Indholdsfortegnelse for April 2023 i Metal Hammer UK

YOU MAY THINK it’s strange that Moby – writer of the kind of chill-out anthems you might hear in a spa – has made a documentary about hardcore punk and vegan activism. He’s aware of this. In his documentary, Punk Rock Vegan Movie, a talking dog (yes, really) asks him the question: “If you make pretty Enya music, then why are you making a punk rock movie?” “These genres of music that are usually seen as being the most aggressive, the heaviest, the loudest… they’re also the most conscious,” the 57-year-old explains to Hammer today. “There are way more activist punk rockers and metal musicians than there are indie rockers, and it’s surprising how people still don’t understand that. I had one friend who said she thought punk was just…

THE METAL SCENE was itching for something fresh as the new millennium dawned. Ever since grunge had up-ended trad metal at the start of the 90s, the scene had been rapidly evolving in sound and aesthetic, but by 2000 even nu metal was looking decidedly dog-eared. Unsurprisingly, industry eyes (and ears) began to scour the underground, digging into the fertile grounds of post-hardcore, emo and metalcore to find the next big thing. Bands like Glassjaw, AFI, and At The Drive In, who had spent much of the decade without troubling the eyes and ears of the mainstream were suddenly being courted by major labels, thrust onto magazine covers and getting heavy airplay on MTV. But while many found themselves struggling to adapt to their newfound interest and fame, none were…

SPIDER GOD’S FRONTMAN, G, has fingered many pies: hardcore bands, comfy-synth (Google it), and Ghost-inspired rock opera. But last year, Spider God broke Bandcamp with a black metal album covering Justin Bieber and Whitney Houston. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t know it might rile people up,” he says. “But we honestly thought it would be pretty low-key!” Formed during the 2020 lockdown, G’s one-man project – now a full band – grew legs in the online-bynecessity UK underground. “It’s a scene built on Instagram,” he tells us. “That sounds awful, but it brings people together. A few key labels like Phantom Lure, Repose and Death Prayer shaped this quite disparate scene. Charlie [Woolley] at [London record shop] Crypt Of The Wizard became another big player, by giving…

IN SHORT SOUNDS LIKE: Miserablism that’s tailor-made for dancing FOR FANS OF: Paradise Lost, Carpenter Brut, Perturbator LISTEN TO: Wretched Soul “NOBODY ASKED FOR this!” is Greg Mackintosh’s open, if perhaps inaccurate, assessment of Host. His new project with Paradise Lost bandmate Nick Holmes is a spiritual successor to the band’s 1999 album of the same name, and a love letter to the Yorkshire alternative clubs where their love of metal, new wave and gothic music blossomed. “It’s taking stock of yourself and your life,” Greg explains. “The project sprung up because when we were growing up, liking this stuff together was frowned on. But we’re allowed to completely air these skeletons in public now.” Host’s debut album, IX, embraces those formative influences. In Wretched Soul, synths pulse under Nick’s…

ADA MUSIC Nightwish’s revered frontwoman opens up new acres of emotion FLOOR JANSEN IS a force of nature. Since joining Nightwish in 2013, the Dutch vocalist has helped to transform the symphonic metallers into one of the biggest bands in the world – not bad for a genre still deemed hopelessly uncool. And her vocal acrobatics have sparked reams of reaction videos, dishing out ‘Floorgasms’ – the term coined by fans to describe the emotion of watching her perform live – to millions of viewers, many discovering metal for the first time. Unsurprisingly, Floor’s versatile voice takes centre stage on her debut solo record, although, much like her side-project Northward – a collection of hard rock tracks she recorded with Pagan’s Mind guitarist Jørn Viggo Lofstad, and released in 2018…

