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: TTHEIR HEIR FIRST FIRST METAL METAL H HAMMER AMMER INTERVIEW INTERVIEW REVISITED REVISITED 1O OF F2 COLLECTABLE COLLECTA COLL ECTABLE ECTA BLE COVERS COVE RS

INSIDE IN NSI S DE TH THEIR HEI E R MO MOST OST UNDERRATED U UN DERR DE RRAT RR A ED AT DS SONG O G ON AC/DC, AC/D AC /DC, /D C C C, CRABCORE… CR RA AB BCO CORE R …

RE AND A AN D FI FISH SH & C SH CHIPS H PS HI P THE TH E ST S STREAM TRE REAM RE A O AM OF F TH THE HE YEAR YE EAR R REVIEWED EVIE EV IEWE IE WED WE D

AND AN D TH THEE TO TOUR UR THA HATT

CONQUERED THE WORLD

“WE’RE “W WE’ E RE R CREATING CREA CR EATI EA TING TI TING G A NE NEW W EXTREME” EX EXTR XTREM EM E ME”

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DVNE D VNE • F FEAR EAR F FACTORY ACTORY • M MONSTER ONSTER M MAGNET AGNET SATYRICON S ATYRICON • H HOLDING OLDING A ABSENCE BSENCE • B BALA ALA

ISSUE 349

Future PLC, 1-10 Praed Mews, Paddington, London, W2 1QY Web: www.metalhammer.com Letters: metalhammer@futurenet.com

Editorial

Editor Merlin Alderslade merlin.alderslade@futurenet.com Deputy Editor Eleanor Goodman eleanor.goodman@futurenet.com Production Editor Vanessa Thorpe vanessa.thorpe@futurenet.com Reviews Editor Jonathan Selzer jonathan.selzer@futurenet.com Art Editor Louise Brock louise.brock@futurenet.com Acting Online Editor Dave Everley dave.everley@futurenet.com Freelance News Editor Hannah May Kilroy hannahmay.kilroy@futurenet.com Content Director – Music Scott Rowley

YUP. TEN YEARS.

Contributors Steve Appleford, Paul Brannigan, Dean Brown, Cheryl Carter, Richard Chamberlain, Chris Chantler, Alec Chillingworth, Ali Cooper, Joe Daly, Laina Dawes, Alex Deller, Malcolm Dome, John Doran, Dave Everley, Jerry Ewing, Paris Fawcett, Connie Gordon, Spencer Grady, Stephen Hill, Rich Hobson, Emma Johnston, Tyler Damara Kelly, Hannah May Kilroy, Dom Lawson, Dannii Leivers, Dave Ling, Clay Marshall, Sophie Maughan, Edwin McFee, Chris McGarel, Ken McIntyre, Joel McIver, Matt Mills, Ashley Oaken, Tom O’Boyle, Dayal Patterson, Greg Prato, Adam Rees, Alastair Riddell, Yasmine Summan, Nick Thorpe, James Weaver, Christina Wenig, Jon Wiederhorn, Holly Wright, Nik Young Cover Photography: SUSUMU MIYAWAKI(PROGRESS-M) Cover/Image Manipulation: Gary Stuckey Design: John Woolford Photography Ben Bentley, Justin Borucki, Derek Bremner, Steve Brown, Janson Bulpin, Stephanie Cabral, Duncan Everson, Nick Fancher, Mick Hutson, Will Ireland, Simon Kallas, Tina Korhonen, Marie Korner, John McMurtrie, Kevin Nixon, Jake Owens, Tom Russell, Jeremy Saffer, Ester Segarra, James Sharrock, Travis Shinn, Frank White, Dani Wilgress, Neil Zlozower All copyrights and trademarks are recognised and respected Advertising Media packs are available on request Commercial Director Clare Dove clare.dove@futurenet.com Advertising Manager Helen Hughes helen.hughes@futurenet.com Account Director Olly Papierowski olly.papierowski@futurenet.com Account Director Steven Pyatt steven.pyatt@futurenet.com International Licensing & Syndication Metal Hammer ǣɀ ƏɮƏǣǼƏƫǼƺ ǔȒȸ ǼǣƬƺȇɀǣȇǕ ƏȇƳ ɀɵȇƳǣƬƏɎǣȒȇِ ÁȒ ˡȇƳ ȒɖɎ ȅȒȸƺ contact us at licensing@futurenet.com or view our available content at www.futurecontenthub.com.

Head of Print Licensing Rachel Shaw licensing@futurenet.com Subscriptions Email enquiries help@magazinesdirect.com UK orderline & enquiries 0330 333 1113 Overseas order line and enquiries +44 330 333 1113 Online orders & enquiries www.magazinesdirect.com Head of subscriptions Sharon Todd Circulation Head of Newstrade Tim Mathers Production Head of Production Mark Constance Head of Production Tom Reynolds Senior Ad Production Manager Jo Crosby Ad Production Coordinator Emma Thomas Digital Editions Controller Jason Hudson Production Manager Keely Miller

DON’T WORRY, THOUGH, you haven’t completely lost

the plot; it was in 2014 that Babymetal first fully breached the UK’s consciousness with a certain video about getting some chocolate, so it’s not quite been a decade since we all first heard of them. But, when we found out that the band were celebrating 10 years of existence at a series of explosive shows at the iconic Budokan in Tokyo, we knew we couldn’t pass up the chance to celebrate too.

After all, has there been any other artist in recent memory that has impacted metal in the way they have? Not just in terms of attention, but in the existential crisis they triggered in our community.

Even now, a post about Babymetal on our social media will cause the most extreme reactions, from fanatic adulation to (hilariously) pure outrage.

They’ve taken it all in their stride, of course, and so, as they prepare to take a well-deserved break, we thought we’d take a look back over a quite remarkable 10 years for one of metal’s most unique forces. Cut yourself a slice of cake (or should that be chocolate?) and come join us.

Management !ǝǣƺǔ !ȒȇɎƺȇɎ ǔˡƬƺȸ Angie O’Farrell Commercial Finance Director Dan Jotcham Editorial Director Paul Newman Managing Director – Music Stuart Williams Head of Design (London) Brad Merrett Chairman Richard Huntingford

FOLLOW US METALHAMMER.COM

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Distributed by Marketforce, 5 Churchill Place, Canary Wharf, London, E14 5HU www.marketforce.co.uk Tel: 0203 787 9060 ISSN 0955-1190 We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from responsibly managed, ƬƺȸɎǣˡƺƳ ǔȒȸƺɀɎȸɵ ƏȇƳ ƬǝǼȒȸǣȇƺ‫ٮ‬ǔȸƺƺ ȅƏȇɖǔƏƬɎɖȸƺِ Áǝƺ ȵƏȵƺȸ ǣȇ Ɏǝǣɀ ȅƏǕƏɿǣȇƺ ɯƏɀ ɀȒɖȸƬƺƳ and produced from sustainable managed forests, conforming to strict environmental and socioeconomic standards. The manufacturing paper mill holds full FSC (Forest Stewardship !ȒɖȇƬǣǼ٣ ƬƺȸɎǣˡƬƏɎǣȒȇ ƏȇƳ ƏƬƬȸƺƳǣɎƏɎǣȒȇِ ǼǼ ƬȒȇɎƺȇɎɀ ۰ ‫ ׏א׎א‬IɖɎɖȸƺ ¨ɖƫǼǣɀǝǣȇǕ nǣȅǣɎƺƳ Ȓȸ published under licence. All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used, stored, transmitted or reproduced in any way without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Future Publishing Limited (company number 2008885) is registered in England and Wales. «ƺǕǣɀɎƺȸƺƳ ȒǔˡƬƺ‫ ي‬ªɖƏɵ RȒɖɀƺً Áǝƺ ȅƫɖȸɵً ƏɎǝ ‫׏ ׏‬È ِ ǼǼ ǣȇǔȒȸȅƏɎǣȒȇ ƬȒȇɎƏǣȇƺƳ ǣȇ Ɏǝǣɀ publication is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Future cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. You are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/ services referred to in this publication. Apps and websites mentioned in this publication are not under our control. We are not responsible for their contents or any other changes or updates ɎȒ Ɏǝƺȅِ Áǝǣɀ ȅƏǕƏɿǣȇƺ ǣɀ ǔɖǼǼɵ ǣȇƳƺȵƺȇƳƺȇɎ ƏȇƳ ȇȒɎ ƏǔˡǼǣƏɎƺƳ ǣȇ Əȇɵ ɯƏɵ ɯǣɎǝ Ɏǝƺ ƬȒȅȵƏȇǣƺɀ mentioned herein. If you submit material to us, you warrant that you own the material and/ or have the necessary rights/permissions to supply the material and you automatically grant Future and its licensees a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in any/all issues and/or editions of publications, in any format published worldwide and on associated websites, social media channels and associated products. Any material you submit is sent at your own risk and, although every care is taken, neither Future nor its employees, agents, subcontractors or licensees shall be liable for loss or damage. We assume all unsolicited material is for publication unless otherwise stated, and reserve the right to edit, amend, adapt all submissions.

MERLIN ALDERSLADE EDITOR

@MERL_ALDERSLADE

METALHAMMERTV

MEET THE BAND

Metal Hammer, ISSN 0955-1190, is published monthly with an extra issue in March by Future Publishing, Quay House, The Ambury, Bath, BA1 1UA. UK The US annual subscription price is $194.87 Airfreight and mailing in the USA by agent named World Container Inc, 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA. Application to Mail at Periodicals Postage Prices is Pending at Brooklyn NY 11256.

US POSTMASTER: Send address changes to Metal Hammer, World Container Inc, 156-15, 146th Avenue, 2nd Floor, Jamaica, NY 11434, USA Subscription records are maintained at Future Publishing, c/o Air Business Subscriptions, Rockwood House, Perrymount Road, Haywards Heath, West Sussex, RH16 3DH. UK

Future plc is a public company quoted on the London Stock Exchange (symbol: FUTR) www.futureplc.com

Chief executive Zillah Byng-Thorne Non-executive chairman Richard Huntingford !ǝǣƺǔ ˡȇƏȇƬǣƏǼ ȒǔˡƬƺȸ Rachel Addison Tel +44 (0)1225 442 244

STEPHEN HILL

WRITER For his biggest cover feature to date, we thought we’d task Steve with sifting through 10 whole years of Babymetal lore and somehow turning it into a coherent piece of writing!

Rumours abound that he’s now signed up to the Babymetal fan club… maybe.

RYOSUKE ARAKANE

WRITER Based in Japan, Ryosuke has been present for some of Babymetal’s most careerdefining shows, including their final appearance at the Budokan for their 10th anniversary celebrations. We got Ryo to give us an on-the-ground write up of what went down.

ALI COOPER

WRITER Forever fearless to throw the most ludicrous of fan questions at the most outlandish personalities, we got Ali to helm this month’s People Vs. Her opponent? The one and only Dave Wyndorf from Monster Magnet. Should be a quiet one…

METALHAMMER.COM 3

16 SATYR

30 CHOVU

36 BABYMETAL FRONT ROW

8 Inside Coronation Street’s SOPHIE LANCASTER-inspired storyline.

10##\rx#idfh#rļ#djdlqvw#MONSTER MAGNET’s Dave Wyndorf.

14 Lucas Woodland from HOLDING ABSENCE shares his Slaylist.

16 SATYRICON mainman and elder statesman Satyr delivers lessons derxw#qdwxuh#dqg#jurzlqj#xs1# 20##Zh#jhw#lq#wkh#vwxglr#zlwk#JINJER as wkh|#lqyhqw#d#qhz#jhquh1# 22 The story behind IRON MAIDEN’s Man On The Edge.

28##Krz#Vsdqlvk#gxr BALA duh#whdulqj# up the rulebook.

60 CLASH OF THE TITANS 4 METALHAMMER.COM

86 FEAR FACTORY

FEATURES

36 When BABYMETAL formed d#ghfdgh#djr/#wkh|#frqixvhg#wkh# zruog1#Wkhq#wkh|#ehfdph# a phenomenon. Across 20 jamsdfnhg#sdjhv/#zh#orrn#edfn at their incredible story so far.

60##Wkluw|#|hduv#djr#rq#wkh#CLASH OF THE TITANS wrxu/#wkudvk# metal royalty ran riot.

68##Zh#vlw#grzq#zlwk#Ehduwrrwk# mastermind CALEB SHOMO for The Metal Hammer#Lqwhuylhz1# 74##Iroorzlqj#wkh#vkrfn#qhzv#ri# MUDVAYNEġv#uhxqlrq/#zh#uhylvlw# wkhlu#Ľuvw#lqwhuylhz#zlwk#xv1#

22 IRON MAIDEN

68 CALEB SHOMO

80##Surjuhvvlyh#vfl0Ľ#phwdoohuv#DVNE have come to spin tall tales and eorz#|rxu#plqg1#

95 RED FANG uhwxuq#zlwk#pruh# zhljkw#wr#wkhlu#ulļv1##

ALBUM REVIEWS

98 KORN elevate the art of the livestream.

100 HEXVESSEL/#STEVE VON TILL and DAWN RAY’D rļhu#hqoljkwhqphqw#dw# ROADBURN REDUX. 102 PUSCIFER#zuhvwoh#zlwk reality in LA. 103 INSOMNIUM return to wkh#vkdgrzv1# 105 POPPY#eulgjhv#wkh#dydqw0srs2 metal divide.

86##Lqgxvwuldo#phwdo#ohjhqgv#FEAR FACTORY patch over their cracks.

88 Metalcore veterans ATREYU jdlq# vrph#vwdu#srzhu1# 90##Pd{#Fdydohud#jhwv#pdg#zlwk#GO AHEAD AND DIE. 92##Vydoedugġv#Vhuhqd#Fkhuu|#Ľqgv d#qhz#uroh#zlwk#NOCTULE. 94##V|qwkzdyh#slrqhhu# PERTURBATOR lqyhvwljdwhv the aftermath.

SUBSCRIBE NOW & SAVE Head to p.34 for details

LIVE REVIEWS

105 POPPY

74 MUDVAYNE METALHAMMER.COM 5

THE BIG PICTURE

SILVER SCREAMS

TAKEN FROM THE Rock

Photographers Collective, a website dedicated to merchandise featuring iconic shots from some of rock and metal’s greatest names, this photo of Motörhead chilling at a cinema almost 40 years ago recalls a simpler time, when you could pop to the pictures with your mates and not have to remember pesky things like social distancing and masks. Er, except in this case, it turns out Lemmy et al weren’t at the cinema at all.

“I took that in Leicester, at the De Montfort Hall, April 8, 1982 on the Iron ” explains photographer Andy Phillips. “I asked them to imagine they were at the cinema, staring in awe at the big screen. I think Eddie got it, but let’s face it, it was a crap idea anyway…”

It’s the thought that counts, right?

(C) ANDY PHILLIPS

The iconic British soap opera has introduced a storyline where goth characters are attacked in a hate crime, which was inspired by the tragic killing of Sophie Lancaster in 2007 WORDS: DAVE EVERLEY • PICTURES: ITV

THE HISTORY OF modern TV is littered with bad goth and metal characters. Shows sporadically roll out lazy caricatures and walking clichés for freak-of-the-week stories or wrongheaded comedy value. Which makes it all the more remarkable that venerable soap opera Coronation Street not only features a believable goth character, but has put her front and centre in a devastating hate crime storyline.

In a recent episode of the Manchester-based drama, teenage goth Nina Lucas and her boyfriend Seb Franklin were attacked by a gang of drunken kids. The assault left Seb dead and Nina dealing with the physical and emotional aftermath – an incident directly inspired by the real-life murder of goth and metal fan Sophie Lancaster in 2007.

“I don’t think this has been done before in a TV drama,” says Coronation Street scriptwriter Ian Kershaw, who was involved in Nina and Seb’s story.

“We’ve seen people attacked onscreen for their religion or race, but we haven’t seen someone be a target for hate because of the way they were dressed.”

Seb and Nina’s story has been handled well

“WE’RE TRYING TO GET PEOPLE TO TAKE THIS SERIOUSLY AS A HATE CRIME” 8 METALHAMMER.COM

Life isn’t easy when you don’t fit in

The seeds for the hate crime storyline were sown two years ago, with Nina – played by actor Mollie Gallagher – introduced specifically to build towards it. Where other shows approach similar characters with varying degrees of ineptitude, Nina is perfectly pitched, from her love of bands such as Cradle Of Filth and Evil Scarecrow through to her aesthetically accurate Victorian Goth look.

“That actually came from Sylvia Lancaster, Sophie’s mother,” says Ian. “We were thinking of making her a steampunk goth, but Sylvia said, ‘No, that’s not right.’”

The parallels with the story of Sophie Lancaster, who died after being attacked with her boyfriend Robert Maltby in a park in her hometown of Bacup, Lancashire, are deliberate.

While W writing Nina’s storyline, the Coronation C Street team worked closely The T Sophie Lancaster Foundation, the charitable foundation set up by Sylvia Lancaster in the wake of her daughter’s death.

Harry Visinoni, who played Seb until his onscreen death, grew up listening to metal bands such as Slipknot and Korn, though he was still in infant school when Sophie Lancaster was murdered. “It wasn’t really something I was aware of,” he says, “but we spent a lot of time talking to Sylvia about it.

10 THINGS WE LEARNED THIS MONTH What’s been blowing our tiny brains PEOPLE REALLY LOVE MUDVAYNE BEING BACK

They’re evening headlining festivals in the States! Fair fucking play, lads.

LEGO AREN’T MAKING THE RAMMSTEIN STAGE SET

Booo! Spoilsports. Has anyone got Duplo’s number?

WILLOW SMITH IS METAL AF

Look, reuniting Wicked Wisdom and rocking a Mastodon t-shirt makes her alright with us.

WILLOW SMITH: PRESS/DANA TRIPPE

“IT’S ABOUT EDUCATING PEOPLE ABOUT ACCEPTANCE AND TOLERANCE” Hearing her speak in detail about the events that transpired and how it affected her, that was really moving.

And having to play the character, the reality of it hit me.”

The assault itself and the tragic aftermath made for harrowing viewing, but Nina’s story arc will extend over the coming weeks and months. It follows the character’s recovery and the subsequent trial of their assailants.

“We’re trying to get people to take this seriously as a hate crime, and we wanted to show the true horror of not just the attack, but the after effects,” says Ian Kershaw. “As happened with Sophie, as well as people before and people since, we want to look at how people attempt to repair from something like this. Plus the main attacker is from a very privileged background, and we want to throw a little light on how the justice system can work if you’ve got money.”

A high-profile hate crime storyline such as this one is more pertinent than ever right now. Post-Brexit, racial and religious hate crimes have risen by 15-25% in England and Wales. Tellingly, in Coronation Street, Nina’s antagonists refer to her as “it” – a reflection of the way members of the alternative community are sometimes seen by outsiders, but also a reference to the

provocative language sometimes used by right wing politicians.

“You’ve seen it in the way people like Nigel Farage and Donald Trump talk about immigrants and refugees: they’re ‘cockroaches’’,” says Ian. “And the kids in the show behind the attack, by appropriating that kind of language, they were dehumanising Nina.”

While the storyline is centred around a specific culture, for Harry Visinoni, it goes beyond the fact that Seb and Nina are goths. “For me, the storyline transcends that,” he says. “It’s about educating people about acceptance and tolerance, and the importance of allowing people to express themselves how they want without fear of being stared at or attacked or worse.”

“I remember standing with Sylvia at a peace convention next to a huge photograph of Sophie,” adds Ian. “This woman came along and said, ‘She was very beautiful. And she’d probably have grown out of that.’ Sylvia, who is such a wonderful human being, just smiled and nodded. But it’s not fancy dress – this is who these people are.

It’s the same with anything we identify ourselves with – race, religion, alternative culture. We hope that a story like this makes people realise that.”

WWW.SOPHIELANCASTER FOUNDATION.COM

Willow Smith: one of us

WE NEED TO CROWN METAL’S GREATEST HEADBANGER

Corpsegrinder has thrown his name in the hat. Who’s gonna step up?!

THE METAL SCENE IS IN DENIAL ABOUT RACISM

If you haven’t read Herman Li, Freddy Lim and Mike Shinoda’s interviews with Heavy Consequence about their experiences, do yourself a favour and seek them out.

COREY SAYS LARS WAS RIGHT

About Napster at least. And to be fair, in many ways, they both have a very good point…

A BABY WAS NAMED KORN

OK, it was by accident, but still.

BOIIIIIIING!

GLENN DANZIG THINKS “WOKE BULLSHIT” IS KILLING PUNK

He really went Full Boomer on us. God damn it, Glenn.

MAKING MUSIC KEEPS OZZY ALIVE According to the man himself. New album soon, then?

WTF IS HAPPENING WITH THIS YEAR’S FESTIVALS?!

Some are cancelling, some are holding out… will we get to a field with a beer in 2021?!

METALHAMMER.COM 9

Monster Magnet head honcho and stoner rock legend Dave Wyndorf faces your questions WORDS: ALI COOPER • PICTURES: JEREMY SAFFER

an old billiards table with microphones, amongst the comic books, doing the show. I don’t know how they get away with doing it every week – how long can you be funny for? I can be funny for 10 minutes and I’m done.”

of Monster Magnet’s impending covers album, A Better Dystopia, we really asked their chief wizard Dave Wyndorf to answer your questions on rock’n’roll hedonism, why the 1990s were the best years to be riding the waves of the music business, and exactly where he gets those lyrics from.

To the nearest pound, how much mind-altering pharmaceuticals have you imbibed?

Iain Blarno Roberts (Facebook)

If you were President, what drug would you legalise first?

“I don’t know. I haven’t done acid since I was a kid, but I bet if I twisted my body right and I squeezed hard, my pancreas would probably exude enough to get me off. Some residual LSD would have me tripping in seconds.”

Toby Warren (email)

“Well, they already legalised pot, that’s the obvious one. Heroin! Why not?

Maybe LSD because I think most people are afraid of it anyway and it’s not an addictive drug, there’s only a couple of people jumping off buildings every once in a while but fuck ’em if they can’t have a good trip. Do they make a funny drug? A designer acid that makes you funny as shit and the girls love you? That’s what the world really needs now, so I’d legalise a new synthetic drug of my creation that’d enable people to gather actual talent.”

What’s your favourite post-90s Monster Magnet album?

James Piecer (email)

“Did I make any records post-90s?

I don’t know, I’ve been squeezing my Monster Magnet: space lords

pancreas for about 10 years trying to get that residual LSD out! I’d say Last Patrol [2013]. It was really fun and I started writing whole records from my home and friends’ homes. I’d finally taken myself away from the notion that someday I’d be back on the radio. The only thing that bothered me about the 90s was that the only way you could survive was to have a radio hit or you’d get dropped; nobody will remember your band even if you tour your ass off.

After that, it’s a pain in the ass because you’re competition to bands you’ve had nothing to do with; my band was never designed to be in competition with anyone except maybe Jimi Hendrix. In my mind, the reason I started Monster Magnet was to pretend it’s always 1972 and I’d always be 13 years old. If I go far enough, I can pretend that Hendrix is playing tonight somewhere down the street and we can jam with him! It’s a rock fantasy that was decidedly set in a fantastic time that really existed but probably existed more in my head.”

When are you going back on the Tell ’Em Steve-Dave Show?

If you had a real monster magnet, which monster would you go out and catch with it and why?

@AllOutttaAngst

Jennie Roberts (email)

“That’s a good question, I’m gonna call Walt [Flanagan, co-host of the comedy podcast that Wyndorf appeared on] now. It was really cool doing it at the comic store [Secret Stash in New Jersey].

The place would close at 6pm and I only live five blocks away so I’d just walk to the store and they’d be sitting around

“I’d have to pick my favourite monster from the movies, the Ymir. He was from a 1957 movie called 20 Million Miles To Earth who’s a badass monster and not only that, he looks like he could be friendly if you don’t get him mad.

Also King Kong because he’s nice… you kids remember King Kong?”

10 METALHAMMER.COM

INSET: KEVIN NIXON/FUTURE

NO, YOU’RE NOT tripping – ahead

told him to relax, y’know

“I TRIED MY HARDEST TO BE A WHITE TRASH ROCK’N’ROLL JAMES BOND” METALHAMMER.COM 11

“I BET IF I TWISTED MY BODY RIGHT, MY PANCREAS WOULD EXUDE ENOUGH ACID TO GET ME OFF”

When it comes to sex and drugs, even Dave couldn’t compete with da Crüe

What do you miss most about the 90s?

Moly Emerald (email)

“The money. It was before digital file sharing and you sold albums to people who wanted to buy albums, you didn’t have to hide behind somebody’s paywall and share all your money with everybody. Rock was bigger business then and everything was allowed, it was opening up all the different styles of music and it looked like they were being accepted by the mainstream.

It was a good time but it didn’t last that long, the 90s we’re talking about was only the first half before Napster.”

Would you do your own Beatlesthemed tribute White Album?

Joe King (Facebook)

“What the fuck kind of question is that?

Well Joe, goddamnit, you cut me to the quick; that’s the next thing that’s coming out. You spoiled my surprise!

I think the question’s coming from within me because I need to admit to everyone that that’s what I want to do next. From here on, the rest of my life and career is all Beatles all the time.”

Is Walt Flanagan as funny in real life as on the Tell ’Em Steve-Dave Show?

Rob Lake (Facebook)

“Yes, Walt is awesome and he’s the real deal. I knew him before the show and he’s the exact same guy. I used to hang out at the store before they had the show, and I stopped hanging out when the show started because it got really weird. They asked if I wanted to be part of the reality show and I was like, ‘Get the fuck out, a reality show is the death of civilisation’, and I disappeared.”

12 METALHAMMER.COM

Is your gift writing lyrics that are untethered to the idea that the listener will take meaning from the words? @JoFleischer1

“I’d argue it is tethered to it, there are meanings in all that stuff. I write in a style of my own invention which is nothing special, I write in metaphors with sarcasm but I’m not opposed to writing seriously and with humour within two lines of each other. I don’t spell out exactly what I mean in my lyrics but it’s all there for people to interpret if they’re inclined to do so.

