Innehållsförteckning för January 2025 från Metal Hammer UK

Wandering through the corridors of his West Hollywood home, Ice Nine Kills frontman Spencer Charnas enthuses about a topic dear to his heart: horror movies. But the Zoom video feed suddenly stops, and everything goes quiet. When it reconnects, Hammer is face-to-face with the ghastly, grinning visage of Art The Clown, the murderous ‘star’ of Damien Leone’s Terrifier franchise. “Sorry, I never could resist a good jump scare,” grins Spencer, as he picks the camera back up and sits down by a large Art model. In October, Ice Nine Kills unveiled a 15-minute video for A Work Of Art, the official song for Terrifier 3. Even by their own standards, it was bloody, featuring the band playing to a packed venue while Art – portrayed by Terrifier actor David Howard…

For Slipknot, 2024 was a year of celebrating the new and the old. In February, they recruited drummer Eloy Casagrande to replace the departed Jay Weinberg. The former Sepultura man made his live debut with a show at the tiny Pappy & Harriet’s club near Joshua Tree, where the band busted out their old-school red jumpsuits and some updated versions of the masks they wore around the time of their self-titled 1999 debut album. The latter was no coincidence – this year is the 25th anniversary of Slipknot, and the band marked it by embarking on the Here Comes The Pain tour, which has seen them leaning heavily into that landmark record. “These 25 years have just been insane,” says Clown, as he and guitarist Jim Root look back on…

The hype around Knocked Loose had been steadily ratcheting up. Last year, Billie Eilish moshed to them at Coachella, and Demi Lovato declared she wanted to collaborate with them. The Kentucky quintet started 2024 off strong, releasing singles Blinding Faith in February and Don’t Reach For Me in March. But it was April’s Suffocate, with a guest spot from genre-wrangler Poppy, that made the biggest impact. Its video, directed by Eric Richter (Better Lovers, Lorna Shore), featured the singer in a wedding dress, screaming out the songtitle before a surprise reggaeton breakdown. “Filming this video was so much fun,” recalls frontman Bryan Garris today. “We pushed with every video to be deep and for it to have some underlying theme that kept the viewer intrigued. For this one I took…

Múr CENTURY MEDIA  Mind-blowing majesty from Icelandic debutants THERE IS A real risk that this extraordinary debut album from Icelandic heavy music’s freshest creative force will vanish in the inevitable pre-Christmas frenzy. On the other hand, Múr is utterly magnificent, and denying the world a chance to hear it for another month or two would be a disgusting abuse of power. Anyone who loves epic, powerful and fervent ingenious metal needs this in their ears immediately. Like many of the intriguing bands that have emerged from Iceland over the last 20 years, Múr sound monstrous, windswept and fiendishly hard to define. Broadly speaking, these songs occupy a sweet spot between cinematic postmetal and a refined strain of progressive death, and there are certainly moments that take a more direct approach,…

BEC ARENA, MANCHESTER A state-of-the-underground address from extreme metal’s old and new schools NOW IN ITS 19th year and well established as the UK’s leading underground and extreme metal festival, Damnation’s elevation to an arena-sized event in 2022 has been heartening to see, not least because it allows many bands to play to crowds way bigger than they’d normally face. Post-black metallers UNDERDARK kick off Friday’s proceedings on the second of the festival’s three stages. Songs from 2023’s Managed Decline carry a tormented grace, offset by the punklike attitude of vocalist Abi Vasquez getting her hands dirty in the front row. On the Main Stage, D-beat OGs DISCHARGE spotlight 1982 crust-punk classic Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing. The ear-clattering din of Drunk With Power and Never Again remain markers…

SULLII THE UNDERWORLD, LONDON Ex-Fever 333 renegades lay out their explosive stall SELLING OUT THE legendary Underworld on your first UK headline show is no mean feat when your band only has 20 minutes of released music. For Aric Improta and Stephen ‘Stevis’ Harrison, who have cut their teeth in Night Verses, hardcore legends The Chariot and most recently Fever 333, though? This feels deserved. Their latest outing together is a meeting of minds that’s resulted in a sonic explosion of metalcore, electronica, hip hop and more. It’s a raucous combination that, along with their antics in former bands, promises a very special evening. Ostensibly a hip hop act who flirts with pop punk choruses, opener SULLII exemplifies the headliners’ disregard for genre. He probably confuses a few people who…

