Indholdsfortegnelse for February 2024 i Metal Hammer UK

ON NOVEMBER 26 it was announced that Geordie Walker, guitarist of post-punk legends Killing Joke, had passed away following a stroke. He was 64 years old. Geordie co-founded Killing Joke in 1979 with vocalist Jaz Coleman, bassist Youth and drummer ‘Big’ Paul Ferguson, and alongside Jaz had been the only constant member of the band since its formation. Geordie’s unique guitar tone earned praise from the likes of James Hetfield and Jimmy Page, and influenced countless metal and alternative musicians, ranging from Dave Grohl to Page Hamilton and beyond. Tributes poured in for Geordie upon news of his passing. Youth wrote that he “always seemed indestructible […] bullets bounced off him”, while Kirk Hammett and Duff McKagan hailed the guitarist’s talent and offered their own remembrances. Lamb Of God frontman…

SEPULTURA ARE CALLING IT QUITS They stated: “Sepultura has reached the end of the road and has chosen to depart via a conscious and planned death.” They’ll commemorate their 40th anniversary with a final run of shows. BUT KISS AREN’T GOING ANYWHERE After their final live show, they announced they’ll continue as avatars. LIMP BIZKIT ARE PLAYING DOWNLOAD Fred Durst and co will return to Donington after a decade away. Limp Bizkit: Download will be bouncing! METALLICA ARE ON THE SOUNDTRACK TO A NEW ANIME The Netflix/Metallica love-in continues with a Japanese-language cover of For Whom The Bell Tolls in new anime Blue Eye Samurai. CREEPER ARE DOING AN INTIMATE UK TOUR They’ll continue to play songs from their vampire rock opera, Sanguivore, in March. POWER TRIP HAVE REUNITED Or…

IT’S AWET and miserable Thursday night in Manchester, but inside the venue, Rebellion, South Of Salem are turning up the heat in front of 520 sweat-slicked fans. Like all the shows on this run, it’s sold out –an impressive feat for any emerging act in these straitened times, but even more so considering this is South Of Salem’s first-ever headlining tour. There’s a palpable sense of excitement before they even come on, as the iconic theme from seminal slasher flick Halloween sets the tone. They explode into The Purge-themed Let Us Prey in a welter of volume and energy, the frontline a blur of motion and frontman Joey Draper cajoling and directing the audience like they’re already filling arenas. Just a few songs in, they pause before playing Made To…

IN SHORT SOUNDS LIKE: A bleeding heart sewing itself back together FOR FANS OF: Counterparts, La Dispute, The Devil Wears Prada LISTEN TO: The Cave DUNDEE BASED POST-HARDCORE outfit To Kill Achilles have come a long way since their formation in 2010. With their first two albums they successfully carved their own niche, combining emotionally charged narratives with captivating atmospherics. But their third fulllength, Recovery, is an especially intimate affair that delves deeper into their personal experiences than ever before, navigating hard-hitting, relatable subjects including loss, anxiety and addiction. “It’s a kind of therapy for me,” explains frontman Mark Tindal. “If you can say something out loud and listen back to it, it allows you to normalise and make sense of everything. We say that if our listeners ‘get it’,…

I read this thing once about Robert Pattinson. He was being harassed by a fan and invited them to dinner, and then he just bored the hell out of them –talked their ears off about the most boring, uninteresting stuff until they left,” smirks Bad Omens vocalist Noah Sebastian, as he recalls a story about the A-list Hollywood actor. “He out-punished the fan. I thought that was really amusing. If I ever had that experience where a fan wouldn’t leave me alone, and we went to dinner, once they got to know me, they’d be like, ‘Ah, OK, I’m gonna move on. Back to K–pop, back to Taylor!’” Two years ago, Noah Sebastian was just another frontman in another mid-tier metalcore band. Well-liked, but, honestly, probably not high-profile enough to…

