminal, DIVIDE AND DISSOLVE’s low-end

PETER TROEST

Ulver, Emma Ruth Rundle and Lingua Ignota bring the rapture back to the lowlands

LIVE REVIEWS

Duma herald a new dawn
for electro-grind
Sólstafir: Addi Tryggvason
seeks out a high note

GGGOLDDD’s Milena
Eva: grace under fire

rumble and plaintive laments come across
as sketchy and unfocused, unable to fully
harness the power of last year’s Gas Lit album.
JO QUAIL’s The Cartographer combines postmetal sonic monoliths with symphonic
grandeur, straining the nerves with queasy,
foreboding tones that can explode in brass
cacophonies or gliding strings as pressure
builds. Grave Lines’ Jake Harding booms with
post-metal imperiousness that would do
Kristian Karlsson proud, while Lucie Dehli
invokes more spiritual vocalisations that
cement the experience as being awesome in
the truest sense of the word.
Performing their new album A Loner in full,
HANGMAN’S CHAIR’s brand of doom comes
laden with the cool, seductive tones of goth.
Cédric Toufouti is one of the
scene’s unsung talents, but
judging from the reception
this won’t remain the case

for long. EMMA RUTH RUNDLE’s set may be
on the main stage, but it has all the intimacy
of a tiny club show. Alone, she plays through
her new acoustic album, Engine Of Hell, in full,
alternating between guitar and piano, often
adding explanations to the songs, which adds
to the intimacy. The silence of the crowd in
these quiet moments is testament to the
Roadburn audience’s enduring respect.
Back at The Terminal, SENYAWA’s blend of
traditional Indonesian instrumentation and
inventive industrial clangour proves both
mind- and ear-blowing, before Kenyan
duo DUMA’s electro-assault is a thrilling,
nerve-jangling experience, even if Martin
Khanja’s near-ambient vocals don’t quite
take us to the point of total abandon.
Roadburn don’t particularly do
headliners, but ULVER are chief
among the headliners they
don’t have. Packing the main
stage out more than any other act
over the weekend, the band’s visuals are
a school in synaesthesia that could match
prog titans Pink Floyd or Genesis, while
Flowers Of Evil’s sound bridges old-school prog,
contemplative post-rock and trippy electronica
in a glorious, psychedelia-drenched fusion.

The backdrop for LINGUA IGNOTA’S 2019
Roadburn appearance was a Hades-esque
travelogue through wildfires. This year, with
a Sinner Get Ready-focused set, the images of
pastoral landscapes and rapt spirituals have
a different kind of potency, steeped in themes
of dominance, the thrall of supplication
and the unearthly power that binds. Kristin
Hayter herself sounds like a host of
traumatised angels weeping over the state of
the earth, and these songs are transformed
into ornate sermons conducted from a state
of purgatory that feels both sacrosanct and
indelibly stained.
THOU’s Black Sabbath tribute set brings
Roadburn 2022 to a celebratory close. Tony
Iommi’s riffs are sucked into a black hole of
sludge so heavy it feels like the universe
crushing everything into a single, perfect
terminal moment. Kristin Hayter makes
a guest appearance for Black Sabbath, imbuing
Geezer Butler’s lyrics with otherworldly
doom that perfectly accentuates Roadburn
2022’s express aim of redefining heavy,
taking things back to the source and
reconstructing them at a molecular level.
Long may the revolution continue.
RICH HOBSON/HANNAH MAY KILROY/JONATHAN SELZER

METALHAMMER.COM 93

LIVE REVIEWS

DESERTFEST 2022
VARIOUS CAMDEN VENUES, LONDON

Electric Wizard, Yob and Orange Goblin help resurrect London’s riffastic three-dayer