If you’re not, listen to the words and think of them as image evokers to complement the music. I choose my words from my own soul and experience; I express that with the vernacular of science-fiction, religion and sarcasm and I try to use words that evoke as many images as possible.

Even if something doesn’t make complete sense to the person listening, they’ll get something worthwhile out of it. Growing up, my favourite lyricists were Marc Bolan and David Bowie – you hear their songs and you’re thinking, ‘What the fuck is this guy talking about?

I’ve never kissed a car before?’ I didn’t think of it as nonsense, all I know is in the act of me trying to figure it out, I’ve never been disappointed. If I were to iron out all my words and make them perfectly legible, they wouldn’t be fun to sing. It sounds cool for a punk rock song to say, ‘I broke up with my girl’, but I’d rather say, ‘The universe was ripped asunder.’ Now that’s fucking dramatic!”

Who’s actually managed to out-party Dave Wyndorf on the road?

Dave Shepherd (email)

“Plenty of people over a long time.

When I was at my best, I did it with a certain psychotic style that would be unsurpassed. There’s different ways to party: there’s the sex, drugs and rock’n’roll. You can emphasise one of them that overshadows the others and my emphasis was on the sex, so I tried my hardest to be a white trash rock’n’roll James Bond. I don’t know if anybody beat me on that because I was very slick, but Mötley Crüe beat me with the sex and drugs.”

A BETTER DYSTOPIA IS OUT NOW VIA NAPALM

Lucas’s love for Loathe knows no bounds

The Holding Absence frontman from metalcore anthems to nostalgic throwbacks WORDS: YASMINE SUMMAN

“SLIPKNOT WAS WHERE my love for metal began.

“LOATHE ARE THE FUTURE OF METAL” 14 METALHAMMER.COM

LISTEN NOW

To listen to Lucas’s Slaylist, head to tinyurl.com/ 349Slaylist

believe how vicious and raw Be(lie)ve felt. I’ve watched them countless times over the years at every festival ever, and was even fortunate enough to be asked onstage with them at 2000 Trees a few years back.

“Deathcore is a bit far out for me as a listener, but there’s something about THY ART IS MURDER’s Hate that I adore, front to back. CJ’s vocals are just otherwordly, and though it’s very clean and clinical in its delivery, the whole thing is just Doomed From Birth “PANTERA’s I’m Broken passed me by growing up. I had no Fuel Rock Bar [in Cardiff] for the best part of the last decade, I heard a lot of metal I didn’t know, and Pantera were always the band that would play and blow me away.

“I absolutely love DEFTONES, because they truly transcend genre and have so much to offer. Even though they may fall into their own clichés from time to time, their range is unreal and they can pull off pretty much anything without ever sounding like another band. Their catalogue is very consistent too, and I actually think they’re a fine example of a band that matured with age. Rocket Skates, Diamond Eyes and Koi No Yokan are joint first place for me.

“LOATHE are the future of metal and I’m so excited to watch what becomes of them in the coming years. I found them very early on and binged the hell out of their EP, but when I first heard The Cold Sun and It’s Yours, I knew these guys were even more special than I could’ve hoped. They effortlessly pull off so many different things with real artistry and originality. Whether it’s shoegaze, metalcore or black metal, they just do whatever the hell they want – the sky’s really the limit with this band.”

THE GREATEST MISTAKE OF MY LIFE IS OUT NOW VIA SHARPTONE RECORDS

PRESS

I remember seeing an advert for them during the All Hope Is Gone-era back when I’d just started secondary school, and got sucked in. It was back when the only way to show true support to a band was to collect all their CDs and play them until they scratched. Corey Taylor’s vocals were definitely one of my biggest inspirations as a vocalist growing up: I just loved how passionate and expressive he was on Disasterpiece.

“GALLOWS absolutely flipped my life trajectory growing up. I was 11 years old, shredding on Guitar Hero, when In The Belly Of A Shark appeared as a bonus track, and changed my life forever. I don’t think Britain has seen a more ferocious band since these guys. METALLICA’s Trapped Under Ice was another Guitar Hero discovery. I loved the way the riff just ripped through everything and how obnoxious it was to have two or three solos in one song. One of my best friends growing up was a diehard Metallica fan, and we went to Sonisphere 2011 for our first festival to see them, which will always be a special memory.

“AVENGED SEVENFOLD were just the coolest band to me as I was hitting my teens. I truly view their self-titled to be one of the best metal records of the 21st century. It’s so varied and well-written. I always loved the strings on Brompton Cocktail: it really showed me that metal, and music in general, could be more than just a five-man line-up.

“Sassafras is the opening to one of my all-time favourite albums, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA’s With Roots Above And Branches Below. For me, it’s the quintessential noughties metalcore album. The whole thing flows like a river and I just love Mike Hranica’s feral screams throughout.

“After Gallows, WHILE SHE SLEEPS were probably the most special metal band I discovered in my youth. I couldn’t

A GOOD TEACHER CAN CHANGE YOUR LIFE

“At the age of 12 I started taking classical guitar lessons. I went to this private teacher once a week and she was really good. She taught me a lot about attitude and dedication. I would say to her, ‘Oh there’s no way I can play that! Can’t we focus on something that’s more suitable for my level of experience, or rather complete lack of any experience?’ She didn’t say that she understood or try to justify her choices. She just moved on, not in an arrogant way, but like, ‘OK, let’s just try it. Let’s just have a go at it.’ She managed to ignore my objections somehow and just moved on. She’d say, ‘One step at a time…’ In a matter of weeks I was amazed by how she taught me to play things that’d been unimaginable, unthinkable. I couldn’t believe it. That approach really worked well for me.”

start performing the way you want them to.

It just doesn’t happen that way. Trust your intuition. If it feels wrong, it’s wrong.”

IN EXTREME VOCAL STYLES, STAMINA REALLY MATTERS

“There is nothing worse than the sound of a struggling metal drummer. Can you imagine Reign In Blood with a really feeble drummer?

It wouldn’t have been Reign In Blood. You need someone with the determination and conviction of a Dave Lombardo, and it’s the

PERFECTION IN HEAVY METAL IS OVERRATED

“Many of the greatest records of all time are rough around the edges. It’s why so many of us are so excited by Paul Baloff’s vocals on Bonded

By Blood [by Exodus]. Because he really sounds like this front-row bully in the pit that wants to mess people up! I really like things like the song Riot Of Violence by Kreator, which I believe has the drummer Ventor singing on it. That just sounds ferocious and menacing. You have this feeling: ‘Watch out for this guy!

He doesn’t take any prisoners!’

When you get that feeling, you connect with it. To the best of my ability, that’s what I try to get right every night on tour. I try to put myself spiritually into the right environment for the song, and make it resonate as it should.”

IF YOU WANT TO SUCCEED, TRY HARDER

“I tried to get in better physical shape for touring, after thinking, ‘What am I doing up here [onstage]? I’ve filled the room with people, but I’m up here struggling for breath because I’m just a metal guy and I’m out of shape…’ But I’m not just a metal guy, I’m a professional.

People have paid to come and see me. I can’t stand here, gasping for breath, trying to hold onto my song. So I needed to address my physical shape. I found the right guy, an old-school guy who worked with Olympic athletes.

Whenever I said, ‘There’s no way I can lift this weight!’ he’d just say, ‘No, come on, try harder.’ That was a defining moment. I felt I was already giving it everything, but he said, ‘Try harder. You’re not digging deep enough.’ Then in frustration and anger, I did dig deeper and I pulled the weight up and I was amazed. He just casually said, ‘Yup, there you go. That’s trying harder!’”

being on the inside of the lyrics, trying to feel the message, so that when you sing it, you’re not just playing it, you’re living it. For me, vocals are even more personal than playing the guitar. I’m sure many guitarists will disagree, but they’re wrong! Ha ha ha! With singing, you have an even greater chance to be more intimate and close to those things deep on the inside. There is also a greater risk of screwing up the whole thing by just performing it instead of truly executing it. No one wants to listen to your half-hearted effort, as you try not to make any mistakes. They want to hear what you do when you’re deeply committed.”

The frontman of Norwegian black metal legends Satyricon talks stamina, dedication and getting close with nature

TRUSTING YOUR INTUITION IS THE WAY FORWARD

“Intuition is not some magical or spiritual thing that cannot be defined, some mystical inner feeling. I realised that intuition is just the accumulation of your own experience. It’s your inner voice saying, ‘I’ve seen this before, I’ve experienced this before’, and it either feels good or it feels wrong. I was in a situation in my wine business recently, with someone who was part of a partnership, and they were not really in line with what we’re trying to do, and didn’t seem very dedicated or committed.

I suggested we should sever the relationship, because I’ve learned that if someone seems unmotivated and not really committed, it’s going to take a lot for that person to suddenly acknowledge that they were wrong and

WORDS: DOM LAWSON • PICTURES: MARIUS VIKEN

same with vocals. You want that backpack of extra energy that you can pull out. You don’t want to be up there, feeling like you’re going to pass out. Your biggest friend will be great stamina. Before we tour I step it up, going from working on general fitness to really intense workouts for stamina. That could be rowing or running or bike, but anything with high intensity. That works really well. Then it’s just the usual stuff, from a technical point of view.

Absolutely avoid alcohol before performing.

Avoid spicy food. Make sure you do a proper warm-up routine and get enough sleep!”

ALWAYS SING IT LIKE YOU MEAN IT “Let’s make it simple: if you’re about to sing a line that says, ‘I hate you!’ just make sure that the listener can really feel that you hate them.

Make it real. It’s not about going through the motions and just remembering lyrics. It’s about

IT’S IMPORTANT TO UNDERSTAND THE HISTORY OF THE MUSIC YOU LOVE

“A lot of kids on the internet talk about black metal without knowing anything about it or where it comes from. I’m pretty sure they’re not familiar with Celtic Frost’s To Mega Therion or Morbid Tales at all. I don’t think they’re familiar with early Mayhem. If they are, they haven’t understood it. Fenriz once said, and I understand his point, that people should stop talking about music and being geeks about it, and actually listen to music, to understand it on a deeper level. I agree with that, but I don’t agree that it’s senseless to talk about music, if you’re trying to understand why things are the way they are. I spent years trying to make my band appreciate the importance of why things are the way they are. That’s always been my approach.”

A STRONG RELATIONSHIP WITH NATURE IS ESSENTIAL FOR WELLBEING

“You might enjoy a walk in the park or the odd visit to the Grand Canyon or whatever it is, but that’s sightseeing.

It’s not what I do. I’m out there in nature, at the very minimum, two or three days a week, and

“I LIKE CAMPING, PREFERABLY FAR AWAY FROM PEOPLE”

16 METALHAMMER.COM

Your history lesson is about to start!

METALHAMMER.COM 17

“A LOT OF KIDS ON THE INTERNET TALK ABOUT BLACK METAL WITHOUT KNOWING ANYTHING ABOUT IT” sometimes five or six days a week. Sometimes it’s walking in the forest. Sometimes it’s cross-country skiing into the woods, late at night with just a headlamp. I don’t do a whole lot of snowboarding anymore, but that’s something I’ve also enjoyed. I like swimming in the ocean. I like long bike rides. I like camping, preferably far away from people, in remote places where no one can hear me or see me, and I can’t hear anything, not even a plane in the sky. The problem is that most people haven’t spent enough time in nature to appreciate how good it can be for you. I need it for creativity, but also for my sanity.”

RESPONSIBILITY COMES TO YOU WITH AGE WHETHER YOU LIKE IT OR NOT

“Leading a band isn’t about power, it’s about responsibility. You don’t understand anything about the psychology of leading a band when you’re a kid, but as you grow older you realise that just letting people talk about their concerns is really helpful for getting things the way you want them to be. If you don’t listen to people, it turns bad. Everyone is different. Some people appreciate that you give them space and influence, and they treat that respectfully. Other people think it’s some sort of weakness that you’re displaying and will try to exploit that. With those people you have to be quite firm! When you are firm with people like that, they’re always incredibly offended. So you just call them a taxi.”

UNFORTUNATELY, YOUTH REALLY IS WASTED ON THE YOUNG

“Yeah, I’m afraid it really is. For instance, I wish I’d had a better understanding of things when I did the front cover for The Shadowthrone! We had this great idea, but it didn’t turn out the way that I’d hoped for. The designer worked on it and said, ‘This is the best I can do…’ It didn’t feel great because it wasn’t what I wanted. But I was 18, and at that age you think, ‘I’ve spent all the money and I’ve spent a lot of time on this, so what will people say if I tell them we’ve got to do it all again? They’ll be pissed off!’ So we went with what we had. But knowing what I know now, it would be the easiest decision in the world to say, ‘This isn’t working and it’s not good enough.’ I wouldn’t hesitate. If I could have combined that understanding of how you solve these problems, with the ferocious energy of youth? Come on, we could have been the Beatles!”

Nature boy

18 METALHAMMER.COM

THE REISSUES OF SATYRICON’S FIRST TWO ALBUMS, DARK MEDIEVAL TIMES AND THE SHADOWTHRONE, ARE OUT MAY 28 VIA NAPALM

Jinjer are rewriting the rules

With their highly anticipated fourth album, the Ukrainian metallers are out to “create a new genre of extreme music”. We’re intrigued WORDS: RICH HOBSON • PICTURES: OLEG ROOZ

WITH MILLIONS OF views on

YouTube, sold-out tours around the globe and the huge success of their third album, Macro, in 2019, Jinjer were blossoming into a metal sensation before the pandemic hit. COVID might have curtailed their touring plans, but Jinjer’s quest for domination is far from over. Hammer caught up with bassist Eugene Abdukhanov, vocalist Tatiana Shmaylyuk and long-time producer Max Morton to see how the band’s next record is pushing them to new peaks.

What did the success of Macro do for Jinjer?

Eugene: “I don’t think Macro got all the success it deserved, for obvious reasons!”

Tatiana: “Yes, we had to cut the Macro world tour short due to COVID…” Eugene: “But also, there’s nothing to really complain about, as the album was very well recognised and we definitely had the push from media and fans to get through the pandemic. We were able to survive just through the sales of Macro so I have to say thank you to every single fan around the globe; they helped make this recording happen.”

Tatiana: “Things haven’t changed much, except maybe there are more expectations and we have more opportunities now. Our supporters seem to be as involved with this band as we are – which we are grateful for!”

How has the recording process been this time?

Eugene: “Well, with Macro we were a lot less prepared!

20 METALHAMMER.COM

Generally we make things in a rush because we’re often between tours.”

Max: “This is probably the first time we’ve had time to get things perfect.

We’ve been evolving Jinjer’s sound since I started working with the band in 2013.

On this album we’re going even further from generic elements, really letting the players and instruments speak.”

THE FACTS ALBUM: 4

STUDIO:

Morton Studio, Ukraine

PRODUCER:

Max Morton

EXPECT:

Mind-bending prog metal with soaring melodies and crushing, djentflavoured riffs

The last record spawned a lot of video singles. Is there pressure to make sure the follow-up continues in that vein?

Eugene: “We weren’t told by the label to release singles – it’s our choice.

There is a pressure, but it’s the same as with Macro because we’ve got 10 songs for the new record; it’s hard to choose which one will become a single! Maybe we’ll do like we did with Macro and make nearly all of them singles! Ha ha!”

You’ve worked with Max on almost every Jinjer release. What do you think he brings to your sound?

Max: “I bring them to their sound!

Sometimes sound engineers should shut the fuck up, but you’ve also got to be an extension of the band’s mind and find out what they want to say but don’t necessarily know how to technically achieve.”

Eugene: “In my opinion, a good sound engineer – and Max is very good – is a kind of ferryman who takes a band’s sound from one bank of a river to another.”

Max: “That’s very romantic.”

Eugene: “Without that sound engineer, nothing happens. Max also adds a lot – he might notice sometimes that there is a note that doesn’t sound the way it should, so he’ll suggest trying different things to add more to the music.”

What’s inspired the new record?

Tatiana: “I’m still tracking vocals so it’s a work in process... I’m rewriting and finetuning. Topics so far range from coping with depression and isolation to how we as a band are perceived by the outside world, especially here at home.

So it’s very personal, but you’ll have to wait until it’s finished to ask me more!”

Max: “For those proto-metal geeks out there, I think it’s going to sound how Black Sabbath did back in 1970 when that came out. It sounds completely different – I know every band says that, but with this album I really dare to say it because it’s composing at its finest. There’s nothing there just for the sake of it – I hear some riffs and a Bach piano part in there. It’s not pretentious either, though – it’s meant to be like that.”

Eugene: “Musically, we’re going into the realms of progressive metal; it may sound a little much, but we’re trying to create a new genre of extreme music.

We’ve said it before: we want to take metal to a new level.”

THE NEW ALBUM IS OUT THIS YEAR VIA NAPALM RECORDS

BY IRON MAIDEN

When Bruce Dickinson left, the NWOBHM titans entered their darkest days. Then Blaze Bayley gave them their first light in the black

ON AUGUST 28 1993, Iron Maiden

killed Bruce Dickinson. It was the final night of the Real Live Tour, and the singer had grown bored. He’d fronted The Beast for 12 years, through seven albums and countless blockbuster tours, but things had grown stagnant.

Routine. Ordinary.

The adventurous exuberance that once spawned masterpieces like Powerslave and Seventh Son Of A Seventh Son in the 1980s had dried up. In its place, newest records No Prayer For The Dying and Fear Of The Dark were shaky retreats to the NWOBHM formula initially abandoned after Killers.

Recording sessions in such far-flung paradises as the Bahamas had been replaced by regular returns to Steve Harris’s home studio in Essex. Plus, on the road, the venues weren’t getting bigger anymore. So Bruce left – and he left in dramatic fashion.

Filmed at Pinewood Studios, his swan song concluded with the band “murdering” him in – what else – an iron maiden. It was bombastic and morbid (the perfect Maiden goodbye), but left behind a rudderless ship. The band received more than 1,500 demos from hopefuls yearning to fill the vacant slot, which were whittled down

22 METALHAMMER.COM

THE FACTS RELEASED: 1995

ALBUM:

The X Factor

PERSONNEL:

Steve Harris (bass), Blaze Bayley (vocals), Dave Murray (guitar), Janick Gers (guitar), Nicko McBrain (drums)

HIGHEST CHART POSITION: 1 (Finland)

to just 12 auditions. From that dozen emerged the controversial chosen one: Blaze Bayley.

Blaze was the polar opposite to Bruce. While his predecessor rose to heroism by blaring lyrics about Romantic poems and sci-fi epics, the Brummy had been barking jocular sleaze in cheeky chappies Wolfsbane.

His abrupt promotion to the biggest metal band in Europe remains contentious even today, yet was precisely the redefinition his new cohorts craved.

“A huge part of it was they wanted a change,” Blaze remembers almost 30 years on. “They had had Bruce’s voice for a long time, and mine is nothing like his. Steve [Harris, bassist] heard me warm up and, hearing my lower register, he thought that was so interesting.”

Despite the ferocious competition around him, Blaze was always the apple of Maiden’s eye. Helpfully, he’d already met his eventual bandmates long beforehand, when Wolfsbane supported them in 1990. “At the end of the tour, I gave everyone t-shirts and CDs,” he continues. “So, when my name came up to audition for Maiden, Steve already had my voice on CD.”

With the Maiden machine complete once more, composing for album number 10 began. Blaze attended his first songwriting session in April 1994, making the two-and-a-half-hour drive from Birmingham to guitarist Janick Gers’ London home with lyrics swirling in his head – paramount among them was one simple chorus: ‘Falling down! Falling down! Falling down!’ Paired with a speedy main riff from Janick, the words became the core of Man On The Edge, the future lead single of Blaze’s first Maiden outing, The X Factor.

“I’ve always written but, because Wolfsbane had such a ‘good time’ image, people dismissed my lyrics on many occasions,” he says. “So, when Janick and I took the bones of the idea to Steve and he thought it was good, that was incredible! In my eyes, he’s a giant – someone who’s written so many important songs in pop culture and heavy metal. Someone I admired as a songwriter said, ‘That’s a good idea.’ Wow!” The lyrics to Man On The Edge were blatantly inspired by the 1993 film Falling Down: an anticapitalist melodrama with a protagonist who pretends to commute to work so that

GETTY

WORDS: MATT MILLS

Iron Maiden (left to right): Nicko McBrain, Steve Harris, Blaze Bayley, Dave Murray, Janick Gers

he can avoid telling his family he’s been made redundant. It was that central idea that sparked Blaze’s imagination.

“What connected that film with me is, when I was at school, it was common to have a paper round. I signed up, but I got fired after a few months. I was scared of my stepfather at the time, so I’d still get up at 6:30 and leave the house. I’d wait for him to go to work before I returned. It wasn’t a good relationship between him and I – I’ll leave the rest to your imagination.”

A thrashing anthem with grittier vocals that elicit Paul Di’Anno-era

flashbacks, Man On The Edge was a reinvigoration of the vintage Maiden formula on an often meandering and difficult record. Despite the enthusiasm from new blood Blaze and Janick (who himself had only joined in 1989), The X Factor’s genesis was plagued with low morale, stemming from line-up shifts, Steve Harris’s recent divorce and press that was, at best, apathetic.

“It was a time of turmoil,” Blaze admits. “In the UK, the writers at the time had it in for Maiden, well before Bruce left. It was, ‘Oh my God, haven’t

Having a bad day?

Falling Down, the inspiration behind Man On The Edge

YOU’RE IRON MAIDEN. DO WHAT YOU FUCKING WANT!’”

BLAZE BAYLEY

Maiden died yet? Don’t you know, grunge is here!’ I remember one time, Steve asking, ‘Oh, what will they think about this idea? Will they slag me off because it’s something I always do?’

I said, ‘Steve, fuck ’em. You’re Iron Maiden! Do what you fucking want!

It’s for the fans, not the journalists.’”

The aggression and catchiness of Man On The Edge compared with the rest of its parent album made it a shoo-in when it came to picking a single. The track made it to No.10 on the UK Singles Chart, with The X Factor itself reaching No.8 on the Official Album Chart – Maiden’s lowest entry since 1981. Reviews were largely apprehensive and Bruce Dickinson himself reacted, “It’s a bit of a shame to see Maiden go down the tubes.”

Nonetheless, the commercial dents were still deep enough to get the band onto Top Of The Pops on two separate occasions: firstly with a typical in-studio performance and shortly

METALHAMMER.COM 23

Men on the edge (of the stage): Steve, Blaze and Janick

Blaze clearly struggled against the scorching high notes of mainstays like The Trooper.

However, the singer remained a part of Iron Maiden for two more years following the X Factour’s conclusion.

After returning home they promptly began on 1998’s Virtual XI, which peaked at No.16 on the UK Albums Chart. Later, vocal issues midway through the accompanying world tour led to several US dates being cancelled.

Finally, on February 10, 1999, Blaze’s five-year-long dream ride suddenly crashed. It was announced that day that both Bruce Dickinson and ex-guitarist Adrian Smith had returned to the fold. More than two decades later, Blaze attributes his ousting to simply business, with Maiden needing “something bigger” than just a new album or tour to reignite their dwindling momentum.

“Black Sabbath had a reunion and Deep Purple had a reunion, so, if we wanted to get interest back in the band, a new album wouldn’t have cut it,” he explains. “Bruce came back and Maiden

“WE GOT TO PLAY THE NUMBER OF THE BEAST IN BETHLEHEM” BLAZE BAYLEY

24 METALHAMMER.COM

was back on fire. It was a story fans could talk about and labels could push.

“I was told in a meeting: ‘Sorry, Blaze, this is what’s happening.’ And that was it. Then Steve and I had a chat on our own. He really thought I had a future in music, and so did the management.

Everyone was very supportive.”

The reunion very quickly paid off.

Comeback Brave New World saw them climb commercially for the first time since ’92, while Brixton sell-outs turned into Earl’s Court-level extravaganzas.

As for Blaze, he used the material he’d intended for a third Maiden album to launch a solo career, starting with 2000’s Silicon Messiah. “It got great reviews,” he says, before admitting the caveat: “It failed commercially, but fans loved it.”

Now a prolific solo performer of 20 years, Blaze believes his biggest takeaway from Maiden, and especially Man On The Edge, is a skyrocketing of self-confidence. “When I started writing my solo albums, I could say, ‘I’ve had a Top 10 hit around the world.

I wrote the lyrics and melody, and no one can take that away from me.’

“No matter what you do in life, if you have confidence, it rubs off and you can get through.”

BLAZE BAYLEY’S NEW SOLO ALBUM, WAR WITHIN ME, IS OUT NOW

GETTY

afterwards with a music video recorded atop the Masada fortress in Israel.

“We’d played Bethlehem the night before, which was a rush in itself because we did The Number Of The Beast in Bethlehem!” says Blaze. “All our gear had to go up the chair lift and then zh#glg#wkh#ylghr#lq#433Č#khdw#zlwk#qr# shade. They hired a helicopter for the shoot and, at one point, it came over so low that we all hit the deck. They were army pilots that have seen combat. I bet he was thinking, ‘I’ll get these rock stars!’”

The clip had been filmed during the second day of Maiden’s X Factour.

Blaze’s first trek with the band, it lasted almost a year and stretched from the Middle East to South Africa, then Europe and both the Americas.

Although Man On The Edge was the opening number throughout, the tour proved prone to setbacks. The London date was at a sold-out Brixton Academy with 5,000 fans, despite Maiden headlining the 12,500-capacity Wembley Arena just three years prior.