Hannah Collins, aka Scene Queen, stares up at the camera with a mischievous glint in her eye. She’s lying back on satin sheets, wearing pink lingerie, a stuffed Pink Panther toy tucked under her arm, a 90s pink dream phone in her hand. The imagery couldn’t be more on-brand. The plushie is a reference to her 2022 single Pink Panther, a tongue-in-cheek ode to lesbian sex. The push-up bra she’s wearing is a reference to last year’s Pink Push-Up Bra single, a blistering tirade against sexual abuse. This is the genre-hopping singer’s very first Metal Hammer cover, but it’s also a homage to/twist on another iconic cover shoot. Namely the Lolita-like image of Britney Spears taken by legendary photographer David LaChapelle, which appeared on the front of Rolling Stone magazine…

On December 15, 2019, Children Of Bodom played their final show. It had been announced six weeks earlier that drummer Jaska Raatikainen, bassist Henkka Seppälä and keyboard player Janne Wirman –who had played on every Bodom album since their 1997 debut, Something Wild –had quit the band to “change direction within their lives”, leaving guitarist Daniel Freyberg and frontman Alexi Laiho to carry on without them. The show took place at the Helsinki Ice Hall, a short drive from the town of Espoo, where schoolfriends Alexi and Jaska had formed Children Of Bodom 26 years earlier. It was a bittersweet night, but there was a note of tension too. Despite the diplomatic wording of the statement announcing the trio’s departure, the truth was that Alexi’s alcohol and substance abuse problems…

RISING FROM THE ashes of the scintillating but short-lived The Oath in 2014, Lucifer have spent the last decade steadily spreading their wings and delivering some of the most chilling, thrilling and seriously catchy tunes in metal. Led by Johanna Platow Andersson, their fifth album sees them refine and perfect their fusion of doom, occult and 70s shock rock, and features songwriting that’s as sharp as their namesake’s trident. Conjuring up images of old Hammer and Amicus movies and full of hook-laden hybrid moments, Lucifer V sees these Stockholm-based misfits –who also include Johanna’s other half, Nicke Andersson Platow of Entombed and Hellacopters fame in their ranks –at the peak of their powers. Much like Christopher Lee’s Dracula whenever he locked those blood-red eyes on his victims, many of the…

2022’S CARPE DIEM saw Saxon breach the UK album chart Top 20 for the first time since 1984’s Crusader, but it didn’t mark a huge resurgence. They’ve had the odd dip, of course, but Saxon never went away and, over the course of an impressive 23-album back catalogue, they’ve retained a remarkable consistency. They have their own place in metal history, an established fanbase and an instantly recognisable sound. On album 24 they’re not likely to be presenting anything jaw-droppingly different, so the main question Hell, Fire And Damnation has to answer is whether it succeeds on the band’s own terms. The answer is a resounding yes. Over the years, Saxon have dabbled in grandiose power metal and close-tospeed-metal bangers. The core remains the same mid-paced fists-in-the-air anthems they’ve been…

EPIC SONGS, CINEMATIC lyrics, an iconic mascot –if any band was born to get the comic book treatment, it’s Iron Maiden. To mark the 40th anniversary of 1983’s Piece Of Mind, Maiden have teamed up with comics company Z2 to release Iron Maiden: Piece Of Mind, a 120-page illustrated book based on that classic record. “It’s more than just a graphic novel, it’s a work of art,” Bruce tells Hammer of the Piece Of Mind book. “It’s a thing of beauty.” It’s not the first time the worlds of Iron Maiden and comic books have come together. In 2018, the band put out Legacy Of The Beast, a tie-in with the game of the same name. But Iron Maiden: Piece Of Mind –which is available in various formats, including a…

SINCE HE FIRST joined Tesseract in 2009, Dan Tompkins has been one of the leading voices of British prog metal. The Milton Keynes band’s debut album, One, inspired a wave of copycats, but none could mimic the experimental yet anthemic songcraft, nor Dan’s evocative singing. The vocalist left in 2011 and worked on a litany of projects, from Skyharbor to White Moth Black Butterfly, but returned three years later for a trilogy of excellent albums. With Tesseract’s 2023 masterpiece, War Of Being, still fresh and a European tour looming, we asked Dan all your burning questions. What’s the weirdest thing you saw while on duty as a police officer? Ali Masser, email “It was a domestic situation where a guy just would not stop masturbating. Ha ha ha! His wife…

