Indholdsfortegnelse for May 2023 i Metal Hammer UK

HE’S BIG, HE’S bad, he’s killed three men with a single pencil - it’s the return of Baba Yaga himself. When John Wick swaggered onto the big screen in 2014, Keanu Reeves’ slick, vengeance-hungry charmer took the world by storm. With its hyper-stylised aesthetics and artfully choreographed fight scenes, John Wick breathed new life into the action thriller genre, and, after two more glorious movies, Mr Wick is back and more badass than ever, as the fourth instalment of the gritty neon-noir franchise – Chapter 4 – hits cinemas. Stylish (and brutal) as the action may be, there’s one other aspect that heightens the John Wick experience: a gorgeous score. From operatic highs to rumbling lows, the soundtracks are as diverse as they are absolutely stunning. A collaborative effort from…

ZEAL & ARDOR may be a young band in the grander scheme of black metal, but mastermind Manuel Gagneux has already led a story-filled life growing up in the colourful city of Basel, Switzerland. Before debut album Devil Is Fine stunned with its fusion of heavy music and slave spirituals, he was jamming in disused bunkers, garrisoned with dumbasses in the Swiss Army and watching bands stab themselves with tattoo needles. Here’s some of his hard-earned wisdom. PARENTS AREN’T PERFECT “My mum told me this story where she and my dad were in New York. They walked by a restaurant and my dad would just grab food off other people’s plates as they went by. I guess it was a weird move to impress my mum.” STAY IN SCHOOL “The…

WHEN AARON MATTS left French metalcore veterans Betraying The Martyrs last year, he thought his career was over. “I thought that just might be the end of me as a musician,” he tells us. It was only a chance message from Uneven Structure drummer Arnaud Verrier that changed things. “He said he wanted to be in a jazz band,” Aaron laughs. “I said, ‘Why not just do a really heavy band instead?’ it was only a joke, but he was into it.” The result is Ten56., a group that finally reflects Aaron’s musical passion: music that is, first and foremost, heavy as fuck. “I didn’t want to be remembered as the guy who did the Disney cover [Let It Go]!” smiles Aaron. “This was always what I wanted to do.…

The day Metallica dropped Lux Æterna, Lars Ulrich couldn’t help himself. He had to look at what people were saying about it online. His curiosity was understandable. Released with zero warning on November 28, 2022, Lux Æterna was the first brand new Metallica song in six years, and a taster for their upcoming 11th album, 72 Seasons. Big news by any measure, and Lars knew people would have opinions on it because everybody has an opinion on everything Metallica ever do. And they’re not always positive. “If you decide to go down into the comment sections, at least for me, you have to prepare yourself for not taking any of it overly personally,” says Lars today. “You have to kind of remove yourself from it. But I’d like to challenge…

Hybrid Theory was a genre-defining juggernaut. Released in 2000, Linkin Park’s debut album was a jagged blend of metal, hip hop, electronica and irresistible pop choruses, which pushed nu metal to a new mainstream level. The following year, it became the best-selling album in the United States. By the time the Cali six-piece started creating its followup, Meteora, the hype around them was at an all-time high. Recorded at a time when online piracy had started putting the shitters up the music industry, protecting the record became top priority for the band’s label, Warner. “We had 16 boxes of giant reel tape that we had to take to New York, to go mix the record, on a plane with two security guards,” says Rob McDermott, who managed the band from…

Plagueboys CENTURY MEDIA EIGHT YEARS AFTER the release of the first Grave Pleasures album, Dreamcrash, the influence of post-punk on contemporary rock has never been more apparent. Chuck a Bauhaus CD out of the window, and you will almost certainly hit someone wearing a Joy Division t-shirt, if not one promoting one of the countless bands currently obsessed with the bleak, industrial fag-end of the 70s and the gothic glories that came soon after. Always sharper than the average new wave revisionists, Grave Pleasures have conjured a third full-length that casually confirms that no one does this stuff better. If Dreamcrash was the flawed but feisty debut and 2017’s Motherblood the righteous, potential-fulfilling follow-up, Plagueboys is the moment when everything comes together for Kvohst and his Finnish chums. The band’s…