IZZY CLAYTON PHOTOGRAPHER Izzy loves everything from classic rock to nu metal, and even bubblegum pop, but this month she shot incredible singer-songwriter Chelsea Wolfe for us in Manchester. When she’s not listening to music, you’ll find her curled up with a horror movie. EMILY SWINGLE WRITER For our 50 Best Albums countdown, the excellent Emily spoke to Julie Christmas about her surprise solo record, and Katrine Stenbekk from Kalandra about healing. She rounded it off by speaking to nu gen star Mimi Barks about, er, pissing. RICH HOBSON WRITER As Hammer’s staff writer, Rich has been posing difficult questions to all manner of rock stars this month, including Ice-T, INK’s Spencer Charnas and SOAD’s Shavo Odadjian. We’re not sure Ice-T was impressed with the peanut butter one, though!…

BRANT BJORK IS the godfather of stoner rock. As the drummer and one of the chief creative forces in Kyuss, he helped put desert rock on the map in the early 90s. Even after his departure from the band – following 1994’s seminal Welcome To Sky Valley – he continued to popularise stoner rock via his work in Fu Manchu, Fatso Jetson and Mondo Generator, as well as a solo career that launched with 1999’s Jalamanta. This century, he’s remained a prolific creative force. Between the short-lived Kyuss reunion (sans guitarist Josh Homme) under the name Vista Chino, side-projects Ché and Stöner and a whopping 16 solo albums to date, Brant continues to shape the stoner metal pantheon. Hammer cornered him to find out what gems of wisdom he’s picked…

“THE PLAN WAS always to be really loud and really sad,” bassist Liam Knowles explains of Hidden Mothers’ origins. The name comes from Victorian-era photography, where mothers were ghostly figures obscured by sheets or framing tricks, but also “it was just something that sounded cool”, he laughs. From initial conversations in a pub in late 2018, Hidden Mothers formed as a coalescence of their members’ influences, predominantly Alcest, Deafheaven and Oathbreaker. Since their self-titled debut EP in 2020, though, they have undergone a remarkable evolution. Bassist Liam has also assumed vocal duties, along with guitarist Luke Scrivens, and you’ll find just as much Thrice and even Radiohead now. “There are a lot more facets to us,” Liam grins. Their debut album is proof – five years in the making, Erosion/Avulsion…

METAL IS A complicated proposition in Saudi Arabia. Like many other Western genres, it was effectively outlawed for decades, promoters unable to book international bands while homegrown talent operated entirely underground. The ascension of a new king in 2015 changed attitudes somewhat – Metallica even played the country in 2023 – but the scene is only now starting to thrive. “The scene has gone from, maybe not 0, more like 0.5, to a thousand in what felt like a second,” says Malik Zubaila, vocalist and synth player for Jeddah-formed tech-prog-metal band ana.n7n. “There are suddenly more venues, more opportunities. We hope we can build something special from there.” Both Malik and his key songwriting partner, drummer Maan Balila, were initially emboldened to start making music when they studied abroad as…

BEST Escaping the news cycle in 2024 could be tough. Rage, division, pitiful men with huge egos saying dumb shit. But enough about Falling In Reverse’s new album – this year had its bright spots if you went looking for them. For one, Jon Bon Jovi literally saved someone’s life. That’s right, the man who once sang ‘Take my hand, we’ll make it I swear’ helped talk a woman down from jumping off a bridge in Nashville. Ozzy Osbourne didn’t defuse a bomb or climb a tree to save a kitten, but he was finally inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame as a solo artist by good buddy Jack Black. “Plumber, car horn tuner, slaughterhouse worker, the greatest frontman in the history of rock’n’roll,” said Jack, reeling…

Four years, nine months and 23 days – that’s how long Slayer’s retirement lasted. When the thrash icons announced back in February that they would be returning with a trio of festival shows after they took their allegedly final bow in November 2019, it was a complete shock – not least because guitarist Kerry King was about to drop his debut solo album, taking a few shots at his not-so-former bandmate, Tom Araya, in the press in the process. But you can’t keep a great band down. The two comeback shows they played in the US (Hurricane Helene put paid to the third) were as triumphant as we wanted, celebrating past glories and burnishing their legacy. They’re warning us not to expect any new music, but think of it this…

Lzzy Hale is too young to have been an actual 80s rock star, but she grew up dreaming of being one. When one of her favourite bands from that era, New Jersey hellraisers Skid Row, announced the departure of their latest singer, Erik Grönwall, for health reasons, she got the call to replace him, fronting the band for four spectacular shows. This is what it was like to temporarily land the gig of a lifetime. Lzzy Hale, Skid Row frontwoman. It’s got a great ring to it. How did you end up singing with your childhood heroes? “Oh my goodness. It was a true full circle moment for me. When I told my dad, he was saying things like, ‘Hey, do you remember when you were rocking out to Skid…