TRIVAX INJECT BLACKENED death metal’s darkness with Middle-Eastern melodies, incorporating traditional instruments like the Saz –a lute-like instrument –alongside neck-breaking blastbeats. For vocalist Shayan, who formed the band in Iran in 2009, these elements are not just part of his band’s sound but a link to ahome he was forced to leave. “There was no future for me there,” he admits. “We were playing in a basement with eggshells and cement on the walls to keep the noise in, so that the neighbours wouldn’t complain to the police and get us arrested.” Moving to the UK in 2011, Shayan reformed Trivax from scratch. But while the band –made up of Shayan, Syrian bassist Sully and British drummer Matt Croton –are now based out of Birmingham, they still embrace uniquely Middle-Eastern…

IN SHORT SOUNDS LIKE: A high-octane power-thrash variety show with technical flair FOR FANS OF: Crisix, Exmortus, Havok LISTEN TO: Automatic Thrash Machine IT’S HARD TO believe that Hyperia’s frenzied shredding and breakneck drum-blasts are the product of an extended honeymoon. But it’s true: when Marlee and Colin Ryley travelled for a year following their wedding, it was nomadic strumming on a tiny acoustic guitar that ignited a hunger for bigger sounds. “We’ve been trying to blend old-school thrash from the 80s with more modern and neoclassical elements,” explains guitarist Colin. Based in Vancouver, Hyperia’s third full-length, The Serpent’s Cycle, represents their most ambitious vision yet. Whether it’s the noodling prog of Prophet Of Deceit giving way to crossover thrash, the homage to Municipal Waste-style party headbangers on Automatic Thrash…

Viewed from above, the famous pedestrian crossing outside Tokyo’s Shibuya Station resembles the world’s largest and best-organised wall of death. Stand at its centre point as thousands of Tokyo residents and wide-eyed tourists hurtle across the intersection from every conceivable angle, and you will experience true sensory overload. The blur of human traffic is accompanied by a dizzying, truly deafening collage of sounds. The relentless metallic clinking from the district’s Pachinko arcades clashes against the effervescent beats of the latest J-pop and K-pop hits bleeding across from the SHIBUYA109 mall, the world’s wildest, loudest department store. Advertising jingles blare out from the giant neon screens overhead, and loudhailer-wielding street vendors yell enthusiastic exhortations to embrace the joys of consumerism. It’s a jarring, disorientating, almost overwhelming experience, yet also exhilarating, intoxicating…

01 ALCEST TitleTBC RELEASE DATE: TBC No word yet on when Alcest’s seventh album might arrive, but we know it’s in the pipeline. Frontman Neige finished writing the music back in May 2022. Afew months later the band posted: “We just finished writing the drums for the new album and progressed on our pre-productions, surrounded by ethereal, inspiring landscapes. It’s gonna take some time still but we can’t wait to show you our new songs.” 02 ALL THAT REMAINS TitleTBC RELEASE DATE: TBC Six years after their last album, the metalcore warhorses are finally back in the studio. Frontman Phil Labonte posted footage of himself at work, confirming the band were recording their first album since the death of guitarist Oli Herbert in 2018. Phil confirmed that they plan to…

GERMANY’S LORD OF The Lost lived up to their name at Eurovision 2023, limping home in last place. And that’s fine. The five-piece thrust their sparkling gimp-sticks into millions of homes, driving curious ears toward eight records packed with gothic industrial, symphonia and lovelorn litanies. “THEY LINGER IN THEIR COMFORT ZONE OF SPOOPY ROCK” Never to waste an opportunity, they’ve since lapped stadiums supporting Iron Maiden, now consolidating their gains with… a covers album. Are they flushing all that blood and glitter down the shitter? Yes and no. This isn’t Imperial Triumphant pretending to know Metallica’s Motorbreath and just doing jazzy death metal instead. Rather, Lord Of The Lost linger in their comfort zone –these are all massive tunes, easily transposed to their spoopy, keyboard-laden rock template. Billy Idol’s Shock…

