Indholdsfortegnelse for June 2025 i Metal Hammer UK

WITH HIS BLOND hair, Harry Potter glasses and cheerful demeanour, Poltergeist’s Kalen Baker doesn’t scream ‘goth metal princeling’. Suddenly, the door swings open behind him seemingly of its own accord, and the temperature in the room drops by several degrees. Supernatural? No. It’s just his black cat creeping into the room. “This is Mayhem,” says Kalen, as the furry familiar settles into his lap. “I have another one, named Abba. I’m keeping it Scandinavian.” He may resemble a refugee from a University Challenge team, but the Calgary native has made a crepuscular classic with Poltergeist’s debut album, Nachtmusik. Its vintage keyboards and dry ice-shrouded guitars are a period-perfect homage to the goth and post-punk of the early 80s. “That musical aesthetic is timeless,” says Kalen, who grew up listening to…

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Just across the bridge from Oakland, California, Robb Flynn from Machine Head is climbing through a hole cut into a chain-link fence. He’s at the sprawling former Naval Air Station in Alameda, decommissioned nearly 30 years ago, and he scrambles onto the rock embankment that separates the ocean from a disused airfield and a marsh. He’s also moving fast, a heavy metal lifer in black marching toward the San Francisco skyline on the horizon, with hardly a look back. The longstanding leader, singer and guitarist of Machine Head is also trespassing today. The discarded military base is largely open to public exploration, with miles of buildings boarded up and abandoned to graffiti and broken windows. It also happens to be prime waterfront real estate, and several airplane hangars have been…

As Thornhill’s Ethan McCann hops on our call, there’s an air of victory in his tone. Despite it being late in Australia, he’s cruising in on a high, having beaten his frontman to the post. “Is Jacob not here yet?” the guitarist smirks, raising a glass of red wine to his lips. “So rare of him to be fucking late.” It’s a playful dig that reflects the band’s dynamic – Thornhill is the product of a rock-solid friendship. “It’s a brotherly relationship,” Ethan explains, getting a little sentimental. “Jacob’s my oldest friend, and he’s become family. He can’t get rid of me now.” When Jacob Charlton makes it onto the call, the floodgates burst open. The pair bounce off one another, balancing brotherly bickering with sarcasm. It’s an energy they…

Steve Sylvester is a reluctant trailblazer. As frontman with cult Italian horror-metal band Death SS, he was plundering graveyards for stage props and embracing the occult well before the likes of Venom, Mercyful Fate and Bathory. But he insists he never deliberately set out to drag metal to the dark side. “Many people said that Death SS was the precursor of black metal, because we started in 1977, doing Satanic things in music before all those other bands,” he says. “But it was completely unconscious. We were simply very young guys dressed in black, with a street attitude, obsessed with dark things, who came into the cemetery at night and wanted to do what we liked.” Nearly 50 years after they formed, a huge gulf exists between Death SS’s influence…

Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience MUSIC FOR NATIONS / SONY British metalcore titans’ persistence pays off WHILE BURY TOMORROW could already be proud of their consistent output, and the respected niche they’d carved for themselves in the British metal scene, 2023’s The Seventh Sun took them up to the next rung of the ladder. Driven by the departure of co-founding guitarist/clean singer Jason Cameron, and the frustration over the pandemic robbing their sixth album, Cannibal, of momentum, its follow-up took the road to uncertainty by favouring heaviness over the more palatable approach they had been honing up to that point. In many ways, Will You Haunt Me, With That Same Patience feels like the natural successor to Cannibal, fully owning that well-worn cliché of adding melody without…

Ànv NAPALM Swiss folk metal heroes wring triumph from turbulence AFTER MORE THAN two decades and multiple line-up changes, it’s seemed recently that Eluveitie have been grasping to figure out who they are. On their ninth album, however, any self-doubt that the band might have had has completely disappeared. With respect to 2019’s Ategnatos, an accomplished but not indelible record, Ànv completely blows its predecessor out of the water. The sound is massive, yet cohesive. Instead of swinging back and forth clunkily between folk whimsy and metal assault, both elements are omnipresent, coming to the fore organically when called for. Above all, what Ànv has is some truly brilliant song-writing. It’s more immediate and, at times, succinct. From the jump, Taranoías is all pummelling, symphonic death metal onslaught, lifted by…

Songs Of The Shaman PROPHECY PRODUCTIONS Siberia’s ritual folk duo delve deeper into their roots NORDIC MUSIC’S IMPACT on metal has opened our ears to rousing tales of old, accompanied by ritual percussion and traditional instrumentation, its popularity consolidated by the success of Wardruna and Heilung. Siberian married couple Natalya and Anatoly Pakhalenko embarked upon a similar spiritual journey with Nytt Land, their 2013 self-titled debut, each record since exploring various interpretations of Norse mythology and Siberian shamanism. Their music is fuelled by both diligent historical research and an animistic presence channelled via field recordings of the boreal forests of the Siberian taiga they call home. This latest album is their most literal exploration to date, resurrecting the ancient Shamanic rituals of the Manchu-Tungus peoples of Southern Siberia, from whom the…