In an increasingly saturated festival market,
the Camden-crossing Desertfest continues to
thrive by taking the acolytes of the riff from
the fringes and putting them front and centre
for experiences fans just won’t find anywhere
else. A decade since its first event, the 2022
line-up features a kaleidoscope of acts
covering stoner, doom, psych and just about
everything in between – with ribald
afterparties to boot – to fully satiate even the
most ardent devotee.
To whit, Japan’s BLACKLAB flit back-andforth between fuzz-drenched grinding
doom and adrenaline-laced punk at The
Underworld. Drummer Chia clatters the kit
so hard she breaks it. “She’s got too much
power,” vocalist Yuko says with a grin.
Dingwalls might have changed its name to
Powerhaus, but it still holds true to its punk
legacy, as newcomers SHOOTING DAGGERS
electrify with hardcore punk ferocity.
LOWRIDER are still channelling the
psychedelic, desert rock of Kyuss, albeit with
a heavy dose of early QOTSA, Josh Hommestyled vocals. The packed Electric Ballroom
crowd lap it up, reaffirming the enduring
power of the scene, and the loyalty it inspires.
Discontinuity can be just as thrilling, as
Iggor Cavalera and Wayne Adams, aka
PETBRICK, mash d-beats, electronics and
ritual, brain-freezing clatter into a state of
delirium as cameos from Integrity’s Dwid
Hellion and a faux-pro-Trump cowboy suggest
a homemade Ministry on a whole new set of
psychoactive drugs.
Nine years after their last UK show,
INTEGRITY themselves are a holy grail for
Desertfest’s hardcore punk faction. A band
fundamental to the scene, yet one that exist
in a singular space where occult leanings and
visceral, street-level assaults meet, their
songs are potent, groove-battered stews,
coagulating around Dwid’s sandpaper howl.
Seeing SPIRIT ADRIFT in the pressure cooker
that is the Black Heart feels truly explosive.
You can scarcely nod your head without being
subsumed into a wall of flesh, but songs like
Ride Into The Light are so epic you just can’t
help yourself.
WITCHCRAFT have the pedigree to conjure
a majestic, magic-fuelled performance.
Instead, their somewhat drab, lacklustre
presence, along with guitar strap mishaps and
Adidas tracksuits, sees the Swedish, former
retro-doom darlings squander whatever
charms they have left.
The bastard child of Kyuss and Alice In
Chains, STEAK close the Electric Ballroom
with their dance-friendly, mellow melodies.

94 METALHAMMER.COM

Their harmonised, Chris Cornell-influenced
vocals and chilled-out vibes are the perfect
way to end the first night.

SATURDAY

“There are more people here than in the
village I come from.” SLOMOSA’s frontman
might be humbled by the Ballroom’s early
afternoon crowd, but there’s nothing modest
about the Norwegians’ driving grooves, like
a makeshift plane achieving take-off as
Ramones-y belligerence and nasal vocals
combine with hazy, desert-warmed riffs
for maximum, endorphin-releasing effect.
MY SLEEPING KARMA aren’t the beings of
pure light their recorded music suggest, but
a bunch of strapping Germans whose every
blissful note quivers and dilates like newborn,
radiant spores.
Featuring Kyuss alumni Brant Bjork and
Nick Oliveri, STÖNER offer up their bluesy
marijuana-infused punk rock’n’roll to an
Electric Ballroom that’s as heavily packed
as you’d imagine one of their joints to be –
and their music is just as potent. After a set
chock-full of originals the trio close up with
an impassioned cover of Motörhead’s
R.A.M.O.N.E.S. before treating the crowd to
what they were clearly waiting for - Kyuss
classics Gardenia and Green Machine. The
psych-heavy open-ended soundscapes of
EARTHLESS attract a substantial crowd to the
Ballroom. It’s hard to catch a glimpse of the
San Diego trio through the sea of swaying
souls, but their immense riffs fill every nook
and cranny of the venue.
In 2016 at the very same festival, an
inebriated conversation between five folklore
fanatics formed GREEN LUNG. Now, the
Londoners are greeted with an overflowing
Underworld reciting every line and furiously
rocking their heads to songs that
already seem like decades-old
classics. Sweden’s MAIDAVALE
serve the Black Heart a
banquet of 70s-style
experimental
grooves,
pulsating bass,
dazzlingly wild
percussion and stretches of
kaleidoscopic, acid-laced riffs that
- if not for Matilda Roth’s uniquely
executed, monotone vocals to keep
you earthbound - would send you
spiralling into a wondrous cosmic
trance. Classic crowd-pleasers
ORANGE GOBLIN rouse late-night
festival-goers with a host of
groovy, fist-raising anthems as
Opium Lord are
bad medicine

the walls of the Electric Ballroom vibrate with
high-octane energy right through to closing
track Red Tide Rising.
“The guillotine is too good for those people.
Hanging is too kind.” Steve Albini isn’t shy of
opinions, letting the world know just how he
feels about Celine Dion singing one of her own
songs at karaoke. SHELLAC’s set holds no less
bite, angular, jutting noise punk with a clasp
like a bear trap proving an odd-but-fun choice
for Saturday night headliner.

