Indholdsfortegnelse for October 2025 i Metal Hammer UK

ICE NINE KILLS have made a name for themselves thanks to an encyclopaedic knowledge of horror and a flair for theatrics. Now, the Bostonians have one of the most dedicated, and bloodthirsty, fanbases around. Today, however, frontman Spencer Charnas is in the decidedly unspooky setting of an airport departure lounge to talk to Hammer about the key things he’s learned about life (and death) so far, as he heads to a horror convention in North Carolina. THERE’S NO SUCH THING AS A GUILTY PLEASURE “Fuck anyone who looks down on a genre of music, especially punk, ska, stuff like that. Anyone who judges or says it’s a guilty pleasure is an asshole. I’d like to see them write a song that good! Ska and punk bands are still some of…

“TALKING ABOUT MENTAL health still carries a certain type of stigma, but it’s really important that people know they’re not alone,” declares Lotta Ruutiainen, Luna Kills’ straight-talking vocalist. “Music is therapy; it’s important for me to convey emotions with my vocals.” Her dedication to her craft, at the head of an alternative metal band combining monstrous riffs with sugary hooks and visceral and epic video game textures, was reflected in the studio. While tracking their debut album, Deathmatch, getting the right delivery for a song about suffering a mental breakdown caused her to have one. “I had a really hard time with Leech because it’s so personal,” she says. “I wanted to get the perfect vocal take for it. Isuffered, butitpaidoff.” Lana Del Rey’s “soft, velvety vocals” and the “raw,…

On June 9, 1976, Iron Maiden played the Cart And Horses pub in Stratford, East London. They’d formed 10 months earlier, in August 1975, though bassist Steve Harris hadn’t come up with the band name they’d adopt until Christmas Day that year. Since then, they’d rehearsed, rehearsed and rehearsed some more. The Cart And Horses gig wasn’t actually their debut show. That had taken place on May 1 in St Nicholas’ Church in nearby Poplar on May 1, 1976. But the Cart And Horses was what Maiden’s bassist, founder and commander-in-chief calls their first “proper” gig. “It was amazing,” says Steve now. “Literally within three or four gigs we had a following. We were doing things differently to other bands. We were playing a lot of original material. We had…

WHAT WAS THE IDEA BEHIND LAUNCHING A KICKSTARTER TO FUND THE RELEASE OF THE VIMIC ALBUM? Annie Gaster: “When we lost Joey, he still had a lot of projects going on. It made sense to pick Vimic up because it was basically completed. We knew the most important thing in terms of honouring Joey and his music was making sure his music was always out there and it would always be available.” WERE YOU SURPRISED WHEN THE KICKSTARTER HIT ITS GOAL WITHIN HOURS? Katie Riekena: “We managed to raise over $100,000 purely from fan support, and it’s just so touching. Joey’s fans are so dedicated, so loyal and the coolest group of people. They really love Joey and we really felt that, putting this whole thing together.” DO YOU STILL…

“OK, we’re dropping the ballad. We’re cutting it from the set.” We’re in Eindhoven at Dynamo Metalfest and I Prevail frontman Eric Vanlerberghe has just purposefully strode up to Metal Hammer to tell us some breaking news. Iron Maiden’s The Trooper is currently blasting out of the huge PA. When it finishes, the Southfield, Michigan band are due to step out onto the stage for their set. This long-running Dutch festival has been headlined by everyone from Metallica to Manowar. This year’s line-up features such heavyweights as Rivers Of Nihil, Fleshgod Apocalypse, Kublai Khan TX, Kreator, Obituary and Kataklysm. I Prevail themselves are sandwiched between Kerry King and headliners Gojira. The problem is that Eric has peered out from the wings to see what’s happening out front just before his…

It wasn’t until he got offstage that Winston McCall realised the police had been called. It was 2007, and his band, Parkway Drive, had just played the gig of their lives: the release show for their second album, Horizons, at now-defunct Brisbane venue The Arena. The singer can still recall the incandescent energy and steam rising from the windmilling, circle-pitting, crowd-surfing mass. And then… “I get a message from my sister going, ‘Hey, I’m getting chased down the street by the riot patrol. They have the K9 unit. They’re clearing the entire district of Brisbane out,” the singer remembers, laughing. The venue, not accustomed to the level of carnage, had called the cops on what they saw as an out-of-control situation, and the national press soon added their own fuel…