RIFF RAFF / BONES / ECCA VANDAL / N8NOFACE / KAREN DIO SSE WEMBLEY ARENA, LONDON Fred Durst fires Wembley into full-on party mode THE CHAOS STARTS before the first note is played. Next door, Newcastle are dismantling Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final, and the roar from Wembley Stadium spills into the concourse. Inside Wembley Arena, it’s a different kind of spectacle – a sea of fans comprising fathers and sons, full families, and hordes of Fred Durst lookalikes in backwards red caps. Some were there when Significant Other ruled the world. Others are only now catching up. Tonight, none of that matters. This isn’t just a comeback, it’s a full-blown takeover. And like any good coup, it starts with total anarchy. Randomly, for the Loserville tour, Limp Bizkit…

JEN ROSENSTEIN PHOTOGRAPHER Jen recently shot the Garden State 20th anniversary concert for Zach Braff, and has also photographed hotshots such as Kamala Harris. This issue, we sent her to Oakland to snap Robb Flynn amid the dive bars and studios of his hometown. RICH HOBSON NEWS EDITOR Rich is our News Editor, bringing you all the new bands you need to hear right now. But sometimes he writes about bigger ones, like Sleep Token. This month, he took a deep-dive into the masked mystery men for our cover feature. BEN GIBSON PHOTOGRAPHER After Ben covered Five and the Elton John & Brandi Carlile show at The London Palladium, we sent him out for a different kind of fun – a Limp Bizkit show! He partied with Freddy D at…

WHEN SHE’S NOT writing scathingly honest alt metal tracks, 22-year-old Bex runs a 500-member community WhatsApp group and helms her own fashion brand. But as founder, vocalist and bassist of her namesake nu gen punk band, she’s not merely staying busy. She’s got her sights on revolution – and doing something entirely fresh. “There’s been so many bands,” she bemoans jokingly. “So many girls that make music; the whole riot grrrl movement. We can’t do it again, it’s happened. It’s time to go and do something new!” Her teenage years were sound-tracked by All Time Low and Creeper, but these days Bex draws on influences as diverse as The Pretty Reckless, Vivienne Westwood and Sabrina Carpenter. “You have to like such a broad range of things to create something that’s…

“How we got here is as irrelevant as who we are – what matters is the music and the message.” So Sleep Token singer Vessel told Metal Hammer in 2017, in the very first interview this mysterious figure ever conducted, and one of only a scant handful that has been done since. Except that quote isn’t quite accurate. Who Sleep Token are behind the masks and under the robes may not be a concern to a fanbase deeply protective of the band’s true identities, but their journey from tech metal curios to the biggest success story of the 2020s is a different matter. Since releasing their debut single, Thread The Needle, back in 2016, Sleep Token’s fame has grown exponentially. Post-pandemic in particular, their ascent has been dizzying, with Sleep…

Sharon den Adel laughs a lot as she speaks. She makes for entertaining company and seems to exude both a calm, confident air and an overwhelmingly positive attitude. She looks to be on the verge of tears, however, as she recalls the UK tour that was her worst ever moment in Within Temptation, the band she co-founded with her high school sweetheart, husband-to-be, songwriting partner and guitarist Robert Westerholt. The pair had been the beating heart of the band since its inception in 1996, but the pressures of burgeoning success and combining a simultaneous romantic and working relationship had simply become too much. It was 2007, and their fourth album, The Heart Of Everything, had propelled them to worldwide success. It debuted at No.1 in the Netherlands, making it their…

The Ugly Side Of Me NAPALM Atlanta nu metal revivalists give us more of the same IN CASE YOU missed the memo, nu metal has undergone a major resurgence in recent years. Be it Limp Bizkit going viral for Fred Durst’s wigs, Adidas dropping a Korn collab or Linkin Park’s mega comeback, you can barely swipe up on ‘metal-Tok’ without stumbling across some reference to the mainstream-crushing glory days of the early 2000s. It’s not just the old dogs flexing new tricks, either. The scene is now flooded with young artists paying homage to their baggy-jeaned icons: Wargasm roping in Durst for a guest spot; Poppy dropping David Draiman monkey noises; Vended carrying the spirit of Slipknot. Few rising bands, however, have whole-heartedly embraced the scene’s sound, feel and angst-laden worldview…

ICE NINE KILLS have announced their biggest UK tour to date. Kicking off at Manchester’s O2 Victoria Warehouse on December 8, the US horror movie-obsessed metalcore mob will play their first UK arena headline shows in Glasgow and Nottingham, before wrapping up the run with a massive performance at Wembley Arena on December 12. Support on all dates comes from fellow horror-fanatics Creeper and The Devil Wears Prada. The tour is called ‘A Work Of Art’, after the band’s most recent single of the same name, which was featured on the soundtrack to slasher box-office hit Terrifier 3. At the time of writing, there’s still no word on when we can expect a follow-up to their sixth album, 2021’s The Silver Scream 2: Welcome To Horrorwood. While Ice Nine Kills…