SUNDAY

Despite being named after an entire desert
planet, Edinburgh’s DVNE would feel more at
home at Arctangent. Their proggy post-metal
sounds spectacular in the Roundhouse, but
with such a dispersed audience, it’s clear they
are a little out of place here. CONAN, however,
drop like a sledgehammer here. Their riffs
gurgle and lurch like the digestive tract of
some great fellbeast, showing how much
scope uncompromising doom has when given
the space to roam.
EYEHATEGOD might baulk at being called
sludge, but there’s no better term to describe
the suffocating filth of their set, Mike IX
Williams shrieking like a man condemned.
From the gutter to the stars. YOB’s Atmacover backdrop hosts the radiant light at the
end of a tunnel, and every throbbing riff
sounds as if it’s gathering the critical mass to
reach a state of transcendence. It’s an organic,
heaving rite that holds more than 1,500 souls
in a state of tantric awe.
OPIUM LORD’s grit-laden sludge sifts
through the last dregs of humanity and
increases the Black Heart’s force of gravity by
66.6%. SACRI MONTI’s daze-inducing
psychedelia also renders movement almost
impossible as the Californians voyage
across expansive streams of mindwarping keys, harmonising guitar
solos and crushing, sense-assaulting
riffs.The Roundhouse is an ideal host
for ELECTRIC WIZARD’s black mass,
their signature Satanic, cinematic
visuals adding to the ambience
of their psychedelic dirge. The
band lure the hordes in by
opening with Return Trip
before belting out a storm
of classics culminating in
the inimitable Funeralopolis
– the ultimate in stoner
doom deliverance to send
Desertfest out on the
greatest of highs.
RICH HOBSON/ALICE PATTILLO
LIZ SCARLETT/JONATHAN SELZER

WILL IRELAND

FRIDAY

LIVE REVIEWS
Electric Wizard induce
a super stupor

Green Lung receive a
heroes’ homecoming
Orange Goblin: still on
top of the world

Dvne: planetsized riffs

Yob make tracks
for transcendence
Shellac’s rage will
always go on…

Maidavale: sorceresses
of garage psychedelia

Stöner: Nick Oliveri
cranks up the riffs

METALHAMMER.COM 95

LIVE REVIEWS
Djerv: something
wicked this way comes

Venom’s Cronos:
black metal’s
original sinner

INFERNO FESTIVAL 2022
JOHN DEE, ROCKEFELLER, OSLO

DENIED ITS 20TH anniversary by you-

know-what, it’s entirely in the nature of
Inferno that it’s kept as much of 2020’s
intended line-up as possible. Although it
throws the occasional curveball, the festival’s
reputation, and popularity, is based on
reaffirming the (mostly) Norwegian extreme
metal canon, making it a true North Star on
the festival circuit. It’s also wholly apt that
DJERV kick off proceedings on the main
Rockefeller stage, having recently returned
after a 10-year hiatus. But with Agnete
Kjølsrud a towering, Maleficent-eque
presence, there’s a near-feral lust for life
erupting throughout their stomping,
exhilaratingly wayward anthems. KAMPFAR
are Inferno royalty, the broad, scorched
ground covered over their near-three-decade
history both brought into focus and given
a charred and ragged edge by frontman Dolk’s
hoarse, punky vocals as the doom-laden Troll,
Død Og Trolldom and supercharged pummel
of Det Sorte offer different perspectives on
a still-fevered, crowd-inciting vision.
Downstairs at the John Dee venue,
SYLVAINE offer a more intimate experience,
both the warmth and adventurism coursing
through Katherine Sheppard’s crystalline-

96 METALHAMMER.COM

turned-feral vocals already bewitching
everyone gathered before a final, a cappella
folk song stops time and hearts. BÖLZER, as
ever, sound as though they’ve tapped into
some paranormal artery, the livid streams of
sound coursing out of KzR’s guitars
and corralled by HzR’s pounding
drums turning the John Dee
into a packed house of
worship for ferocious,
primal forces.
IHSAHN and
his band of music
students aren’t just
pitch perfect, but the
Norwegian is pushing
black metal to its
limits and beyond by
performing the full
Telemark EP including the
Iron Maiden and Lenny
Kravitz cover versions
intersected by some fan favourites.
One genius follows the other as Tom
G. Warrior pays tribute to his late friend and
co-creator Martin Ain. Under the banner
TRIUMPH OF DEATH the Swiss mastermind
lays bare the foundations of black metal by

a stunning live recreation of the legendary
Hellhammer demos. Flanked by three young
musicians, the Swiss veteran maintains
the original rawness but adds the later
musicianship of Celtic Frost and Triptykon.
Day two starts in stately style with
HAMFERÐ’s evening dress
matching the distraught
elegance of their funeral
doom. Jón Aldará’s
operatic vocals are a
thing of such beauty
they become an elegy
for all humankind, his
growls a told-you-so
from the darkest side
of the psyche. Some
bands are basically rock
Asagraum’s
Obscura digs deep
acts dressed up in BM
into the dark
clothing, but there’s an
electrifying purity of intent
to ASAGRAUM. They may pay
tribute to the icy Northern style, but
their riffs are ever-surging channels mining
a host of dark forces that are fully their own.
GORGOROTH are the embodiment of
Norwegian black metal and although the
majestic aspect went with singer Gaahl, Taake

UNCLE ALLAN

Taake, Emperor and Tom G. Warrior herald the return of Norway’s infamous extreme metal fest

LIVE REVIEWS
Xxxxxxx xxxxxx xxxxxxx
xxxxx xxxxxx xxxxx...