The band were spat at in Chile, and

I DON’T GET GOJIRA And other alarming opinions you opted to share with us this month GO-GO-GOJIRA

James Van Emmis (Facebook)

We’re glad you dug our Gojira cover! A quite wonderful band who deserve to be the biggest thing in metal, no doubt. You might wanna look away from this month’s cover, though…

NO-JIRA

Am I the only one who doesn’t get the Gojira hype? They’re a vrolg#edqg/#exw#L#Ľqg#wkhp#d#elw# pedestrian live, to be honest.

All musicality and no emotion for me. I would rather see more Mastodon coverage in Hammer.

Gojiraaaaaaa: awesome.

End of discussion

summer without festivals.

2000Trees cancelling was a real kick in the gut. I’m excited for next year but we need something to keep us going!

FESTLEMANIA

I think I’m going to lose my mind if we have to go through another

26 METALHAMMER.COM

Zhġuh#vwuxjjolqj#wr#Ľqg#d# reason to moan about watching Iron Maiden at Donington, to be honest. But hey, that’s The Internet for ya.

You’re not a musician until someone asks “but what’s your real job?”

OZ-ZZZZZZZ-Y

I may not be the most articulate person in the world but I’m extremely passionate and proudly use my platform for positive change that this world so badly needs.

And just because I’m an ambassador for Sea Shepherd doesn’t mean I won’t tell you where to shove it.

Ol Drake (@old_rake)

Helen Daly (Facebook)

We feel exactly the same, Helen.

This is a fucking awful time in that regard. But we know that the good times will return one day. At time of press, Bloodstock and Reading/Leeds were both vwloo#rq#wkh#fdugv/#vr#Ľqjhuv# crossed they can still happen, but if not… just think how good wkdw#Ľuvw#ihvwlydo#ehhu#lv#jrqqd# wdvwh#zkhq#zh#Ľqdoo|#jhw#rqh1

Guy Doyle (Facebook)

W….you think…wh… but…no, we got nothing for this one. Let’s just move o-PEDESTRIAN LIVE ARE YOU OUT OF YOUR MIND, GUY? OUT OF Ozzy: YOUR GOD keeping DAMN MIND?! busy

#TWEETS

FROWNLOAD

People bitching about the Download 2022 line-up are pathetic. We’ve had no festivals for ages and you’re moaning? Just sit at home and watch YouTube, then – presumably that’s been enough for you recently…

Deg (email)

I think someone might need to tell Ozzy it’s OK for him to take a break. He put out an album last year and he’s already talking about a new one. Go have a nice nap or a cup of tea, mate, you earned it!

Olivia Pone (Facebook)

Well, as the man himself told us in our exclusive recent interview online, working is keeping him going through this pandemic - that plus getting new Ozzy music at the end of it means this is absolutely alright with us!

SEVENTH HEAVEN

Really enjoyed the Avenged Sevenfold piece looking at all the highlights of their career.

Puts things into context and makes you realise how many juhdw/#glļhuhqw#hudv#ri#wkh#edqg# we’ve seen. Can we have one for Slipknot?

Rod Wilson (email)

Sam Carter (@samarchitects)

Man, life is a weird Mickey Fickey

Brian Posehn (@thebrianposehn) I eat them crispy shrimp tales idgaf

Courtney LaPlante (@corklezlaplante)

PRESS

About fucking time Gojira were on a Metal Hammer cover again.

A modern band who deserve the praise and attention so much more than Babymetal, Ghost and all those hyped ‘metal’ bands. More of this, please, Metal Hammer.

THE BIG DEBATE In issue 346, Serena Cherry from Svalbard gave us some hardhitting truths on representation in the metal scene, and why it needs to change.

SHE SAID

ģPhwdoġv#qrw#d#xwrsld>#li#|rxu#idfh#grhvqġw#Ľw#wkh#prxog# that’s already been made, it’s a lot harder to get the attention of bookers and agencies.”

YOU SAY

Avenged Sevenfold: did you catch the great feature in the last issue of Hammer?

For what started as a rebellious and not traditional movement of ideals, many in the metal community are unaccepting of anyone who is not white, male or heterosexual. They are really conservative posers who think it’s cool to be assholish to other people.

Don Miller (Facebook)

only Dino knows that.

Oh, and Digimortal rules.

We have some pretty cool Slipknot plans in place as is, actually, so you may just want to keep an eye out for those. But yes, we’ll defo be giving more bands the career once-over in the coming months too!

BOOK IT

L#Ľqdoo|#Ľqlvkhg#wkh#odvw# Metal Hammer Activity Book. Can we have another one please?

Finn Dunnelll (email)

No. OK, maybe. Ahhhh go on then, but you may have to wait a little while.

TEAR FACTORY

I’m absolutely gutted to see Fear Factory end like this. I know Dino says the band will continue but it’s just not the same without Burton.

As someone who saw them at Brixton in the 90s, I’m an old-school fan and I’ve loved just about everything they’ve done - even Digimortal!

It’s not really an issue with metal, it’s an issue with corporate control of music and media. Corporations are the enemies of anything good.

Craig R. Brittain (Facebook)

Women have always been put down in the metal scene and it’s less common for female-fronted bands to get the same attention and popularity as bands consisting mostly/purely of men. This applies for many genres, not just metal, but it’s metal ‘fans’ like those in the comments wkdw#hqirufh#wkhvh#lghdv#lq#wkh#phwdo#vfhqh#vshflĽfdoo|1 Destiny Arroyo (Facebook)

SNAPSTER

Corey Taylor sticking up for Lars Ulrich in the whole Napster debate reeks of rock star privilege. When was the last time either of them had to buy an album? Ridiculous.

Fronting and writing for multiple bands, swimming, Jiu jitsu, roller coasters and a PhD? Serena, do you run on a 40-hour day or something? That’s insane productivity!

Pete Grimsure (Facebook)

Phillip Poutney (Facebook)

Luckily, the Dino/Burton era has gone out with a bang with what is a surprisingly coherent and brilliantly put-together new album. As for what the future holds? We guess

We’re pretty sure both of those guys have spent their fair share on vinyl, to be honest. Plus, it’s harder than ever for bands to make a living, so Lars was kinda… right?

Metal needs to actually be the inclusive community we all say it is.

HAMMER STEREO

FEAR FACTORY

Aggression Continuum

PERTURBATOR Lustful Sacraments

“As far as clusterfucks “Synthwave has go, this is a hell of a way to sign I’m here for it” off on one” ELEANOR GOODMAN

MERLIN ALDERSLADE EDITOR

DEPUTY EDITOR

Aidan Rufus (Facebook)

Gemma Rutherford (Facebook)

JOIN THE BIG DEBATE AT FACEBOOK.COM/ METALHAMMERREADERS

What’s been blowing our office speakers

BLACK MOON MOTHER

Illusions Under The Sun

“Lustrous, entranced doom, like classic rock broadcast from the Phantom Zone”

JONATHAN SELZER REVIEWS EDITOR

FEAR FACTORY

Aggression Continuum

“Bloody marvellous.

Well worth all the blood, sweat and tears”

VANESSA THORPE

PRODUCTION EDITOR

FEAR FACTORY

POWERWOLF

“What an album!

A great swansong for the Burton era”

“Here, doggy!

More lycanthropic lunacy from power metal’s pedigree champs”

Aggression Continuum

LOUISE BROCK ART EDITOR

Call Of The Wild

DAVE EVERLEY

ONLINE EDITOR

SOMNURI

Nefarious Wave

“A fresh take on sludge from this killer Brooklyn trio”

HANNAH MAY KILROY FREELANCE NEWS EDITOR

METALHAMMER.COM 27

Spanish firebrands tear up the genre rulebooks WORDS: ALEX DELLER • PICTURE: MATTIAS MONSTERKID

WHILE WE ALL love to hear stories about bands slaving over their art and driving themselves to the brink of madness with endless, Chinese Democracy-style meddling, there’s a lot to be said for grabbing life by the jugular and just getting on with it.

Spanish duo Bala – Violeta Mosquera (vocals, drums) and Anxela Baltar (vocals, guitar) – exemplify this attitude, with their new album Maleza, a superb slice of all-caps ROCK that combines adrenaline-hit immediacy with crashing riffs and huge, skullinvading hooks.

“Generally when you’re in a band there’s always something you feel you need to rethink or work out, but with Bala, that doesn’t exist,” says Violeta.

“Don’t get me wrong, it’s not less work, but it doesn’t need overthinking.

I think all the songs we’ve written are recorded and out there; we’re not one of those bands that writes 20 songs and picks eight for the album.”

While their most recent full-length is a testament to their ferocious, espresso-shot-to-the-brain urgency, this energy is also matched by quality songwriting smarts. Stoner, grunge and riot grrrl influences tear through music that sounds timeless and yet startlingly fresh, and the band’s asskicking rage is offset by a scintillating sense of joy.

“Lume, our last album, was an angry one; we were pissed off, and the songs reflect that,” says Violeta.

“With Maleza there’s a lot of hope: they’re angry songs, but the message got more positive.”

Bala formed six years ago, but Violeta and Anxela were on each other’s radars before then; both were 28 METALHAMMER.COM

IN SHORT SOUNDS LIKE:

A thrilling collision of raucous stoner crunch, punked-up energy and grunge melodies

FOR FANS OF:

Mantar, Nirvana, Big Business

LISTEN TO: Hoy No

active in the Galician music scene and playing in bands that occasionally gigged together. Discovering a mutual love for Black Sabbath, L7 and The Jesus Lizard made the decision to start their own band a no-brainer, and, tellingly, both women also shared a make-it-happen approach when it comes to playing music.

“From the moment I started playing it was like, ‘Oh, a girl drumming…’,” says Violeta. “I started with the perspective that I had to prove something, but then I thought, ‘OK, I don’t give a fuck, I’m just going to enjoy this.’”

Anxela, too, possessed this same can-do attitude. “When I bought my first electric guitar, I started a band the ” she says. “I didn’t know how to play, but I started a band anyway.”

The band’s journey from playing in squats to gigs in Australia (“We played in AC/DC Lane,” beams Violeta), Japan and the California desert (at the suggestion of former Kyuss drummer Brant Bjork, no less) seems meteoric, but Violeta suggests there’s plenty of road yet to travel and that Bala are still experimenting with their sound. The language in which they sing, for example, has switched from English to Spanish for the most part because the duo feel it gives them a deeper connection to their audience, while one of Maleza’s tracks is sung in Galician.

“Galician is kind of a dead language,” explains Violeta. “Young people don’t really speak it, and historically it has been downtrodden because under Franco it was a forbidden language. We use it to value our history.”

One thing the band likely won’t be experimenting with, however, is their pared-down line-up. “We were always

Bala: the only way is up

clear this was going to be a two-piece band,” says Violeta. “We never think about adding more people. The only con comes down to making decisions; if I say ‘no’ and Anxela says ‘yes’, we have a problem. That’s the biggest pain in the ass.” Logistically, however, it’s a dream and taps nicely into that aforementioned sense of immediacy.

“If we need to travel it’s really easy,” says Anxela. “To organise our schedule, our practices, it’s easy. We don’t need anyone else. It’s like, ‘You can? Me too.

Let’s do it!’”

Alongside punked-up energy and a seemingly endless supply of vertebrae-jangling riffs, Bala also subtly deal with important themes, ideas and experiences, with songs

dedicated to the flapper girls of the Roaring Twenties, Joan Vollmer (a woman at the heart of the Beat generation who was killed by her husband, William S. Burroughs), and the W.I.T.C.H. feminist movement.

“We’re women in a men’s world and we have a very feminist perspective,” says Violeta. “We talk about the things that bother us, or that we think should be better. I like to be optimistic, and I think things are changing. But there’s a lot of work to do, because most of the bands, festival organisers, sound engineers and promoters are men.

But in the six years we’ve been together I’ve seen a difference – girls come up and tell us, ‘You made me grab a guitar and start playing’, which is super-motivating.”

And what final words of advice would Bala give to this next generation of women following in their footsteps?

“HATERS GONNA SWIFT WOULD SAY”

“The most important thing is keep going and don’t give up,” says Anxela.

“Just believe in what you do. Of course you need to have a bit of luck, but I always say luck doesn’t come for free – there’s a lot of hard work behind it.”

Her bandmate nods, before signing off with one final thought that neatly encapsulates what Bala is all about: “My advice would be don’t give a fuck about anything anyone tells you,” smiles Violeta. “Haters gonna hate, as Taylor Swift would say, and there’s always gonna be people envying you or trying to put you down so don’t give a fuck. Do your thing and enjoy it, because that’s what life’s about.”

MALEZA IS OUT NOW VIA CENTURY MEDIA METALHAMMER.COM 29

NEW NOISE

Forward-thinking futuristic brutalists explore a nightmare vision of tomorrow WORDS: DOM LAWSON

Shadowy goth London duo deal in mystery, intrigue and cassette tapes WORDS: DAVE EVERLEY

ZETRA KNOW THE power of mystique. The duo –

Mellotrons, swathes of alien dissonance combine every conceivable strain of and some of the most gleefully intricate extreme metal while also sounding and intense ensemble performances strikingly original, Cryptosis may anyone will hear this year, songs like have just released the year’s most tooth-ratting single Decypher and the exciting debut. Formerly dark and ominous Prospect Of known as old-school Immortality sound gloriously thrashers Distillator, the unique and forward-thinking.

SOUNDS LIKE: Dutch trio have reinvented Meanwhile, the album’s sci-fi Genre-blurring, themselves as futuristic themes have given Frank and state-of-the-art brutalists for Bionic Swarm: his bandmates a limitless metal with a dystopian twist an album that lives up to its source of wild ideas. name on every level.

“We’re not Satanists and FOR FANS OF: “Bionic Swarm sums up the we don’t suffer from Revocation, Black whole album – the advanced, depression or addiction, so Fast, Stortregn technical guitar playing, we can’t really talk about CHECK OUT: advanced songwriting and that kind of stuff,” notes the Decypher the futuristic theme of the bassist. “As a thrash metal lyrics, too,” says bassist Frank band, you often write about te Riet. “We’ve always been a band political stuff, but in this band we that’s about the details. Some people always have three different opinions, might say we’re hard to work with, so it’s hard to write a song that works especially in the Netherlands! Ha ha! for everybody! We needed a way to But we have our own vision and we express our thoughts, and the sci-fi won’t settle for less. This had to be subjects are really something that we the way we pictured it, or even better. can explore. In the end, everything just We’re very proud of it.” fell into place.”

Despite their wholesale change of direction, there is still plenty of thrash BIONIC SWARM IS OUT NOW ON in Cryptosis’s sound. But with swirling CENTURY MEDIA

IN SHORT

30 METALHAMMER.COM

IN SHORT

FROM WITHIN IS OUT ON JUNE 11

PRESS

WITH A SOUND that seems to

mononymous guitarist/vocalist Adam and keyboard player/ programmer Jordan – favour shadowy photographs and indistinct artwork. “All the great bands have some kind of mystique,” says Adam. “They build their own worlds and inhabit them.”

Zetra’s drum machine-augmented music draws equally on the turn-of-the-80s synth punk of Cabaret Voltaire and Gary Numan, Type O Negative’s monolithic goth-metal fuzz and the dense sonic assault of shoegaze SOUNDS LIKE: visionaries My Bloody Valentine.

Sci-fi dungeon “Strange bedfellows,” as Jordan puts it. music wrapped That maverick approach bleeds into in enigma and mystery their choice of covers: they’ve given the Zetra treatment to everything from FOR FANS OF: America’s early 70s soft rock classic Type O Negative, Horse With No Name to Cry Little Sister, the Deadsy, Gary Numan theme from The Lost Boys.

Zetra only came into focus a couple LISTEN TO: of years ago, but the pair have been Phaethon productive. They dropped two and half hours of music via Bandcamp in 2020 alone. Much of this was released on cassette, their favoured format and one that adds to their otherworldly enigma. “We record directly to cassette tape, and it fills everything with a nervous energy,” says Jordan. “It’s the perfect physical medium for us.

Their next EP, From Within, will be released in two parts – one in June, one later in the year. It features songs written before the very first lockdown that were parked when Zetra released they were too close for comfort. “The lyrics are about the plague – a non-historical and a historical one,” says Adam. “About fear and leaving your loved ones. But now it feels like we’re finally OK to put it out there.”

Kenyan extreme metallers uncover the ancient arts of witchcraft WORDS: HANNAH MAY KILROY

IN SHORT SOUNDS LIKE:

A compelling concoction of harsh brutality and expansive melody

FOR FANS OF:

Satyricon, Grave Lines, Cobalt

LISTEN TO: Mwikali

CHOVU’S BAND NAME is derived from ancient Swahili, meaning ‘something bad or evil’. Through their captivating sounds that veer from sweeping melody to searing black and doom metal, they delve into African mythology and their ancestry.

“In Chovu, all five members come from different cultures – there are seven tribes amongst us,” says vocalist Preston Rot. “This diversity allows us to explore individual backgrounds.”

Their debut EP, What Sorcery Is This?, focuses on the Akamba myth of the sorceress Mwikali, and her story of love, witchcraft and tragedy is told across the EP’s four tracks.

“The Kamba tribe is one of the few that has held on to its witchcraft practices,” guitarist Saibore explains.

“Most other tribes have abandoned

their ancient cultural practices. To get to know about ancient traditions, you have to delve deep into native towns far away from Nairobi and speak to the old folk – preferably over some hardcore homemade local brew!

“We wanted to pay homage to the tribe that still knows the power of witchcraft in the community,” Saibore continues. “The story of Mwikali is dark in a way that enticed all of us.”

What Sorcery Is This? was released on Obsydian Media, but Chovu have since parted ways with them and are looking for a new label. They’re also working on new music: “Our next album will be a story based on another myth,” says Saibore. “We will really explore our native past on this one.”

WHAT SORCERY IS THIS? IS OUT NOW VIA OBSYDIAN MEDIA

IN THE KNOW What your favourite bands are listening to

OF MEN No bullshit, no

fucking about – just massive rock’n’roll riffs WORDS: STEPHEN HILL

IN SHORT SOUNDS LIKE:

A big, boisterous, unpretentious blast of massive rock’n’roll thrills

FOR FANS OF:

Clutch, Eagles Of Death Metal, Therapy?

LISTEN TO:

PRESS

Saviour

“WE DON’T WANT people to come

to our shows and listen to us moaning, or stand there stroking their chins,” says Ghosts Of Men vocalist and guitarist Clegg. “Our music is meant to be a proper fist in the gut. Rock has become so scared of just being dirty and unrefined, but that’s all we want.”

There’s something brilliantly unpretentious about Clegg and his bandmate, drummer Adam, which is evident in their second album, Exhale.

They take cues from Clutch’s bluesy rock and Royal Blood’s hook-filled, modern alternative sound, but end up with a fresh take that’s all their own.

“People ask us what music influences us,” Clegg says, “but that’s a boring conversation! Life influences us; how

we’re feeling that day influences us.

You feel pissed off or tired and you wanna take it out on your guitar! That’s what this music is meant to be, isn’t it?

An escape from the fucking boredom!”

Stripped down and straight ahead, Clegg and Adam feel that being a duo is one of their biggest strengths. “The good thing about being a two-piece is that we only have each other to rely on,” Adam says. “If there’s something that one of us doesn’t like, we know it needs changing.”

“I like turning up to a festival and it’s just us,” Clegg smiles. “That feeling of just the pair of us taking on everyone.

It feels good to be the underdog!”

WE’RE WOLVES “WE’RE WOLVES IS a metal

band coming up out of Florida. They’re bringing back the golden era sound of metalcore complete with a twisted, bloody edge.

Keep an eye on these boys!”

SPENCER CHARNAS, ICE NINE KILLS

EXHALE IS OUT NOW METALHAMMER.COM 31

DAY OF THE TED PLUSH £29.99

If you ever wanted to recreate the opening scene of Spectre with a teddy bear, your wildly specific dreams have come true. This little chum is 100% polyester and comes in a transparent backpack/mobile tomb. https://tinyurl.com/dead-toys

Box sets, underground oddities and all the essential merch you need this month

ALESTORM CAPTAIN MORGAN FIGURINE £34.50

Too cheap to splash out on Eddie? Prefer maritime miniatures? Fear not – there’s a cap’n for that. Alestorm’s cursed mascot, Captain Morgan, is now 20cm tall, and made from polystone. Argh. https://tinyurl.com/alestorm-captain

BLACK SABBATH SABOTAGE: SUPER DELUXE EDITION BMG

£90/£135/£210

MORE THAN ANY other album in the album in the Sabbath catalogue, 1975’s

Sabotage is most deserving of reappraisal. Cast in the shadow of both the five classic albums that preceded it and the two that followed, which chronicled the disintegration of the Ozzy era, its status hasn’t been boosted by half-cooked artwork you won’t find gracing many t-shirts. Musically, Sabotage still never puts a foot wrong, fuelled on venom from their legal struggles at the time, experimenting with choirs, and filtering glam stomps and boogie-woogie and yet still sounding like a complete vision bound together with immaculate, timeless songwriting.

Now it’s getting its own CD and 180g vinyl box set treatment with a new remaster alongside three extra discs cataloguing that year’s North American tour plus a reproduction seven-inch with rare Japanese artwork. You’ll also find in-depth, illustrated sleevenotes, replica Madison Square concert book and tour poster, making this a treasure trove of rediscovery.

https://wickedworld.net/

32 METALHAMMER.COM

YEAR OF NO LIGHT BOX SET £163

Here’s something to give your postie a hernia: a huge box set from France’s premier postmetallers. Splurging their epic discography across 12 LPs, this ultra-limited collection is a thing of true wallet-busting beauty. https://tinyurl.com/nolight-box

POWERWOLF CALL OF THE WILD T-SHIRT

EARACHE GRINDCORE COFFEE

PARADISE LOST GOTHIC CANDLE

You’re a Powerwolf fan – that should be enough for people to know you’re a total legend. But in case the message got intercepted, just become a walking advert for the power metal band’s eighth record.

You suffer in the mornings, so get some resurrection with this killer Arabica coffee, roasted over the Earache back catalogue.

With notes of chocolate, citrus, nuts and treacle it’s the most wolverine of brews!

If you want to know what sadness smells like, it’s this. Vegan-friendly and crafted from soy wax, these bourbon and leather-scented (sure) candles celebrate 30 years of PL’s landmark record, Gothic, in suitably sombre style.

`llhk2''lafqmjd&[ge'nmmdƬ%l]]

https://webstore.earache.com

https://tinyurl.com/gothic-candle

JUMANJI REPLICA BOARD GAME

PUSCIFER PICTURE DISC

MAC SABBATH POP-UP BOOK

Overdraft? Mortgage? Kids? Pfft. Who needs to worry about that when you’ve got an actual Jumanji board? Just be careful that man with the weird moustache doesn’t show up, though. Bit of a party pooper.

Existential Rekoning was an unexpected highlight from the arse-end of 2020. Its cover art is as silly and subversive as its sonic contents. Grab yourself this picture disc and laugh along to the apocalypse.

Be sure to wash the burger grease from your fingers before you delve into this lavish - and surreal - pop-up book. Inked by Gris Grimy, it brings Mac Sabbath’s hideous and hilarious worldview to life.

https://tinyurl.com/jumanji-replica

https://tinyurl.com/puscifer-pic

https://tinyurl.com/mac-popup

DEATH SS BOOK

BAD BRAINS THROBBLEHEAD

PERTURBATOR T-SHIRT

Offering a glimpse into legendary occult rock act Death SS, this 224-page tome was penned

by Steve Sylvester himself. Expect magick, witchcraft, amazing photos and naughty goings on in sacred places!

How Low Can A Punk Get? Well, they could be immortalised as a wobbly-headed seven-inch plastic figurine. Still, at least legendary Bad Brains frontman H.R. looks pretty cool, and if you think you Don’t Need It, just go Sailin’ On!

James Kent’s latest LP sees him move from neon-lit streets to menacing industrial shadows, and this beautiful shirt reflects the shift. Wear with sunglasses to look moody, suave and artful in one deft swoop!

https://tinyurl.com/deathss-tome

https://tinyurl.com/hr-throbble

https://tinyurl.com/lustful-tee

£18.99-£20.99

£130

£22.50

£9.99

£28.99

£25.15

£24

£43.15

£17.25

METALHAMMER.COM 33

FREE! KIRK HAMMETT FUNKO POP! AND METALLICA BOOKAZINE WHEN YOU SUBSCRIBE

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METALLICA BOOKAZINE: FROM THEIR UNLIKELY BEGINNINGS TO THE MAKING OF THEIR CLASSIC ALBUMS, AND PACKED WITH DECADES OF INTIMATE, BEHIND-THE-SCENES SHOTS, THIS IS THE COMPLETE STORY OF HOW METALLICA BECAME THE WORLD’S BIGGEST METAL BAND. FUNKO POP!: THIS KIRK HAMMETT POP! VINYL FIGURE STANDS PROUDLY AT APPROX 3 ¾ INCHES TALL AND HE’S READY FOR ACTION (WAH PEDAL NOT INCLUDED).

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ast month, Babymetal played the last of 10 spectacular shows at Tokyo’s iconic Budokan venue. The gigs were played in honour of the band’s 10th anniversary, and to

36 METALHAMMER.COM

celebrate, we’ve put together the ultimate look inside Babymetal’s rollercoaster career, from their earliest days as a J-pop teenie off-shoot to their unprecedented rise through the music industry.

As the girls look set to take a brief hiatus, only the Fox God knows what comes next, but one thing’s for sure: it’s been a wild ride so far. Here’s the full story of a modern metal phenomenon.

Four years before Babymetal stunned the world with Gimme Chocolate!!, the seeds of a legend were being sown

MICK HUTSON

WORDS: STEPHEN HILL • TRANSLATOR/INTERPRETER: AYAKO UEDA

etal is only getting older and older.

I wanted to do something new, something no one has ever done before,” Babymetal mastermind Key Kobayashi told us back in 2014. “The idea just fell from the heavens.”