They might have millions of views on YouTube, but even Indian metal heroes Bloodywood were surprised when their song Dana Dan was chosen to soundtrack one of the biggest fight scenes in action/thriller Monkey Man. Directed by and starring Dev Patel (Slumdog Millionaire, Skins), the scene sees Dev’s underground fighter Kid take on a corrupt religious and political force that ruined his life, with the help of India’s hijra (intersex/trans) community. So how does an independent Indian band end up working with a Hollywood A-lister? Jayant Bhadula [vocals]: “It’s funny – I got an Instagram message from someone claiming to be Dev’s manager, saying he wanted to talk to us. I was like, ‘This is a scam!’ and ignored it. Then I started thinking, if somebody wants to fuck with…

Metallica have headlined all over the world, but in June they played their biggest shows yet – inside online videogame Fortnite, which has more than a million active players a day. The Metallica: Fuel. Fire. Fury concert was held six times across two days, enabling players to attend virtually, as animated versions of the band cranked out Lux Æterna, Hit The Lights, For Whom The Bell Tolls, Master Of Puppets and Enter Sandman. Rather than being something players stood and watched, the concert involved interactive experiences. First, players raced towards the stage in a hotrod, as flames exploded around them, to the thunderous kick of Lux Æterna, before seeing the band peel out a snippet of Hit The Lights. Next, they platformed through a belltower to the sounds of For…

“I never know what genre we fit into,” Katrine Stenbekk muses, earrings chiming as she tilts her head in thought. “It’s quite interesting that metalheads resonate with our sound.” As she sits before us, delicately piecing together her thoughts, Kalandra’s frontwoman seems at odds with the metal world. Her doe-eyed, gentle demeanour is that of a nymph plucked straight out of the forest. It perfectly pairs with the band’s ethereal formula of prog-infused riffs, fluttering birdsong and mystical Nordic alt folk. Second record A Frame Of Mind is like a series of lessons learned from therapy sessions, with single Untie The Knot questioning what life would look like if she let go of limiting beliefs and accepted herself fully. “I write because it’s a healing experience for me,” she admits.…

Gatecreeper came into 2024 with a mission: to release an album that would flex their biggest sonic evolution yet, and make a clear statement about modern death metal’s capacity to sound bigger, badder and catchier than before. “That was our goal, to put out an album like that,” confirms frontman Chase Mason. “We felt like everything was aligned for us to take a big step and take some risks.” Those risks paid off handsomely. Third album Dark Superstition, the band’s first for Nuclear Blast, wasn’t just one of the best heavy metal albums of 2024, but one of the more exciting and ambitious extreme metal records of recent years. Expanding on their fearsome, Sweden-indebted death metal template, the Phoenix crew added flourishes of rumbling doom, crusty hardcore, grandiose gothic metal,…

Blood Incantation were loading their equipment into Berlin’s fabled Hansa Studios to record their fourth album, Absolute Elsewhere, when they were mistaken for Depeche Mode. “There were seven or eight people outside the studio, taking pictures,” says Paul Riedl, singer and guitarist with the Denver genre-splicers. “We roll up with all our gear, and they say, ‘Are you Depeche Mode?’ We’re like, ‘No, we’re clearly not.’ That didn’t stop them trying to sneak into the foyer with us.” If we’re being generous, there’s a grain of logic to that thinking. The British synth-pop icons recorded some of their classic 80s albums at Hansa, and the German capital has had a love affair with them ever since. Blood Incantation landed in Berlin in the middle of Depeche Mode Week, a city-wide…

SLEEP TOKEN HAVE been announced as headliners for Download Festival 2025. They’ll play on Saturday June 14, between Green Day headlining on Friday and Korn closing out the weekend on Sunday. It will be their biggest-ever performance. The masked band formed in 2016, but quickly rose to fame after single The Summoning went viral on TikTok in 2023. Their third and latest album, that year’s Take Me Back To Eden, reached No.3 in the UK Albums Chart and broke the Top 20 of the US Billboard 200. This November, they played a UK arena tour, peaking with two sold-out shows at London’s 20,000 capacity O2 Arena. Sleep Token’s anonymity has helped cultivate a sense of mystery, especially when it comes to their backstory, with frontman Vessel refusing to do interviews…

HIP HOP ICON, rap metal pioneer and all-round star of film and TV, Ice-T is a formidable presence. Ever since Body Count’s controversial 1992 single, Cop Killer – which protested against police brutality, in the wake of four white officers beating black motorist Rodney King that year – Ice has remained outspoken. On latest Body Count album Merciless, he still takes aim at the issues that infuriate him, from class division to US politics. But how will he hold up against your questions (and one from a legendary Floridian death metal band)? When and how did you get into metal? James Kinder, Facebook “I got into rock’n’roll – not necessarily metal – growing up. When I lost my parents [both died of heart attacks] and moved out to LA, I…