SERENA CHERRY IS a woman of many passions. Besides being the singer and chief songwriter for emotionally devastating post-hardcore stars Svalbard and videogame-inspired black metal project Noctule, she loves to indulge in her other favourite things: gaming and rollercoasters. We caught up with Serena between epic sessions of Elden Ring, and trips around the world to check out new rides, to see how she would fare answering your questions. Get ready to discover how she learned guitar, whether she’d play for polar bears, and what Pokémon her bands would be. Hey, you asked… Svalbard albums usually have themes, how do you decide what the next one is going to be? Adriank91488, Instagram “Whatever I write about in my diary. It’s that simple! I write in it every day, and there’s…

HEARTBREAK MAKES FOR fertile soil when it comes to song-writing, and millions of songs have been dedicated to the wars and woes of love. But for Claudio Sanchez, creator of the galaxy-spanning Amory Wars series that’s been told across comic books, graphic novels and just about every album his band Coheed And Cambria have released over the past 20-plus years, surely a bunch of songs about failed relationships would seem, well… pedestrian? “Every Coheed record stems from a personal place,” the singer counters. “I was afraid to be a frontman – and still am, to a degree. The Amory Wars concept is just a way for me to exorcise my truth and be more honest.” Claudio was still in high school when he formed his first bands. By 1998, he had…

THE INFAMOUS 1990s Norwegian black metal scene might have kicked off a fresh wave of Satanic panic, but there are deities other than the mighty Baphomet who demand reverence. Accordingly, Rune Eriksen, aka Blasphemer – the black-metal legend formerly of Mayhem – has cast a brutal aural invocation in tribute to the ‘lefthand path’ of Brazilian folk religion Umbanda, with his new band, Ruïm. Rune was initiated into Umbanda in 2013 at a house in Portugal, where he lives, and witnessed a cleansing ritual involving serpents. Fascinated, he returned to the house frequently over the following eight years, and eventually took those teachings and alchemised them into Ruïm’s debut album, Black Royal Spiritism. “It was about becoming a medium for these living and breathing energies that surround you,” he explains.…

Happy birthday to us! This is the 400th issue of Metal Hammer - a landmark however you measure it. Since the magazine first hit the shelves in 1986, literally tens of thousands of artists have featured in these hallowed pages. For many of them, that was the pinnacle of their career, but for others it marked the start of a journey that continues to this day. To mark this momentous anniversary, we’ve donned our hazmat suits and descended into the dungeon where the Hammer archive is kept, to locate the first time we covered 10 major bands. From Metallica and Maiden to Korn and Ghost, this is the story of 400 issues of Metal Hammer by the bands who helped build it. METALLICA FIRST APPEARANCE: February 1987 Metal Hammer was…

I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven MNRK HEAVY Math-metal/hyperpop oddities look to the future THE CALLOUS DAOBOYS have become one of the most Marmite-y bands of the modern era. Existing in a scene becoming increasingly serious and bereft of personality, their refusal to be po-faced and instead lean into hyperpop tropes and aesthetics and behave kinda “wacky” seems to have split opinion. They’re either the greatest band on the planet or an absolute affront to the grand traditions of heavy music. Whichever side of the fence you’re sitting on, I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven is going to make you double down on that opinion. Conceptually, the 13 songs here are apparently destined for a time capsule to be opened 300 years from now, to either the…

Life Is Violence RELAPSE Coalesce’s post-metal pioneer bares his hardcore soul SEAN INGRAM WAS formerly frontman with Kansas City legends Coalesce – a band whose radical manglings of leftfield hardcore made the entire genre a little looser and more adventurous. Absent from the music world for a decade, he returns with an entirely distinct new project, wherein ambitious and dynamic post-metal collides with the thoughts of an older, wiser and perhaps a little sadder Ingram. Life Is Violence is full of troubled thoughts and world-weary resignation, as Idle Heirs ponder the meaning of paternal influence, the burdens of heritage, and the turbulent nature of love itself. Occasionally angst-ridden, but never less than completely honest and raw, these are songs borne of frustration at the state of the world. As ever, Sean’s…

Månen Ska Lysa Din Väg PROSTHETIC Exhilarating, blackened hardcore punk venom from the Finnish frontline MÅNEN SKA LYSA Din Väg (‘The moon will light your way’), the second album from Finland’s Svarta Havet, takes a full complement of leftist politics, from respecting the environment to accepting all humanity and living with compassion, as it barrels forth via a barrage of lung-punching post-hardcore, black metal and blistering d-beat/metalpunk. The Turku-based quartet’s latest is a volley of sonic sputum in the eye of the mainstream and its conventions. Flying a contentious banner of support for the DIY punk underground and marginalised communities, it provides the vulnerable and overlooked with a sense of welcoming safety given the knowledge that such a furious-sounding battalion has their back. The shit that vocalist Lotta is calling out…