Whether inspired by angels or not, it’s fair to say he succeeded in his goal of revolutionising metal. A decade on from their inception, Babymetal’s mix of hyperactive J-pop, brutal riffs and heavy metal bombast has seen them sell out arenas, stun major festivals, conquer the mainstream, befriend legends of the genre and make some members of Hammer’s Facebook page throw proper toddler tantrums.

None of us saw it coming. So, how did it happen? We’re told that ‘only the Fox God knows’. Well Foxy, we’ve waited long enough – it’s time to spill the beans. This is the story of how Babymetal became heavy metal royalty.

The year is 2010. Japanese talent agency Amuse Inc. have formed a school-themed idol group named Sakura Gakuin. Its line-up features 10-12 rolling members, all aged between 10 and 15, with their own principal and teacher. The bandmembers, or ‘students’, are divided into a series of sub-units to celebrate a series of extracurricular activities, such as the ‘Cooking Club’, ‘Newspaper Club’ and something called the ‘Go Home Club’.

Which is, you know, not really that metal.

One of these sub-units, named ‘The Heavy Music Club’, has been devised and produced by the aforementioned Key Kobayashi, soon to be known to you and I as Kobametal. It is comprised of three members: Suzuka, Yui and Moa, who will become known as Su-Metal, Yuimetal and Moametal. It’s probably safe to say this isn’t how bands like Anthrax formed.

“I thought this amalgam of J-pop and metal would be a good way to represent Japanese metal and Japanese music,” Kobametal told us.

Soon, The Heavy Music Club began to perform songs at Sakura Gakuin concerts.

Journalist Yuka Okubo was the editor of

a magazine called CD Data, and was following the idol scene intently at the time.

“I’d met the girls in Babymetal and had been following them closely before they were in the band,” she tells us. “I saw them in 2010 with Sakura Gakuin and they came on at the end as Babymetal. I honestly just thought that it was really cute, and it was very different to the usual Japanese idol groups, but I had no idea it was going to become something this big.”

The rule of Sakura Gakuin is that, just as with school, members have to graduate and leave the band. At one of the final shows as members of the idol act, Babymetal as we now know them were presented to the world.

“They’d been doing this style with a backing track,” remembers Yuka. “But I saw the band at Shibuya O-East in 2012, and during the encore they brought the full Kami Band on with them.

It’s here where we realised, ‘Oh, they are actually going to be going forward with this style.’ It was clear they were serious about it.”

By then, Babymetal had released a handful of songs. Doki Doki * Morning appeared on Sakura Gakuin’s debut album, Sakura Gakuin 2010 Nendo: Message; they put out a split single with death pop band Kiba Of Akiba; and their first solo single was Headbanger!!. This earned them a place on the bill of Japan’s prestigious Summer Sonic Festival in Chiba and Osaka that summer, alongside Green Day, Rihanna and New Order. They were the youngest-ever act in the festival’s history – but that didn’t mean they were welcomed with open arms.

“At first everyone just recognised them as this cute Japanese girl band,” Yuka says. “They were always in that category, but they wanted to get out. They couldn’t, because no one admitted they were a real band. When they started to play more rock and metal festivals, things started to change, but they told me that back then they felt like they weren’t accepted.”

As the year progressed, Babymetal began to transition out of teen magazines and into Japan’s rock press. They played Summer Sonic again in 2013, as well as the Loud Park festival in Saitama Super Arena, and released a video promoting Metallica’s Through The Never

movie to be shown at a special event. Their debut album was released on February 26, 2014, peaking at No.2 in the Japanese Billboard charts, and in March they were booked to play two nights at Tokyo’s legendary Budokan, to a total of around 28,000 fans.

“That was the moment I knew they were going to become really big,” says Yuka. “On one of the nights, Yui actually fell off of the stage, but she got up and carried on performing. The other two really supported her through that as well; you could see something had changed, I could see the determination in them.”

Despite this, the Japanese metal fraternity still viewed Babymetal with suspicion. But, 5,845 miles away, in the country that invented heavy metal, something was stirring. f there’s one thing that’s bound to attract attention on the internet, it’s cat videos.

If there’s another thing that’s bound to attract attention on the internet, it’s uploading something bizarre, confusing and unique.

At the start of 2014, Babymetal delivered a true ‘WTF?’ moment to the metal world – the video for Gimme Chocolate!!. It was the song, the moment. Suddenly, everyone you spoke to was asking you if you’d seen this… thing!

“I thought, ‘This is mad! What the fuck is that?’” says Alan Day of promoter Kilimanjaro, who went on to book the band’s first UK show.

“I saw the video and like most people thought, ‘What the fuck is this?’. It seemed like this crazy novelty song, but I’d really never seen anything like it before,” veteran music journalist Paul Brannigan tells us.

Tesseract guitarist James Monteith, who would play Sonisphere’s main stage just before Babymetal’s debut UK appearance in 2014, remembers: “Someone sent me the video and I thought…”

Let us guess: “What the fuck?” “…This is pretty fucking stupid, really.

I didn’t get what they were doing, but I was weirdly fascinated by it.”

Well, two out three isn’t bad. But the point still stands: here in the UK, Babymetal had our attention.

METALHAMMER.COM 37

Following the success of Gimme Chocolate!!, Babymetal finally landed in the UK, and things were never the same again WORDS: STEPHEN HILL

says Tesseract’s James Monteith. “They imme Chocolate!! becoming stood out like a sore thumb. These young a legitimate phenomenon girls dressed in these uniforms all next in the UK didn’t escape to a bunch of hairy old metalheads. Then the girls.

I saw their guitarist [Mikio Fujioka], who “We’ve received so many has sadly passed away now, in his comments online from the costume and facepaint, warming up. He UK, we’re getting such a great response was an incredible player. I just thought and we never expected it,” Su-Metal told ‘Well… you don’t see that every day.’” us in 2014, when Metal Hammer first spoke By the time Babymetal took to the stage, to the band. “It makes us feel like we’re the field was packed with a mixture of being accepted. It feels like a dream.” converted zealots, curious cats and folded“When the rumours began to circulate armed sceptics. “Most people just had that they were being embraced by other their jaws on the floor,” laughs Alan. “They parts of the world, that’s when it really couldn’t believe what they were seeing.” changed in Japan,” Yuka Okubo recalls.

“I went to the front to find my family “People really wanted to see just how the and watched the show. My son loved it UK fans were reacting to them.”

– he actually forgot his dad even played Such was the interest surrounding ” sighs an absolutely, definitely Babymetal that the race was on to bring not bitter James. them to the UK. On July 5, 2014, Babymetal Their performance was the weekend’s played their first UK set at Sonisphere, on biggest talking point – and it wasn’t just the same bill as Iron Maiden, Deftones, fans who were in the grip of Babymetal Anthrax, Ghost and openers Tesseract. fever. Pictures from the weekend of the “Straight away I had to find out who girls alongside the likes of Kirk Hammett, their manager was,” promoter Alan Day Chino Moreno and Kerry King showed just tells us. “We managed to get hold of them how fascinated and I booked our genre had them for become with Sonisphere and the band. a date at the “Sonisphere Kentish Town was an amazing Forum [in experience,” London] just Su-Metal told after the festival. us two days later Initially I had at the Kentish them playing ALAN DAY, SONISPHERE Town Forum. the tent, but it “It was the first time we had played in soon became clear that it’d be dangerously front of such a huge audience.” packed if we did that. So, we managed to One member of the crowd that day was free up a slot on the main stage, and it’s earMUSIC MD Jonathan Green, who was the biggest crowd I’ve ever seen for a set suitably impressed by what he had seen. at one o’clock in the afternoon.”

“I looked around and thought there was “I was packing down my gear after we’d definitely something going on here,” he played and I saw them getting prepared,”

“IT WAS THE BIGGEST CROWD I’VE EVER SEEN FOR A 1PM SET”

38 METALHAMMER.COM

JOHN McMURTRIE

Babymetal: the UK didn’t stand a chance!

METALHAMMER.COM 39

Reek Of Putrefaction by Carcass, she didn’t even know they started as a grindcore band! DA FUQ?! Yet this frothy-mouthed outrage from supposed defenders of the faith only served to strengthen the girls’ bond with their growing fanbase.

“The smart thing they did was never position themselves as dyed-inthe-wool metal fans,” shrugs Hammer writer Paul Brannigan. “They were young girls who were taking their first steps into the genre.”

remembers. “The reaction from the crowd was pretty amazing. It felt like a moment.”

EarMUSIC signed the band for the UK and Europe and released Babymetal on June 1, 2015. “We believed that it could be a significant moment in the progression of global metal,” remembers Jonathan. f Sonisphere and the Forum could be written off as successes born from people’s curiosity about this new type of idol-metal band, what came next proved they were no flash in the pan. On November 8, 2014, they played a sold-out, 5,000-capacity Brixton Academy.

“Usually, you book bands from different countries and people from those countries turn up to see them,” says Alan Day. “I went to the Forum expecting to see a lot of Japanese music fans, but it was all British metalheads.

That’s when I thought it was definitely going to cross over – that’s when I thought about getting them in for Brixton. We kept it exclusive – the only place you could see them was Brixton.

And as more people clicked on Gimme Chocolate!! or heard Megitsune, the more the demand shot up and up.”

But not everyone was convinced.

Some hardened metalheads burst blood vessels over the thought that these teenage girls, these manufactured pop stars, were using metal as a gimmick.

They didn’t dress right! They smiled!

They danced! Yuimetal (a 16-year-old, let’s not forget) not only hadn’t heard

40 METALHAMMER.COM

“I HAD NO IDEA WHAT METAL MUSIC WAS” YUIMETAL

“I would like more people to enjoy metal,” Yuimetal told us in 2015. “To tell you the truth, when I joined Babymetal I had no idea what metal music was.

But now I know what’s great in metal, I’ve learned a lot from it.”

While some were glad there was potential for metal to find an entirely new fanbase, some high-profile members of the metal community were starting to pull the drawbridge up on Babymetal.

“I made a decision that I personally, as the booker of the festival, don’t believe they are right for the spirit of what Download’s all about,” Andy Copping told the That’s Not Metal podcast in 2015.

But things started to turn when the festival rolled around later that year.

Metal Hammer were with Babymetal all weekend when power metal legends Dragonforce, having already featured on new Babymetal track Road Of Resistance, and who are cheeky scamps at the best of times, decided to invite the band onstage during their Friday afternoon set and have an impromptu run through of Gimme Chocolate!!.

“Somehow word had got out that the girls were onsite,” remembers Jonathan.

“Once the rumour spread that they were going to be coming on with Dragonforce, let me tell you, that tent was packed. There were people outside fighting to get in.”

“We knew they were coming over for the Golden Gods so we just thought it would be a fun thing to do,” chuckles Herman Li. “I’ll never forget the reaction to them walking out onstage.

It was mania!”

Three days later, at Metal Hammer’s Golden God Awards in London, Babymetal picked up the Breakthrough award, before playing a brief set that brought every jaded, grizzled, veteran metal musician in the house that night from backstage to out front, to see their performance.

Eighteen months after hearing Gimme Chocolate!!, the UK was still enraptured by the band, far longer than the initial 15 minutes of fame people thought it would inspire. There was a growing suspicion that they weren’t just one-hit wonders. But just how big could Babymetal become?

PRESS

Channelling the power of the Fox God

Herman Li: unashamed Babymetal fanboy

Dragonforce’s shredder extraordinaire explains how he became one of Babymetal’s biggest champions and even wrote a song with them SO WHEN WAS THE FIRST TIME YOU HEARD BABYMETAL? Herman Li: “We were recording The Power Within album, so we’re talking about 2011, and we hear the buzz about this band.

We decided to watch the music videos on the internet and stuff. I’m very familiar with the Japanese culture, so it wasn’t anything shocking to me. I know a lot of people were like, ‘Oh my god! What have they done?!’, but I thought it was a cool combo, very original. And the songs are so catchy, very melodic, so I was into it.”

WHY DO YOU THINK THERE WAS SUCH A BACKLASH AGAINST THEM? “Anything you do different, you’re gonna be hated. Doesn’t matter if it’s good or bad, the internet is there for love and hate! Let’s be honest, a lot of rock and metal fans are very stubborn, they don’t like things done differently; you just gotta roll with it and do what you do.”

HOW DID YOU END UP COLLABORATING WITH BABYMETAL ON ROAD OF RESISTANCE? “They contacted us before the first album even came out!

In the email back and forth they started trying to explain who they were, and I was like, ‘I know EXACTLY who you are!’

I spoke to Sam [Totman, Dragonforce guitarist] and we were both definitely up for it. We get asked a lot to guest on things with other bands, but unless it’s fresh and original we say no.

But this time it was an instant yes.”

WHAT WAS THE PROCESS OF WRITING THE SONG LIKE FOR YOU GUYS? to play exactly like you are playing for Dragonforce. We’ve got this song written, do your thing!’ At the time it was no singing, it was just a demo, and we just tried to be ourselves, but also think about them and where they were coming from.”

WHAT WAS IT LIKE THE FIRST TIME YOU MET THE BAND? “We played Japan and they came to see us. Su-metal was there and the whole crew. It’s funny actually, we talked about the song a bit and they actually wanted more extreme guitar solos! OK, we’ll go crazy then! Ha ha ha! They were very polite and respectful, they were real Dragonforce fans!”

TELL US ABOUT THE IMPROMPTU GIMME CHOCOLATE!!

PERFORMANCE AT DOWNLOAD IN 2015…

“We like things to be a bit weird, and there was that whole thing about Babymetal never being able to play Download, so we thought we’d get them up. We did the show before we’d even rehearsed for the Golden Gods – the first time we’d ever played together was that performance of Gimme Chocolate!!

I must have been nervous because I pressed the intro to them on the computer three times! It kept stopping, so I was freaking out, and I just looked over and Su was staring at me like, ‘What

AND THE PERFORMANCE OF ROAD OF RESISTANCE AT THE GOLDEN GODS A FEW DAYS LATER IS THE ONE TIME YOU’VE EVER PERFORMED THE SONG, RIGHT? “Correct. We’ve only played that song once! So, if you were there, it’s a little bit of history! Seeing the fans and Metal Hammer take to Babymetal in that way was fantastic. We did get to rehearse with them that time, and it was such a memorable moment.”

42 METALHAMMER.COM

PRESS/MORGAN DEMETER

out laughing! We hadn’t rehearsed and she could see me all agitated, like, ‘Ooooohhh god whyyy?!’ We have a laugh with them; they’re really fun, funny girls.”

Earlier this month we put out a message asking for Babymetal’s biggest fans to send us their photos and stories.

You didn’t disappoint. @YURIAYAMETAL (Twitter)

@MOMOKO_FUKEI (Twitter)

“These are all 302 official Babymetal t-shirts that I have in my collection. If I get one more t-shirt, I’ll be ‘full complete’. (In other words, I have a collection of all the official t-shirts except one!)

The flag I’m holding is the one I always bring with me when I go to see Babymetal live.” @FZJ80_METAL (Twitter)

“In May 2016, Babymetal played the Carolina Rebellion festival. My son, Harley (shown kneeling), was a huge fan and he was a little frustrated that a group of fans from Japan had camped out at the small stage Babymetal were to play, hours ahead of their slot. All went fine and Babymetal got a huge reaction (David Draiman even watched from the sound booth). After, as the Japanese fans were taking photos, I asked if we could get Harley in a photo too. They were super-nice!”

44 METALHAMMER.COM

EUGENE STEI

@K_METAL44 (Twitter)

“I’ve been collecting for four+ years, so I can’t fit it all on camera, but here Babymetal-ised room!

I live and breathe Babymetal, so having multiple shrines to them is the least I can do for them…”

@BABYMETAL_JPG (Twitter)

@TAJ_DEBBIE02002 (Twitter)

@YUEMETAL (Twitter)

@YASUKEIMETAL (Twitter)

“I’ve been a fan for almost six years and they’ve changed my life! Thank you, Metal Hammer, for always supporting Babymetal.”

(Twitter)

@SHINEONETARO (Twitter)

@0222ONO (Twitter)

LOGAN PACHECO

@MARTINISHPKSDD (Twitter)

@MJMSSHIRo (Twitter)

METALHAMMER.COM 45

From hitting America to sharing stages with metal legends, the Babymetal hype train became a juggernaut WORDS: STEPHEN HILL

2015’s Reading and Leeds festivals on the embley Arena is same day as Metallica – plus that little one of the most sprinkling of stardust – had created prestigious venues a perfect storm for the band. on the planet. Not “It’s that old Kevin Costner thing,” many metal bands smiles earMUSIC’s Jonathan Green. “If you get the chance to build it, they will come. We really believed headline there and, when they do, it’s in the band, and our belief was rewarded.” usually after years of slogging away.

When recalling April 2, 2016, promoter Iron Maiden first headlined it on their Alan Day still struggles to comprehend it.

Seventh Tour Of A Seventh Tour in 1988, “I turned up and I saw one of my merch and two years later Metallica did the same guys running off to print new T-shirts while touring …And Justice For All. That’s because he’d run out,” he recalls with an close to a decade a piece of hard work from air of disbelief. “I’d never seen that before. metal’s biggest bands. Babymetal sold it Before the doors opened, they were out on their third UK headline show. running out of merch and having to go and The day before their triumphant print up new t-shirts… like… what? They Wembley gig is a date that every broke the all-time record for merch sold Babymetal fan now has marked on their at that venue calendar: April 1, in one night.

AKA Fox Day. I walked around Ever since 2016, the stalls at the it’s signalled end and there some kind of was nothing… celebration of not a single item the band. Back anywhere. And it then, they was the biggest released their headline show second album, ALAN DAY a Japanese artist Metal Resistance. had ever done in this country. Their third Receiving glowing reviews from the likes headline show… who does that?!” of The Observer to the metal press, with our own Dom Lawson calling it a ‘Ludicrous but brilliantly executed delight’ in his 8/10 he praise wasn’t just coming from review, it set the band up perfectly for the UK either; the US was starting a career-defining moment. to cast a beady eye on the band.

“It still doesn’t feel real,” Su-Metal told Three days after Wembley, the band made us when we caught up with the band in their American television debut on early 2016. “I know that Wembley Arena is prestigious talk show The Late Show With a very legendary venue, so thinking about Stephen Colbert. “I’m not sure what I’m us playing there is a little unnerving.” about to see, but I’m pretty excited about Moametal wondered: “I’m not sure it,” the host smirked, before the band whether anyone will come.” ripped through Gimme Chocolate!!, much She needn’t have worried. The success to the confusion of middle America. of their debut album, the notoriety raised “Babymetal’s noise is Satanic!! This by playing Sonisphere, Download and is TERRIBLE!!” tweeted one particularly

“THEY BROKE WEMBLEY’S RECORD FOR MERCH SALES”

46 METALHAMMER.COM

PRESS

Babymetal: satanic, according to some deeply religious Twitter twits

METALHAMMER.COM 47

48 METALHAMMER.COM

Metal God meets the Fox God: at the Alternative Press Music Awards in 2016

“YUI TOLD ME SHE HAD TO FOLLOW HER OWN PATH” YUKA OKUBO

o far Babymetal’s career had been one success story after the next – the epitome of a meteoric rise.

But what goes up eventually has to come down, and 2018 represented something of an annus horribilis for the band.

On December 30, 2017, longtime Kami Band guitarist Mikio Fujioka, a graduate of the Musicians Institute of Osaka, fell while visiting an astronomical observation platform.

Tragically, he succumbed to his injuries and passed away on January 5, surrounded by his wife and daughters, at the age of 36. The band tweeted the news alongside lyrics from their song The One, ‘We are the one, together, we’re the only one, you are the one, forever.’

Shaken by the event, the band still headed out on the road in May 2018 and would later launch their own comic book, Apocrypha: The Legend Of Babymetal, an origin story of the band.

But something else was about to hit:

without any explanation, Yuimetal dropped off the band’s US tour.

The band’s management declared that “Yuimetal remains a member of the band”, but she was still absent by the time they hit Europe in June, and in October it was announced that she had left the band due to “health concerns”.

“Although I thought it over and over,” began Yui’s own statement, “I decided to leave Babymetal […] There was a strong desire to stand onstage again, but there is also a feeling that I am not in perfect condition.”

“Yuimetal is like a family member to this group,” Su-metal told us when we caught up with the band in 2019.

“Although she has left, we’ll continue to support her in the future.”

Even a longtime fan like Yuka Okubo was a shocked by the news at first.

“I know the girls had known each other since elementary school,” she says. “So, I really believed that bond was so strong that they would stay together. But I spoke to Yui and she explained to me that she had to go and follow her own path and her dreams; it wasn’t a negative thing. She’ll always be part of Babymetal.”

After nothing but success to date, this didn’t feel like it was part of the Fox God’s plans…

GETTY

angry viewer - an opinion echoed by many irate, amoeba-brained religious fanatics, seemingly just as outraged as metal’s more elitist quarters by a song about how much three young girls enjoyed chocolate.

It mattered not; for all the toythrowing from their detractors, the patronage of a certain Rob Halford was of far more interest to most metal fans.

So, when Babymetal were invited to play the 2016 Alternative Press Music Awards, roping in the Metal God to plough through Judas Priest classics Breaking The Law and Painkiller was an unbelievable coup.

“I’ve always been a big supporter of something which I think is going to get a lot of traction,” Rob tells us. “So I was delighted to be asked. It was such a hectic day that it was over in a flash, but it was a blast.”

With the rest of the world catching up quick, back in Japan things had moved up yet another notch. The Metal Resistance tour was due to end on September 19, and the band were booked for the massive 55,000-capacity Tokyo Dome. Such was the demand that a second show was added for the following day.

“There’s this idea that metal is huge in Japan,” Paul Brannigan says, “but that’s actually a bit of a myth. Aside from Maiden or Metallica, none of our big bands could play the Tokyo Dome.

I’ve seen Avenged Sevenfold over there, and they can’t play arenas in Japan. So, for a band like Babymetal to do two nights there is pretty much unheard of.”

“They invited me out to see them at the Tokyo Dome,” remembers Alan Day. “I think it’s the biggest indoor music venue in the world. Over here it would be like the equivalent of going to see U2 at Wembley Stadium. You literally couldn’t get any bigger.”

It was a landmark for the band – a dream that was almost unthinkable a few years before.

“In Japan we have played many big venues, like Budokan,” Su-Metal told Kerrang! in the build-up to the shows.

“But Tokyo Dome was always a place that I’ve been dreaming of performing at. Even in Japan, not everyone gets a chance to perform here!”

Another bucket list moment was ticked off on January 11, 2017, at the 17,000-capacity Gocheok Sky Dome in Seoul, South Korea, where Babymetal were main support to the biggest metal band in history. “Metallica are like gods to us,” Su-metal said at the time.

“I had been admiring them for a long time and dreamed to perform with them, so I never thought it would come true this fast!”

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If Babymetal are good they’re good enough for you!

The Metal God fell in love with Babymetal when he heard them early on.

Then they got to play together WHEN DID YOU FIRST HEAR BABYMETAL? “Pretty much when they first started, I think. It was 2012 or 2010, but it wasn’t until the first album came along and I heard songs like Doki Doki * Morning and they first started getting traction, that I was really captivated by them. The Japanese are very creative and experimental – they do things that you would never see anywhere else, they’re fearless. The way they looked got into my mind and the music was something I had never experienced before.”

HOW WAS IT WHEN YOU FIRST GOT TO MEET THEM? “Oh, it was wonderful! I think it was backstage at a festival, I can’t remember where, and they just came over really quickly for a photo. They were obviously big metal fans and very polite, lovely people, it was great.”

HOW DID YOUR PERFORMANCE WITH THEM AT 2016’S ALTERNATIVE PRESS MUSIC AWARDS COME ABOUT? “Their management reached out to us, so I said yes. I was in America at the time, so it was easy enough for me. They suggested Painkiller and Breaking The Law and I thought that was a lovely idea. We got a very quick rehearsal in and I loved their efficiency, and I loved, not only the girls, who have such classy voices, but the backup band as well. The guys in that band are phenomenal, they tend to get a little overlooked, which is unfair – Babymetal is everybody to me. It was a blast.

Once I knew I was going to do it, I thought about their outfits and went to the vintage store and got a black and red pseudo leather jacket, a black and red t-shirt from Amazon and I bought some black and red sneakers as well. So, I actually put together an outfit exclusively for Babymetal. It’s in my closet still somewhere.”

AFTER DOING A PRIEST SONG WITH THEM, WOULD YOU BE TEMPTED TO DO A BABYMETAL SONG? Gimme Chocolate!! or a Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!. But, even more than that, I would love to sing in Japanese, because I’ve never done anything like that. It would be a thrill to sing a Babymetal song, but, rather than one of their existing songs I’d like to do something unique. We could make a one-off special, that would be a dream. Maybe when Priest goes to Japan next, we can stop in a studio and do an original song. Call it ‘Fox God Metal God’!”

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THEIR IMAGE? “Oh, I love it. It’s actually quite similar to what we’ve done in the past with Priest, the characters of the Fox God and the mythology surrounding it, it’s beautifully evocative of both metal and Japanese cultures. They’re very gracious as well, in saying that bands like Priest and other metal acts have been an inspiration to them on their journey.”

THEY ACTUALLY REFERENCED PRIEST ON ONE OF THEIR SHIRTS AS WELL! “And that’s great. A lovely homage and a really nice gesture.

It shows that it’s something that has substance, and it’s quite cyclical, because we did something on Unleashed In The East with Japanese calligraphy. So that kind of played it back to us.”

TRAVIS SHINN

WHY DO YOU THINK METAL FANS HAVE HAD SUCH A HARD TIME ACCEPTING THE BAND? “They broke the mould. Everything that gets hated is usually successful, have you noticed that? I’ve never understood it myself; metal is for everyone and it’s about acceptance, being open-minded and checking things out. I welcome any kind of expression, no matter what it might be. But if you can get past the 10-year mark then you’re here for good!”

DO YOU HAVE A 10TH BIRTHDAY MESSAGE FOR THE BAND? “Happy 10th metal anniversary. Horns up for a loud metal future with the Fox God, from your Metal God!”