PROSTHETIC Liverpool’s folk-infused black metallers attain a startling fusion THIS LIVERPUDLIAN TRIO’S ability to generate evocative atmospheres using such a minimal setup has always been impressive, but never more so than on their third full-length. Taking a slightly more introspective approach, it’s easily their most dynamic, detailed and melancholy to date. If the first two felt like a stirring soundtrack to revolution, To Know The Light is the reflective campfire vigil the night after. Dawn Ray’d have lost none of their incendiary fervour, but their folkier side is much more prominent, fusing seamlessly with their ferocious black metal on glorious Agalloch-esque closer, Go As Free Companions – one of the most powerfully proggy songs they’ve ever put to tape. In The Shadow Of The Past, meanwhile, feels like new territory…

NUCLEAR BLAST California’s deathcore evangelists stick to the old gospel NO MATTER HOW far Suicide Silence run, they’ll always be in the shadow of two of their own albums. The first one’s The Cleansing: their 2007 debut that made deathcore a legitimate force. The other is 2017’s self-titled disaster, which crashed into a nu metal nadir so hard that it inspired more memes than it did defenders. Mercifully, 2020 comeback Become The Hunter was nearer to the former than the latter. The wounds inflicted by all the squeaking vocals and Deftones mimicry were bandaged by good ol’-fashioned breakdowns and blasts. Sure, the result of such throwbacks wasn’t exactly a mind-shattering album, but it had the potential to lay the track for a rejuvenation they’ve needed since former vocalist Mitch Lucker…

IT’S A FEAT to get the never-ending queue through bag check in time for WHEEL, but an ample crowd manage to catch the opening act, who still sound like Tool for part-time Tool fans - all the proficiency, off-kilter rhythms and brooding atmosphere without the pretentious 10-minute ramblings. Originally planned for 2020, this delayed co-headlining tour has allowed EPICA’s 2001 album, Omega, to bed in, and tonight the songs from it explode with the ferocity and virtue these symphonic metallers deserve. From the galloping Abyss Of Time to swelling, dark fairytale The Skeleton Key, they cement this band’s continual evolution. But while a certain amount of shapeshifting is key to Epica’s career, their heaviness is their mainstay. The hard-hitting Fools Of Damnation – asong quick to lean on string segments…

OZZY OSBOURNE HAS RETIRED FROM TOURING… He cancelled the No More Tours 2 run due to ill health, but his team is looking into ways he can still play live. …BUT HE CLEANED UP AT THE GRAMMYS The Ozzman won Best Rock Album for Patient Number 9, and Best Metal Performance for song Degradation Rules. MARGOT ROBBIE IS A DEFENDER OF THE FAITH She defended metal to a sceptical Cate Blanchett on The Graham Norton Show. SOMEONE MIXED UP THE 1975’S MATT HEALY WITH MATT HEAFY But the Trivs man sent “the nicest message” to the fan who erroneously bought a Cameo video from him. SLEEP TOKEN ARE… SEXY? On TikTok, fans have been getting hot under the collar for new single The Summoning. Speaking of which… SKINDRED ARE TIKTOK’S…

BRISTOLIAN GOTHIC POST-PUNKS Naut are clawing their way out of the darkness with debut record Hunt, a heady mix of jagged guitars and pulsating drum machines that makes a reverential nod to the likes of Bauhaus, Siouxsie And The Banshees and The Sisters Of Mercy – “like you’ve cut a slice out of what was happening in 1983,” explains frontman Gavin Laubscher. Along with guitarist Jack Welch, Gavin started Naut out of a desire to see a harder edge to the post-punk revival, akin to the rawness of the 70s and 80s. Though with a background in black and death metal, plus myriad other influences, the pair were keen not to sound contrived, and Gavin describes their music as “almost anti-riffs mixed in with proper banger riffs”. The song Damocles,…