Invisible Queen FIREFLASH WHEN IT COMES to pioneering women in heavy music, Sabina Classen is unquestionably near the top of the list. Holy Moses formed in 1980, and their frontwoman broke new ground the minute she first opened her mouth and let rip with one of her trademark screams. Alongside the more widely celebrated Kreator, Destruction, Sodom and Tankard, the Germans were an integral part of thrash metal’s genesis and subsequent evolution in their native country. It remains a crying shame that Holy Moses aren’t a much bigger deal. Few bands from any era of thrash have released records as righteously berserk as 1986’s Finished With The Dogs and 1989’s The New Machine Of Liechtenstein and, to this day, Sabina’s vocals are among the most thrillingly hostile in metal. Very…

Rot CHURCH ROAD OHHMS ARE ONE of a growing number of bands who have been giving progressive metal a contemporary shot in the arm. This explorative quintet have never been afraid of an overarching theme to their albums, with 2017’s The Fool exploring the Tarot, and 2018’s Exist casting its eye upon animal cruelty. On Rot, frontman Paul Waller gets to explore his love of horror, with B-movie titles such as Eaten Alive, an apocalyptic barnstormer with tribalistic drumming, and Let’s Scare Jessica To Death, with its overdriven wall of fuzz and anthemic chorus. Such macabre material has been plundered countless times in metal circles before, but OHHMS approach it with a fresh ear. Beginning appropriately with the sound of a VHS cassette being inserted into a player (ask your…

Of Golden Verse PROSTHETIC EVEN THOUGH IT’S become an increasingly common gimmick, an artist presenting themselves under an anonymous guise still has the ability to captivate in a world of easy answers and access. While half of UK duo Sermon plies their trade behind Decapitated’s drumkit, a mysterious masked multiinstrumentalist only known as Him naturally adds a sense of intrigue. The interest was also enhanced by the band going silent just months after the release of 2019 debut Birth Of The Marvellous and a solitary show, only to emerge again nearly three years later. The most important element in Sermon’s appeal, however, is their melody and cinematic, progressive doom. The ceremony is continued on Birth…’s follow-up, swapping some of the despair for a more acerbic tone. With a wall of…

IN THE EARLY 2000s, Killswitch Engage helped revitalise a scene that was growing restless with nu metal. They became figureheads for the New Wave Of American Heavy Metal and inspired a generation of metalcore bands that continue to thrive today. Frontman Jesse Leach departed just as the band exploded after 2002’s Alive Or Just Breathing, but made a triumphant return a decade later and has carried the band to new heights ever since. So what better way to celebrate the band’s enduring legacy than letting you loose to ask him questions about psychedelics, double-denim and the drunkest rock stars he’s ever seen? The New Wave Of American Heavy Metal: actual scene or a load of media bollocks? Rory Atkins, Twitter “I think those things were happening whether or not you…

DEATHCORE’S MOST SURPRISING band are at it again. Four years after dropping It Comes In Waves unannounced and three after releasing Slow Decay as a series of seven-inches, The Acacia Strain are back with two albums due out on the same day: Step Into The Light and Failure Will Follow. What’s more, it’s a concept piece: the former is grindcore, while the latter is composed of three 20-minute-long doom songs. We sat down with lead singer Vincent Bennett to figure out how they broadened their creative horizons yet again. Two albums! What inspired this? Vincent: “We’ve got to the point where we can never do anything normal ever again when it comes to record releases. We went, ‘OK, we did It Comes In Waves [as a surprise release] and Slow…

BLACKGOLD FRONTMAN SPOOKZ is enthusing to us about the quality of 90s music, over a Zoom call, when another figure steps into the room behind him. “Who’s that?” asks his girlfriend as she places a cup of tea next to the singer. “It’s Metal Hammer!” he calls back. You might think this is an unnecessary detail, but Spookz is sporting a black-and-gold face mask that conceals his identity, and even the ‘unintended’ interruption of a cup of tea from Mrs. Spookz – we didn’t catch her name – sees her pop up in a balaclava. Say what you want about the UK nu metal revivalists, they know how to leave a lasting impression. “Metal has only got itself to blame for not being as big as it used to be,”…

COMBINING SNARLING BLASTS of black metal, anthemic pop hooks and expanses of proginformed ambience, Greek metallers Euphrosyne certainly aren’t shy about mixing things up. What’s startling, though, is how seamlessly it’s all come together for such a young act: founding members Efi Eva (vocals) and Alex Despotidis (guitar) kickstarted the project in 2019 and only fleshed it out to full-band status in 2021. “It may sound crazy, but everything came very naturally,” says Efi of the effortless blend of sounds found on Keres, their debut EP. “The different musical genres we’re into can certainly be a trap, because it’s challenging to combine all the things you have in your head if you want to avoid it sounding like a mess. Though, now that I think about it, even this could…

