Indholdsfortegnelse for January 2024 i Metal Hammer UK

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 Hilton (neé Brock) louise.brock@futurenet.com Associate Editor Dave Everley dave.everley@futurenet.com Staff Writer Rich Hobson rich.hobson@futurenet.com Content Director – Music Scott Rowley Contributors Steve Appleford, Oliver Badin, Adam Brennan, Richard Chamberlain, Chris Chantler, Alec Chillingworth, Joe Daly, Hywel Davies, Remfry Dedman, Alex Deller, Jerry Ewing, Paris Fawcett, Spencer Grady, Stephen Hill, Emma Johnston, Hannah May Kilroy, Dom Lawson, Elliot Leaver, Dannii Leivers, Dave Ling, Clay Marshall, Will Marshall, Sophie Maughan, Edwin McFee,Joel McIver, Matt Mills, Mörat, Catherine Morris, Tom O’Boyle, Alastair Riddell, Liz Scarlett, Kevin Stewart-Panko, Emily Swingle, Jack Terry, Paul Travers, James Weaver,Christina Wenig, Kez Whelan, Jon Wiederhorn,…

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

AS MOST BANDS will tell you, one song can change everything. After grinding away for almost two decades in their home country to little international fanfare, Japanese alt-metallers SiM released their single The Rumbling in March 2022… and got 10 million views in a week. Written as the opening theme for the final season of anime phenomenon Attack On Titan, it catapulted the band in front of a global audience: currently the song has been viewed 50 million times on YouTube and has more than 118 million streams on Spotify. “Suddenly, our YouTube was filled with comments from all around the world,” says vocalist and songwriter MAH of the moment he realised everything had changed for the band. “It became difficult to find comments in Japanese.” Named after a catastrophic…

This was the year the whole world turned pink. The Barbie movie turned Mattel’s beloved plastic doll into a big-screen icon, perfectly embodied by Margot Robbie. Released in July, it was a huge, rosé-coloured success, pulling in $1.4 billion at the worldwide box office. Dour World War II biopic Oppenheimer might have had the atomic bomb, but the Barbie phenomenon was truly explosive. Even metal was swept up in Barbiegeddon. The movie left its vivid pink mark on the scene this year, both directly and indirectly. The most obvious connection came in the shape of Scene Queen, aka US singer Hannah Collins, whose hyper-femme personality, 100-megawatt smile and mix of metalcore vitriol and pop choruses saw her single-handedly leading the self-styled bimbocore revolution. “When Barbie was called a ‘professional bimbo’,…

Until 2023, Lord Of The Lost were strictly a cult act outside their native Germany. And then Eurovision happened, and the rest of Europe clapped eyes on these latex-clad, feather-sporting industrial metal peacocks. Frontman Chris Harms looks back on 12 months of unexpected attention, royal encounters and genital-related controversy. You kicked off 2023 with your new album, Blood &Glitter, hitting No.1 in Germany. Did you celebrate by going out and getting trollied? “No, I don’t drink alcohol. I leave that to the others. Having a No.1 album was a big surprise. We announced it six days before it was released. We were like, ‘We’re not doing any presale, we’re not going to enter the charts with this one, it’s all about the magic of just releasing an album.’ Iwent on…

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

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

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

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

BETTER LOVERS Better Lovers The ETID/Dillinger/End supergroup that lived up to the hype. Better Lovers’ debut EP felt fresh and exciting, yet beautifully familiar of the members’ sublime previous work. GHOST Phantomime Ghost going full ham on covers of Iron Maiden, The Stranglers and Genesis? What’s not to love? Papa and co. approached the source material with a typically brilliant sense of panache. JO QUAIL Invocation / Supplication Collaborating with Heilung’s Maria Franz, Italian vocalist Lorenzo Esposito Fornasari and a choir, the cellist forged a suite of imperious and ageless magic. SWOLLEN TEETH Swollen Teeth Produced by Slipknot DJ Sid Wilson, the filth-encrusted, deranged nu metal from this masked US quartet was every bit as grim as their name suggests, and ripe with skin-crawling promise. SPIRITBOX The Fear Of Fear…