WARDRUNA RUNALJOD TRILOGY – VINYL BOX SET BY NORSE MUSIC £167.90 FIFTEEN YEARS IN the making, Wardruna’s Runaljod trilogy isn’t so much a concept as a lived experience – a work of singular dedication that’s transformed both the musical landscape and the consciousness of countless fans for whom the band have become a calling. The three albums – Gap Var Ginnunga, Yggdrasil and Ragnarok – each musically bound to their respective themes of seed-sowing, nurture and rebirth – may have been collected before as a CD set, but this vinyl edition is undoubtedly the lodestone. Limited to a mere 1,000 copies, it comes in a lidded, leather-finish box imprinted with hot foil, featuring each album in double gatefold with a tactile matt finish, new UV-varnished inner sleeves and the vinyl…

In 2004, Roadrunner Records founder Cees Wessels called a meeting. The man who had started the label in Holland in 1980 wanted to mark its approaching 25th anniversary, and he was looking for ideas. “There were all the usual suggestions for books and documentaries,” says Monte Conner, at the time the label’s Senior VP of A&R and someone who worked for Roadrunner from 1987 to 2012. “But in typical Cees fashion, he went, ‘Go broke or go home.’ He wanted to do something big.” It was Monte himself who hit on the biggest idea of all: an album featuring brand-new songs written and performed by an all-star line-up of Roadrunner musicians past and present. And it was Monte who was tasked with turning this epic undertaking into reality. The project,…

malevolence’s Alex Taylor is glaring balefully at the crowd in front of him. It’s a chilly Sunday evening in January, and the singer and his band are opening for Trivium at London’s Hammersmith Apollo. For many, this would be a thankless gig. But not for Malevolence. “I know it’s a Sunday night and I know it’s fucking early, but you people in the middle, I need to see something special,” Alex barks. “Open the whole fucking floor up right now. Push it back! Push it back! Push it back!” As Malevolence launch into a lacerating version of the title track from 2017’s Self Supremacy album, the crowd obey his orders. Suddenly, the entire floor of the Apollo is transformed into a maelstrom of flesh and sweat. Bodies collide with each…

THIS IS A celebratory year for August Burns Red. This month, the Pennsylvanian outfit reach their 20th anniversary as one of the most vibrant and ferocious bands in the world of metalcore. They’re never ones to shy away from adding plenty of different flavours to their music, but they always retain that crushing foundation of gilt-edged riffs and pit-inciting breakdowns. Alongside this, their studio album output has reached double figures with Death Below – the first via their new home of Sharptone Records, and an album that proves to be demanding and rewarding in equal measure. The opening, rapped monologue and tribal drums of Premonition give way to a near eight-minute colossus in The Cleansing, which goes through all manner of styles, including blastbeats to rival any black metal track,…

Heimdal NUCLEAR BLAST Bergen’s blackened prog voyagers seek out the unknown HEIMDAL STARTS WITH the splash of water, the creak of rigging and the repeated call of a mighty horn, sounded by Wardruna’s Eilif Gundersen. It feels like the beginning of an epic voyage into the unknown, which is apt because that’s exactly what Enslaved specialise in. The Bergen five-piece are far from the only band to have piloted black metal into stranger tides since its misbegotten beginnings, but they are one of the most consistently inventive and engrossing. Enslaved are now an incredible 16 albums in, and they still haven’t run out of ideas. Thematically, this new album reaches back to a figure that featured on one of the very first Enslaved songs: Heimdallr from 1994 debut album Vikingligr…

IT WOULD BE slightly disingenuous to claim that MOTÖRHEAD never made a shoddy album (it’s called March Or Die, just FYI) but the band’s focus and consistency really did last right until the bitter end. An expanded version of Lemmy’s final musical statement, Bad Magic: Seriously Bad Magic (Silver Lining Music) [8] is a solid testament to the efficacy of his band’s last and most enduring line-up. If songs like Thunder & Lightning and Electricity don’t make you want to run through a brick wall, there’s something wrong with you. Meanwhile, a bonus disc containing a full live set from Mt Fuji Rock Festival in 2015 is predictably thrilling. The legendary Roadrunner United: The Concert (Roadrunner) [9] from December 2005 is finally receiving the lavish triple vinyl rerelease it deserves.…