Death Above Life CENTURY MEDIA Sweden’s melodic death maestros take another evolutionary leap ISN’T IT GREAT when a band graft and graft, getting incrementally better with each release, building a fanbase from nothing that gets that little bit bigger and little bit more committed as each album cycle come around? It’s not just great, it’s extremely rare in the modern era. It used to happen on a regular basis: see everyone from Meshuggah and Devin Townsend to Gojira. If you’re something of a traditionalist, this is an idea that represents doing it “the right way”. Well, for any traditionalists out there, Orbit Culture are definitely doing it the right way. The Swedes’ fifth full-length may not come with an overload of hype and wild claims made on its behalf, but Death…

FERNHILL FARM, COMPTON MARTIN Tesseract and Wardruna bring the majesty to Somerset’s forward-thinking fest WELCOMING ITS 11TH edition in the midst of a heatwave, Arctangent continues to cement itself as the go-to festival for metal’s most experimental and radical sounds. With their panoramic prog folk adding new weight to the word ‘beauty’, Norway’s KALANDRA set the bar early on the Wednesday, with the most wholesome performance of the festival. Katrine Stenbekk’s seraphic vocals even prompt a few tears among the audience during the heart-wrenching Borders. SLIFT, on the other hand, open up a wormhole in space and time. With their metallic psych-rock and mind-expanding video projections, the Frenchmen make their hour slot feel as if it’s half as long. They threaten to steal the weekend before it’s properly begun. WARDRUNA…

THE WORLD OF metal united to pay tribute to former Mastodon guitarist and co-vocalist Brent Hinds, who died in a motorcycle accident on August 20, 2025. According to police, the 51-year-old musician, who co-founded the band in 2000 before leaving acrimoniously earlier this year, was killed after his Harley-Davidson collided with an SUV that was reportedly making a turn without checking. “We are in a state of unfathomable sadness and grief,” his ex-Mastodon bandmates said in a statement. “We are heartbroken, shocked, and still trying to process the loss of this creative force with whom we’ve shared so many triumphs, milestones, and the creation of music that has touched the hearts of so many,” Members of Tool, Machine Head, Lamb Of God, Opeth, Trivium and more also offered their own…

IT’S BEEN MORE than 40 years since This Is Spinal Tap charted the trials and travails of the titular heavy metal heroes as they fought to break America at the dawn of glam metal. Their success might have been limited, but their legend lives hard in the tell-all documentary that showed just what it was like being a heavy metal band seeking fame and fortune. And now they’re back. Director Marty DiBergi has reunited with the band to create Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, documenting what could well be their final gig. Hammer couldn’t resist catching up with vocalist/guitarist David St. Hubbins to grill him with your questions. “Marty DiBergi has assured us we come off better than we did last time,” David says. “He’s not the busiest director…

IF ANY PROOF was needed that the late 90s and early 2000s were a wild time for heavy music, then look no further than the curious case of Corby’s hard-drinking, chaos-causing, sludge metal crew Raging Speedhorn. In what other era could a violently ugly underground metal band persuade Charli XCX’s future manager to get them signed to a subsidiary of the Universal Music major label machine, making them labelmates with Tom Jones, All Saints and Lisa Stansfield? “David Bianchi managed All Saints at the time, and was best mates with one of our mutual friends and lived in Corby,” Speedhorn drummer Gordon Morison tells us. “We met up after rehearsal one day and he said, ‘If you can fix my car window, I’ll get you on some shows.’ Frank [Regan,…

SEATED OUTSIDE A Portsmouth boozer – whose top floor will soon be immolated by Seven Sisters’ epic, cosmic trad metal madness – the London-based whizzkids seem relaxed. Beneath that unruffled surface, however, nerves are kicking in. Tonight, for the first time, they will perform their fourth album, sci-fi opus Shadow Of A Fallen Star Pt. 2, in its entirety, including 20-minute centrepiece Andromeda Descending. Having developed in increasingly progressive directions since the NWOBHM revivalist purism of their 2016 debut, is the impulse now to keep pushing the prog pedal harder? “The best thing Iron Maiden ever did, for me, was Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son,” notes guitarist Graeme Farmer. “Then they went totally back to basics on No Prayer For The Dying, with mixed results. So it’s a big…