METALHAMMER.COM 51

We tracked down some of the rarest Babymetal merch.

Good luck finding it, and may the Fox God be with you

e LIVE LEGEND I, D, Z APOCALYPSE BLU-RAY (2013)

e BABYMETAL SUNGLASSES (2015)

The design of these sunglasses was inspired by the rap song Iine! When you put them on, you’ll be tempted to say, ‘Atama yurase megane hazuse!’

c LIVE AT BUDOKAN ‘BUDO CAN’: THE ONE LIMITED BOX RED/BLACK (2015)

In 2014, Babymetal played two shows at the Budokan. This package comes in a ‘Budo Can’, geddit? It’s octagonal in shape, just like the venue, and contains a performance from the first night and a live CD from the second. Plus, you get a sick, limited-edition neck brace.

52 METALHAMMER.COM

SUPPORTED BY “BESSATSU KADOKAWA SPECIAL ISSUE OF BABYMETAL” (KADOKAWA)

This Blu-ray package contains the complete trilogy of Babymetal’s live series, Legend I, D, Z, and comes with a special cloak!

Wear it, add a ‘metal’ suffix to your name, and pretend you’re one of the Avengers.

d BABYMETAL MICRO LUGGAGE (2016)

Throw away your old, boring suitcases, because this one has a kickboard! And a built-in Bluetooth speaker! And if you can’t travel anywhere right now, just give it a spin at your local skatepark.

d MAGIC CIRCLE PYRAMID (2015)

As if Babymetal weren’t shrouded in enough mystery, they released their own version of a Rubik’s cube. With only four sides instead of six, it should be easier to solve. Right…?

c BABYMETAL DEATH MASK (2015)

Babymetal were selling face masks long before Covid-19. Now they’re part of our everyday attire, why not advertise your Babymetal fandom on your face? Sadly, you won’t be able to eat any chocolate!! while your mouth’s covered.

d GALAXY ARK TABLE LAMP (2019)

Recreate the part from Babymetal’s Yokohama Arena show in June 2019 where the girls travelled on an ark through a galaxy of metal. All you need is this lamp and some tiny heatproof figurines.

e MINI-ARROW GUITAR (2016)

This axe of dreams, made in collaboration with ESP, was sold exclusively to members of fan club The One. Babymetal played them when they performed with the one and only Metal God, Rob Halford.

d ROMPERS & BIB (2020)

You’re never too young to get into Babymetal! Bring your little ones up under the spell of the Fox God with these bonetastic bibs and rad rompers.

You don’t want them to get cold in the Metal Galaxy.

METALHAMMER.COM 53

From Glastonbury to the Galaxy itself, with their third album, it seemed nowhere was immune from Babymetal WORDS: STEPHEN HILL

a plane to the UK and took another huge hen you’ve step into the mainstream, joining conquered the a Glastonbury bill featuring gargantuan world, what do you artists such as Stormzy, The Cure, Liam do next? You Gallagher and Kylie Minogue. With conquer the a Sunday afternoon set on the Other universe, obviously.

Stage, they made history by becoming The challenges of 2018 led to the girls’ the first Japanese act to play on one of the first extended period away from the festival’s main stages. spotlight. They punctured the silence on The band were pitted against, of all April 1, 2019 – Fox Day on the Babymetal people, Sir David Attenborough (yes, really) calendar – by announcing they would be on the Pyramid Stage. And, as much as we releasing a third album later that year, and love learning about the mating rituals of would be embarking on a series of headline the white-tailed wildebeest of Africa from shows titled Babymetal Awakens – The kindly ol’ uncle Dave, we love circle pits Sun Also Rises and Babymetal Arises – and riffs a fuckload more.

Beyond The Moon – Legend M. Hammer Editor Merlin Alderslade was On June 28, the day of the first concert there to witness what he called in his at Yokohama Arena, they unleashed review “a curious, decent-sized crowd’s bouncy, summery new single Pa Pa Ya!! bemusement melt into amusement, and revealed their record would be called before giving away to pure joy”.

Metal Galaxy. That night, a dancer took “I know that Glastonbury is one of the Yuimetal’s place onstage – one of three world’s biggest festivals,” Su-Metal told dubbed the Avengers, who would take NME after their set. “I was really nervous turns to sub in. but after a few songs the audience had Kobametal described it to us as “The their hands in the air and were screaming. beginning of a new Babymetal. On top of We’re looking forward to Billie Eilish!”

Su-metal and Moametal, their supporting Avengers are the chosen dancers hey were that the Fox God steadily summoned” cranking before adding up the hype-othe typically meter, but it on-brand: “Who ticked over into will be chosen the red when is something word got out only the Fox that Metal ROB HALFORD God knows.”

Galaxy featured “I think the fans accept the Avengers,” a number of high-profile guest spots from a slightly more non-committal Yuka says. the likes of Arch Enemy’s Alissa White“Anyone that comes into the Babymetal Gluz, on the song Distortion, and Sabaton family is welcomed. But it’s always going frontman Joakim Brodén, on Oh! Majinai. to be about the three original girls.”

Even metalheads who were previously After a second Yokohama Arena show snooty about the band had to admit that the following day, Babymetal hopped on sounded pretty fucking cool!

“IF YOU MAKE IT

YOU’RE PART OF THE FURNITURE”

54 METALHAMMER.COM

SUSUMU MIYAWAKI(PROGRESS-M)

Moametal and Su-Metal: no longer baby-faced Babymetal

METALHAMMER.COM 55

abymetal welcomed in 2020 with their first European headline run – but not even the Fox God could have foreseen the pandemic.

Like all their peers, they had to find new ways to stay active beyond the

56 METALHAMMER.COM

Moametal, Su-Metal and Avenger Riho Sayashi on The Other Stage at Glastonbury Festival, 2019

“I WAS SURPRISED THEY WANTED ME TO JOIN THEM” JOAKIM BRODÉN

traditional touring cycle. Their most high-profile moment was the collab track Kingslayer, on Bring Me The Horizon’s Post Human: Survival Horror EP, bringing together two of our genres’ biggest contemporary hitters.

In December, they released a ‘best of’ compilation album for their 10th anniversary, and celebrated by performing 10 shows at the Budokan between January and April. At the end of the final night, a cryptic message from the Fox God was shown, insinuating that another huge change is coming.

“Despite the ongoing pandemic, BABYMETAL once again gave a powerful performance and successfully ended the series of 10 Budokan shows,” a press release from the band’s management read. “At the end of the 10th show, it was announced that BABYMETAL departed from earth and were to become a LIVING LEGEND.” Quite what that means is anyone’s guess, and there seems little point

in making predictions about the phenomenon that is Babymetal. It’s been a spectacular 10 years for a group most people thought were just a curio, a gimmick or a one-hit wonder. Far from it – Babymetal are the success story no one saw coming (well, there was that one fox guy, but definitely no one else.)

“Back when they started, there wasn’t really this mainstream fascination with Eastern culture and J-pop,” says Paul Brannigan, “and it’s hard for any metal band to cross over.

So, the idea that this was a calculated thing, or that this was an easy way to be successful… it’s really not.

It’s incredibly unlikely to have ever happened, so the fact that it has is nothing short of remarkable.”

“Where they are now was where Priest were on British Steel,” Rob Halford adds. “Just take that in for a second.

Ten years in this business, it’s very difficult for any band, and if you make it then you’re the real deal – you’re part of the furniture.”

Here’s to the next decade.

BABYMETAL’S BEST-OF ALBUM, 10 BABYMETAL YEARS, IS OUT NOW VIA EARMUSIC. SEE MORE AT BABYMETALSTOREUK.COM AND WWW.BABYMETAL.COM

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“I was surprised they wanted me to join them,” Joakim told us prior to the album’s release. “But why the hell not! They are good people and put on a good show.”

“Arch Enemy have a strong relationship with Japan,” Alissa added.

“They asked if I wanted to take part and I said yes. They gave me really detailed information about how they were picturing it.”

Babymetal were, once again, the talk of the metal scene. The waiting world finally got to hear Metal Galaxy on October 8, and it quickly proved itself to be the grandest, most diverse and challenging record of their career. Not all reviewers outside metal circles got it, although The Guardian called it “the kawaii metal My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” in reference to Kanye West’s genre-defining and critically adored 2010 masterpiece. But in an 8/10 review in the pages of this magazine, Dannii Leivers said, “For a band whose existence is one massive curveball, the number of tangents on show here suggest this band are capable of growth we never imagined.”

The record hit the top 20 in the UK Top 40 and the US Billboard Top 200, becoming America’s highest-charting Japanese language album ever, and the first album by an Asian band to top the US Top Rock Albums Chart. Babymetal were on their debut headline tour of the country, and the release date coincided with their first arena headliner at The Forum in Inglewood, LA, in front of more than 17,000 fans.

To prove the newfound pull of global metal, they brought Mongolian folk metallers The Hu out with them for shows in Portland and Seattle.

“Both of our bands have our own original concepts,” says The Hu’s multi-instrumentalist, Jaya. “We both sing in our native languages, and one could view our bands as heavy metal.

But the Japanese and Mongolian sounds we bring to our music bring a whole other dynamic.”

As for the shows themselves…

“We did get to hang out a little backstage,” he remembers. “We felt a lot of love and support each night – Babymetal’s fans were very loud and shouting ‘Hu! Hu! Hu!’. We also got to watch parts of their show and they were amazing. Their vocals and choreography, plus the skill level of their musicians, was very impressive.”

Got… got… need… need… got… got… got… need…

He’s the mastermind behind Babymetal’s NFT trading cards. So who better to explain what they’re all about?

WORDS: RICH HOBSON

LET’S START WITH THE BASICS! WHAT IS AN NFT? HOW DOES IT WORK? “An NFT is a digital collectible that lives on the blockchain [a kind of digital ledger]. It’s infinitely transferable, unalterable, and because it lives on this forever. What’s been super-interesting to me is that it takes the inherent risk out.

I have collected bobbleheads, comics, cards… incredible physical items that had an element of care that’d make you think, ‘Can I read this graphic novel?’ ‘Can I open this vinyl?’ that means you don’t always get to enjoy what you’ve got unless you don’t care for it as a collectible!”

WHY DID YOU PICK TRADING CARDS? “Digital trading cards and collectibles sit at the forefront of WAX (Worldwide Asset eXchange), and complete sets are the hardest and rarest to come by and usually take the most work to compile. It’s too early to say what the secondary market will be, but as a collector myself, being able to get a complete set right out the gate is mega. Trading cards made so much sense for Babymetal because there’s

a narrative and history to them that gives a through-line to everything they do, that from a creative perspective really allows it to develop over time and gamify.”

BABYMETAL ARE ONE OF THE FIRST METAL BANDS TO REALLY GO INTO IT… “Definitely to this extent! The NFT space and digital collectible space is evolving in real-time, so the more artists like Babymetal that can bend genres and sit at the intersection of so much potential, with the kind of story they’ve developed and having this enormous fanbase that is so diverse, is so exciting to see. It’s not just an artist trying something new – it’s them doing something in a space that is still evolving in real time.”

WERE YOU A FAN OF BABYMETAL BEFORE YOU WORKED WITH THEM? “Absolutely! Doki Doki * Morning was my intro and is still on repeat almost daily!

The band, the music – it ticks so many boxes for us as creatives and so when we could talk to them about doing this project we were all about it. We’ve got notebooks full of creative ideas – hopefully it’s the beginning of a lot more!”

WHAT KINDS OF IDEAS? “Tons! Between ourselves and their management, there are so many

opportunities to be able to continue to tell interesting and unique stories using these cards as a mouthpiece.”

THERE ARE 10 CARDS, EACH REPRESENTING A YEAR/EPISODE OF THE METAL RESISTANCE. HOW MUCH OF THE COMPLETE PICTURE DO YOU HAVE OF THAT STORY? “We know as much as anybody else who has lived through those episodes of the Metal Resistance, but let’s face it – only the Fox God truly knows!”

WHAT CAN YOU DO IF YOU MISSED OUT ON GETTING THESE CARDS WHEN THEY CAME OUT? “Well, that’s where the secondary market comes in! Interestingly, I think there will be a unique secondary-secondary market for these things; we have the vinyl, which will definitely be in people’s collections, but we also have those trading cards that are going to have unique collectable value right from the off. Even if you miss out, you can sign up on Babymetal.cards for a newsletter specific to the digital trading card space, which will have more information and even announce future releases and other opportunities.”

SEE MORE AT BABYMETAL.CARDS

METALHAMMER.COM 57

We sent Japanese correspondent Ryosuke Arakane to the final night of Babymetal’s epic 10-gig stint at the legendary Budokan in Tokyo. Here’s what went down

BABYMETAL KNOW HOW to

throw a party. To celebrate their 10th anniversary last year, they announced 10 shows at Tokyo’s 14,000-capacity Budokan venue, spread out across January to April 2021, under the banner ‘10 Babymetal Budokan’.

It’s a venue they have a history with; in March 2014, they became the youngest female artists in history to perform there.

Tonight, they’re returning to the sacred ground of Budokan for the last of their 10 shows. Due to COVID-19, the organisers have taken the utmost care to prevent infection.

The venue has been disinfected and divided into blocks, and there’s an innovative system where you hold your phone to a camera, and the machine checks the electronic ticket and your body temperature at the same time. Each audience member is given a special ‘Savior Mask’ with Babymetal’s logo printed on it to wear during the gig, and rather than having merch stands, people can shop online.

Throughout the Budokan dates, they’ve been playing a well-balanced selection of songs from across their career, including some rarities. At the third show, on February 16, they played From Dusk Till Dawn – a unique, beat-driven tune punctuated by Su-Metal’s high-pitched vocals, which appears on the international version of Metal Resistance. It had only ever been performed once, in the US in 2017. Live, its mystical atmosphere was amplified to an impressively grand scale.

During their March 16 show, the destructive power of B×M×C was also tremendous, with Su-Metal’s falsetto soaring over the chunky rap metal. Their energetic dancing matched the ups and downs of the song, creating a dynamism that fascinated the audience.

There are no deep cuts at tonight’s final, sold-out concert, but we’re treated to a brilliant greatest hits set.

D#693Č#rfwdjrqdo#vwdjh#rffxslhv#wkh# entire floor space of the arena, taking advantage of the Budokan’s shape, while the crowd sits on the first and

58 METALHAMMER.COM

energy to power the National Grid

“AN ECSTATIC FEELING WASHES OVER THE VENUE” THE SET

Babymetal Death Ijime, Dame, Zettai Gimme Chocolate!!

Doki Doki + Morning GJ! No Rain, No Rainbow Distortion PA PA YA!!

Megitsune Karate Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!!

ENCORE: The One Road Of Resistance

second tiers. A video message announces that the show will be ‘A Story Of Destruction And Rebirth’, before they launch into a rearranged Babymetal Death.

Then Su-Metal, Moametal and three support dancers appear onstage, crucified. This kind of ritualistic display is an essential element of Babymetal’s performance. With flames flying around, they launch into Ijime, Dame, Zettai, the Kami Band’s heavy guitars deafening the eardrums.

During the chorus, the song hits a peak as the audience jump as one.

The words ‘GIVE ME’ appear on the screen, before Gimme Chocolate!! bursts into life. With countless laser beams criss-crossing them, Babymetal pdnh#wkh#prvw#ri#wkh#693Č#vwdjh1# Then, everyone claps along to the intro of their debut song, Doki Doki * Morning. They dance wonderfully, amazing the audience with an explosive power of pop-metal that will never get old.

Moametal performs GJ! with four kid dancers in tow. As the crowd clap along with the three-three-seven rhythm, she shouts, “It’s not enough!

You can do even more, right?!”, hyping up the crowd. The atmosphere changes when Su-Metal sings her solo song,

No Rain, No Rainbow. Dry ice covers the stage like a sea of clouds and, surprisingly, Su-Metal plays piano for the first time. It’s a huge highlight of the entire show.

Distortion has the audience pumping their fists in the air, followed by the party song PA PA YA!!, with an ecstatic feeling washing over the venue as pyro burns brightly. The crowd wave their souvenir towels over their heads in an increasingly festive atmosphere that makes everyone forget about the COVID-19 crisis.

The groove-metal Karate explodes like a Pantera or Lamb Of God song, as Su-Metal calls out, “Everybody jump!” It’s a spectacular sight to see the girls, the support dancers and the audience bouncing at the same time.

During Headbangeeeeerrrrr!!!!! the audience even bow to Babymetal.

For the encore, Babymetal appear in capes to perform sacred song The One, bringing every together with their message of unity. Then the screen announces the countdown for the end of Metal Resistance, bringing a 10-year period of activity to an end, and the sound of the soul-stirring conch echoes for closer Road Of Resistance. As no one’s allowed to shout along with the call-andresponse section, they play an audience cheering sound to connect the audience and Babymetal. In the middle of the song, Su-Metal expresses her gratitude: “Finally, we’ve reached the final. Thank you so much to all the fans around the world who have continued to support our challenge and to all the fans who gathered at the Budokan!’” Needless to say, our hearts are moved.

The show ends with a special performance as Su-Metal hits 10 gongs in order to celebrate Babymetal’s 10th anniversary. In the closing video, they announce that after building a strong career over the past 10 years, Babymetal’s next chapter is to exist as a ‘Living Legend’.

Put plainly: this show was the coolest. The girls deserve applause for giving 120% of their power and overcoming the COVID-19 crisis. We can’t wait to see what they do next.

TAKU FUJII

WORDS: RYOSUKE ARAKANE

TAKU FUJII

Babymetal know how to put on a spectacle

WHEN CON UERED

THE WORLD names set their egos aside for Clash Of The Titans: an epic package tour that would put their scene on the world stage like never before...

WORDS: RICH HOBSON

60 METALHAMMER.COM

METALHAMMER.COM 61

GENE AMBO/ICONICPIX

t began in Europe. Co-headlined by Slayer and Megadeth, the bill was designed to cross the enormous gap between the venues they had been headlining (2-5,000 capacity) to full arenas (average capacity: 16,000). There were logistical challenges: getting two of thrash’s biggest names together came with the mammoth task of ironing out every detail to ensure both bands were equally represented on the bill. The clash had begun…

John Jackson (Founder of K2 Agency): “We already had a tour approved by Slayer’s manager, Rick Sales. Megadeth were also looking to tour around the same time, so I thought, ‘Wouldn’t it be brilliant if we could put them together?’

On the face of it, it wasn’t necessarily a slam dunk, but that was one of the reasons we had pulled it together – we felt together those bands could do better than either would on their own.”

David Ellefson (Megadeth): “The thinking was, if we could combine forces, Megadeth and Slayer – later

62 METALHAMMER.COM

Dave Mustaine: See, Kerry? looking at his fingers!

Anthrax too – we figured we could achieve the same level of success as a band like Metallica. We’d already worked together a few times by that point anyway – Kerry was even in Megadeth at the start.”

Kerry King (Slayer): “[Playing with Megadeth] was killer! The only reason I considered it is because I was such a big Mustaine fan – I saw him play with Metallica when they were still a southern California band. It blew me away that he’d be up there ripping on guitar, not even looking at what he was doing. I played the first five shows and it was a good time; I was just honoured that he wanted me to help him out.”

John Jackson: “We settled on the name Clash Of The Titans because a) it’s a great name, and b) it says exactly what it is!”

David Ellefson: “It’d be a team effort where we’d have to put our egos aside.

That was probably the biggest clash of the titans – not with the outside world, but internally! Who closes the show, who gets the right set time… these were discussions that turned into finer negotiations behind the scenes. In Europe, the line-up was fixed: Slayer would close and Megadeth were in third position, which I always maintain is the best position as the fans still have loads of energy and the beer’s still working!”

Kerry King: “I would always rather close. I don’t care who plays before us, we’re gonna smoke ’em.”

lash Of The Titans kicked off in Belgium on September 22, 1990.

It soon became the hottest ticket going, and city after city sold out as the tour rampaged through Switzerland, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and the UK. The bill was rounded out by the

FRANK WHITE

y the end of the 1980s, four bands had emerged as kings of the burgeoning thrash metal scene: Metallica, Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax.

Though not yet the ‘Big 4’, they’d each released landmark albums and were heralded as indicators of the genre’s enormous potential. But Metallica were quickly pulling ahead, as 1989’s …And Justice For All had broken the Top 10 on the US Billboard 200.

“Metallica were in a league of their own – they didn’t need anything from anybody. They chose their own path; I think it was like, ‘We’ve done all that [thrash] stuff’, and so they aimed ” says Slayer guitarist Kerry King.

Their peers weren’t about to miss their own shot at the big time, however.

A plan was hatched: to bring Slayer and Megadeth together for a tour that would see them reach the arena-headlining level of Metallica.

Package tours weren’t new. A decade earlier, the Metal For Muthas tour – Motörhead, Samson and Saxon each playing on different dates, supported by a range of young bands – had helped popularise NWOBHM, thrash’s direct progenitor. But Clash Of The Titans was something different: a coalition of greats who could achieve more together than alone. This is the story of how Clash Of The Titans revolutionised touring, took thrash into the big leagues and cemented the concept of the Big 4.

Guitar gods (left to right): Dave Mustaine, (Special mention must go to Jeff’s shorts)

addition of Bay Area contemporaries Testament and Suicidal Tendencies – the LA crossover thrashers who represented a new breed of thrash.

This was the genre’s commercial and critical peak, and each band had just released – or were on the verge of releasing – game-changing records.

David Ellefson: “Slayer were just about to drop Seasons In The Abyss and we were working up to Rust In Peace. The tour took us into arenas, so it was big news, you know? Testament had got Souls Of Black coming around that time too, so it was a really special time for heavy metal.”

GETTY

Kerry King: “That kind of thing never happens for a two-band bill let alone four. Bands with big albums just don’t tour together and here we were with four bands with huge albums. I mean, Suicidal were coming off of Lights, Camera… what a great album!”

Chuck Billy (Testament): “Clash Of The Titans was a big opportunity – it was a chance to play some real shows in places we’d otherwise only visit for festivals. We’d never even played

shows indoors at some of these places!

Soon we realised that shit, there was a caveat that we needed a new record out to get on the tour. Cool – let’s go to the studio and drink some beers and play some songs!”

David Ellefson: “Dave [Mustaine] and I saw Megadeth as an arena band right from the off – you have to remember it was a conception before it was a reality.

I remember sitting in the apartment in Sycamore Avenue [in Hollywood] discussing everything, down to our names – how do you have a band with two Daves in it? It was all about the vision of what we could be and the band formed to fill that vision.”

“WE HAD TO PUT OUR EGOS ASIDE” DAVID ELLEFSON

Chuck Billy: “That tour launched us as a headliner in Europe. We’d been working hard on our music for four years and really wanted to prove that we belonged there. The other guys were so cool and down to earth, so

we could all just go out and put on a great performance.”

he tour wasn’t without hitches, however. At the time, we asked Suicidal Tendencies frontman Mike Muir how it was going. “We haven’t had any problems with Slayer, they’re really cool. The same applies to the crew,” he said. And Megadeth? “We don’t see them and I’m very pleased ” he replied. Additionally, the Megadeth Daves were freshly on the wagon after battling addictions.

Chuck Billy: “A couple years before, we’d toured with Megadeth and Dave [Mustaine] was smoking, drinking and everything, which meant the guy we toured with a couple years later was a completely different person, telling us not to smoke in the building! We were young, like, ‘That’s your problem not ours’, but it must’ve been tough being on their own. We were too immature to realise what was at stake.”

Kerry King: “It’s difficult sometimes to sift through the years because me

METALHAMMER.COM 63

and Dave [Mustaine] can be on edge for decades at a time, but then completely cool with each other for decades too.

Mustaine and I were on the rocks at that point, but we made it work. It’s funny – when we did The Big 4 shows together later he took me aside and said, ‘You know, you and me are the only guys who have played in two of the Big 4!’

But back around Clash we were all peaking, but we also had a chip on our shoulders about proving ourselves and that made every show special for fans.”

David Ellefson: “Because we were clean, we couldn’t go hang out where the parties were. Ron Laffitte was a terrific manager for us in that regard.

His icon was Pat Riley of the Lakers, so he was all about team and focusing on how you could channel all this talent so we’d be marching in the same direction. He pulled us together, got us sobered up and made sure we’d have band meetings, sobriety meetings… everything to keep going the right way and harness the greatness that was developing in the band at the time.”

Chuck Billy: “There was definitely some butting of heads – between Kerry and Dave Mustaine, myself and Dave Mustaine… Dave Mustaine and Dave Mustaine… ha ha! In the end we all worked through it.”

nterpersonal conflict or no, ‘greatness’ was certainly attained.

Clash Of The Titans’ initial run ended with an enormous show at Wembley Arena on October 14, 1990 – Slayer would use footage from it for their War Ensemble video. The bands couldn’t rest on their laurels though, and it wasn’t long before a sequel took shape.

Anthrax were added as a third headliner and the bands agreed to rotate positions on the bill each night. The opening spot was filled by a wild card: Alice In Chains.

Scott Ian (Anthrax): “Our record had just gone Gold in the States and we were sat in a dressing room playing alongside our heroes, Iron Maiden. But here was an offer to come out and do those same venues just a few months later. Our reaction was, ‘Why do we need this?

We can do it ourselves’, so we initially said no. By the time we got offstage that night there was another fax and this one was loooong, explaining all the reasons it made sense for us to do it!”

David Ellefson: “God bless Alice In Chains, they were definitely the odd band out on the bill. [While touring Europe in early 1991] we were at the

64 METALHAMMER.COM

Alice In Chains: a brave addition to the bill

Volkshaus, Zürich to see The Almighty and Marty [Friedman, guitarist] and I saw Alice In Chains’ name on the day schedule, like, ‘How goofy are these guys?’ figuring they were some local band. All four of us [in Megadeth] decided to go up and see them play, and we were blown away. We phoned Ron and told him this was the band we had to take out with us for the tour.”