SPINEFARM Finnish melodic metal icons bow out in untouchable form WHEN ALEXI LAIHO disbanded Children Of Bodom in 2019, then passed away just 12 months later, it left a chasm that no metal band –no matter how flamboyant, talented or charismatic –have filled since. The Wildchild was a once-ina-lifetime rock star within extreme metal. Plus, his guitar playing’s trade-offs with keyboardist Janne Wirman were so impressive and fun that few have even dared to replicate them. All of the idiosyncrasies that made both Alexi and his band great have now been immortalised on AChapter Called Children Of Bodom: the recording of the last live show the Finns ever played. The end of Bodom was effectively foreshadowed weeks before this December 2019 gig, with Janne, drummer Jaska Raatikainen and bassist Henkka…

EMERGING FROM NAMSOS, a cradle of Norway’s rich metal heritage, Vemod return with their long-awaited second outing. Their 2012 debut, Venter På Stormene, was a decent, if slightly generic, offering, but The Deepening elevates the trio’s sonic alchemy to new stirring new heights. Vemod’s ability to weave together the dimensions of time and space is evident here. It’s as if they have absorbed the ethereal essence and rugged beauty of Norwegian fjords and mountains and transformed it into sound, embodied by teleportational soundscapes like Fra Drømmenes Bok I. This connection to nature and their Nidrosian black metal roots remains strong, yet the post-punk gothic undertones of Inn I Lysande Natt establish the lengths to which Vemod have committed to expanding their sonic palette. Within these six tracks, waves of profound…

IF YOU’RE AN extreme metal fan, you almost definitely know about Shane Embury. The 56-year-old has been the bassist of Napalm Death since 1987, during which time he’s not only served as one of the chief creative forces with the grindcore rabblerousers, but used any downtime for a litany of side-projects, indulging in everything from extreme metal (Lock Up, Brujeria), to industrial metal (Blood From The Soul) and hardcore punk (Venomous Concept). But while you might know Shane Embury, you don’t know Shane Embury. In his new autobiography Life…? And Napalm Death, Shane gets into the nitty-gritty of his personal life in a way he never has before. And, the multitasking musician says, it took finally sitting still for him to set about revisiting his past. “The past couple of…

INTER-BAND FEUDS WERE a major part of the metal landscape at the turn of the millennium. While Fred Durst threw stones at every musician who gave him a funny look, Slipknot and Mushroomhead were at each other’s throats and System Of ADown were being lambasted as “the shittiest band of all time” by Oasis. It was also reported during the genre’s dying days that even nu metal B-listers Sevendust and Coal Chamber were having a bit of a spat. That venom seeped into the public eye with the release of the ’Dust single Enemy, taken from the band’s 2003 record, Seasons. Singer Lajon Witherspoon certainly sounded incensed. ‘Step up to me! You want to be a big-time player? It’s not to be!’ he spat, over thunderous riffing and imperious percussion.…

FUMING MOUTH SEEMED unstoppable. Merging early 90s death metal with late 90s metalcore to deadly effect, the Massachusetts act cratered the earth with a series of monstrous early releases. Three weeks before they were due to record their second album, however, everything changed when singer, guitarist and mastermind Mark Whelan was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. “The first thing I said was that I just wanted to play one more show,” says Mark. The band entered “battle stations”, with Mark viewing each milestone - chemo, remission, finding a bone-marrow donor - as a campaign victory. And while the process was painful, exhausting and uncertain, it also gave him the opportunity to rewrite expansive new album Last Day Of Sun, musically and conceptually. “I was going crazy stuck in aroom all…

SLAYER SHOW NO MERCY: 40TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION METAL BLADE £51 PANNED AT THE time by cowards who knew nothing, Slayer’s seminal debut outlasted the critics who hooted and scoffed, while planting a permanent hoofmark on the face of heavy metal. This 40th anniversary edition of Show No Mercy goes all out, boldly choosing to hide the cover’s thewy goatman behind a classy, embossed slipcase and slapping the album’s 10 wild tracks across some tasty black and gold vinyl. Bundled with it you get a double-sided poster, a hefty 28-page booklet and a handsome slipmat, along with a couple of other neat-looking doodads. The only complaint? That this particular edition is limited to 6,000 copies –surely someone out there should’ve thought to round that up to a neat 6,660? tinyurl.com/nomercy-40 FIVE…