He’s been a knife-wielding killer and a flag-waving soldier, a cyborg bounty hunter and a Japanese samurai. He’s been mummified, lobotomised, disembowelled, set on fire, interred and dug up again (twice), and turned into a tree. He’s fought the Devil, murdered a Prime Minster and attempted to kill members of Iron Maiden onstage on numerous occasions. We’re not exaggerating when we say there’s nothing like Eddie. From his humble beginnings as a papier-mâché mask stuck over the drum kit at early pub gigs to various towering live incarnations, via his appearance on virtually every Maiden album sleeve, single cover and t-shirt, Eddie – aka Eddie The ’Ed, aka Edward T Head, aka Edward The Great, aka (possibly) Benjamin Breeg – is absolutely integral to the history of not only Iron…

Four face-painted men stand around a bonfire, one of them banging on a South American tribal drum called a kultrung. No, this isn’t the scene of some ancient ritual – it’s the opening sequence of the music video for Wingkawnoam, a single from up-and-coming Chilean groove metallers Mawiza. Based in Santiago and representing the Mapuche Nation, this four-piece join the rising tide of Indigenous bands introducing their cultures to metalheads worldwide. As with their peers – including Māori trio Alien Weaponry and Native American black metal project Blackbraid – they use heavy music as a megaphone to scream about their pride in their customs and their hatred of colonialism. “We are searching for our own identity within our music,” says lead singer Awka Mondaka. “Here in Chile, for the Mapuche…

The Bestiary BLUES FUNERAL RECORDINGS NYC metal fantasists effect a very real triumph ON THE UNOFFICIAL list of things that are very, very metal indeed, the artwork of Barry Windsor-Smith sits proudly at the pointy end. Castle Rat are so joyously authentic and true-to-the-bone that they appear to have stepped directly out of his posters for kitsch sword-and-sorcery classic Red Sonja, with frontwoman The Rat Queen (Riley Pinkerton to her friends) fulfilling the role of that movie’s titular heroine. Everything about this band rules hard. Last year’s Into The Realm debut was a potent warning shot, as the Brooklyn crew’s fantasy doom stretched out a tentacle or three, capturing and rejuvenating the old-school spirit, and slapping as hard as Conan The Barbarian’s broadsword. Barely a year later, The Bestiary seals…

Ascension NUCLEAR BLAST Yorkshire metal veterans prove that misery still loves company THERE CAN BE a sense of diminishing returns with artists who have been around for a long time. It’s not always easy to get truly excited about a band’s 17th album but, on the flipside, if that band haven’t perfected what they’re doing by that point, they might as well go and jump in the sea. Paradise Lost have been through several bouts of evolution and experimentation since they spawned in Halifax close to four decades ago. Over the past few albums, though, they’ve settled into a groove – making music that is instantly recognisable as Paradise Lost, while emphasising different elements of that sound. 2015’s The Plague Within reached back to their death/doom roots, 2017’s Medusa leaned…

King Of Terrors EP KING OF TERRORS / ADA New cult phenomenon make their opening address IT’S EASY TO be cynical about President. In February, before they’d released any music, the UK band were quietly added to the Download line-up, igniting a frenzy of speculation and causing detractors to label them industry plants. Meanwhile, their MO seems lifted straight from the Sleep Token manual. Both bands blur the boundaries between atmospheric tech metal and melodic electronica, share management and have a masked frontman – in President’s case known officially only as ‘President’, although his identity has been widely shared online. Now their debut EP lands as one of the most anticipated releases of the year although, musically, the hype feels a tad overcooked. The band’s initial singles, In The Name…