20 BUCK SPIN Tomb Mold’s journey to the top of the death metal dung pile has been steady and grotesque, like the inexorable crawl of plump white maggots squirming from the bin you kept forgetting to empty. Rather than wallow in fetid familiarity, The Enduring Spirit saw the Canadians inject their savage OSDM with sticky,stringy gobbets of prog. The results were as compulsive as they were gruesome; odd, silvery melodies illuminated the album’s sticky crevices while patches of unnerving spaciousness made the stagnant air almost breathable.…

PENTAGRAMMATON Devilish doo-wop couple Alexandra and Zachary James revelled in their roles as Old Nick’s slinkiest emissaries on their second collection of songs for swingin’ Satanists. Gloriously retro vamps Burn Your Bible, Let’s Have ASatanic Orgy and finger-snapping empowerment highlight Be ASlut were diabolically good fun, as provocative as any metal band and made all the more alluring by the periodimmaculate Wall Of Sound production, right down to their vintage, dust-on-theneedle sound.…

METAL BLADE There’s something about Primordial’s world-weary anger, dirt and sorrow that only seems to get more profound and intense with the advent of middle age. That was all here in spades on their ominously titled 10th album, but it shared space with some of their most gorgeous, upbeat melodies and good old-fashioned heavy metal heroics. Viewing contemporary traumas through the prism of historical tragedy has been Primordial’s stock in trade since the mid-90s, but How It Ends proved we need them more than ever.…

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

SPINEFARM With broken relationships and substance abuse all but ending the band following their last album, 2017’s Wick, the fact that Royal Thunder were still going in 2023 was a cause for celebration in itself. Yet in typical fashion, the Atlanta natives used the fuel from their uncertain times to craft yanother stunning addition to their perfect discography. While the band’s emotional songs have always had a knack for hitting the sweet spot, the tales of hope, redemption and healing spread across Rebuilding The Mountain were given that much more clout. Josh Weaver’s gorgeous melodies painted the most perfect landscape for Mlny Parsonz to break your heart with the honesty and darkness of Pull, Drag Me and Live To Live.…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

ELECTRIC CALLBOY COULD have easily become metal’s biggest novelty. Their irresistible, EDM-splattered take on metalcore, and wig-tastic videos, have established them as one of the silliest bands around. But none of it would mean anything if the band didn’t have the technical proficiency and, more importantly, the tunes to justify their skyrocketing popularity. MONUMENTS’ progressive metalcore contains plenty of melody too but, unlike the headliners, it reveals itself coyly, unfurling between techy glitches and huge hammering grooves. It’s a meaty, riveting sound, but this crowd are hankering for a payoff that’s more instant. They get it with High Wycombe’s AS EVERYTHING UNFOLDS, whose anthemic post-hardcore contains shades of Architects, Bring Me The Horizon and Crossfaith’s rave-y tendencies. It’s an apt appetiser for tonight’s main event, but the party really kicks…

HOW IS IT the end of the year already?! It seems like five minutes since we put Ville Valo on the cover in January, and yet so much has happened since. Metallica released their huge 72 Seasons album and took it on a two-nights-per-destination mega-tour, while our friends in Maiden stunned us with the ray-gun-toting fun of their Future Past shows. Meanwhile, Download blew out the candles on its 20th birthday cake during a four-day FOLLO party. In 2023, metal felt like a celebration. Meanwhile, there were tons of other, no less significant victories. Skindred and Sleep Token booked arena shows, Indonesia’s Voice Of Baceprot took on the States, and somehow even Barbie went metal –you can relive all the action from p35. You’ll also find a list of the…

