Indholdsfortegnelse for July 2025 i Metal Hammer UK

“MY LOVE FOR PAPA ROACH is the worst-kept secret. The Infest album made me want to be a frontman like Jacoby Shaddix. I was a nu metal kid and it came out just as I was a teenager. I remember the video for Between Angels And Insects with the roaches coming out of Jacoby’s mouth, and thinking it was the most badass video I’d ever seen. I’ve played with Papa Roach and Jacoby said he liked our band, which was a monumental moment for me! “I used to flip between genres massively when I was a kid, and some of the skaters I used to hang out with were into punk and some were into drum’n’bass. I remember hearing PENDULUM when Slam and Tarantula came out, which were their big…

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From the very beginning, Linkin Park knew they were creating something significant. “Nobody out there sounds like us,” vocalist Chester Bennington said, in their first major Metal Hammer feature in January 2001. “Sure, there are comparisons that can be made, but we sincerely believe we’re doing something unique.” Back then, these six 20-somethings from LA were already on an upswing thanks to the out-of-the-box success of their debut album, Hybrid Theory, released the previous October. But they could never have predicted the scale of what would follow. Within a year, the album had sold almost five million copies, launching Linkin Park to superstardom and a rollercoaster journey that would end in tragedy, before an unexpected rebirth added a surprising chapter to the story. It’s no understatement to say that Linkin…

God Of Angels Trust VERTIGO/UNIVERSAL Danish heroes bring home the bacon on album number nine VOLBEAT FOUND THEIR groove several albums ago and have stuck with it ever since. That groove is a mash-up of two parts metal, one part punk rock, and one part good old-fashioned rock’n’roll of the kind frontman Michael Poulsen was weaned on by his late dad. They’ve tweaked the formula since – notably in the case of Michael’s voice, meaning there’s a lot less ‘James Hetfield strangling a goat’ in the singing department these days – but it’s still recognisably Volbeat. It’s a formula that works. It might not have kicked the Danes to the same level as Michael’s heroes-turned-patrons Metallica, but a return to Wembley this year proves their success in the UK is…

Songs Of Last Resort CENTURY MEDIA Swedish thrash/death crew stand in the shadow of the gates JONAS BJÖRLER AND Adrian Erlandsson co-founded The Haunted in 1996, pursuing a thrasher tangent after their melodeath frontrunners At The Gates split. Over their near-three-decade tenure, the Swedes have weathered multiple line-up shifts, but their biggest obstacle was in 2007: At The Gates reformed. Wherethe masters behind Slaughter Of The Soul have been routinely recording and touring for more than a decade, The Haunted have been barely active, releasing their previous album, Strength In Numbers, eight years ago and playing just 13 shows since the pandemic. Sadly, Songs Of Last Resort doesn’t seem set to further their standing. Let’s start with the good news. Longtime fans get a sense of stability, as this is…

HAS ANYONE ENDURED more for metal? In November 2015, Confess singer/guitarist Nikan Khosravi and DJ Arash Ilkhani were jailed in their native Iran for making heavy music. The pair spent 18 months in prison, including three in solitary confinement, before getting out on bail and smuggling themselves out of the country. Reuniting and reactivating the band in Norway, Confess released their third album, Revenge At All Costs, in 2022, chronicling their experiences. With follow-up Destination Addiction now in the world, Nikan offers Hammer the lessons he’s picked up so far. CREATIVITY NEVER DIES “My dad was an accountant. But before the Iranian Revolution, he worked in the fashion industry. I see him as another version of me from decades ago, born in the wrong place and wrong time. To provide…