Ihsahn: the old and
new wave of BM

Nyrst weigh up the pros
and cons of the endtimes
Taake’s Hoest: Norway’s
new king of black metal

Kampfar: the jewel in
Norway’s BM crown

Triumph Of Death:
Tom G. Warrior goes
back to his roots

frontman Hoest brings the fierceness back
that interim vocalist Pest never achieved.
An amp fries, a guitar cable breaks, the sound
turns rotten, but the crowd hardly cares and
celebrates the likes of Incipit Satan. Picky
punters might complain that VENOM are
playing far too well these days, but Cronos
and his band are literally being worshipped
in the North and starting with Witching Hour
the trio play just enough old material to win
this day with the encore of Black Metal and
In League With Satan.
DARK FORTRESS have had better days.
Although the German melodic black
metallers’ performance is technically sound
as they kick off day three, they lack conviction
and create no spark – probably enhanced by
many hearing tracks like Baphomet for the
first time. ASPHYX don’t have bad days. With
a set focused on both 1991 debut The Rack
and last year’s Necroceros, the primordial,
palpitating, groove-laden nature of their
death metal trawl remains both constant and
a source of reinvigorating thunder. It was
never rocket science, but only few are granted
access to DM’s inner citadel. Whatever VREID
are doing, it works great with the crowd,
whether it’s covering the Rolling Stones’ Paint

Kreator stir the
pits of Hell

It Black, playing the Windir tribute Spiritlord
or taking Oslo by storm with Wild North West.
MARDUK are also in exceptionally strong
shape. Frontman Mortuus is as fearsome as
ever, but refusing to play many hits beyond
1993’s Wolves is not the way to win over
a packed festival audience.
Keeping to their recent three-part format,
replete with set and costume changes, it’s
the first, reformation-era set that sounds a
little ropey by MAYHEM’s standards, neither
the clinical angularity nor the old schoolbinding approach of the Daemon tracks
quite gelling under the red banners. A cowled
Attila Csihar is an otherworldly presence
throughout, and as they tear into both De
Mysteriis Dom Sathanas and Deathcrush, the
profane, commanding power reaches an
ecstatic state that’s a tuning fork for a rapt
and rammed Rockefeller.
If you’re feeling a little wasted by the final
Sunday, ORANSSI PAZUZU are on hand to
tip you over the edge. Hitting Inferno like
a visitation from an extra dimension, even
by the Finns’ standards, their set is out there.
From the woozy tension and traction of
Oikeamielisten Sali, through extended
atmospherics, you can sense the awe and

Mayhem: Attila Csihar
incites Carnage

‘does not compute’ throughout the crowd, but
the final conflagration of Taivaan Portti gives
way to a rapturous response, as if we’ve just
remembered clapping as a human impulse.
NYRST’s vocalist takes a similar mad-prophet
approach to vocals as Oranssi’s Jun-His, as the
Icelanders’ apocalyptically atmospheric BM
courses thorugh the John Dee. The Rockefeller
is packed for KREATOR as the Germans
hammer out a set only filled with classics
from the first to the latest album. A circle-pit
grinds relentlessly through the whole gig,
only interrupted when Mille Petrozza
instigates another wall of death.
TAAKE’s headline slot feels like a coronation
for an entity at once central to True Norwegian
BM and yet somehow parallel to the canon,
Hoest a wilful, one-off anomaly whose
singular charisma can make the flame his
alone, and to whatever ends he sees fit.
Tonight, he lives up to the occasion, no longer
a feral Iggy Pop in corpsepaint, but something
more regal, draped in a Norwegian flag cape
as he lords it on stage. From epic, folk-laced
anthems to Myr’s fuck-you banjo solo, this
is an ascension to the crown to which all of
Inferno pays enthralled witness.
GUNNAR SAUERMANN/JONATHAN SELZER