“VESSEL SEEMS TO BE HAVING ASLIGHT GIGGLE” Many weird things happened to Sleep Token on the way to becoming 2023’s most talked-about new band, from their TikTok-assisted elevation to ‘metal’s sexiest band’ (courtesy of the bass drop in The Summoning), to the sight of guitarist IV hamming it up in a cowboy hat onstage at a gig in Dallas, Texas, to the fact that they sold out their Wembley Arena show in just 10 minutes. But nothing was as weird as The Fart. The band were playing the Metro Theatre in Sydney, Australia in April when an audience member chose the quiet segment of Atlantic as the opportune moment to let rip. Aclip of the offending arse burp went viral, racking up thousands of views and several reaction videos. The…

NAPALM These German ‘nautical doom’ obsessives had been rising in stature and greatness since 2006. With their latest concept album, based around Jules Verne’s subaquatic classic 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea, they’d spent eight years honing a masterwork that is the very definition of immersive (or should that be ‘submersive’?). Agripping artistic achievement, bringing atmospheric post-rock textures, emotional nuances and dark jazz inflections to bear on their progressive death-doom fundamentals, Ahab reached their tempestuous apotheosis aboard Captain Nemo’s Nautilus.…

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

In 2019, Anaiah Rasheed Muhammad had an idea. After 11 years performing in LA indie-rockers The Bots alongside his brother, he would form a hardcore side-project. It would incorporate the music he listened to growing up, making connections between people of the African diaspora. The result? Zulu. “It’s the sounds of all Africanderived music,” explains Anaiah. “We’re talking about jazz, we’re talking about soul. We’re talking about funk, R’n’B, hip hop. And maybe it’s not always the sound, but it’s the essence of the sound and the essence of the band. It’s all due to those folks that made the genres that made it possible for punk to exist. That’s kind of a shortened version of what Zulu is.” Debut album ANew Tomorrow reinvigorates hardcore, offering surprises at every turn.…

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

NUCLEAR BLAST As with 2020’s Utgard, Enslaved’s 16th album found new ways to map Norse mythology onto the deepest realms of the human psyche. Themed around the titular keeper of the rainbow bridge and harbinger of Ragnarok, Heimdal was a rite of passage into the unknown, steeped in the belief that magic happens in the places in between. That sense of openness to possibilities pervaded the album as vast sonic vistas lurched into urgent, psychedelic quests with an adventurism undimmed over three decades.…

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

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

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

CANDLELIGHT The London trio’s 2021 debut album, Serpent &Spirit, was incredibly promising, but surely no one could have seen the gigantic leap in quality to AFeast On Sorrow coming. The riffs were more complex, the production from Gojira’s Joe Duplantier sharpened their attack, but it was vocalist Joe Nally’s emotional performance, palpably channelling the confusion and frustration of grief and loss, that was the key element. Heartbreaking and crushing in equal measure, AFeast On Sorrow was the perfect modern metal album.…

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

SABATON /BABYMETAL / LORDI WEMBLEY ARENA, LONDON The monster magic of Lordi, a bombastic, dazzling display from Babymetal, and Sabaton bringing all the explosive ordnance… The Tour To End All Tours lived up to its name. AC/DC POWER TRIP, INDIO From Brian Johnson’s return to a setlist full of rarities and fan faves, AC/DC’s first show in seven years was amazing. SPIRITBOX ROUNDHOUSE, LONDON This pair of shows crowned Courtney and co.’s welldeserved rise, and featured a blinding appearance from Architects’ Sam Carter. LIMP BIZKIT GUNNERSBURY PARK, LONDON As if their Wembley Arena show earlier in the year hadn’t been fun enough, the Bizkit returned for this party in the park. The nostalgia was flowing, the red caps were plentiful, and Break Stuff was off the charts. GOJIRA ALEXANDRA PALACE,…

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

LOMA VISTA RECORDINGS NEARLY TWO DECADES into their career, LA’s experimental electronic rock trio Health have arguably completed their stealth-like climb from underground, art noise clubs to an essential component of the modern metal scene. Where the band’s Disco4 pair of albums gave them a greater presence in the world of heavy music and saw them collaborate with the likes of Full Of Hell and Perturbator, Rat Wars feels very much like the completion of their evolution into a full-blown, destructive industrial metal powerhouse. The band themselves have admitted as much in the build-up to Rat Wars, with the record being framed as the most personal, cathartic and brutal of their career. Certainly, it all points that way on paper. Lamb Of God’s Willie Adler brings a trademark groove riff…