1 72 SEASONS The title track is a classic Metallica album opener: machine-gun drums, jagged riffs, James Hetfield spitting out terse, staccato stanzas. A relentless, thrashy song punctuated by bursts of melodies and a pair of killer solos, it’s the charred objects on the album’s cover brought to life. Key lyric: ‘Wrath of man / Thrive upon / Feeding on / 72 seasons gone’ 2 SHADOWS FOLLOW James’s howl fights against an insistent, serrated-knife riff as he filters youthful anguish through a 59-year-old mind, leaning heavily on tried-and-trusted wolf imagery in the process. Key lyric: ‘On I run, still my shadows follow’ 3 SCREAMING SUICIDE Kirk’s big, loping wah-wah introduces the album’s second single, before James spits out his taboobusting lyrics, articulating the emotions surrounding a sensitive subject without glorifying…

Do you have any idea how lucky you are? There are people all queuing to get into the most exclusive club in the world, this boulder is just about to run down the hill, smash them all out of the way, and you’re standing behind it and can just wander in!” Slipknot DJ and all-round loose cannon Sid Wilson is screaming excitably at Metal Hammer via Zoom, while his friend, former Slipknot producer Ross Robinson, looks on. According to Sid, we are privy to something big. He may well be right. The only problem is that we’re not 100% on what exactly that “something” is. The subject of his excitement is his recent discovery, Swollen Teeth. A mysterious quartet who deal in furious, jagged modern metal, they have seemingly appeared…

72 Seasons BLACKENED RECORDINGS IT’S WORTH TAKING a moment to compose yourself before listening to 72 Seasons, the new album from the biggest metal band of all time, so you won’t fall prey to a knee-jerk reaction. Hardcore Metallica fans have long wanted to hear a return to the fire of those hallowed first four records, and to shout their excitement from the rooftops. Instead, their disappointment has led to some unfair criticisms of the band, especially about their post-St. Anger material. RARELY, IF EVER, HAS HETFIELD LAID HIMSELF AS BARE AS HE DOES HERE Yes, Metallica have had serious wobbles, such as the critical mauling of 2011’s Lulu. They’ve also given us moments of pure class, like Moth Into Flame from 2016’s Hardwired… To Self-Destruct, which is now worthy…

Songs Of Abundance, Psalms Of Grief LA RUBIA PRODUCCIONES IT SHOULDN’T REALLY be too surprising that a new project featuring members of Maud The Moth and Ashenspire – two distinctive, standalone acts in their own right – is also an outlier entity, yet Healthyliving still manage to subvert expectations. Songs Of Abundance, Psalms Of Grief occupies the liminal, frequently fascinating zone known to fans of modern rock music as “umm, postsomething?” It presents a sprawling, neither-fishnor-foul amalgam of sound that chucklingly muddles genre boundaries and invents its own strange folk knowledge. Grunge-y, Vitalogy-esque melodies hobnob with a baroque and undeniably gothic sense of drama, while the uncanny post-rock of Slint makes spidering forays to the base of your spine. Bloom seems to channel and warp Katatonia’s Tonight’s Decision, Back To…

Severance WHEN A BAND is name-dropped by bigger names, the assumption often is that they are an inscrutable, limitedappeal, musicians-only outfit. This NYC duo may be the listener’s choice for Mastodon, Gojira and Dinosaur Jr., but appreciation of Timo Ellis and David Keith’s work isn’t impenetrable, it just takes a willingness to accept something different churning the gears. In fact, with Severance being their ninth release, Netherlands themselves are hardly the same band they were on their 2012 debut, Fantasmatic. Where the past was dominated by baritone guitar crunch’n’sludge, Netherlands have continued to build upon the wiry 80s new wave, angular soundscapes, beehive bass buzz and Moog washes that have been a broader part of their more recent sonic palette. They move mountains with Swimming Dog, redefine prog with the…

Scorched NUCLEAR BLAST AS THE WORLD gets to grips with Metallica’s 11th studio album proper, Overkill are close to lapping them with their 20th. The New Jersey thrashers might have spent four decades jostling elbows with Exodus and Testament just outside the Big 4, but they’ve always maintained their distinct approach, complete with pneumatic grooves, holler-along hooks and Bobby ‘Blitz’ Ellsworth’s instantly recognisable warbling growl. As the title track opens things up, it seems like not much has changed. After a Van Halen-esque thrashwith-flash eruption of guitar, they let the wrecking ball swing once more for six minutes or so of distilled Overkill mayhem. Launching from a classic D.D. Verni bassline, The Surgeon is even more in-your-face. It has all the pit-whipping ingredients of classic Overkill and, with all the…