THE LAST PERSON who wanted Mastodon’s Brann Dailor to sing on Oblivion was Brann Dailor. Actually, that’s not quite true. The Atlanta band’s big-shot new producer, Brendan O’Brien, didn’t want him to sing on the opening track and second single from their fourth album, 2009’s Crack The Skye, either. “Brendan thought it was gonna be the big song on the record,” says Brann today, speaking from his home in Atlanta as his dog barks in the background. “He said, ‘There’s no way I’m having the drummer be the first voice that’s heard on the record. The last thing in the world I want is you guys going on [Late Show With] David Letterman and the freakin’ drummer’s singing.’ I was like, ‘I’m with you.’” In the end, the freakin’ drummer…

It was only when he was speeding through Paris, champagne in hand, in the back of a black car flanked by a national guard motorcycle escort, that Gojira’s Joe Duplantier managed to process what had just happened. A few minutes earlier, Joe and his bandmates had been standing on slippery, rain-soaked platforms on the side of a former prison, a hundred feet above the River Seine, roaring out a fearsome, metalised version of a centuries-old song from the French Revolution, as dozens of headless Marie Antoinettes danced in the windows next door, flames shot out around them and an actual opera singer sailed below, singing as she went. For most of the tens of millions of TV viewers watching the 2024 Olympics Opening Ceremony unfold across Paris on a wet…

BAD OMENS X POPPY V.A.N. Bad Omens went all-out for the soundtrack to their graphic novel, Concrete Jungle, pulling the likes of Wargasm and Bob Vylan. The best thing was this collab with fellow genre-smasher Poppy, which saw her go from delicate croons to lung-busting screams. KNOCKED LOOSE FEAT. POPPY SUFFOCATE It’s that Poppy again, and this time she’s trading screams with Knocked Loose’s Bryan Garris, as well as adding ethereal vocals before that reggaeton breakdown. Some fans have called for her to become a full-time member. Not the worst idea… BABYMETAL X ELECTRIC CALLBOY RATATATA The “funnest song of the century” is what Babymetal and Electric Callboy promised with Ratatata, and they delivered. Earworm melodies, hefty guitars, bouncing percussion - this was a killer East-meets-West culture clash. BRING ME…

No release this year was as sonically or conceptually grand as Nightwish’s Yesterwynde, an album that drew on metaphorical ancient computers, the Welsh language, Tongan choirs and the very meaning of life and death. As if that wasn’t head-spinning enough, Nightwish mastermind and keyboard player Tuomas Holopainen announced that the band wouldn’t be touring in support of it. Luckily for us, frontwoman Floor Jansen is here to shed a little light on the enigma of Yesterwynde. What do you remember about making Yesterwynde? “It was a different album in the sense that some of the usual steps weren’t there. Usually, we make one album, release it, go on a world tour, then a new one gets written, we rehearse it and then record it. This time, Tuomas was writing the…

In 2018, six years after their inception, Montreal’s Big | Brave found themselves at a crossroads. For vocalist/guitarist Robin Wattie, the experience of being a woman in a male-dominated music scene, not to mention mixed race and queer, was starting to take its toll, from the endless arguing with sound techs who thought they knew better than her, to experiences of racism, misogyny and myriad “tiny things that add up”, familiar to so many women in the music scene and beyond. “I actually thought [2021’s] Vital was going to be our last album, because I was so burnt out,” recalls Robin in remarkably good humour. “I was so tired and so alone. Every tour, every time we wrote, recorded… after, I was fucking spent. I had no one who could…

ПРОРОК ИЛИЯ (Prophet Elijah) NAPALM Former Batushka faction regroups and undergoes a spiritual reawakening ОИРЛО BLACK METAL HAS always thrived in extremities – not just in terms of sound, but in its capacity to transform the arcane and esoteric into something urgent and ferocious. With their debut album, Prophet Elijah КЯ, ИП Patriarkh have plunged boldly into the shadows of history, emerging with a mesmerising interpretation of their own cultural and spiritual roots. This isn’t just an album, it’s an incantation. THIS ISN’T JUST AN ALBUM, IT’S AN INCANTATION In 2019, the enigmatic Polish black metal collective known as Batushka split into two separate factions, each retaining the Batushka name. In the wake of a recent court ruling, Patriarkh have finally severed ties with Batushka’s entangled legacy, emerging reborn and…