Where Steel Panther are a knowing pastiche of 80s hair metal, Cobra Spell play it straight. They could have been one of the also-rans declaring they were going to be stars in The Decline Of Western Civilization Part II –the looks and attitude are present but the Xfactor is not quite there. They can certainly play and singer Kristina Vega has an impressive wail, but opener S.E.X. is all front and no hooks while Fly Away is tepid power balladry. The sax-imbued Love = Love and infectious The Devil Inside Of Me are far better, dancing gleefully over the fine line between big dumb fun and throwaway trash. In the 80s they’d have been strictly second division, but in 2023 the throwback novelty might just win out. ■■■■■■ FOR…

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

CELESTE Epilogue(s) NUCLEAR BLAST These cuts from 2022’s Assassine(s) sessions further explore the smouldering bombast of that album. It’s an amalgam of crisply produced black metal and hardcore, by turns gracefully contemplative and blisteringly punitive. ■■■■■■ TOM O’BOYLE CONTINENTS Lifeline SELF-RELEASED Lifeline is awash in vitriol from the off. Gaslighter lobs a Molotov cocktail of hardcore-tinged metalcore that grows in magnitude throughout a blistering howl of an EP confronting the agonies of mental health issues. ■■■■■■■ EMILY SWINGLE DEAD ICARUS AdInfernum MNRK HEAVY After leaving Atreyu, vocalist Alex Varkatzas craved more aggressive waters, and this is his project’s debut EP. The murky brutality and heavy riffs here do justice to his screams, and So I Set Myself On Fire is particularly fun. ■■■■■■■ NIK YOUNG INSOMNIUM Songs…

“WHEN I FIRST heard SLASH’s Beautiful Dangerous with Fergie, Iknew what path I wanted to take my career down. My new album wouldn’t exist if I’d never heard this song. Slash made me realise it was possible to be an established guitarist without having to be a vocalist. And it really inspired me how Slash tailored his playing to each person featured. For Fergie, the guitar feels sexy - it has this feminine, powerful edge to it. Similarly, IRON MAIDEN’s Fear Of The Dark - specifically the Rock in Rio live version - really inspired my playing. It was the first Maiden song I ever heard, and I remember thinking, ‘I’ll be the best guitarist in the world if I can ever play this song.’ It taught me about being…

IT’S BEEN FIVE years since Ihsahn’s last album, Ámr, but the prog metal maverick is compensating for the dry spell with some of his most complex material yet. The Emperor leader’s eighth full-length solo record (handily titled Ihsahn) will be a 100-minute double album that casts him back to his symphonic black metal origins: one half heavy, and the other orchestral interpretations. Chatting to Hammer, the multi-instrumentalist reveals that the string-backed songs are already being called “the Emperor album that was never recorded”. Why have you made a double album of avant garde metal and orchestral music? “I like to experiment, find new angles to attack the album format. Sometimes it’s more basic, sometimes it’s more out there. This time, I wanted to really play to my strengths, and I’ve…

“If I’m going to sing about very specific things from my life, it’s all or nothing,” explains vocalist Jack Dunn. There’s a delicious aggression to Creak’s debut album, Depth Perception, but there are also moments of atmospheric introspection, the band taking inspiration from the surreal works of David Lynch, anxietyinducing horror films and videogame soundtracks. Left To Heaven, for example, started life as Creak’s take on the Resident Evil save music. “We didn’t set out to make an album, we just got excited trying out new things,” Jack says. With lyrics written about his mum’s cancer diagnosis and her four-year recovery, the album tackles guilt, fear, loss, misery, dread and selfloathing in excruciating detail. But as heavy as Depth Perception is, it never feels oppressive. IN SHORT SOUNDS LIKE: The…