REVIEWING GOJIRA’S MOST recent album, Fortitude, in 2021, Hammer concluded: “If they aren’t playing arenas at the end of this album cycle, it’s probably your fault.” That’s because those songs were genetically engineered for big rooms. They condensed the French behemoth’s technical prog/groove metal bludgeonings into anthems accessible and socially conscious enough to ignite a revolution. In the two years since, the heavy metal masses have lifted Gojira to monolithic status. Fortitude’s tracks have been streamed a total of 97 million times, and the band’s first UK tour since 2019 sees them enrapture the 10,000-plus-capacity Alexandra Palace. But before extreme metal’s greatest kaiju can all but level this Grade II-listed building, EMPLOYED TO SERVE sneak in a rampage of their own. The metalcore hellraisers let the material of new album…

INDUSTRIAL GOTHS LORD Of The Lost will represent Germany at the Eurovision Song Contest this year, with their song Blood & Glitter. Founded in 2007 by Chris Harms as a Myspace project, Lord Of The Lost quickly grew into a full band and have released eight albums. They won the opportunity to play thanks to a public vote in their home country. “We are the band with the best fans in the world: you!” said Chris. Since Lordi won with Hard Rock Hallelujah in 2006, Eurovision has featured a smattering of heavy acts, including Hungarian posthardcore troupe AWS in 2018, Iceland’s Rammstein-like Hatari in 2019, and Finland’s Blind Channel and Italian winners Måneskin in 2021. As well as Lord Of The Lost, this year’s contest – to be held in…

“METALLICA’S MASTER OF Puppets is the first metal song that I learnt to play from beginning to end. Those riffs had me hooked! It made me appreciate how great James Hetfield’s downpicking is… my arm would be so tense that I’d get serious muscle pain the following day! DEEP PURPLE’s Burn is a classic, but it’s difficult to play. I really like the tone of Ritchie Blackmore’s Stratocaster. I used to think, ‘I want to be like Ritchie!’ but then I saw he’d smash up his guitar onstage and I thought, ‘Nah, I can’t be like Ritchie, I’d feel too sorry for the broken guitars!’ I also think the presence of two legendary singers, David Coverdale and Glenn Hughes, really elevate this song to another level. “ALL THAT REMAINS’ This…

FROM 1981 TO 1987, R. Budd Dwyer served as the state treasurer of Pennsylvania. The Republican had been in his post for six years when he was convicted of accepting bribes from a computer company and awarding them a multi-million-dollar government contract. The day before his sentencing, he hosted a press conference where he refused to resign and proclaimed his love for his family… then shot himself, in public and on camera. Footage of Dwyer’s death was broadcast across Pennsylvania, and recordings of it became a mainstay of the 80s and 90s’ most depraved tapetrading circles. Audio samples showed up in Faith No More and Kreator songs, while Neurosis’s reissue of their debut album, Pain Of Mind, featured a still of his last moment on the cover. Richard Patrick was…

THOTCRIME ARE DEVILISHLY unpredictable. Their latest album, D1G1T4L_DR1FT, is an outpouring of sonic disorientation, dead-set on giving you genre whiplash; one moment you’re blasted with neon-spattered cybergrind, before suddenly being faced with Britney Spears dipping her toe into a pool of djent. “Sometimes we’ll be like, ‘Oh, this section sounds like Napalm Death… what if we go into Skrillex?” producer K. Salmon laughs. “If a track sounds like it’s obviously building up to a mathcore climax, we’ll cut to a hyperpop chorus - we’ll do the total opposite.” Formed over Discord, the international collective’s unabashed creative freedom oozes digital nostalgia. In the same way creatives flooded Myspace with genre-blind anthems back in the 2000s, whatever sound you’re craving - be that sugary-sweet glitchpop, rabid metalcore or thumping, club-worthy EDM -…

DIMMU BORGIR PURITANICAL EUPHORIC MISANTHROPIA: VINYL BOX SET NUCLEAR BLAST £62 DOES NORWEGIAN BLACK metal need to be remixed and remastered? In 665 cases, no. But Dimmu Borgir were always different. Their fifth album, Puritanical Euphoric Misanthropia, was an overblown, sordid secretion of reach-for-the-stars maximalism, paving the way for even more bonkers escapades. It was also the full-time debut for Nick Barker on drums, Galder on guitars, and ICS Vortex on bass and vocals – a man whom they’ve had to replace with an actual orchestra since leaving. Basically, it was a blockbuster back then and remains so 22 years later. To commemorate such a landmark record, Nuclear Blast are peddling the 3LP, remixed and remastered edition. But it’s not some crap cash-grab. Rather, it’s an intricately detailed package, including…