HAMMERSMITH APOLLO, LONDON EVEN IF IT hadn’t been long delayed by Covid, tonight was always going to be a release. Heilung’s powerful, worldwide connection with their fans isn’t just because of pop culture’s obsession with Vikings, or because the Scandi-German folk collective wear antlers and have instruments made with human bones. In today’s world, the desire to escape the grind and embrace the primal is strong – and a Heilung show is the most fun way to do it. Up first tonight is Italian solo artist LILI REFRAIN, her heavy, ritualistic sounds, operatic voice and dynamic performance commanding both stage and a vocally enamoured crowd. Faroese folk artist EIVØR PÁLSDÓTTIR has had her music feature in shows like The Last Kingdom. Her stunning, classically trained voice is the focus, going…

MANNEQUINS OF A young Papa Nihil and his Nameless Ghouls went on display during a Ghost pop-up event at LA’s legendary Whisky A Go Go. The installation was designed to represent the band’s ‘first gig’ at the venue, back when Nihil was their singer in the 60s. In reality, it was a celebration of the band’s 2019 EP, Seven Inches Of Satanic Panic, which features Kiss The Go-Goat and the now-viral Mary On A Cross. In true Ghost fashion, the museumstyle event, held on February 1, was equal parts mysterious and ridiculous, with exhibits of their ‘history’ ranging from a napkin sketch of the first Ghost logo to a still of a Scooby-Doo episode featuring Papa. The dummies of the Nameless Ghouls and the young Nihil were overseen by a…

SINCE BURSTING ONTO our scene in 2018, Mongolian metallers The Hu have gone from strength to strength, selling out shows around the world and even cracking the charts with their 2019 debut, The Gereg. We sat down with bandleader Gala to talk powerlifting, shamanism, and whether we’ll ever see a Babymetal x The Hu collaboration. At what age did you learn to ride a horse? Jack Dudfield, email “Horseback riding comes easy for us – it probably has something to do with our DNA. Three-year-olds riding horses are a real thing in Mongolia. I learned to ride before I got into elementary school and it’s my most fun summer memory. Safe riding and handling techniques are essential when we first start, so it’s normally the father’s or elder’s job to…

REALITY CAN OFTEN be a bitter pill to swallow and Ukrainian hardcore punk trio Death Pill know this only too well. Formed in 2017, the group had steadily built a reputation in their hometown of Kyiv and were working on their debut album when Russia invaded their country in February 2022. The band’s world was turned upside down; rather than continuing to produce their debut, their focus instead shifted to that of personal safety and survival. As lead vocalist/guitarist Mariana Navrotskaya’s face freezes onscreen, the Kyiv internet connection staggering, she nonetheless makes the reality of her situation crystal clear. “When you read the news, you never think that it will be you. We woke up in a nightmare, and we must live in that nightmare.” “I often hear people say,…

IN SHORT SOUNDS LIKE: A contemporary blend of melodic rock and expansive electronica FOR FANS OF: Linkin Park, AFI, Letlive LISTEN TO: Lost It WHEN BELOVED CALI soulpunks Letlive split in 2017, fans were distraught. But none were as upset as guitarist Jeff Sahyoun, who was thrust into a crisis of identity and confidence. “I was writing some of the worst tracks of my life,” Jeff says. “I didn’t know who I was; I’d been onstage since I was 14 years old. I was trying to hold on to a lifestyle that I had been so used to since I was a child, when in reality, that chapter was closed.” Jeff’s situation became desperate. Facing homelessness, he crashed on his sister’s couch and attempted to rebuild his life. Now, with…

Stand on Visby’s rocky beach and gaze out across the roiling sea, and it’s easy to imagine a fleet of wooden ships heaving into view over the horizon, bearing an army of snarling invaders ready to subjugate its inhabitants, or worse. Dating from the Viking Age, this picture-postcard medieval town is the biggest settlement on the Swedish island of Gotland – ahunk of rock measuring 100 miles by 30 miles, located halfway between mainland Sweden to the west and Latvia to the east. Visby has been fought over down the centuries by the Swedes, the Danes, the Hanseatic League and more, and it has the ruined city walls to prove it. Another army has invaded Gotland today. This one numbers just five people, and furs and armour have been replaced…