METALHAMMER.COM 97

LIVE REVIEWS
Devin Townsend ranges
across his musical spectrum

BURNING WITCHES
NERVOSA

THE ROBIN 2, BILSTON

VOLA

ROYAL ALBERT HALL, LONDON

Canada’s cosmic metal maestro soars across a gloried career
IT’S A GRANDIOSE

setting for one of metal’s most
grandiose characters this
evening, as the legendary glory
of the Royal Albert Hall once
again hosts one of our most
creative minds. “They sound
like Korn,” says one punter
dismissively, as VOLA run
through the support set. He’s
not accurate; the Danish prog
metallers don’t quite aim for
that level of party-starting, but
they do have some massive
instantaneous riffs, and on
These Black Claws do attempt
something slightly nu metal-inspired. Maybe
that’s what he meant. But Vola do all of this with
a far more cerebral bent, going for emotional
weight over jumpdafuckup bounce. Decent.
“I just love playing music!” beams DEVIN
TOWNSEND halfway through his set, and from
the excitable way he exclaims it he’s obviously not
lying. The band he has put together has learned
four and a half hours of music to play over the two
nights that Devin will play this venue. This first
of the two evenings has a unique, special feel to
it, everyone aware that this is a one-off set that
will never be repeated. It’s a stripped-down affair
visually, the elephants and dancing ballbags of

his Bloodstock headline show
of last year don’t put in an
appearance, but musically it’s
as vast, as wild and as eclectic
as any show this beautiful old
building has ever seen. We get
songs from every facet of
Devin’s career. Highlights veer
from an incredibly delicate
acoustic version of Ih-Ah! from
his Devin Townsend Project to
four Strapping Young Lad
songs that are greeted like the
second coming by the
old-school metalheads in
attendance.
But whatever he tries his hand at, Devin is
a fascinating focal point for his band, his voice
soaring through the venue when he croons,
shaking the foundations when he roars, his
playing note perfect and idiosyncratic, his smile
as wide as a particularly delighted Cheshire Cat.
It also should be noted that the Royal Albert Hall
doesn’t just look nice, it lets its artists sound as
fantastic as they should, managing to harness
all of the nuance and intricacies in this often
incredibly complex music. All in all, this is the
kind of evening that will live long in the memory.
Thanks Devin, we love you playing music too.
Vola: brains
over bounce

STEPHEN HILL

RICH HOBSON

GAEREA
WODE

THE BLACK HEART, LONDON

From the post-industrial heartlands of
Manchester, WODE have been making
waves with the Swedish-inspired
blackened thrash of last year’s Burn In
Many Mirrors. As good as that album is,
live they take it to another level. More
feral, and yet more organic, the added
savagery brings a hint of 90s German
thrash to their epic, Dissection-like
riffing. In the cramped sweatbox of The
Black Heart they hit like a cavalry charge.
Imbued with the sound of rusting bullet
belts and tinnitus, Wode have something
special. GAEREA’s take on black metal
is less ferocious, but no less enthralling.
Somewhere between the epic nihilism
of Mgła and the swell and whisper of Isis,
they are post-black metal perhaps, but
they never lose sight the essential
misanthropic core that is the heart of
BM. Steeped in the occult imagery with
sigil-covered masks and punishingly
loud, the Portuguese quartet – at least it
appears so, it’s too packed to see clearly
– are an immersive and enthralling
proposition. They can also boast more
shirt designs on sale than most bands
have in a lifetime.
ALASTAIR RIDDELL

98 METALHAMMER.COM

TINA KORHONEN

DEVIN TOWNSEND

In 2020, Prika Amaral was forced to
reforge NERVOSA when three-quarters
of the band unceremoniously quit. You’d
never tell from watching them live today,
the Brazil-born thrash act playing with
a tightness and synchronicity that
perfectly accentuates the Teutonic-style
that has been making exploratory raids
in territory most black for more than 40
years. They sound fucking massive. Their
set covers Perpetual Chaos almost in its
entirety, chucking a few older ragers like
Death and Masked Betrayer in to show
what the new unit can do. An early
appearance from Burning Witches
vocalist Laura Guldemond on Rebel Soul
highlights how well both bands
complement each other, the latter’s set
offering a perfect exploration of chestbeating trad metal like mama used to
make (presuming said mama is Doro
Pesch). The sheer muscular force of
BURNING WITCHES’ rhythm section
ensures the show loses none of its energy
even as the pace takes a near-total shift.
Flight Of The Valkyries, Lucid Nightmare
and Black Widow are as fine modern metal
anthems as a red-blooded metalhead
could hope for, belted out with such
vigour you’d almost forget we’re in
a small club in a Wolverhampton suburb
and not some grand Viking hall.