"OHHHHHHHHH! OHHHHHH-OH-OHOHHHH! OH-OHOHHHHH-OHOHHHHHHH! OH-OH!” That’s the melody 16,000 people are yelling in unison inside Paris’s Accor Arena. It’s as enthusiastic and awe-inspiring as the mass chanting at a football game, yet it’s the sound of a death metal crowd. Gojira have just finished their biggest-ever indoor show, on their first-ever headline arena tour, and they’re standing onstage as a home crowd serenade them with the wordless hook of meditative song The Chant. They are speechless. Frontman Joe Duplantier is near tears. Tonight is both well earned and long anticipated. The band have been working their way up metal’s ranks since 1996, and announced this arena run in 2021, off the back of that year’s beloved Fortitude album. Then Covid restrictions got in the way, meaning they had to push it…

It was during a show in August 2022 at the FirstEnergy Stadium in Ohio, home to the Cleveland Browns NFL team, in front of 41,000 people, that Sophie Lloyd knew she was doing something right. She was playing guitar for US pop-punk/tabloid star Machine Gun Kelly, when he brought four fans onstage. One of them was a girl, who ran right past him to gift Sophie a cap. “It was such a cool moment!” Sophie grins today. “I was on my knees jamming with her. It was one of my favourite moments of the tour – and I still have that hat.” That tour was in support of Machine Gun Kelly’s sixth album, Mainstream Sellout, and encompassed some of the US and Europe’s biggest venues. Before Sophie joined his band,…

In 1983, Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian saw a band that changed his life. Growing up in New York, he’d been aware of punk since the arrival of the Ramones, but heard enough horror stories about what the punks would do to “longhairs” that he decided to avoid the city’s legendary CBGB’s. That all changed when The Exploited came to town. Scott was a big fan of the Scottish band’s 1982 album Troops Of Tomorrow, and he headed to downtown Manhattan club The Great Gildersleeves with then-Anthrax singer Neil Turbin and bassist Dan Lilker to see the band play and watch anarchy unfold. “The Exploited came on and the crowd erupted into what I soon found out was called slam-dancing; I’d never seen anything like it!” Scott says now. “All these…

Drifting In The Endless Void BLUES FUNERAL RECORDINGS PLAYING A CONSISTENT smattering of festival slots since returning from hiatus, Dozer have had a presence as a sort-of legacy band in recent years, courting the desert rockers who are still swooning over their split EP with Unida back in 1999. But when Covid-19 came along, these influential Swedes, crushed by isolation and cancelled gigs, hit the studio, resulting in their first fresh material in more than a decade. Drifting In The Endless Void tells two stories. The first is a love letter to Kyuss, divulged through a wash of fuzzed-up licks and low-end rumble. Roaring opener Mutation/Transformation is a slice of the riffier end of Dozer’s handiwork, proffering fiery licks, modulated vocals and explosive percussion. On Ex-Human, Now Beast the stoner…

Interludium NAPALM WHEN IS AN album not an album? The so-called “Easter offering” from German heavy metallers Powerwolf is partly a look into the future, with six brand-new songs, and partly a recognition of their past in the form of various rarities. With such an on-the-nose title as Interludium it’s not exactly trying to hide its purpose, which is to tide fans over with a sort-of album until a release of all-new material. That’s not something the band take lightly, as the live and covers album - in which their peers record versions of their songs, not the other way around – they released last year shows. In fact, Interludium has such an album included as a bonus disc in most editions, on which they have once again enlisted the…

JINJER / ATREYU O2 ACADEMY, BRISTOL AS THE VENUE stops raving to Darude’s 90s smash, Sandstorm – what is it with metal fans in the UK and the cheesy Eurodance of yesteryear? – ATREYU arrive for half an hour of both current and nostalgia-inducing metalcore. It’s as slick and professional as you’d expect, but nothing fully gets off the ground. Whether it’s the newer blasts of Save Us and Drowning or the age-old classics of Becoming The Bull and closing track Blow, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the band are going through the motions, despite the sold-out crowd lapping them up. There’s almost as much excitement for JINJER as there is for tonight’s headliners, and the Ukrainian progmetallers aren’t about to let anyone down. Technically gorgeous one moment…