GETTY Ozzy Osbourne is the first to admit that 2023 was quieter for him than he’d have liked. Although still basking in the success of last year’s Patient Number 9 album, he was forced to finally cancel his much-delayed No More Tours 2 run in February, announcing his retirement from touring due to ongoing health issues. There was a glimmer of hope when he was announced as one of the headliners for October’s Power Trip, but he pulled out of the show. “It’s been fucking miserable man,” he says, speaking to Hammer from his home in LA. “I thought I’d be back on my feet months ago.” It’s not all been bad. This year saw the return of The Osbournes Podcast, effectively an audio continuation of 2000s reality TV show…

Even by their own standards, the last 12 months have been chaotic for Slipknot. There has been the end of long-term relationships, mysterious departures, confusing messages and ageneral sense of instability, leading to speculation that the title of their last album The End, So Far may prove to be at least 50% prophetic. This is how 2023 played out for metal’s most combustible band. APRIL 1 Slipknot’s contract with Roadrunner Records officially ran out. “It’s such a different label than it was when we first signed with it,” Corey Taylor said. “Once you’re in the hands of people who don’t care, it’s just a fucking business.” Clown claimed that their long-awaited ‘lost’ album Look Outside Your Window would be released soon after (spoiler: it wasn’t). JUNE 7 The first night…

“NU METAL BECAME COOL AND NOW IT’S COMING BACK TO BEING HATED AGAIN” Nu metal had been threatening to return for years. Limp Bizkit’s 2009 reunion was a catalyst, spawning a huge wave of nostalgia. Over the following decade, bands such as Cane Hill, Ocean Grove, Tetrarch and Tallah began to emerge, while well-known metalcore acts like Of Mice &Men and Stray From The Path turned to the often-reviled music of their youth. The genre that dared not speak its name huffed and puffed in the background, but it was in 2023 that it truly broke again. The Sick New World Festival in Las Vegas was a pivotal moment, the line-up reading like a Who’s Who of OG Nu Metal: Korn, System Of ADown, Incubus, Evanescence, Papa Roach. “There’s definitely…

Avenged Sevenfold’s 2016’s prog-metal masterpiece The Stage might have been a left turn, but nothing could’ve prepared us for its follow-up, Life Is But ADream… Landing in June, their eighth album combined hip hop, classic rock, EDM, thrash metal, classic soul and more, with some hailing it as a masterwork and others condemning it as career suicide. Like all the finest art, it was hated and adored –but never ignored. We spoke to guitarist Synyster Gates about what it was like being in the eye of the storm. It’s been six months since the release of Life is But aDream… How do you feel about it now? Synyster Gates: “I’m beyond proud of it. I don’t listen to it as much as I did, but I still listen to it…

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

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

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

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

HI-FI RUSH While the soundtrack leaned more towards garage rock than metal (although shoutout for Nine Inch Nails’ excellent The Perfect Drug making an appearance), Hi-Fi Rush used music better than any other game this year. It was a rhythm-based action game with a lot of spirit. RESIDENT EVIL 4 REMAKE Capcom delivered one of the best horror games of the year with its remake of the terrifying 2005 classic. Resident Evil 4 Remake (good name, that) was a wonderfully paced adventure that you’ll never regret playing… until you try to sleep. DIABLO 4 Diablo 4 was undoubtedly the most heavy metal game of the year. Its entire focus was slaying demonic entities by the thousands across gothic, blood-soaked environments. A true delight. BLASPHEMOUS 2 Blasphemous 2 was a challenging…

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

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

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

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

After abandoning black metal for Nordic folk on 2020’s Folkesange, Mykur made another left turn this year with Spine, embracing grandiose, alt pop sensibilities –with the odd blastbeat, of course. “Someone said to me it sounded like ‘if Enya caught fire’, and I can’t stop thinking about that,” she says with a chuckle, speaking to Hammer days after debuting her new material live at London’s Rough Trade East. Ever since the black metal experimentation of her debut, M, in 2015, Myrkur –real name Amalie Bruun –has pushed stylistic boundaries, and admits Spine was a reaction to the minimalism of Folkesange. “I needed amplification!” she exclaims. “For the longest time, I didn’t even want to pick up an instrument. It’s something I’ve experienced to some extent on every record. Not quite…