LIVE REVIEWS

IGORRR
OTTO VON SCHIRACH
THE FLEECE, BRISTOL

Hyper-inventive Gauls bring their maelstrom
to the west

DJE IMAGES/DUNCAN EVERSON

SOME BANDS BEND the boundaries of music. Igorrr

twist them until they snap. The very definition of an
‘avant-garde metal’ band; their melting pot of genres and
styles have been such a hit that they’re selling out club
venues nowadays, albeit with a two-year wait thanks to
the pandemic. Still, that’s neither here nor there right
now, because the atmosphere inside the Fleece is at fever
pitch for the outfit started by Frenchman Gautier Serre.
It renders support act OTTO VON SCHIRACH little more
than a side attraction and, whilst his dark, industrial hip
hop isn’t entirely a trainwreck, there’s no hiding the faces
of those who are only watching him to secure their spot
for the main event.
What transpires is something that’s beyond even the
minds of those who think they know what to expect.
Bolstered by an impeccable PA and a light show that
would make the Prodigy blush, IGORRR are, quite simply,
untouchable tonight. The conglomerate of elements that
make up their sound can all be made out – Nervous Waltz
goes from classical to dubstep to blastbeats to symphonic
metal in the space of 30 seconds. Gautier is both DJ and
additional guitarist, and he and drummer Sylvain Bouvier
get to trade off during a mid-set interlude, while Martyn
Clement’s doom-laden riffs during Downgrade Desert marry
beautifully with Middle Eastern tones as it segues into
Camel Dancefloor.
The stars, however, are vocalists Aphrodite Patoulidou
and JB Le Bail, whose juxtapositions of operatic soprano and
gutturals are abrasive and captivating in equal measure.
When the two combine on Pavor Nocturnus, both singing
clean, it’s an encapsulating lovesong worthy of Gomez and
Morticia Addams’ first
wedding dance. It’s followed
Otto von Schirach:
strangely not the
by the all-out war of Viande,
main attraction
a soundtrack for the end of
the world, then Opus Brain,
which starts in line with
a midnight rave. Like a lot of
Igorrr’s material, it shouldn’t
work on paper, but it’s
delivered with such panache
and conviction that it’s
impossible not to get swept
up in the majesty of it all.
There might actually not
be another band on the
planet capable of combining
outstanding beauty with
immeasurable brutality
and not leave either in the
other’s shadow, but Igorrr
have struck the perfect
balance. This isn’t just
a gig, it’s a borderline
religious experience.
Igorrr: Aphrodite Patoulidou
searches for a dance partner

ELLIOT LEAVER

METALHAMMER.COM 99

LIVE REVIEWS
TOOL

BRASS AGAINST

Architects: who says
discourse is dead?

ARCHITECTS
SLEEP TOKEN, MALEVOLENCE
O2 LEEDS ARENA, LEEDS

Brighton’s metalcore champions showcase their arena credentials
IN 2016, WHEN Architects sold out the 5,000capacity Brixton Academy, it seemed like a huge
deal. So, to see the Brighton metallers here, on
the opening night of their first ever UK arena
tour, is a reminder of just how far the band have
hurtled since their techy metalcore beginnings.
Of course, one of the most exciting things
about Architects making the jump to arenas is
opening the door for other bands to go too. Case
in point is Sheffield’s MALEVOLENCE, whose
gut-punching technical groove metal goes down
a treat. There are a lot of fans here in Malevolence
t-shirts and, given the size of the pits that open
for Self Supremacy, it appears the rest of the crowd
have been won over too. On the other hand,
SLEEP TOKEN’s thunderous tech-metal and cold,
otherworldly soundscapes yearn to be heard in
cathedral-sized buildings. From the moment
mysterious band leader, Vessel, steps onto the
stage, a hush falls over this room. Unfortunately,
the mix tonight is slightly off, rendering the
singer’s mystical vocals almost inaudible on
Hypnosis and a cacophonous Jaws, although there’s
no dimming the band’s gospel-like atmosphere
and raw emotion that leaves our ears throbbing.
This show has been a long time coming for
ARCHITECTS. We’re used to seeing them play
vast London venues, but this is their biggest

show to date outside of the capital, with vocalist
Sam Carter acknowledging tonight is a special
moment for the band. Accordingly, the production
is huge: lighting displays, raised platforms and
a massive LED screen beaming out apocalyptic,
eye-popping visuals, during monstrous opener
Black Lungs.
By now, they’ve mastered the art of blending
their most brutal moments with the clean,
melodicism of their newer material. Nihilist is
probably the heaviest song that will ever be
played within these walls, while a monolithic
Gravedigger shimmies against a disco-inflected
Little Wonder and the anthemic bounce of Meteor,
with the crowd bellowing along to every word.
And any remaining doubts that Architects are
now a bona fide ‘arena band’ are silenced by
the juddering riffs and life-affirming horns
of a wondrous Dead Butterflies. Along with
the heart-wrenching Gone With The Wind,
dedicated, as always, to late guitarist Tom
Searle, it’s their epiphany moment. The days
when selling out Brixton Academy seemed like
an impossible dream achieved feel an age ago.
Architects are untouchable tonight, the best
UK metal band of a generation, and right now
they feel unstoppable.
DANNII LEIVERS