Dani Winter-Bates has had enough. Sitting at a dining table in a disused chapel, surrounded by crumbling stonework on the coldest, bitterest day of the year, he faces his bandmates in Bury Tomorrow with a look of disgust and hatred. He’s letting it all out, theatrically gesturing as his face contorts and he wordlessly snarls. At the other end of the table sits Loz Taylor, the frontman of fellow British metalcore heavyweights While She Sleeps. He has driven almost 200 miles in the early hours of the morning to be here, but right now he looks like an unwelcome guest. As he contributes his own wordless protest, things come to a head. Dani rises from his seat, pulls out a gun and shoots Loz. And who said metalcore wasn’t competitive?…

The Seventh Sun MUSIC FOR NATIONS THE DAYS OF Bury Tomorrow being plucky underdogs making a decent fist of helping to put British metalcore on the map are long gone. The streaming numbers, venues they headline and reaction to both 2018’s Black Flame and 2020’s Cannibal albums indicate a band on the verge of following their peers with their big commercial breakthrough. So, it’s with this context that we find their seventh album, The Seventh Sun – a record that could be Bury Tomorrow’s definitive statement, and a bold attempt to upscale up into the territories inhabited by BMTH and Architects. But if that is their goal, then it might not necessarily be realised this time out. That’s not due to a lack of quality, but more because, where everyone…

JPU Japan’s power metal powerhouse upsize the shred AS ONE OF the most internationally active acts to come out of the J-rock scene, Lovebites have stood out as purveyors of oldschool power metal in Pleaser heels. They’ve sought to channel the most European sound possible, and under the guidance of Finnish mixing/mastering maestros Mikko Karmila and Mika Jussila, they’ve undoubtedly found it. That’s no different on their fourth offering, as is immediately apparent the second We Are The Resurrection kicks in. It’s an all-out shredfest from the get-go, powered by the outrageously talented guitarists, Miyako Watanabe and Midori Tatematsu – a duo with the virtuosity and showmanship to rival Dragonforce’s Sam Totman and Herman Li. With equally talented new bassist Fami, Lovebites have perfected the power metal recipe. Judgement Day…

MATT HEAFY IS totally in his element. Standing in front of a backdrop of fearsome dragons and tattooed samurai, he lets out the scream. ‘In the court of the dragonnnnn!’ Due to Covid, it’s been four years since Trivium played the UK – a long time away from their second home in the first country that truly embraced them. In that time, they’ve released career-best albums in 2020’s What The Dead Men Say and 2021’s In The Court Of The Dragon. This tour is long overdue. Due to a police investigation into a crowd-crush tragedy at Brixton Academy, in which two people lost their lives, tonight’s show has been moved to the historic Hammersmith Apollo. MALEVOLENCE frontman Alex Taylor makes clear it’s a “bucket list” venue he’s dreamt of playing.…

LEPROUS ARE PROOF progressive music, with its technicality or more cerebral songcraft, can still be packed full of hooks. It’s fitting, then, that openers KALANDRA exemplify this sentiment, albeit from an entirely new angle. Katrine Stenbekk’s vocals are entrancing, layered atop each other to create a haunting beauty. A bowed bass during opener Veiviseren adds to the folky atmosphere, but by Naive they’ve morphed into a prog rock spectacle carrying all the emotion of before with a renewed intensity. The appearance of an as-yet-untitled horn-led song mid-set elevates the sense of space both in volume and being otherworldly. It’s enrapturing, giving Monuments an incredibly tough act to follow. Despite the massive shift in tone between bands – and with MONUMENTS being something of a stylistic outlier tonight as the heaviest,…