Babymetal are partying in a karaoke room, vibing with the music and sipping on colourful cocktails, when Electric Callboy vocalists Kevin Ratajczak and Nico Sallach burst through the wall. Soon the bands are dancing and duetting in a hall full of firework showers, flashing lights and sparkly disco balls. This is the video for last year’s Ratatata – a high-energy, dopamine-releasing collab single that became a phenomenon, and currently has 42 million views on YouTube. On Spotify, it’s at 77 million streams, making it Babymetal’s biggest song on the platform after breakout hit Gimme Chocolate!! (115 million streams). When the band debuted it in the UK at 2024’s Download festival, even during a set interrupted by torrential rain, it went off – something that was repeated at shows across the…

Berlin’s Rockcafe Halford is dedicated to The Metal God himself. Jam-packed with Judas Priest memorabilia, and with its own Halford Hell beer on tap (delicious, by the way), we never want to leave. Hammer have been invited here to hang out with Michael Poulsen, frontman of Volbeat, whose label offices are in the city. When the great Dane arrives, he’s obviously as impressed as we are, nodding his head and muttering “very cool” a lot as he takes everything in. Rockcafe Halford must indeed be “very cool” to get a reaction from Michael, a man who exudes effortless, quiet confidence and who has made Volbeat the biggest metal band to come out of Denmark. Since forming in 2001, with a sound that melds 50s rock’n’roll with heavy riffs, they’ve shared…

Crawling across the planet from March 9, 1994 to September 8, 1996, Nine Inch Nails’ Self Destruct touring cycle, in support of 1994’s The Downward Spiral, has passed into legend. Trent Reznor’s one-man studio project evolved into a full live band featuring his closest confidants: guitarist Robin Finck, bassist Danny Lohner, drummer Chris Vrenna, and keyboardists James Woolley (until December 11) and Charlie Clouser (all other shows). Across 178 dates around the globe, Trent recreated the album themes of self-loathing, destruction and nihilism. It took a huge toll on the mental and physical wellbeing of those involved, with Trent spiralling into depression, panic attacks, violent outbursts onstage, and heavy drug use behind the scenes. Instruments, hotel rooms and even personal relationships between touring members were destroyed, dismantled and abused. Images…

Where Only The Truth Is Spoken MLVLTD Sheffield’s indefatigable bruisers land another knockout blow THERE AREN’T MANY stories from the metal world over the last decade that are quite as surprising or impressive as the rise of Malevolence. Since grabbing the attention of the UK underground with their superb 2013 debut album, Reign Of Suffering, they’ve crept slowly but surely into a position where they’re filling some of the most prestigious venues in the country and stealing the show at every festival stage they set foot on. Not bad for a bunch of Sheffield hardcore kids with no gimmicks or obvious mainstream crossover appeal. Against all the odds, it’s not impossible to believe that Malevolence could be on the brink of becoming the next big shock success story in heavy music,…

Nocturne PROPHECY PRODUCTIONS Finland’s black/folk troubadours cast a shadowy spell OUT OF THE misty woodlands of Finland slinks Nocturne, a consciousness-shifting collection that unfolds like an incantation carved into the bark of a thousand-year-old tree. Led by Mat McNerney (Grave Pleasures, ex-Dødheimsgard), Hexvessel have long trafficked in earthy, elemental moods, and here they paint in smudged tones of black metal, psychedelic folk and doom, woven into a cinematic sprawl of atmosphere and shadowplay. Nocturne follows the frostbitten overhaul of 2023’s Polar Veil, which shed much of the band’s folk skin in favour of gothic black metal. While the blackened spirit remains here, Nocturne marks a partial return to their earlier wyrd-folk mysticism as otherworldly acoustic passages, whispered incantations and spectral interludes are threaded throughout the gloom. Sapphire Zephyrs is the…

Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State NAPALM Sweden’s melancholic masters reconnect with their roots YOU COULD DESCRIBE Katatonia as many things across their career. Scrappy death-doom upstarts in the early-to-mid-90s, goth metal miserabilists at the turn of the millennium, then prog metal maestros starting with 2006’s The Great Cold Distance. One description you’d seldom use is “budding comedians”. And in fairness, with Nightmares As Extensions Of The Waking State, you still probably wouldn’t. But there’s a pointed sense of humour at points of Nightmares… that offsets their career-long penchant for melancholia. Ish. It’s worth noting that this is the first Katatonia album without co-founder and guitarist Anders Nyström, who officially announced his departure from the group barely a month before the album was announced. Anders attributed his departure to…