Fifteen years waiting and finally it’s
here: Tool are back in the UK, playing
indoor arenas. Their Download 2019
headline was nothing to be sniffed at,
but for a band whose visual spectacle
sits somewhere between Pink Floyd
and Star Wars, finally seeing them with
full production is a once-in-a-bluemoon opportunity.
BRASS AGAINST warm the crowd
up ably, chucking brass covers of Rage
Against The Machine, Audioslave and
even Tool themselves out to a politely
patient crowd. But TOOL command total
attention tonight – literally. A phone
ban in the arena means the room is
almost completely black as the band
arrive, a semi-translucent curtain
draped in front of the stage creating
a near-3D effect that messes with
your sense of perception. It’s nothing
compared to the lighting, however –
the entire arena effectively turned into
a lighting rig that bathes different
sections in a kaleidoscope of colours
that, combined with flashing laser
displays that would do George Lucas
proud, make it almost impossible to
focus on the stage when so much is
going on away from it.
Fear Inoculum accounts for half of the
setlist, its hypnotic sounds shimmering
and twisting in the ears as songs unfold
like some quasi-evolutionary jam.
Guitarist Adam Jones and bassist Justin
Chancellor excel at switching between
tight, stabbing riffs and amorphous
drifting melodies, but the MVP is
drummer Danny Carey, whose fills and
beats flow with such fluidity that it looks
like his arms may be made of rubber.
Behind it all lurks Maynard James
Keenan, gripping his mic stand like it’s
a life support as his voice takes on an
impossibly omnipresent aura. It’s
a perfect complement to the mesmeric
rhythms of Fear Inoculum, while older
cuts Sober, The Pot and Right In Two feel
like colossal commands being issued by
some Old Testament god.
Even a 10-minute interval between
the main set and encore isn’t enough
to break the spell Tool conjure, the
mesmeric rhythms soon luring us back
in, while a shower of sparkling confetti
creates a visual display like watching
a swarm of fireflies drifting from above.
Tool prove to be more than worth the
wait when it comes to gargantuan visual
spectacles, their arena tour making
their Download performance look like
a bunch of blokes standing in a field. It’s
a masterclass in transcendental musical
experiences, but here’s hoping we won’t
be waiting 15 years for the next lesson.
RICH HOBSON

100 METALHAMMER.COM

KATJA OGRIN

RESORTS WORLD ARENA, BIRMINGHAM

LIVE REVIEWS
Helloween don’t
fritter away their
two hours onstage

HELLOWEEN
HAMMERFALL

O2 ACADEMY, BRIXTON, LONDON

JAKE OWENS

Europe’s triumphant tandem bring power (metal) to the people
IF YOU WERE dropped into tonight with
zero context, you’d assume HAMMERFALL
were the headliners. Their set is 75 of the
most bombastic minutes Sweden can
muster, while the stage is decorated
entirely in their honour. We’re talking
light-up shields and mallets flanking the
drum kit. There’s also a backdrop depicting
an angelic knight wielding… guess what…
a big fucking hammer.
However, they’re actually jerking the
curtain this evening. London has a power
Hammerfall: big
fans of Platoon
metal marathon ahead of it, with just two
bands filling up these four-and-a-half
hours. Joacim Cans et al are ostensibly here to
his Mjölnir-shaped guitar. They’ve not so much
help Brixton loosen up, yet it’s clearly limber
warmed London up as torn the house down.
already, greeting the band with roars of delight.
Then HELLOWEEN rock up and fucking
A maelstrom of power metal pageantry keeps
hell. Everything goes batshit. Their drum riser
the momentum high, from the pit-inciting
is a pumpkin! They have an LED backdrop that
Renegade to the pipe-shredding Last Man
bombards with fever-dream-level imagery;
Standing. The bandmembers are just as
think vegetables lifting weights and Valkyries
flamboyant as their tunes. There’s enough
hanging from chains by their nipples. Also,
leather onstage to make Judas Priest go “Bit
there are seven of them now. Classic frontman
much”, while Oscar Dronjak regularly flaunts
Michael Kiske and co-founding singer/

guitarist Kai Hansen rejoined the fray in
2016, letting the Germans easily fill up
their stage. Add in a crowd so amped up
that they’d probably kill on Kiske or fellow
vocalist Andi Deris’s command and you
have a stadium-worthy show condensed
into an academy.
Skyfall, the 12-minute finale of 2021’s
self-titled album, opens. However, tonight
swiftly becomes about the classics. Eagle
Fly Free immediately follows and is the
first of five cuts lifted from Keeper Of The
Seven Keys, Part II. Of course, whether what
they’re playing comes from last year or
the last century, it’s all maximalist power/
glam silliness: fast-fingered solos, wailing
lead vocals and mythological worldbuilding
aplenty. And London’s here for it. 120 minutes
of exuberance may sound like a slog to some,
but Helloween have the back-catalogue and
rabid following to back it up. By the time
I Want Out wraps up, everyone’s (almost) as
animated as when the band first arrived.
MATT MILLS