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Frédéric Leclercq was lying in bed on July 26, 2021, when his phone began buzzing incessantly. Texts, calls, messages on social media, all asking the same question: had he heard the news? Joey Jordison had died. “I remember being head in hands hearing it all,” he says today, recalling how he’d ignored his phone at first until his girlfriend spotted a headline online. Frédéric had been bandmates with Joey in death metal group Sinsaenum, and while the band were taking a breather after an intense few years, he remembers being struck numb by the news. “My father had died the year before and I remember thinking, ‘I should be getting used to this.’ But Joey was a brother to me. It’s so fucking sad.” A similar scenario was unfolding for…

ALIEN WEAPONRY Formed by singer and guitarist Lewis de Jong and his drummer brother Henry when they were just eight and 10 years old respectively, the trio sing in te reo, the language of Polynesia’s Māori people. They’ve toured with Gojira and Employed To Serve, and even opened for Guns N’ Roses in New Zealand. BLACKBRAID Jon ‘Sgah’gahsowáh’ Krieger is Native American but was adopted by white parents. Through his oneman black metal project, he reconnects with his roots and sings about the natural beauty of where he lives in the Adirondack mountains. Barefoot Ghost Dance On Blood Soaked Soil is a resonant track about the atrocities Indigenous people have endured. CHTHONIC Taipei’s Chthonic imbue black metal and melodic death metal with traditional East Asian instruments, such as the erhu…

Violent Nature FEARLESS Michigan’s unstoppable metalcore force defy the doubters DESPITE BEING GRAMMY-NOMINATED, I Prevail have ruffled a lot of feathers. Predictably, soaring to fame thanks to a viral cover of Taylor Swift’s Blank Space and then co-headlining with acts as established as Halestorm was bound to rub people up the wrong way. Their knack for spotting music trends – be it pop hits, a resurgence in love for Linkin Park, or Sleep Token worship – and then so bluntly leveraging those influences in their own work is also a bit too on the nose for some. Whatever the rub, this beloved Michigan metalcore band with their million-plus YouTube subscribers and nearly five million monthly Spotify listeners get dismissed as generic and cookie cutter, while other so-called basic bitches stealing…

Amen METAL BLADE More crazed creativity from France’s king of the oddballs MUSICAL INSANITY COMES in many forms. Igorrr are attempting them all at once. Amen is the French experimentalists’ fifth album, and it’s even more unhinged and ingenious than its predecessors. Creative mastermind Gautier Serre has so many stylistic strings to his bow that fans will be prepared for just about anything, but even by those high standards of esoteric abandon, this is wild stuff. Igorrr are a metal band by default rather than by design. Gautier’s liberated approach to making heavy music regards everything as grist to his multicoloured mill, and so although Amen has plenty of powerfully metallic moments, it gains just as much evolutionary traction through its numerous leftfield, avant-garde and counter-intuitive elements as it does through…

Age Of Aquarius NUCLEAR BLAST French synthwave maestro turns further to the dark side MUCH LIKE BARNEY Gumble did with barbershop in that episode of The Simpsons, Perturbator is taking synthwave to strange new places. The man born James Kent spent the mid-2010s on the frontlines of his genre, bringing glowsticks, electronics and 80s nostalgia to heavy metal line-ups alongside the likes of Carpenter Brut and Dance With The Dead. That was, until he got bored. With 2017 EP New Model, the Parisian button-masher rejected retro vibrance and adopted a bleak industrial aesthetic. Full-length follow-up Lustful Sacraments doubled down, touching upon goth rock to convey the vibe of partying at the end of the world. Now, on Age Of Aquarius, all bets are off, as James’s borders open even wider…

CATTON PARK, DERBY Gojira, Machine Head and Trivium go for glory at Derby’s beloved metal extravaganza IS THIS BLOODSTOCK’S biggest year yet? Announcing all three headliners at last year’s fest generated plenty of excitement, and the big SOLD OUT signs that adorned its posters for much of this year certainly suggest special things are afoot at Catton Park. Shaking the main, Ronnie James Dio stage on the Friday, PALEFACE SWISS might look like a 1997 nu metal band, but their guttural brand of deathcore is fucking heavy, the one thing they share with their aesthetic counterparts being seriously catchy grooves. ORANGE GOBLIN may be winding down, but their ability to steamroller a crowd is undimmed. With tunes from across their 30-year career, their main stage set is lap of honour that…