Kerry King: “At first I fucking hated it!

They were the Man In The Box band and I never needed to hear that song again.

It was all I knew because that’s all MTV played. But we’d watch them, hang out and watch the [other bands’] sets. Layne [Staley] was probably the best singer of our generation – a superstar with pipes like nobody you’d ever seen before.”

David Ellefson: “If there’s one thing we know about thrash metal fans it’s if you’re not thrash, YOU’RE OUT! At the same time, after Clash AIC went out to

play with Van Halen and became superstars, so that’s their story!

I always commend them on their work ethic, for jumping in the trenches and taking their bullets but still going on.”

he US leg began in Dallas on May 16, 1991. On June 28, an MTV Headbanger’s Ball special was set up to celebrate the arrival of metal’s newest stars when they played New York’s Madison Square Garden. It was a watershed moment for thrash in the US, laced with a sense of anarchy; some of the crowd’s 19,000 fans got unruly and began throwing things towards the stage – as a pissed-off Tom Araya would recount to MTV’s cameras after the band’s set. It even gave hometown heroes Anthrax pause, as they worried about how the crowd would react to a special surprise they had planned for their headline set.

Anthrax brought the noise, big time

show. After that tour, all venues would do festival seating for metal shows.”

FRANK WHITE

Scott Ian: “We brought out Chuck D and [Flavor] Flav [of Public Enemy] to do Bring The Noise. It was so crazy, because we had no idea how the crowd on that tour was going to react. A fuckin’ Slayer crowd! There was worry as to whether people were going to dig it or scream, ‘Fuck you, don’t mix your rap with our metal!’ But the moment Chuck and Flavor stepped out onto that stage, there was an energy I’d never felt until that point; it was fucking insane!”

David Ellefson: “It was Anthrax’s hometown and I felt very proud for them as it was their day. Playing Madison Square Garden is huge and a lot of those amphitheatres were great.

We did this thing with Riki Rachtman of Headbanger’s Ball. We were MTV darlings, all because we were a thrash band, not a hair metal band. By that point hair metal was moving out, so bands like Metallica and Queensrÿche were holding the top spots. We could

“WE WERE TOO IMMATURE TO REALISE WHAT WAS AT STAKE” CHUCK BILLY

see Seattle coming up behind us. It was a world in transition, for sure.”

Scott Ian: “Some of these places had never done shows without seats on the floor – Madison Square Garden was a big one for that. Straight away I could see that being a big problem, because promoters and venues didn’t know about mosh pits yet. About half the venues didn’t want to remove their seating. They had this attitude of, ‘We’ve been doing shows for 40 years, don’t tell us how to do our job’, only to see 10,000 seats get destroyed in one

uch of the interpersonal drama that had popped up in the press during the European run had fizzled out, and the bands were having a good time. They were young and conquering arenas, in what David Ellefson refers to as “the summer of heavy metal love”.

David Ellefson: “There was actually a little feud starting between Megadeth and Slayer at the time, especially because our lifestyles had become very different. I think that’s how the food fight started – a flick of bread suddenly turned into a whole turkey flying across the room. Fuckin’ Anthrax always had the best catering. A full Thanksgiving turkey spread, and we’re there asking for raisins as a treat! Ha ha ha!”

Scott Ian: “We all had the same rider!

As for the food fight… I don’t think it’s true! I think Tom [Araya] was fucking around, but Charlie [Benante] did end up with fish on his shoulder. I remember something like Tom shouting ‘SWORDFISH AGAIN’ and flinging his plate over his shoulder, and the fish

METALHAMMER.COM 65

flew and landed squarely on Charlie’s shoulder. Nobody was upset, though – we laughed so hard.”

A very hirsute Kerry King: him looking like this either

Kerry King: “[My favourite thing was] probably getting the groups together – it’s not easy co-ordinating with other bands, especially ones with any kind of fame or career. Being able to do that any time is great – it felt great to all come together and show everybody that thrash is rad.”

David Ellefson: “It was the summer of heavy metal love. There were people throwing beer, chicks pulling their shirts up… all the rock’n’roll cliches you’d never usually get at a thrash show.

I remember having a great conversation with [Slayer guitarist] Jeff Hanneman in a hotel bar. He was there having a few beers and we chatted for ages. That was my real takeaway fond memory of Jeff; despite these hellish songs he could write, he was a kind, sweet guy and I had great admiration for his integrity.

There he was, kicking back alone and just making his own entertainment.”

Scott Ian: “Jeff and Kerry managed to get paintball guns, so their crew guys got paintball guns too. They thought it was hilarious to shoot at us by bursting out of a room as we were walking down a hallway. We all went out to buy paintball guns, and so it’d turn into a daily war where we’d be blasting each other. At a Hilton in Indiana, somebody’s room opened up onto the roof, so we made the adult decision to go out and shoot the giant, giant Hilton sign outside the hotel until it was repainted in 40 different colours! There was a $10,000 cleaning cost! Luckily, we all pitched in to cover it.”

John Jackson: “Clash Of The Titans helped set us up for future package tours too, not least the Unholy Alliance runs Slayer did [first with Slipknot/ Mastodon/Hatebreed in 2004, then Lamb Of God/Children Of Bodom/ Mastodon/Thine Eyes Bleed in 2006 and finally Trivium/Mastodon/Amon Amarth in 2008].”

66 METALHAMMER.COM

“I FUCKING HATED ALICE IN CHAINS!” KERRY KING

Kerry King: “Each of those tours was just us moving forwards – even when moving forwards wasn’t going to be a thing for us anymore. But the end of the 80s was thrash’s peak, because afterwards grunge came in and kicked the shit out of everything. Music changed and we basically had to wait before we could really become big again around God Hates Us All.” Scott Ian: “I don’t remember people calling us the Big 4 at that point – I don’t think it was used yet. Metallica were a giant band in their own right, so it makes sense that this term to

describe us would originate from this giant, sold-out tour of the States.”

David Ellefson: “It’s kinda rumoured that [music journalist and longtime Hammer scribe] Malcolm Dome came up with the idea of the Big 4. I don’t know if even he knows for sure, but it definitely started to be talked about after the Clash Of The Titans. It’s a pretty special thing that we started it and lived to tell the tale.”

SLAYER’S REPENTLESS, ANTHRAX’S FOR ALL KINGS AND TESTAMENT’S TITANS OF CREATION ARE OUT NOW VIA NUCLEAR BLAST. DAVE ELLEFSON’S NO COVER IS OUT NOW VIA COMBAT RECORDS AND A NEW MEGADETH ALBUM IS EXPECTED SOON

FRANK WHITE

he Stateside dates of Clash Of The Titans did more for Slayer, Megadeth and Anthrax than make them into rock stars. It was an apotheosis that led to the idea of the Big 4. When someone asks, ‘Why aren’t ‘x’ in the Big 4?’ the answer is simple: who else has played a tour so important to the metal landscape – a tour that changed the model for bands and made the mainstream take notice?

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THE HAMMER INTERVIEW

CALEB SHOMO He was only a teenager when Attack Attack! hit the headlines mastermind. Caleb’s packed a hell of a lot into 28 years

PRESS

WORDS: DANNII LEIVERS

6 MET 68 METALH A AMM ALH A ER ER. R COM

What were you like as a kid?

“I was very reserved, very curious and very obsessive. I was very much so ADD [attention deficit disorder]. If I didn’t enjoy it there was no way I could focus on it, but if my brain latched to it, then that was all I could think about and focus on. Music was the one.”

What is your most vivid childhood memory?

“My earliest memories of life are lying next to our little boom box listening to cassette tapes, or my mom had a record player and she’d play Toto and Yes all the time and we’d dance around in the basement to the records.”

What was the first metal band you heard?

“August Burns Red. I was like, ‘What the fuck is this?! This is insane!’ I’d been playing guitar and drums, just learning [aged] probably 10 or 11 years

old. It was the sheer talent, the speed, how fast they’re playing the drum parts, and hearing double bass shattered my mind.”

At what point did you realise you could sing?

“I learned how to sing out of necessity.

I had never sang ever in my life until I was 16. In my first band, Attack Attack!, I’d been taking over screaming, which I didn’t know how to do either.

I’d blow my voice every single show.

I fucked myself up constantly, I was honestly a god-awful vocalist, but just kind of got through it. I’d already been writing melodies but never performed them. Then when our singer left, we were like, ‘Well let’s see if I can do it, let’s just try it.’

I went in the other room and started recording something I’d written, and it just worked. It wasn’t great, but I had pitch.”

Growing up, your dad was a pastor.

What part has religion played in your life?

“We went to church every week. My dad was a pastor, my mom was in the

“I FUCKED MYSELF UP... I WAS A GODAWFUL VOCALIST” church band. I was involved in a lot of that stuff then growing up. I saw a lot of damage it did to people in my life, certain situations and even my family.

I’m not trying to say that religion itself was the issue. A lot of American church society is fucked up, to be really frank. I will always have a respect and understanding of it because of the big part it played in my life, but that’s not what my world revolves around anymore.”

On Beartooth’s first EP, Sick, on the song Go Be The Voice, you ask, ‘God where are you now?’ Did you become disillusioned with religion?

“I had some wild situations with religion. [Attack Attack!] is getting rolling and we’re about to go on tour and the people at [church] are telling us, ‘You can’t go on tour because you need to be here because that’s what God has told us. You need to stay here.

This church is growing because you guys are part of it. If you go on tour, you’re completely disobeying the word of God.’ I was like, ‘This is batshit.

I’m out of here and I’m going to go play rock’n’roll.’ This is incredibly repressive and fucked up.”

Was that pressure difficult for you all, given you identified as a Christian metal band?

“I came into the band when that was already the band’s cup of tea. It honestly was one of those things that didn’t last long. To be honest, to a point, that was the cool thing to do at the time. Bands like Underoath and The Devil Wears Prada, there were a lot of really big Christian bands in the scene and I think that had a bit of an influence on it.

A few of us are Christians, let’s make it a Christian band and we’ll be in that scene. Maybe to a point. I’m just reflecting on this, I’ve never really talked about this with anyone, I’m just piecing it together as I go and trying to figure it out for myself.”

You’ve talked about experiencing depression since you were 11. Did you recognise what it was at the time?

“Somewhat, because it’s something that runs in the family. I know my mom dealt with it a lot and also my dad, being a pastor, dealt with it in multiple ways, whether it be himself or helping other people. I’d known about it, but I didn’t realise it really was what it was. I thought, ‘I’m just a kid, that’s what happens.’”

Did you seek treatment for it at the time?

“I tried things to deal with it. When I was 18 or 19, I went to a therapist for the first time and it just didn’t go well.

Whoever it was, no disrespect, they just didn’t understand what I was going through and how to help me deal with it. It kind of burned me, I had a really bad experience. I do therapy once a week now. The person I’m with now is fantastic and it’s a really important part of my life and helping me stay in control.”

You dropped out of school when you were 15 to tour full-time with Attack Attack!. How did that conversation go with your parents?

“It was a lot of discussion and a lot of discussion between management.

Rise Records signed us, and we got a booking agent. We’d been playing local shows and venturing a few hours outside of Ohio every so often on a weekend, but when we got signed, they were like, ‘Hey you’re booked on this tour.’ We started playing shows when I was 14, but 15 is when we started touring full time. According to my dad, management told him and my mom, ‘He can do online school and they won’t be touring that much. It’ll be a few weeks here and there.’ They let me do it and we toured 44 weeks out of the first year of touring.”

PRESS

I

n June 2008, Caleb Shomo’s first band, Attack Attack!, dropped their first music video on the world. The track was Stick Stickly, and it quickly became one of metal’s first memes. A low-budget vision of sweeping fringes and dance moves that looked like hell on the knees, Stick Stickly spawned a strain of ‘crabcore’ metalcore which, despite being derided by critics as one of the worst videos of all time, was to be surprisingly influential.

“We started playing shows with bands that were literally choreographing our music video moves,” remembers Caleb today of the song and video’s impact. “But I don’t think we were ahead of our time.

I think we were perfectly on time.”

Caleb released two albums with Attack Attack!. He started out as keyboardist on 2008 debut Someday Came Suddenly, graduating to covocalist on the band’s 2010 self-titled follow-up. Since then though, he’s better known as the singer and mastermind behind Beartooth, a passion project that he never intended to make public. “It was just a way for me to vent to my computer and get stuff off my chest,” he admits today. “The fact it is where it is now is wild. I had zero intention truly of it being a full-time band.”

Now, Beartooth are one of the hottest bands in our world, while millions of fans have found solace in Caleb’s lyrics, which talk openly about depression and mental illness. As Caleb prepares to release Beartooth’s fourth album, Below, we ask him to take a look back over his life and career so far.

What are your memories of filming Attack Attack!’s Stick Stickly video?

“I remember being at this old-ass house in the middle of nowhere and it was really cold. I never wore jeans and they made me wear jeans. I always just wore basketball shorts and a t-shirt.

I never cared what I looked like back then. I remember being like, ‘This is serious, we have to wear jeans. Oh my goodness.’ We had already kicked Austin [Carlile, ex Of Mice & Men vocalist] out of the band, he toured with us for like a month before he got kicked out, he did not last long but he recorded the album. We had Nick Barham fill in who looks completely different and didn’t record the vocals, but he’s just miming away. The crab moves? That was all [guitarist] Andrew Whiting. I have no idea where the whole crab thing came from, he would do it and that was his thing.”

A lot of people took the piss out of you because of that video.

How did that feel?

“We thought it was funny.

I remember being on Warped Tour and Fox News did a whole piece making fun of us. They sent us an apology because they didn’t realise we were straight up, fucking children. Some ratty, 50-year-old dude was making fun of us, it’s like, ‘Really that is national news?

This is all you got time for?’”

You left Attack Attack! in 2012. What were your last six months like in the band?

“I was honestly fucking miserable. I was not dealing with a lot of my own personal issues.

It went from being sad, to trying to justify why the world would be a better place if you were gone, to eating disorders to try and please other people. Then that turned into binge drinking and binge eating and getting stoned all the time, searching for some way to feel I had control. That’s what I Have A Problem, the first Beartooth song, is about. It’s not about alcoholism. It’s about the fact I was fucking miserable in that band and I was finding ways to escape, whether it be alcohol, or getting high, or lying in my bunk for 12 hours until we had to play, then going back into my bunk.

I wrote that song and was like, ‘Yeah I need to quit.’ I felt like I’d grown out of that style of music and didn’t care for it anymore.”

Caleb: “Just off Want anything?”

Beartooth were never meant for our ears.

We’re glad Caleb changed his mind

What’s happening with your electronic side-project, Class?

“Nothing ever happened with that.

I made an EP around the time of the Beartooth EP. It did come out, but it’s not even out anymore. I’ve thought about doing some other stuff in that scene, but Beartooth is so timeconsuming, it’s difficult to do anything else. Hopefully at some point.”

When you wrote Sick and Beartooth’s debut, Disgusting, were you worried about putting such honest lyrics out there?

“Still to this day that’s a tough thing for me with this band. But it wasn’t as hard for the first EP and the first record because I didn’t plan on it being a big thing. When I write now, I try to get to the same mental state I was in when I wrote the Sick EP; this is just for you and you alone, just write and you’ll

72 METALHAMMER.COM

“I LAY IN MY BUNK FOR 12 HOURS UNTIL WE HAD TO PLAY” feel way better afterwards. At the same time, that’s one thing our fans appreciate. If I was writing songs for anyone else, they wouldn’t be as personal to people.”

Lyrically, all four Beartooth albums deal with depression. Do you ever worry it has defined the band?

“Not really because that’s what Beartooth is. That was the whole point of Beartooth, to be this personal musical therapy session. If people get it, they get it, if they don’t, whatever.

If people just like the music but don’t care about the lyrics, that’s cool. If people are obsessed with the lyrics but they don’t like the music, totally cool.”

Your wife is English. Are you an Anglophile at all?

“I love the basic, classic, stereotypical British shit. I’m into it. I love a good fish and chips. I love going and having a pint and hanging out at the pub, watching football games. I don’t love the weather!”

Did you know there’s a petition on Change.org asking you to release the lost Attack Attack! album that you recorded before you left in 2012?

“Really? I did not know that, that’s fucking hilarious. I wonder if I could find some of those songs, I know I have one or two in my email. They’re not even done. We probably recorded 16 or 17 songs and a ton of them never got finished. It’d be a ton of work and to be fair, Attack Attack! have reformed, they are a whole different thing now. More power to them, I’m going to let them do their thing, and I’m going to do mine.”

What has been your career highlight?

“There’s been a few. Playing Download Festival on the main stage at Donington Park, because one of the most important music DVDS in my life was AC/DC Live At Donington, in 1991.

When got a call from our booking agent saying Slipknot wanted to take us out on tour… I think I cried that day.

We also got to support Architects at Wembley. They’re one of my favourite bands and to be a direct support slot to them at Wembley was one of the most surreal experiences I’ve ever had.”

BELOW IS OUT ON JUNE 25 VIA RED BULL. BEARTOOTH TOUR THE UK IN FEBRUARY 2022

PRESS/MYRIAM SANTOS

Why did you stay in Ohio instead of moving to LA where the business is?

“I thought about it. In the transition into Beartooth, I was going to move to LA. [Producer] John Feldmann is the guy who signed Beartooth and he wanted to work with me as a writer.

Then Beartooth got so busy I was like, ‘It doesn’t matter where I live, I’m gone all the time.’”

www.classicrockmagazine.com

“We’re from another fucking Pl|An|Et!”

FROM ARCHITHE VE

Mudvayne are back! To celebrate, we dug out their first Metal Hammer interview, from the year 2000, when Hammer’s Daniel Lane jetted to Atlanta to work out how four facepainted fiends had become metal’s unlikeliest nu superstars

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WORDS: DANIEL LANE • PICTURES: MICK HUTSON

n Thanksgiving weekend in 2000, photographer Mick Hutson and I flew out to Atlanta, Georgia to interview Mudvayne for the cover of Metal Hammer. The cover shoot itself was going to be a composite with fellow rising nu metal stars Disturbed.

The concept was for Kud (the stage name Mudvayne vocalist Chad Gray was going by at the time) to be electrocuting Disturbed’s frontman, David Draiman.

Both bands were blowing up Stateside and were already starting to resonate with UK metal fans, thanks to heavy rotation on MTV2 and XFM. So it seemed like a no-brainer to pair them up, especially given the wider music press at the time were sceptical about this new brand of heavy music from across the pond. While the sheer spectacle of Slipknot, whose debut album was unleashed the previous summer, could not be ignored, at the time, their peers couldn’t get arrested. Their loss was Metal Hammer’s gain, and so began a relationship that’s lasted 20-odd years.

Mick had already shot David Draiman grimacing in one of the Chicago band’s then stage props a few weeks earlier in Spain. This was in the days pre-digital photography, and before Photoshop was the norm. Mick was going to have to comp the two singers together in his darkroom, and he’d use actual sparklers to make the shots more dynamic.

74 METALHAMMER.COM

Mick and I first met the band sans make-up on their modestly sized tour bus.

I interviewed them in pairs: Chad and his future Hellyeah bandmate, guitarist Greg Tribbett (AKA Gurrg), were the more grounded half of Mudvayne. Chad could talk for America, and had star quality in spades, while Greg was quieter, more modest, but keenly aware that his band were on the verge of something big.

Ryknow (bassist Ryan Martinie) and drummer and Spag (drummer Matthew McDonough), on the other hand, were a lot more intense. Matt was incredibly passionate about his band’s audio visual art, while Ryan had the chops to back it up; he was classically trained and had studied jazz bass to a high level. Ryan spoke at length how he’d already moved on from the Devil persona he debuted from their breakthrough video, Dig. For them, Mudvayne was about living in the moment, and not a vehicle to market t-shirts and action figures to kids.

I think the concerns we all had at the back of our minds was: did Mudvayne have the substance to go with the style?

After talking to them and witnessing their ‘art’ live, absolutely.

M

udvayne are the genuine article, the real deal and the whole nine yards. They are so real that you can reach out and touch them, but don’t be surprised

if they turn round and tear off one of your limbs!

“The person I walk on stage as is not the person you’re talking to right now,” states shaven-headed bassist Ryknow.

“At this moment in time I wouldn’t spit at you, but if you were on my stage I’d try to trip you up, or I’d try to kick you, or be pissed off enough to try to push you off the front of the stage.”

I am sitting with the band in the relative luxury of their tour bus, which is hauled up outside the Masquerade club in dreary Atlanta. It’s been a hectic year for Mudvayne. Not only have they been on the road solidly for nine months playing sweaty clubs, heaving toilet venues and the massive Tattoo The Earth festival, as well as touring the UK with One Minute Silence; they have also unleashed their phenomenal debut album, L.D. 50, on the world.

“It’s how toxicologists rate the toxicity of a substance,” sticksman Spag tells me. “‘LD-50’ stands for Lethal Dosage 50, and the way it works is that they administer a chemical to a certain number of test subjects, and after 50 die they say that’s a lethal dosage. Basically how much it takes to kill 50 out of 100 test subjects.”

In spite of being given the Slipknot seal of approval, with Shawn ‘Clown’ Crahan as the executive producer on L.D. 50, Mudvayne have been dogged by accusations that they are merely

pretenders to the Slipknot throne. But Mudvayne don’t wear masks. They do, however, wear make-up.

Says Spag: “We’ve been wearing make-up for almost three years. A year and a half before Slipknot ‘came out’.

It’s coincidental that they wear masks and we wear stage make-up. If you want to associate us with Kiss, that’s different. We can’t deny that, we grew up with that in our conscious youth.”

While Slipknot have personas associated with their masks, for Mudvayne this use of theatrics is merely a part of the disidentification process, drawing the audience’s focus away from the bandmembers, and allowing them to focus on the music.

“It’s artistry,” explains frontman Kud. “We’re bringing a visual element to music. There’s flow in a painting, there’s a flow in music. We’re bringing art full circle. I like to bring visual stimulation with our sonic arousal.”

“It morphs us into the culture of being this alien clan, far removed from people’s everyday frame of reference,” continues Spag. “It’s an unexplainable thing. It’s indefinable.

It gives an element of mystery and something that you want to explore and find out about. The make-up doesn’t really have anything to do with us specifically as human beings. Our ‘personas’ represent nothing – that’s just an assumption people have.”

“We arrived at our current image through a process of trial and error,” continues Kud. “I think they’ll continue to evolve and steamroll right through what we are now. This is basically a precursor to things yet to come!”

And the first notable example of a stage in their evolution lies with fourstringer Ryknow. “Look at me. Where are the horns?” he asks. “Where’s the goatee? We’ve already metamorphosed within our own entity – Spag has changed his colours, Kud changes his smile, Gurrg changes the patterns on his face, but for full change I’m the first one in line. Obviously I’m not the same person from day to day, and neither are you. You’re not going to feel the same from day to day, and you’re not going to wear the same clothes day to day.

“I’m a changing person so therefore am I meant to not change just because our fans have a preconceived idea of what I’m supposed to look like? I’m gonna be real with me and real with the guys in my band and I’m going to step on that stage feeling real and not that I’m made up for anyone but me.”

Still, it begs the question that if Mudvayne are not characters, and their make-up represents nothing, why have they opted for bizarre names? Even though Slipknot’s masks have altered

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KUD

Age: “I was born in 2001.”

Marital status: “As single as a person can be without being married.”

From: “Peoria, Illinois.”

Other than your instrument, what do you bring to the band?

“I bring a lot of the artistic ideas.”

What was the first record

Kud has a winning (and ever-changing) smile

“That was Too Fast For Love by Mötley Crüe. Mötley Crüe, dude!”

What was the first concert “It would have been Journey, at a free concert at Daytona Beach Boardwalk.”

What is your idea of hell?

“A world without music.”

What was your first ever job?

“Washing the dishes in a restaurant.”

What is your favourite film?

“2001: A Space Odyssey.”

What is your favourite comic?

“Preacher.”

When fame becomes too much for you and you have to fake your own death, what will be the elaborate story that appears in the papers?

“The only way to ensure death is a 9mm shot straight through the top of the head…

And it’s not gonna be a story!”

egos, they retain that aloofness by hiding behind a series of numbers.

“If the truth be known,” says Spag, “we’ve got a Monty Pythonesque approach to our band. We’re always fucking around. Gurrg has probably got 13 different nicknames. They were given to us by people around the band, by each other, and like the make-up

“I BRING VISUAL STIMULATION WITH OUR SONIC AROUSAL” KUD

you can’t read too much into them. But unlike the make-up, the names will probably stay the same because they’re so stupid! Also, if we’re gonna change everything else we have to give the audience something to identify with.”

M

udvayne are putting the showmanship back into rock’n’roll, the glamour and the allure as extreme music embraces performance art. They’re regular guys who eat, sleep and shit, but you don’t want to know about that. It doesn’t play to the larger-than-life lifestyle we expect people in bands to inhabit.

But does it get to a point where the make-up overshadows the music?

“You can’t deny it,” sighs Kud. “And we’re cool to talk about it, but we’re doing something different musically and all people wanna know about is the make-up. It starts to get in the way of the music when there are bands out there that aren’t doing anything different musically and they get to talk about their own music and we don’t.”

“It depends from what perspective,” says Spag. “From our point of view absolutely not, but from your point of view, or other people’s, most definitely.

But anyone who comes to a show or sits down and pays some attention to the

RYKNOW

AVALON.RED

hands for this band

album realises, make-up or not, we’re a band and we can play!

“Initially the idea with the make-up was to gauge an instant reaction. It’s backfired to a certain extent, but maybe we were being naïve. You go on message boards and all they talk about is the make-up. We had a write-up in a large US music magazine and the whole piece focused on the make-up, saying that the lines on my face weren’t straight.

It was supposed to be a fucking album review! It’s like an art critique!