METALHAMMER.COM 101

The first VV EP dropped in March
2020 but then we heard nothing
until Loveletting came out in April.
Why the delay?
“We released a three-track EP as
a digital release to test whether I was
able to record everything by myself
and make it sound good. Once I was
past that, it was also a) whether the
audience was still there and interested,
but also b) to see if record labels were
interested. That’s why there was such
a gap, but it means I’ve recorded
a 12-song album and got a record
label in the meantime.”
Did you ever worry that people
wouldn’t care?
“I honestly think you can’t take
anything for granted. Nobody knows
if every project will be successful and
a lot of that can come down to timing
– people change and the world
changes with them.”
Your final Metal Hammer interview
with Him was during a hurricane.
The first VV EP came out as the
pandemic hit. Is the universe being
a bit dramatic just for you?
“I’m the drama king. I like a lot of
drama in my music too, I’ve always
been a melodramatic bastard. I’m not
proud of it, but I get on because it’s
like a medical condition. Music is the
only cure for it!”
The first time you performed solo it
was as Rambo Rimbaud. What was
that all about?
“Ha ha! It was a pseudonym that
I used for a weekend. I was actually
thinking of using that for the project,
but I thought it might be too highbrow
and I might get sued by Stallone! I did
like two songs in Helsinki under that
name – playing Solitude by Black
Sabbath with a shit-ton of reverb and
all sorts of weird stuff. It was a leap
of faith; you’ve got to do things that
will keep you on your toes.”
Where is the weirdest place you’ve
seen a Heartagram pop up?
“I keep seeing them in weird places,
even today. The weirdest is always

“I HAVE
ALWAYS
BEEN A
MELODRAMATIC
BASTARD”
106 METALHAMMER.COM

when I see somebody’s had it tattooed.
I was 19 or whatever when I drew the
initial symbol and it’s travelled so far
and gone to so many different places
I’m flabbergasted with the whole 00s
thing with Jackass and Kat Von D.”

FIVE MINUTES WITH

VILLE
VALO

The ex-Him frontman on
wannabe witches, stalking
David Hasselhoff and his
new VV project
WORDS: RICH HOBSON • PICTURE: JOONAS BRANDT

When Him were coming up, how did
you fit in with the rest of the Finnish
metal scene?
“Most of us were mates – we’d sit
around in bars drinking beer and
chatting shit. I never thought there
was like a caravan of Finnish music
going out to people, though, as we
were all so different – there’s no
comparing Stratovarius to Impaled
Nazarene, or either band to Amorphis.
We’re all black sheep.”
What’s the weirdest interaction
you’ve had with a celebrity?
“I was once hanging out with Andy
McCoy of Hanoi Rocks and Bam
Magera, getting fucked up while
watching paparazzi following David
Hasselhoff around. For whatever
reason we ended up trashing Andy’s
hotel room. It was rock’n’roll learning
from the old guard, but when it
comes to trashing a hotel room you
have to follow your heart – and have
a manager who is wealthy!”
You’re a modern rock sex symbol.
What’s the scariest proposition
you’ve had?
“They’re all a bit scary and weird. Back
in the day, there were all these weird
semi-esoteric wannabe witches who’d
cut bits of my hair out and whatever,
which is crazy.”
Which band can bring sexy back to
metal in 2022?
“Witch Fever. They’re not fake – they
come across as very real individuals,
with different ways of presenting
themselves and playing their
instruments. They’re not a carbon
copy of what old-school metal was,
but I’m glad they still make bands
like that. They have a similar bravado
to Queens Of The Stone Age –
elegant recklessness.”
You’re launching your solo tour next
January. Will you be nervous?
“I feel great about it. The last time
I played rock’n’roll in English was at
the same venue [Tavastia in Helsinki]
on New Year’s Eve 2017, going into
2018. It’s been a while, but I’ve done
this most my life and it’s like riding
a bicycle, innit?”

NEON NOIR WILL BE RELEASED
IN EARLY 2023 VIA
SPINEFARM/UNIVERSAL

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