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

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

SPINEFARM Sleep Token were one of the most talkedabout bands in heavy metal before Take Me Back To Eden even came out this year. When the masked cult’s third album dropped in May, it only deepened everybody’s love for the rising stars. Anthems like Chokehold and the ultra-viral The Summoning not only broadened the band’s eclectic palate –featuring djent, pop, rap and funk –but carried an emotional authenticity even listeners outside the metal sphere could relate to. Frontman Vessel’s croons about love, loss and remorse were both beautifully written and gorgeously sung, giving the inevitable chunky riffs that followed an extra, cathartic heft. No doubt, Take Me Back… will be remembered as an essential work in the Sleep Token canon as they continue to ascend.…

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

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

WILD THING Liminality is a fierce debut from this Melbourne band. Lead singer Amariah Cook has an impressive range, from ethereal to ferocious, finding vocal chemistry with bassist Kira Neil. Roach Queen is wildly hooky, Iliad is fast and breathy, Will I? is quirky, stripped down and dreamy with a soaring guitar solo. Plated Gold should please Paramore fans, with effective guest vocals courtesy of Make Them Suffer’s Sean Harmanis. The Embers provides a brutal close due to Amariah’s deeper roars. This fusion of progressive metal, poppy overtones, alt rock and theatrical flair does Future Static proud. ■■■■■■■ FOR FANS OF: The Last Martyr, Jinjer, Tura Satana NIK YOUNG…

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

VINTER Leonov have been releasing music at a glacial pace, their stately post-metal tending towards solid rather than stellar. Procession, however, sees the Norwegians carving out an album that possesses more grace –and more grit –than anything previous. After the Godspeed!-like blip of Rem the quintet enter a more individualistic space: stark, cinematic and seemingly informed by life in a land endlessly riven and reshaped by the whims of slowly shifting ice. While Leonov are adept at moving from faint flickers to hugely satisfying riff avalanches (check out the title track for proof) it’s in steady restraint and the slow release of tension where Procession’s strengths are really displayed. The propulsive pulse of Mesos, say, or closer Son, which hinges on the subtle ache of Tåran Reindal’s spectral, shimmering…

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

DARK ESSENCE Written and recorded in the shadows of an active volcano, Völd is a soaring and chaotic tribute to Iceland’s elemental heart. Inspired by the country’s roaring streams of lava, cutting through its rocky tundra and windswept fields, the album translates to ‘Force, power or might’ –and aptly so. Völd is a grim, blackened symphony that blends Nyrst’s previous outings with strains of doom and even death on Hrímvíti and Eilíft Eldhaf. While the album captivates with its raw energy and atmospheric layers, invoking some truly exhilarating moments, it somewhat falters in its quest for innovation. Rich in homage to both its homeland and its musical influences, Völd unfortunately lacks the adventurousness to truly carve new paths in black metal, leaving it in the sonic slipstream of its predecessors.…

SELF-RELEASED The new studio album from this German progressive metalcore band is melodic and catchy throughout. They’re releasing monthly music videos until the album drops and, true to their album title, created them with the help of AI. Some songs like Lighthouse, with its soaring vocals and stadium rock feel, are more atmospheric, while others like standouts Meant To Be and Aporia are more ferocious. The Escapist has a Fall Out Boy feel, Count On You juggles groove and breakdowns with ease, and Faults Are Thick Where Love Is Thin is a true earworm. The vocals might be too squeaky clean for some, but interwoven with fierce screams, djent fretwork, and a dystopian electronictinged vibe, it adds up to an intoxicatingly emotive, hyper-modern sound, and there is no denying…

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

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