“We’re a rising band and people feel threatened, and they’re looking for an angle to put us down. It’s easy to say we picked up on a gimmick and maybe there’s some truth there, but at the end of the day, what is wrong with that?

“When we started doing it, it was way the fuck out!” he continues. We played hick-assed bars full of 40-year-olds who’d never heard of us, who weren’t there to see us, they were there to drink.

We got up onstage looking like this, played our show, emptied the whole

Age: 25.

Marital status: “Single but happily in a relationship.”

From: “Illinois, surrounding the town we eventually ended up at.”

Other than your instrument, what do you bring to the band?

“I bring a visual aspect and I bring them peace of mind. I don’t know exactly what I bring, but I bring it! Hopefully I bring some heart.”

What was the first record you bought?

“I don’t remember ’cause my dad had such a huge record collection. The Beatles, Hendrix, The Mamas & The Papas… To me, that was the first music I owned.”

What was the first concert

fucking bar out and scared everyone half to death! We got off on that!

“It’s also inevitable that a record company is going to see it as an obvious marketing tool, and 13- or 14-year-old kids are gonna freak on that, and they do and it’s great! We can play to the 30year-old market as we’re proficient musicians and we’re thoughtful about the music we’re doing; 13-year-olds are gonna come to the shows and buy our album because we’re cartoon characters – we’re from another fucking planet!

To me, as an artistic entity, I think that’s really powerful and very positive.”

At the same time, doesn’t he think people find it hard to identify with them as people because Mudvayne, as an entity, is not them as people?

“Not at all,” says Spag. “There’s a side to our band that worships anonymity.

It’s unfortunate in modern metal that everything has to mean something, has to be explained, has to be lowest common denominator, and there’s no appreciation for intelligence! I think

“Man, I went to so many theatre and community productions when I was growing up, I couldn’t tell you.”

What is your idea of hell?

“It’s like putting ‘not applicable’ on a survey. I don’t know ’cause it doesn’t exist.”

What was your first ever job?

“Probably waiting tables.”

What is your favourite film?

“I don’t have one, but 2001: A Space Odyssey would be close. It’s a beautiful vision of how things came to be and how things will come to be.”

What is your favourite comic?

“The closest thing I had to comic reading when I was growing up was National Geographic!”

When fame becomes too much for you and you have to fake your own death, what will be the elaborate story that appears in the papers?

“It’s my dream to go hand-gliding.

Me, my wings and my Discman. And I’d make it look like an accident.”

that some of the world’s greatest art, whether it’s paintings, whether it’s sculpture, doesn’t have to explain itself.

I think that some of the greatest work that really gives something back to the human experience doesn’t necessarily have to define everything about it. It gives the audience an opportunity to interact with it and make the experience something for themselves, and there’s the identification.”

“We’re about relating to our audience through our own personal experiences,” adds Ryknow. “With our music I believe we reach people and see into their lives through our songs. That’s definitely a part of what we’re about.”

So will there ever be a point when the make-up will come off?

“If the make-up comes off,” says Kud, “then I don’t want to be a part of this band. It’s what I’m about, it’s a way to express myself. It stops me from being just another singer on a stage. We’re not 18 years old, we’re not out there to do a show, try and get inside some chick’s pants and get back on the bus and drive to the next town. We’re more mature.

We’re doing this because we’re artists; if we weren’t there’s no way I’d be doing this. I wear my art on my sleeve.”

“The make-up has been a portion of where we are now,” says Ryknow, “but it’s really the music that has brought us through, and there are a lot of people out there, fans or industry people, who get off on the music, people who have not seen what we look like, people who just have a demo tape. This is not the only genre of music I’m involved with, and to say I’m gonna wear make-up to perform all the time is not true. I’m also a jazz singer, I love to sing and I’m not gonna wear make-up all the time.

And that goes for Mudvayne. I don’t want to wear make-up all the time and if in the future you see me without make-up then don’t be surprised.”

Kud adds another twist: “Then again,” he says, “not wearing make-up could be wearing make-up…”

O

n the flip-side of the facepaint is the most important element of the Mudvayne experience – the music. All four individuals are incredibly proficient musicians and their debut album showcases simple yet brutal riffs over a complex rhythm section with deep, deep lyrics, carefully cemented together with electronic interludes to create a continuous body of work. An uncompromising, all-encompassing wall of noise. A whole experience from start to finish.

This is all well and good, but let’s not forget we’re living in a consumer society where everyone’s looking for a quick fix and fast food and the three-minute

METALHAMMER.COM 77

pop song reigns supreme. So do Mudvayne feel that by being the seven-course candlelit dinner to Limp Bizkit’s ‘burger and shake to go, y’all!’ they are perhaps in some way alienating potential fans by their comparative inaccessibility?

Gurrg disagrees. “I think we’re offering something new. A lot of people have to put up with all this rap-metal stuff as well as the likes of the Backstreet Boys. People are looking for something with meaning and I’d really like to think we’re a part of that.”

“Also, our live shows draw a lot of attention,” interjects Ryknow. “Take Tattoo The Earth, for example: some shows had 60,000 kids going wild, but there were smaller shows that maybe only sold 5,000 tickets. So if you do the math with 10 or so bands, each with around five members and only 5,000 kids, it’s gonna be pretty easy for people to get out there and meet the bands.”

“We’re working on a grassroots level,” agrees Spag. “That’s why we’re touring like this. Our album’s only been out for maybe three months, but we’ve been touring for eight or nine. We’re building up the kids that are gonna buy our next three albums. They’re not just gonna see a video on MTV and be listening to the next big thing three months down the line. That’s what touring is all about – getting out there to actually see the kids and interact with our audience!”

A highly commendable feat it is, too.

Getting back to the music, though, it’s apparent that Mudvayne have a shared appreciation of synthetic, pseudogothic 80s kitsch pop. This is perhaps a concept that seems alien to metallers on this side of the Atlantic, but it is nevertheless embraced Stateside by everyone from Nine Inch Nails to Orgy, and Marilyn Manson to Fear Factory.

“It’s what I grew up with,” enthuses Spag. “Joy Division, New Order… we’re a new generation of music fans making music. Music has definitely crossed over between heavy metal and electronica with the White Zombies of this world and half the bands we tour with. It was something that started to happen in the 80s. Punk crossed over into metal and you were getting speed metal, through the 90s Ministry popped up, and we’re one of those bands that have grown up in that era before music like that was acceptable. I’d listen to Ozzy and Talking Heads back to back.”

But the question on everyone’s lips is: why focus on such a small part of music from that era? Why settle for the new romantics? Surely as a metal band looking back at the 80s, wouldn’t it have been a more logical conclusion to go down the avenue of thrash or maybe even cock rock?

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GURRG

Gurrg: grease(paint) is the word

Age: 32 Marital status: “Married, June 5 2000. My wife’s been really supportive through this, and she loves what we do too.”

From: “Peoria, Illinois, but I was born in Pekin, Illinois.”

Other than your instrument, what do you bring to the band?

“I am the dictator!

Consistency.

Level-headedness, and I probably stop every fight these guys ever have.”

What was the first record “I believe it was the soundtrack to Grease. Pretty corny, I know!”

What was the first concert “AC/DC and Fastway, Peoria Civic Center.”

What is your idea of hell?

“I don’t have an idea about hell really. I don’t care if it exists or if it doesn’t.”

What was your first ever job?

“It was a paper round.”

What is your favourite film?

“2001: A Space Odyssey.”

What is your favourite comic?

“Mudvayne – it’d be pretty messed up, though!”

When fame becomes too much for you and you have to fake your own death, what will be the elaborate story that appears in the papers?

“It would have to be a plane crash.

I think I’d be found dead when I crash private jet!”

“Yes, but that wasn’t what was going on, though,” grins Spag. “It was the staple that was being rammed down everybody’s throats. Sure, we listened to cock rock and played it in cover bands, but that’s not what was inspiring me. I’d much rather have sat down and listened to a Christian Death record or a Bauhaus album.”

In the same way as people now see 80s cock rock like Mötley Crüe and Poison as somewhat dated, are people 10 years from now going to see extreme music such as Slipknot and Mudvayne as dated?

“It’s bound to happen,” says Gurrg.

We’ll have our own VH1 special!”

“When we talk about cock rock, the first thing we think about is hair, we don’t think about the music” Spag points out. “I think that as a contradiction to that, our music is going to be remembered. Our music actually says something. Also the fact that our look, our images and the visual aspects of our band are going to

“IF THE MAKE-UP WANT TO BE A PART OF THIS BAND” KUD

change means it’ll be hard to pin us down to pink lipstick and backcombed Aqua Net hairdos. In three albums’ time you’re gonna be interviewing a different band. The music is still gonna be Mudvayne. The image is still gonna be Mudvayne, but what you’re hearing and seeing content-wise are not gonna be the same.”

And speaking of the future, how is the entity which we know as Mudvayne going to progress musically?

“One of the things that distances us from Slipknot and is gonna define us in the future is that they’ve set a precedent for themselves that they’re crazier than anybody else,” enthuses Spag. “They’re more extreme or off the wall than anybody else. My interpretation as a listener is that they have to go more extreme on the next record, whereas with our next couple of records we’re going to be able to become more accessible, more commercial. We could be mellower and not necessarily lose our market. There’s a much higher unpredictability ratio with us. On our next album I’d like to pursue the use of melody – more melodic vocals that are hinted at on this album, but more so.

“One of the things that we’d like to do with our music – and Kud and I have talked about it – is bring more of the human experience into our songs emotionally instead of just being this juvenile ‘I hate my parents ’cause they

Spag: determined to be a sell-out

wouldn’t let me out tonight’ aggression.

Allowing heavy music to maintain its intensity, but allowing it to express that intensity about being happy, about being sad, intensely lonely, the intensity of depression and just being more human. It’s about maintaining the intensity that we want but not just being angry. I’d like to see that on our next album, bringing a bit of maturity to heavy music. Our live show is a pretty aggressive experience, and we’ve been labelled as being this negative band, but I don’t see it that way. I don’t necessarily see us as being positive, but I’d like to see us walking in-between.”

AVALON.RED

I

t has to be said that Mudvayne walk that line with impeccable accuracy, and depending on how the next 12 months shape up, they’ll undoubtedly earn their place alongside Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath and Iron Maiden in rock’n’roll infamy.

“What I see us doing, and people like Slipknot doing, is creating a new mythology like bands used to that just doesn’t happen anymore,” says Spag.

“Iron Maiden for me was a mythology when I was growing up. Judas Priest

was a mythology, Skinny Puppy was a mythology. Bands don’t have that anymore, but given a record label that’s understanding, and working with good people that want to see something like this happen, this can happen. If you look at our label, there’s only a few bands in this genre that they’re working with, and we’re the only ones they’re putting time and effort into.”

Oh yes, that age-old record company quandary. Unlike Slipknot, who are signed to independent label Roadrunner Records, Mudvayne inked a deal with Epic, an offshoot of multinational corporation Sony. Slipknot have had time to develop their sound, build their career and expand their fanbase, but is this the case for Mudvayne? Surely a weight of expectancy hangs over the band to sell vast units of records?

Gurrg: “I’ve heard a lot of horror stories from different bands, but I don’t think we’re getting that from our label.

They’re very supportive with what we wanna do. Of course, they want us to sell albums, but they’re not in a rush to do it. It’s a building process and they know it, and they want to build our career at a grassroots level like we do.”

SPAG

Age: “31, closing on 32.”

Marital status: “Happily divorced.”

From: Born in Rockford, Illinois, and I grew up in Peoria, Illinois. I’m actually homeless at the moment!”

Other than your instrument, what do you bring to the band?

“A general sense of euphoria and a sense of claustrophobia simultaneously.”

What was the first record you bought?

“Freeze Frame.

What do you mean you’ve never heard of them?

They were huge!

My first metal album was Screaming For Vengeance Judas Priest.”

What was the first concert “The Charlie Daniels band, but one of my first major shows was Prince on the Purple Rain tour.”

What is your idea of hell?

“Hell for me would be a way to describe a state of unpleasantness, and day-to-day life can be that way. Hell? Hell is marriage?

What was your first ever job?

“I worked in an ice cream parlour.”

What is your favourite film?

“2001: A Space Odyssey.”

What is your favourite comic?

“I was a big Faust fan, and I like the Dark Horse comics such as Sin City.”

When fame becomes too much for you and you have to fake your own death, what will be the elaborate story that appears in the papers?

“This has been on my mind lately, maybe it’s all these interviews about our make-up! I’d like to accidentally die in a staged magical act. I’d do some big publicity stunt where I bury myself for 24 hours in front of the White House and die doing it.”

Indeed, and the difference between Mudvayne and other new bands is that they are not under any illusions and were aware from the outset that they are a marketable product, a commodity to be bought and sold, and are using this elevated platform to get their artistry to as many people as possible.

“We’ve never had any reservations about being on MTV or the radio,” grins Spag. “Any medium that allows you to communicate your work is positive.

You just have to be smart about it, you have to play the game and bend it to your angle. We’ve butted heads a couple of times with the label, but to me that’s the perfect opportunity to test out our creative ability and remain consistent with our vision and retain our integrity.

There’s no point saying the label is a bunch of assholes, they gave me money so they could make money. It’s stupid to want this label for so long and when they expect you to do something that’s seen as selling out, to kick up a fuss.

What the fuck did you ever think? We’ve had complete intentions of selling out.

We want to sell out our shows, we want to sell a million albums. We want to get this out to as many people as possible!”

“Outside the band,” interrupts Ryknow, “each one of us wants to make music. We all enjoy touching people through music, whether any of us is a real people person or not. We want to give people something they can’t get in school or something they can’t get from their parents. Each one of us will always be involved with other projects that deal with different musical aspects. I can’t see us not doing it and we’d be very depressed about it – personally, I’d die without it. We’re gonna be doing what we’re doing for a very long time to come. It’s a Catch 22.

There’s a business behind everything, but there’s an art to it. And our project manager understands what we’re about and what we’re trying to do on a core level. But the make-up and the glamour is something very exciting and very intoxicating for an audience.”

So where do Mudvayne go from here?

“The only answer to that is that we’ll run it as long as we can run it,” says Kud. “We’ll run is as long as we can deliver it real!”

So there you go. Mudvayne, thirdgeneration Slipknot clones or the genuine article? Make up your own minds, but if you know a good thing when it hits you, you know what the right answer will be!

MUDVAYNE PLAY AFTERSHOCK, INKCARCERATION, LOUDER THAN LIFE & WELCOME TO ROCKVILLE FESTIVALS. SEE DANNYWIMMERPRESENTS.COM METALHAMMER.COM 79

Scottish progressive metallers Dvne ditched their singer to pursue their dream of writing about...sci-fi?! What the fuck is Etemen Aenka all about, and why does it sound so incredible?

WORDS: STEPHEN HILL • PICTURES: ALAN SWAN

n 2013, Scottish progressive metallers Dune were about to play a gig at Bannerman’s in Edinburgh. There was only one problem: their singer hadn’t shown up. After some deliberation, they went onstage and played instrumentally. It was a decision that’d shape their destiny.

“People were saying that it sounded really vast and cinematic in that science-fiction way,” grins Victor Vicart, the band’s vocalist, guitarist and keyboardist. “So we kicked our singer out, changed the spelling of our name, and decided to concentrate on capturing that feeling from the books and movies we loved. It felt like home.”

From Iron Maiden, to Fear Factory, to Code Orange, heavy metal and science-fiction have long been comfortable bedfellows, the unholy union of loud guitars and futuristic ideas yielding some legendary albums.

But there aren’t many bands who have dived as deeply into sci-fi lore as Dvne.

Their name comes from Frank Herbert’s 1965 science-fiction novel, Dune, one of the most critically discussed and culturally important pieces of work in modern history.

“Dune’s mix of fantasy and sciencefiction, this mythical and mysterious vibe that it has, is something we really resonated with,” Victor explains.

“People said the name wasn’t very original, but we don’t care. I even love the movie adaptation, if you can sit through the whole thing. The universe is very inspiring.”

That no-show was the best thing that could have happened to Dvne.

The members had spent most of their lives playing in underground doom and grindcore bands and, with a newfound sense of purpose and identity, they released their debut album, Asheran, in 2017. It hinted at what they were capable of, creating compelling progressive metal that tells a story and creates its own world, but its follow-up, Etemen Aenka, blows it out of the water.

“We had a little bit of a buzz around us with Asheran,” Victor says. “I think that record was the best thing we could have done at that time. But I’m really proud of the work we put into this record. We sat down and really worked on the story, meticulously working out what was going to happen, before we even started on the music.

On Asheran, we were looking more at the environment, so this time we wanted to explore the topic of society.”

Victor has every right to be proud of Etemen Aenka, which is inspired by far more than just progressive metal tropes or a nod to Blade Runner.

82 METALHAMMER.COM

influences and stories in their music

“PEOPLE SAID WE SOUNDED SO WE KICKED OUR SINGER OUT” VICTOR VICART, VOCALIST

Clocking in at 10 tracks, over a 66minute runtime, it’s packed with sonic deviations that recall the post-metal of Cult Of Luna at their most crushing and Deftones at their most ethereal. Victor talks of drawing on Portishead, the sound/artistic style of Japanese anime producers Studio Ghibli, and languages of long-forgotten civilisations to help tell a multi-perspective story, of a world that worships a series of elite individuals who have fought their way into the upper echelons of society [see ‘Etemen Aenka For Dummies’, right].

“This is why I really enjoy sciencefiction and concept albums, because you can talk about big things,” Victor enthuses. “This is about society and its relationship to power: who has the power? What you do when you

don’t have the power? It’s an allegory for a time where the elite are these celestial beings, almost gods, and you’re told that if you work hard enough then you can become one of them. But then there are people who are outsiders looking into this idea, and thinking, ‘What is going on?

This is crazy!’ We needed to make an album that really took you through those transitions.” f this sounds like another metal band using a conceptual narrative to spread their beliefs and wag their finger at people, then Victor is quick to dismiss the idea that Etemen Aenka is a ‘political’ album.

He acknowledges that music is inherently political, and that their leanings are obvious, but would prefer

Everything you need to know about the grand concept behind Dvne’s new album SO DVNE’S NEW ALBUM HAS GOT SOME PRETTY HEAVY-DUTY CONCEPT, RIGHT? Indeed it has. It’s set in the aftermath of a big battle between The Humanists and The Augmentists. “The Augmentists win and take people away to build a new civilisation; they take mankind Victor explains. “Then they make them build these towers for them to live in.”

WELL… THAT’S A BIT MUCH, ISN’T IT? It is a bit, yes!

Annoyingly for all us in The Humanist

camp, it gets worse.

“Over generations, the society gets more divided, and the beings now known as Celestials are living in the clouds on top of them,” Victor says.

“The towers represent the rise and golden era of this empire.”

THE PEOPLE BUILDING THOSE TOWERS CAN’T BE HAPPY WITH THAT! Ah au contraire, mon ami! They start to believe they are doing the will of the gods and worship those above them. “They believe the myth,” says Victor.

WHY WOULD THEY THINK THAT? Well, over time they start to believe that working on the towers is a rite of passage into the higher echelons of society.

So they can transcend to become Celestials.

AND EVERYONE IS COOL WITH THIS, ARE THEY? Nah, not everyone!

There are a group of people who are outside of all of this, who are more interested in nature. We get to hear their perspective on the song Mleccha (‘Remove oneself / from synthetic light… into forested freedom’).

HOW DOES IT ALL END, THEN? Well, little do those down at the bottom of the ladder realise, but the towers have begun to collapse and the Celestials have actually buggered off. They’ve used the land, destroyed it, and fucked off – the nerve of them! There is violence as everything crumbles, and nature reclaims the planet.

JESUS! SO, WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN? We’ll let Victor answer that: “Well, the Earth goes in cycles, and it’s about that really. It’s really about a planet reconfiguring itself in a violent way.”

people to focus on the fiction aspect of their science-fiction.

“We want people to dig deeply into this cinematic story that we have told and go, ‘I like this, let’s start looking at the lyrics and the album title, and the weird, cryptic symbols.’ I know our fans like it when we start looking at etymology and these stories of the world. We use Sanskrit and Latin and Greek and old French. We aren’t talking about specific problems that are happening now – we are talking about mankind and human history.”

Much like Tool or Mastodon, who Victor cites as huge inspirations, there are clues, Easter eggs and layers all over Etemen Aenka, which he describes as ‘essential’ to the make-up of the band.

There are also moments that break metal’s genre confines, such as guest vocalist Lissa Robertson’s beautifully melodic wails on Omega Severer.

“That section is obviously a nod to Pink Floyd’s The Great Gig In The Sky,” Victor says. “We felt that we needed that juxtaposition in sound to really make the story hit home at that moment. She came in and did it in about half an hour. It was amazing; I was working on the solo to accompany it for about eight hours!”

In fact, such is the grand ambition of Dvne that Victor barely even considers them as a band, let alone a metal band.

They have changed some members between albums, and have different producers and contributors coming in and out. In future, they might change their sound entirely.

“We don’t want to keep that same perspective in each release,” says Victor. “We look at bands like Mastodon or Gojira, who have made some great music over the last decade, but it is always those individuals and their perspective. I would prefer to look at Dvne like a collective group of artists who come up with an idea and then utilise the right people to make that idea come to life. And if that means not using heavy music or us not being a metal band… so be it.”

The last thing we have to ask Victor is about the mysterious ‘v’ in the band’s name. So much thought has gone into the band that surely there’s a reason for it. Why Dvne and not Dune? What does it stand for? What can it all mean?!

“Oh…” Victor pauses. “Honestly man, it’s just a practical thing. No one could find us, and it just made it easier to Google us. And we thought it looked cool.”

Well, that’s one of Dvne’s mysteries solved. Now for the rest…

ETEMEN AENKA IS OUT NOW VIA METAL BLADE METALHAMMER.COM 83

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REV VIEWS

98

KORN

Nu metal pioneers unleash a high-altitude extravaganza

86

FEAR FACTORY Burton C. Bell makes his last stand

86 ALBUM REVIEWS 88 ATREYU 92 NOCTULE 93 OUR HOLLOW, OUR HOME 94 PERTURBATOR 98 LIVE REVIEWS 100 ROADBURN REDUX 102 PUSCIFER 103 INSOMNIUM 105 POPPY EDITED BY: JONATHAN SELZER • PICTURE: STEVE THRASHER

METALHAMMER.COM 85

Fear Factory: can they still chime with the times?

Aggressive Continuum NUCLEAR BLAST

AS MUCH AS you’d like to get excited about the first Fear Factory album in six years, the band themselves don’t make it easy for you.

Ever since vocalist Burton C. Bell departed the band for the first time in 2002, Fear Factory have been as much a soap opera as they’ve been a great metal band. And, annoyingly, they actually have been a great metal band in that period as well, with 2010’s Mechanize and 2012’s The Industrialist both being superb examples of their own unique brand of grinding, synth-heavy, industrial/death metal mash-up. But line-up changes, false starts, 86 METALHAMMER.COM

average live shows and unfulfilled promises have made them a frustrating band to be a fan of in the last 15 years.

Predictably, Aggressive Continuum comes with its own set of utterly non-music-related problems, with Burton leaving the band at the end of last year and leaving FF with an album to promote featuring a vocalist who is no longer part of the fold. It makes just how good the majority of Aggressive Continuum is a deeply frustrating conundrum. As good as 1995’s classic Demanufacture or even its followup, Obsolete, from the band’s golden era?

Probably not, but not by far. Opener Recode has all the hallmarks of the band – Dino Cazares’ samurai-sword riffs, Burton’s gruff, shredded throat giving way to his melodic croon on the turn of a dime, some Blade Runner-esque futuristic soundscapes – but is joined by a brass section at the song’s climax.

Fear Factory gone ska this is not, and despite what surrounds it being fairly typical Fear Factory fare, on paper it’s an idea that really shouldn’t work. So it’s testament to the continual tweaking and experimenting a band of this vintage are willing to continue to do

STEPHANIE CABRAL/PRESS

LA’s industrial metal legends patch over their latest short-circuit

ADAM Sun

VENERATE INDUSTRIES Greek stoner rockers only half-bake their strudel

“FEAR FACTORY HAVE BEEN AS MUCH A SOAP OPERA AS THEY’VE BEEN A GREAT METAL BAND” that it really is a very different sound to anything they’ve done before.

After that, it’s clear that Fear Factory know exactly what side their bread is buttered on, and they smash through another nine slabs of ferocious cybermetal. The groove of Disruptor and the staccato riffing of Manufactured Hope in particular hit the bullseye, and there’s probably some kind of allegoric concept about how your iPhone is your master, your microwave controls you and your electric blanket will overthrow humanity and become your new overlord in here as well. Basically, it’s exactly what longtime fans would hope for. Even the opening riff to the final track, End Of Line, is

almost identical to Zero Signal from their 1995 classic, Demanufacture. But when you are so good at doing this incredibly unique and specific thing, that’s not a problem at all. Thirty-two years into their career and Fear Factory remain superbly adept at crafting records that serve to enhance their legacy as a legendary band. It’s really what they get up to away from the studio that is their Achilles heel. If you can ignore that, then Aggressive Continuum is enough to keep you believing in them.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Strapping Young Lad, Ministry, Static-X STEPHEN HILL

Adam claim to “straddle the worlds of grunge, post-rock, alternative metal, psychedelic and stoner rock.” Their debut partially lives up to that promise. Opener …And Then There Was Light is a postrock instrumental that drops into pummelling sludge guitarwork. Threepart finale Monolith worships at the altar of stoner rock’s breathy vocals and bassline heft, while also feeling cinematic in scope.

Sadly, the trio of tracks in between are more by-thenumbers stoner grunge, their verse–chorus–verse– chorus layouts making them rarely as adventurous as the album’s bookends.