GHOST HAVE SCORED their first US No.1 with latest album Skeletá. It’s an astonishing feat, considering the only rock bands to top the Billboard 200 in the 2020s have been Red Hot Chili Peppers and AC/DC, and it’s the first metal record to take the spot since Tool’s Fear Inoculum in September 2019. Skeletá has also brought the Satanic Swedes career-best streams and physical sales, and shifted 44,000 vinyl copies alone in its first week – the best vinyl sale for any hard rock album since modern records began in 1991. Ghost’s success isn’t limited to the US, either. Skeletá reached No.1 in seven other countries, including Germany, Australia and their native Sweden, and the album placed second in the UK charts. At the time of going to press, there…

“I KNOW YOU guys have some crazy questions sometimes,” Shavo Odadjian chuckles anxiously, when he joins Metal Hammer’s video call to answer your queries. You can understand his nerves. As a founding member of System Of A Down, Shavo has seen both success and controversy, his band’s outspoken stances over war, politics, race and more always inciting passionate reactions. It may have been two decades since the last System album, but Shavo is still out there. Not only is he filling stadiums with the Armenian-American crew, he recently launched alt-metal-via-deathcore venture Seven Hours After Violet, and has plenty of live plans for it. In the lead-up to a Seven Hours European tour, which includes a set at Download, we hit the bassist with your questions both curious and cruel. Have…

WHEN YOU THINK of Opeth – a band who’ve dealt in grand, 10-minute-plus songs for three decades now – ‘immediacy’ isn’t the first thing that comes to mind. But that’s exactly what the Stockholm adventurers were striving for when they penned Ghost Of Perdition. After just eight gentle guitar strums, the first track on 2005’s Ghost Reveries plummets into a death metal hellscape, with Mikael Åkerfeldt abruptly howling, ‘Ghost of mother! Lingering death!’ “It’s a common trick in the metal world to have one of the heavier, more hard-hitting songs open a record,” Opeth’s self-deprecating but confident singer/guitarist/songwriter admits. “It’s not super-original, but it was deliberate. I still have a tendency to think like that when we put out records. You want a smack in the face in the beginning.”…

SYLVAINE IS A master of emotion and atmosphere. In 2022, the Norwegian artist, real name Kathrine Shepard, released Nova, an excellent record that veered violently between swirling, moonlit melodies and blasts of blackgaze and anguished shrieks. She followed it up last year with Eg Er Framand, an EP of haunting Nordic folk songs that put her hypnotic vocal upfront, heavily inspired by spiritualism and nature. “I’m fascinated by duality in sound,” she explains. “I try to find balance between them and figure out how far can I push the limits.” Much of Eg Er Framand’s six tracks were recorded in Sylvaine’s local church in Oslo. “It’s pretty luminous; it’s the opposite of those creepy darker, heavier churches,” she says. “I wanted it to have the life that was captured in…

HEXVESSEL NOCTURNE: COLLECTOR’S BUNDLE PROPHECY PRODUCTIONS £72.50 IF EPIC, GENRE-STRETCHING metal is your thing, then you better hop to it, because this Hexvessel bundle is limited to a mere 500 copies. Within its shadowy folds you’ll discover a treasure trove of mournful delights, including CD and vinyl editions of the band’s seventh album, Nocturne (the latter on special grave-yard-by-moonlight black and white marbled vinyl), alongside a tote bag, poster, patch and signed photo. Plus, for the benefit of fervent completists everywhere, there’s also a seven-inch single exclusive to this set. Perhaps the greatest prize of all, though? The opportunity to fully immerse yourself in the sound and art of one of modern metal’s most distinctive acts. After all, where else are you going to find references to contemporary classical composition,…