The opening of the show is like something from a horror movie. The sinister choral intro of Welcome Back, O’ Sleeping Dreamer reaches a crescendo as blinding blue light floods the venue. Lorna Shore run onstage. “Berlinnnnn! Are you guys ready to fucking jump?” shouts frontman Will Ramos. Then, punctuated by a “blegh”, plumes of flame shoot up around him. We’re at the 3,500-capacity Columbiahalle in Berlin, Germany. Tonight’s show has been upgraded from the 2,000-capacity Astra venue –one of many upgrades on this headline tour. It’s the culmination of a year in which the New Jersey quintet have played Download’s Main Stage, supported Parkway Drive in Europe’s arenas, and opened for Gojira and Mastodon in amphitheatres across the US. All this, and they’re a deathcore band. Will Ramos still…

The Album SELF RELEASED EVER SINCE EDDIE Van Halen revolutionised guitar playing with a style derived from his boyhood training as a pianist, metal’s ties to classical music have been evident to anyone paying attention. That’s never more so than in extreme metal, where the various layers of contrasting complexity are the sound of orchestral sections distilled into guitars, drums and bass. Bright &Black seek to herald this legacy, asking a stellar array of metal musicians to compose for the Baltic Sea Philharmonic orchestra, with –for obvious reasons –Apocalyptica’s Eicca Toppinen as their soloist. This fierce ensemble is conducted by the innovative Kristjan Järvi, who’s made a career of pushing the limits of what modern classical can be. The results are frequently startling. Bloodgrind, composed by Entombed AD’s Nico Elgstrand,…

WHEN IT COMES to the enduring image of man vs machine, The Terminator’s ‘human skull getting crushed by a robot foot’ takes some beating. But what James Cameron didn’t –and perhaps couldn’t – show us was the fact that when the machines rise up, they’ll do it dressed as orcs. Singing jaunty second-rate Amon Amarth songs. Oh, the inhumanity. Billed as the world’s first AI-generated metal album, there will be suspicion levelled at Frostbite Orckings’ The Orcish Eclipse. And we get it; even the name sounds more like keyword generation than the cheesy-but-effective, erm, elegance of Dragonforce or Hammerfall. On its own merits, The Orcish Eclipse plays out like an oh-so-faithful take on epic sword-and-board metal championed by European bands such Amon Amarth, Brothers Of Metal and so many other…

PREVIOUSLY KNOWN AS Gyze, the Matt Heafyproduced and mentored Ryujin are primed for global domination with their unique brand of samurai metal. Flexing traditional Japanese instruments like the shamisen, erhu and dragon flute, their eponymous fifth album brims with traditional folk elements. Meanwhile, the meteoric shredding and raspy vocals of Ryoji Shinomoto are emblematic of Ryujin’s past, losing nothing in their profundity and aggression. Ryujin’s fierce six-string tactics loom large on album opener proper Gekokujo, unleashing Ryoji’s breakneck riffs. But it’s outdone in its ferocity by Dragon, Fly Free’s flute-meets-thrash tumult and Scream Of The Dragon, which segues from dizzying Children Of Bodom-style licks to a saccharine, clean-sung chorus. Evoking the energy of the band’s home region via the language of the indigenous Ainu people, many of the songs here…

TONIGHT IS Alittle like going back in time to the early 2000s. Whether you remember Tunbridge Wells’ THE HURT PROCESS or not, their music is reminiscent of other alternative British bands from the era such as Hundred Reasons and Hell Is For Heroes. Like their forebears, they’ve recently decided to reunite. And in the same way that another band of that time, A, encouraged people to do a walking moshpit during their reunion shows, The Hurt Process proudly proclaim to be “dadcore” now and more set up for “two-step in slippers”. It’s a set full of warmth, warmly received. And so to ATREYU. Their pre-set music sets a freewheeling tone of silliness, switching from Sweet Caroline to their intro tape of Darude’s Sandstorm. “London, what the fuck is going on?!”…