In the music video for She’s Walking Down, The Yagas frontwoman Vera Farmiga plays a foreseer. As her eyes turn white, she has visions of a girl in danger who kills her abuser. These powers of foresight recall her portrayal of paranormal investigator Lorraine Warren in blockbuster supernatural horror franchise The Conjuring. “I play a clairvoyant who’s a rock star in the paranormal community,” laughs Vera of the movie. “It’s so analogous!” The Ukrainian-American actor has starred in a string of movies and TV shows over the last three decades, including the award-winning Psycho ‘contemporary prequel’ Bates Motel, and was nominated for an Oscar for 2009 comedy-drama Up In The Air. It’s horror-franchise The Conjuring she’s best known for, though. To date, the series (including spin-off movies such as The…

Stand in the centre of York Minster and look up, and it quickly becomes clear why so many people find God. The vaulted, timber-arched roof, the graceful stone pillars raised by long-forgotten craftsmen, the sunlight streaming in through the ornate stained-glass windows – it’s a spectacle that will have all but the most dug-in atheist questioning their place in the universe. A church of some sort has stood on this site since the 7th century, though the Minster itself – the second-largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe – dates back to the 1200s. During that time, it’s witnessed all manner of events both godly and ungodly: fires, lightning strikes, murders and heaven knows what else. But there’s one thing this venerable building has never seen: a metal gig. “This place…

Xenotaph NUCLEAR BLAST San Francisco’s ever-shifting tech metallers get into their flow FALLUJAH HAVE NEVER quite attained the notoriety they feel worthy of. The exhilarating pace and complexity of 2014’s The Flesh Prevails put them on the tech death map, but constant line-up changes and the sluggish, stylistic simplification of 2019’s Undying Light alienated their fanbase. Current vocalist Kyle Schaefer joined for 2022’s Empyrean – a record that initially seemed a safe return to their former sound. Repeat listens proved it to be a multi-layered epic that showcased the jewel in Fallujah’s crown: principal songwriter Scott Carstairs. He is an outstanding guitarist, born as much of Chuck Schuldiner’s influence as he is legendary fusion guitarist Allan Holdsworth. His intricate phrasing – jazzy, soaring, but ever-retaining brutality – is utterly scintillating (fingers…

Braiding The Stories SEASON OF MIST Bergen’s mercurial black metal renegade enters the realm of dreams DESPITE HIS IMPOSING, granite-hewn countenance and black metal credentials, Kristian Eivind Espedal, aka Gaahl, is a multifaceted and mercurial presence. Beyond performing on classics by Gorgoroth and Trelldom, he has form as a clothing designer, wine connoisseur, painter and actor. Similarly, his past work with Wardruna and the jazzier turns taken by last year’s Trelldom album speak to a worldview that clearly encompasses more than just grimly sticking animal heads on spikes. Gaahls Wyrd has been perhaps the most personal and overt manifestation of this, and with their second album the band continue to shatter preconceptions and expectations in a manner that’s both defiant and genuinely thrilling. Dealing with the power of dreams and the…

O2 ARENA, LONDON Sweden’s masters of ceremony host a spectacle for the ages WHAT BEGAN AS a ghoulish but inauspicious appearance at Camden’s Underworld has evolved into one of the most ambitious live acts in modern metal. Ghost now stand at the height of their power, carried by the soon-to-be-released Skeletá – an album that drapes their occult pageantry in the velvet of classic AOR - and a ‘Skeletour’ of full-blown rock opera scale. At London’s O2, that transformation feels absolute, as the congregation gathers: robed and glittered, masked and painted, some in full ecclesiastical drag, others decked out in fishnets and the many monochromatic faces of previous Papas. Inside, a strict no-phones policy adds to the charge. It’s the band’s decision – meant to deepen the connection with the…