Sun suggests that Adam could well fulfil their ambitions of eclecticism in the future – even if this first attempt sees them embark on uneven ground.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Alice In Chains, Junius, Sleep MATT MILLS

ALESTORM

Live In Tilburg NAPALM

Pirate metallers play avast and loose in the Netherlands

Alestorm are best enjoyed visually, and this live DVD brilliantly captures what it’s like to be in one of their sozzled, silly pirate pits.

The sight of the crowd murdering a huge inflatable duck, or floor-rowing to Nancy The Tavern Wench is

what their gigs are all about, although the spectacle does render the audio CD pointless. Furthermore, by the band’s joking admission, the extras here are “low budget”. There’s a media book and vinyl including a cover of viral sea shanty, The Wellerman, which needs to be included in their live sets pronto.

But given the Tilburg gig itself is available to view on YouTube, this box set is probably for the diehards only to plunder.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Korpiklaani, Sabaton, Eluveitie DANNII LEIVERS

ALLUVIAL Sarcoma

NUCLEAR BLAST Atlanta’s former instrumental metallers find their voice

Beginning as a two-man instrumental project in 2016, Alluvial are now a quartet with a vocalist onboard. Ex-Suffocation frontman Kevin Muller has joined the ranks, helping to raise the atmospheric death metallers to the next level.

Although they’ve not completely moved away from their origins – Sugar Paper is a rollercoaster of riffs and drum fills without a vocal line in sight – Muller’s savage tones have added serious clout to what was already an accomplished outfit, highlighted on the likes of Thy Underling and the crushing power of closing track, Anodyne. Given the positive reception of debut album, The Deep Longing For Annihilation, it’s a bold move by Alluvial to add lyrics, but it’s paid off handsomely.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Job For A Cowboy, Allegaeon, Fallujah ELLIOT LEAVER

METALHAMMER.COM 87

VIEWS

Live At Helsinki Ice Hall NUCLEAR BLAST

Finland’s metal masters rejuvenate three decades’ worth of bangers

Atreyu dare anyone to suggest they’ve lost their rough edges

ATREYU Baptize SPINEFARM

Metalcore pioneers gain star power but lose their spark

ATREYU’S INFLUENCE ON

metalcore’s 00s boom and beyond is undeniable, but since the Cali veterans returned from a three-year hiatus in 2014 their second chapter has proved patchy. Since then, they’ve released two albums – 2015’s Long Live and 2018’s In Our Wake – that have been decent, but hardly groundbreaking, with attempts to modernise their sound not always hitting the mark.

The band’s eighth album is their first without founding member and vocalist Alex Varkatzas, who left the band last year. It’s left ex-drummer and clean singer Brandon Saller to step forward as frontman, and he’s steered the band into a polished incarnation that’s more reminiscent of his side-project, Hell Or Highwater. Baptize is geared around the kind of hard-rock anthemia Asking Alexandria aimed for on their most recent album, with huge choruses edging out the grit. When it all aligns, it works.

Save Us is huge, with glistening melodies jostling alongside heavy-handed riffs,

88 METALHAMMER.COM

while well-positioned barks and growls from bassist Marc ‘Porter’ McKnight add much-needed weight.

Yet for all its aim-for-arenas bravado, much of Baptize lacks conviction. For every chorus that buries into your head, such as the title track and Underrated, there are three tracks that pass by without making as much of a dent. Atreyu have pulled in the big guns to pack some punch, but while Untouchable features Jacoby Shaddix, and Travis Barker pops up to batter out a marching band-style drum break on Warrior, the song’s impassioned proclamations of self-belief feel hollow. It’s all executed with polish and aplomb of course, but while Matt Heafy puts in an impassioned vocal from on the heartfelt Oblivion, it doesn’t feel like there’s much else here to scratch below the surface. Baptize is like an adrenaline rush that wears off quickly.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Asking Alexandria, Bullet For My Valentine, Papa Roach DANNII LEIVERS

This double disc becomes essential listening as soon as a twiddling synthesiser explodes into the main riff of The Bee, exacerbated by an earth-shaking growl from Tomi Joutsen. The opener is instantly more dynamic and crushing than its studio counterpart – and the same can be said of the 14 songs that follow.

Recorded on the cusp of their 30th anniversary, Amorphis celebrated by revitalising a career’s worth of genre-spanning anthems in their home town. Melodeath oldie Black Winter Day is skyrocketed by its infallible new singer, while House Of Sleep gets even more arena-piercing thanks to its extended power metal chorus. Flaunting their eclecticism and live muscularity, this is Amorphis in excelsis.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Insomnium, Turisas, Omnium Gatherum MATT MILLS

AN AUTUMN FOR CRIPPLED CHILDREN

As The Morning Dawns We Close Our Eyes PROSTHETIC

Prolific post-black metallers fail to turn over a new leaf

Anyone familiar with this anonymous Dutch trio will already know what to expect from their ninth album in 11 years: abrasive black metal and spacious synths. In Your Light and

FOR FANS OF: Lantlôs, Fen, Alcest REMFRY DEDMAN

BRIDEAR

Bloody Bride SETSUZOKU

Japan’s next idol metal breakout band keep an eye on the classics

Bridear have been a big deal in their native Japan for some time now, but this is their first international release. Over time, the band’s sound has become more melodic and, as a result, Bloody Bride lands somewhere between classic heavy metal and Babymetal’s idol metal, juxtaposing sugary hooks and heart-racing solos with glee. Clearly, there’s a lot of Iron Maidenworship going on, but you can also hear the influence of Children Of Bodom on Keshin and Glitter. Daybreak is a majestic singalong, while The Moment nods to Killswitch Engage and enough of Muse’s penchant for galactic instrumentation to keep things from becoming too one-note. For many, Bloody Bride will serve as an intriguing introduction.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Babymetal, Lovebites, Iron Maiden DANNII LEIVERS

TIMOTHY BRENNAN/PRESS

AMORPHIS

Splendour Unnoticed evoke The Cure as much as they do Darkthrone, with tortured screams interweaved through lush keys and furious tremolo-picked guitar. It’s a captivating mix, albeit one that’s stuck to rigidly throughout the album. There are worse crimes, but with a spate of bands taking this formula and running with it – Holy Fawn, Møl, Respire – it’s unlikely to appeal to many beyond fanatical aficionados of the blackgaze scene.

QQQQQQQQQQ

BURNING WITCHES The Witch Of The North NUCLEAR BLAST

Switzerland’s classic metal maniacs hit top gear

Burning Witches’ fourth album makes good the trad metal banshees’ promise, cementing a distinct identity and expanding their palette.

They are breathing the same rarefied air as Primal Fear and Hammerfall, but with more youthful exuberance, quirky creativity and fiery swagger. The Circle Of Five’s infectious girl-gang chanting, choppy riffs and gonzo Halford-cumUdo-without-any-nuts-atall shrieking, punctuated with tasteful moody melodies is one example.

Subtle but eccentric operatic harmonies mingle supernaturally with the leather lungs of Laura Guldemond on emotive doom ballad Lady Of The Woods, the formidable frontwoman bringing spontaneous soul and conversational intimacy to its breathless verses.

The quality control and thunderous momentum are maintained for a full hour of fat-free, heads-down heavy metal classicism.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Sabaton CHRIS CHANTLER

<CODE>

Flyblown Prince DARK ESSENCE

Britain’s progressive-minded voyagers return to their roots

After a trek in the post-rock wilderness, <code> have

gone back to black… metal.

It would be easy to dismiss their fifth record as a nostalgic nod to when their line-up comprised members of Hexvessel, Dødheimsgard and Ulver, but Flyblown Prince is the best album they’ve done since 2009’s Resplendent Grotesque. It’s not as feral, yet it stands on its own weird little legs. The ground supporting those stumps is, undoubtedly, Wacian. A dextrous screamer, sure, but when he lets that Morrissey falsetto fly, or he’s whispering and wailing atop Clemency And Atrophy’s greased-up Mayhem-isms, you catch onto what he’s doing – paying uncanny debts to ex-vocalist Kvohst while adding his own idiosyncrasies, and it’s a treat. Mancunian whippersnappers Wode may be dominating British black metal discourse this year so far, but <code> are certainly elbowing them.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Arcturus, Dødheimsgard, Mayhem ALEC CHILLINGWORTH

THE EMBER, THE ASH Fixation

PROSTHETIC Enigmatic missives from the black/metalcore borderlands

A new signing to Prosthetic is often something to be celebrated and The Ember, The Ash are an enigmatic and potentially lucrative addition to the roster.

Ostensibly, the solo endeavour of a musical polymath who goes only by the name , this is a project shrouded in mystery. The blueprint laid down throughout Fixation’s 37 minutes is a curious hybrid of symphonic black metal and elegant metalcore. Within, there’s room for surprising detours

such as the Spanish guitars on A Growing Emptiness or the black-metal-goesMuse approach that provides an outro for The Colossal Void. Some might baulk at such a seemingly preposterous proposition on paper, but the sheer exuberance of the music makes it difficult not to be swept up in its bombast.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Dimmu Borgir, Underoath, Unreqvited REMFRY DEDMAN

Black Moon Mother offer a close encounter

BLACK MOON MOTHER Illusions Under The Sun PETRICHOR

Nashville nightlands

EPIPHANIC TRUTH

Dark Triad: Bitter Psalms To A Sordid Species CHURCH ROAD

Mysterious collective embark on an extreme metal odyssey

Epiphanic Truth’s threetrack debut is an extreme metal event horizon. No other explanation checks for how the band are able to make 43 minutes fly by so quickly as genre boundaries warp, shrink and expand to sound as apocalyptic as watching a star implode. As the songs grow in length, so does the scope extend for where they can go next. Each track is a tightly arranged composition of movements and segments that sees them swing from style to style without diminishing the cohesiveness of the overall record. Across realms of blistering death metal and implacable post-metal all the way through to EDM, posthardcore and fire-andbrimstone black metal, Epiphanic Truth dare to go right off the edge of the map, crafting their own kingdoms where each song is a monument to the concept of extremity.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Ulcerate, Neurosis, Batushka RICH HOBSON

NASHVILLE’S BLACK MOON Mother must have

signed some sort of shady Satanic deal after the release of 2017’s Sea Of Dust EP, because their powers have grown exponentially. While this is very much the same band drawing from the same dark pool of influences, the band’s confidence and songcraft have grown to the point where they’re capable of effortlessly invading your senses. Doom, krautrock, shoegaze and psychedelia cascade into each other like colours in a kaleidoscope, and while the effect might have been distracting in lesser hands, they’re deftly brought in check by carefully manipulated threads of dark, beguiling pop.

Opener Lost In The Maze eases you gently into the band’s world with a smoky sense of film noir sultriness, but it’s not long before other, more intoxicating elements begin to take hold. Around The Finger sounds like the obliterative gloom of True Widow colliding with choice cuts from The Crow soundtrack, while High Winds turns blitzed-out Electric Wizardry into an array of sweet, glittering trickles. Elsewhere, Slow Down offers the kind of smudged thump that’s heavy as heck but bizarrely comforting and Radiant Sun begins with full-throttle motorik rock before exploding into some sort of neuron-frying celestial lightshow.

Brianne O’Neill’s aching, impeccable vocals are the album’s clear focal point, and the other players work to complement them with a backdrop that’s supple and subtle yet possessed of limber, sinewy strength. Guitar solos fling sparks as they cascade and overlap, sprawling ambitiously while refusing to quite compete with either each other or Brianne’s voice. It’s this cult-like sense of togetherness that raises Illusions Under The Sun on high – as though the band are sharing a hallucinatory vision of something distinct and strange, perhaps one of those old, make-you-blink photographs that purport to have captured ghosts, aliens or angels.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Dead Feathers, Gold, Chelsea Wolfe ALEX DELLER

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FLYING CUPID All Turns To Dust SELF-RELEASED

Delhi’s multi-disciplinary prodigy turns his talents to metalcore

Go Ahead And Die tap into a wellspring of rage

GO AHEAD AND DIE Go Ahead And Die NUCLEAR BLAST

Brutal metal’s premiere enthusiast goes back to his filthy roots

DOES MAX CAVALERA ever sleep?

It seems unlikely. The Brazilian icon already has Soulfly and Cavalera Conspiracy, not to mention the somewhat overhyped Killer Be Killed, and churns out albums with the maniacal zeal of a man possessed, still visibly and audibly in love with ugly, brutal music.

Clearly Max had another itch that needed scratching, however.

Because while Go Ahead And Die are definitely not going to surprise dedicated fans of Max’s output over the years, the trio’s debut album is just about different enough from the aforementioned bands to justify its existence. That this album is also the nastiest and most obnoxious thing he has put his name to since Nailbomb’s Point Blank in 1994 says a lot about where his creative priorities lie.

Superficially, Go Ahead And Die tend not to stray from the rudiments of their leader’s trademark sound. Songs like the enjoyably misnamed Truckload Full Of 90 METALHAMMER.COM

Bodies (it’s either a truck full of bodies or a truckload of bodies, surely?) and Toxic Freedom are built around plenty of gnarly chugging and primitive discord. And while the production is brilliantly gritty and raw, we’re often not a million miles away from the more brutal direction that, in particular, Soulfly have taken recently.

Nonetheless, there’s much more going on here, not least a mad-eyed devotion to crustpunk and filthy grind, and Max, bassist and son Igor Amadeus, and drummer Zach Coleman (also of Khemmis) sound utterly psychotic and having the best time ever on the fast and frenzied likes of I.C.E. Cage and Worth Less Than Piss. It’s all deeply honest and unpretentious stuff, just as one might expect from Max Cavalera, but it will cheerfully slice your face off too. He’ll sleep when he’s dead (or deaf), presumably.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Soulfly, Ringworm, Nails DOM LAWSON

Abhiruk Patowary is a 19-year-old guitarist, multi-instrumentalist and composer from the bands Acid Pit and Gaia who, until the pandemic struck, had studied at Boston’s Berklee School Of Music, where the founding members of Dream Theater first met.

Now in quarantine in Delhi, Patowary pushes on with his solo metalcore project.

As you’d expect of a guy who also plays pop, hip hop and jazz, the first thing that slams home is the breathtaking quality of the guitar parts. Bookended by guttural growls, melodious hooks, fleet-fingered picking and battering ram rhythms, the excellent Changes, which first appeared on the Reflections EP, also returns here.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Meshuggah, Killswitch Engage, Periphery DAVE LING

FYRNASK

VII – Kenoma VÁN

Germany’s feral black metallers assault the highest authority

Fyrnask began as the solo black metal project of Fyrnd before he fleshed out the line-up in 2014.

Here, his fascination with mythology continues, exploring Musibatname – a 13th-century text exploring the contradiction of a ‘benevolent’ God and human suffering.

It manifests as resonant,

ritualistic power and feral black metal. Hraevathefr’s sonorous intro belies the abject hell it and Sjodhandi Blodh unleash, before Nidhamyrkr slows to a ritualistic pummel.

Helreginn’s 13 minutes are a slow-burn death waltz while Daudhvana alternates hushed reverence with dizzying variations of pace and aggression, making ethereal closer Blotgudh a welcome salve. This is high-concept, modern black metal, executed with a dedication that requires a reciprocal response.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Svartidauði, Dødsengel, Ash Borer TOM O’BOYLE

GHOSTS OF MEN Exhale

SELF-RELEASED UK alt-rock comics find deeper layers underneath the laughter

Don’t be fooled by Ghosts Of Men’s shtick; beneath the banter there’s a hardrocking duo who take their craft seriously. After 150 festival appearances and a European tour, Exhale sees them embracing their alternative rock sound with splashes of Queens Of The Stone Age and Clutch.

Laced with quiet humour and introspective musings, from the sombre opening tones of Breathe In to the rocking indie-jangle of their closing BBC session, Bullet, Exhale is never overtly comedic, even if Tell Me Why really is about losing the TV remote, as singer and guitarist Clegg claims. For a two-piece, GOM pack a punch – check out the Red Fang-inclined riffs on Crooked Back – revelling in explosive rock made for the stage.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Wolfmother, Clutch, The Black Keys HOLLY WRIGHT

HACKTIVIST Hyperdialect UNFD

Grime metal activists keep add more prongs to their attack

Hacktivist’s debut fulllength, Outside The Box, established them as a collective with a flagrant disregard for genre boundaries. Their seething, multi-pronged attack targeted politics, societal injustices and the media.

Unsurprisingly, their follow-up finds the quintet with equally itchy feet.

Hyperdialect includes 2019 singles Dogs Of War and Reprogram, which were akin to battle cries, oozing with acerbic filth and serving as a warning of what was to come from these bloody-minded insurrectionists. Quickfire rapping remains an inherent element with dual vocalists Jot Maxi and J Hurley spitting bars on grime-inflected bangers Lifeform and Turning Tables.

There’s a nu metal bounce to Kid Bookie-featured cut Armoured Core, while the infectious title track bursts with urgency and flexes the band’s genre-fluid muscle.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Body Count, Heart Of A Coward, Rage Against The Machine SOPHIE MAUGHAN

HANGING GARDEN Skeleton Lake LIFEFORCE

Melodic Fins find a glimpse of bliss amongst the gloom

Melodic death-doom septet Hanging Garden’s seventh album sees the band build further upon the presence

of vocalist Riikka Hatakka, wife of existing vocalist Toni. Riikka joined the band for 2019’s Into That Good Night, allowing them to expand in new directions. Her impact’s felt immediately in the opening contrasts of Kuura, its tremulous riff and Toni’s harsh-throated roars offset by her gentler lilt.

It’s a stylistic counterpoint used frequently, in the punchy verse/chorus riffathon of Nowhere Haven, the sombre balladry of Winter’s Kiss and the melodic peaks and valleys of the epic Tunturi. Hanging Garden’s newfound vocal duet is twofold in impact – adding new dimensions, yet constraining their sound to conform to the new dynamic. Skeleton Lake is built on melancholic foundations, but this time rays of sunlight glint across frozen depths.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Katatonia, Vaura, Mothlite TOM O’BOYLE

Midlife Hollow’s curt postpunk/new wave combo – the result borders on transcendent innovation.

Unfortunately, there are far too many spots – Everything Is Vain’s sour post-doom and frustrating ballad Jasmines – where the band are grasping at over-extended straws. Antidote continues Impure Wilhelmina’s battle with themselves, where imagination and vision outstrip ability and ultimately make for a perpetual tease and lack of satisfaction.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: The Ocean, Cult Of Luna, Kylesa CONNIE GORDON

Antidote

SEASON OF MIST Swiss post-metallers still finding a mountain to climb

Seven albums in, Geneva’s Impure Wilhelmina continue to suffer from their musical output lagging behind their lofty conceptual goals.

Encouragingly, Antidote continues the band’s progressive forward motion, pulling in influences from across the sonic charcuterie board, but the contents of vocalist/guitarist/band leader Michael Schindl’s head still haven’t effectively and consistently been transposed via his fingers and vocal cords, as it were.

When they lock into a lane – such as the haunting post-metal of Solitude and

Where EP is short for ‘Epic Potential’

THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA

GÅTE

SOLID STATE

Nightfall is spirited, the melodic weariness of Forlorn is palpable, but for all the atmospheric threads and full-pelt vocals, this five-track chapter is less magically frenetic than the 2010 Zombie OG. QQQQQQQQQQ

The celebrated Norwegian folk rockers reimagine four classic tracks as ancient Norse hymns. Including one new song, these stripped-down versions transport you to a warm afternoon reclining at the base of Yggdrasil.

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NIK YOUNG

JOE DALY

HIDEOUS DIVINITY

KATAAN

CENTURY MEDIA

PROSTHETIC

ZII EP

Til Nord EP

INDIE RECORDINGS

KHANDRA

All Occupied By Sole Death SEASON OF MIST

Bleak uprisings from the new kids on the black metal bloc

IMPURE WILHELMINA

SMALL MERCIES

This relatively unknown entity – aside from their frontman, who growled on Relics Of Humanity’s killer death metal debut back in 2014 – are from Minsk, Belarus, and it shows. You can’t help but instantly visualise cold, austere and grey abandoned buildings hidden in the fog in some deserted factory. Dissonant All Occupied By Sole Death may be, but besides its massive production, it’s the album’s ability to move at different speeds with sudden eruption of blastbeats or syncopated rhythms while firmly staying focused that really sets them apart. The most intricate tracks such as With The Blessing Of Starless Night, have more in common with, say, Ulcerate than Darkthrone, with its weird arpeggios, industrial vibes and sprawling drums.

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LV-426

Kataan

While a mere taster at three songs, the Italian deathsters’ tribute to the Alien mythology is savage and scary enough to be worthy of the original two, before Predator, CGI and Ridley’s return ruined everything.

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Kataan are a dystopian death metal two-piece featuring former and current members of Vattnet Viskar and Astronoid. Their modernist brutality across these four tracks is abyssal in tone and revelatory in depth.

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ADAM REES

TOM O’BOYLE

LOVEBITES

OF MICE & MEN

JPU

SHARPTONE

Glory, Glory, To The World

Bloom

FOR FANS OF: E_ęY$ :dYr] Of Perdition, Ulcerate

Galloping drums. Demented guitar wizardry. Piano solos. Histrionics to rival the biggest symphonic bands. Lovebites’ latest EP, now physically available outside of Japan, is the band’s most brilliantly overblown statement so far.

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On this second in a threepart EP collection for 2021, the California rockers offer up a trio of tracks brimming with shoutalong hooks, expansive melodies and a frankly absurd number of stomping riffs.

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OLIVIER BADIN

DANNII LEIVERS

SOPHIE MAUGHAN

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KING OF ASGARD Svartrviðr TROLLMUSIC

Swedish warriors drift into grim and cold territory

NOCTULE Wretched Abyss CHURCH ROAD

Svalbard’s Serena Cherry slays a few more dragons

FANTASY EPICS AND black metal

continue their love affair with Noctule, the solo project of Svalbard singer/ guitarist Serena Cherry. Made during lockdown, the record is themed entirely on Bethesda’s epic open world role-playing videogame, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It marks an escapist departure from her day job.

Svalbard’s forthright posthardcore with shoegaze and black metal traits is far from fantasy, wielding its assault in direct attack on social injustices. On Wretched Abyss Cherry’s penchant for black metal comes to the fore.

It’s a balefully heroic-sounding record full of long songs, inspired by the deep lore and frostbitten environs of the mythic world of Skyrim and its Tolkienesque tales of dragons, might and magic. As the atonal, tremolo rumble of Elven Sword gathers pace, Serena is atypically raw-throated but less direct.

Instead, she haunts the track, letting heraldic guitars and tumbling fills take the fore. Labyrinthian follows, a song about her favourite dungeon quest in the game. Ancient ruins built by a dragon

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cult are brought to life with a mournful, mid-paced threnody, as rhythm and lead guitars make compelling – and at times cacophonous – counter-points, coming into focus for the big melodic hook. Winterhold tells the tale of a once-great city ravaged by cataclysm with a proud, rousing hook that prevails despite being beset on all sides by gnashing guitars and insistent percussive pummelling. Evenaar switches the tempo up a bit with a staccato riff, yet still maintaining the slow, over-arching grandiosity of the record, while Deathbell Harvest evokes the poisonous nature of its titular flower, collected by players as an ingredient for lethal potions.

As black metal, the songs can occasionally suffer for their repetitive nature, but for fans of The Elder Scrolls, Wretched Abyss makes for an excellent alternate soundtrack. It’s gleefully nerdy fun that further proves Serena Cherry’s unrelenting force as a songwriter.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Fen, Drudkh, Havukruunu TOM O’BOYLE

The best pagan and Viking metal evokes a sense of being assailed by the elements, and King Of Asgard’s fourth full-length is as blustery as they come.

The Swedes’ melodic death has become blacker and less overtly tuneful over the years, and their expertise at conjuring that windswept atmosphere has been steadily refined too. As a result, this is a much more immersive album than its predecessors, with songs that explore the full potential of single, simple ideas, both at a grandiloquent slug’s pace and at full blistering pelt. The finest thing here, Kvikr (‘Alive’) is a defiant, stormy travelogue, full of bombastic old-school metal moments but also queasy, caustic melodies wrenched from an icy night sky.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Einherjer, Moonsorrow, Thyrfing DOM LAWSON

MENTAL CRUELTY A Hill To Die Upon UNIQUE LEADER

German deathcore brutes create a symphony of destruction

While 2019’s Inferis saw synths used for added atmosphere, A Hill To Die Upon sees Mental Cruelty embracing the full bells and whistles symphonic approach. Though the cavalcade of vocals and final descent of Death

Worship show the Germans can still slam with the best of them, the more caustic, blackened air that now permeates their sound gives them a far more vibrant and thrilling dynamic range. Abadon’s lofty peaks and crushing lows is a perfect example, with the grandiosity of the title track, and windswept closer The Left Hand Path revelling in Scandinavian bombast. Though guest virtuoso Yo Onityan steals the show on opener proper Ultima Hypocrtia, the regal leads and melodies of Marvin Kessler set a heroic scope throughout.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Carnifex, Make Them Suffer, Osiah ADAM REES

MOLYBARON The Mutiny SELF-RELEASED

International alt-metallers rustle up a big box of tricks

This French/Irish quartet have been described as alt-metal, but it hardly feels like it’s covering enough bases to adequately capture their sound. Over 10 riffdriven tracks the band do recall the likes of Therapy? or even Prong at their heaviest, such as on the speedy chug of The Lighthouse, but there is a bombast to The Mutiny that feels almost power metal-esque, with second track Lucifer just pure heavy metal thunder. There is also a baroque, gothic edge to vocalist and guitarist Gary Kelly’s performance, the frontman crooning as if he is auditioning for The Sisters Of Mercy on Something For The Pain.

Diverse and satisfying, The Mutiny is a banger.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Therapy?, Helmet, Alter Bridge STEPHEN HILL

JOHN ASHBY/PRESS

Serena Cherry over-thinks her next move in Skyrim

THE MONOLITH DEATHCULT

V3 – Vernedering: Connect The Goddamn Dots HUMAN DETONATOR

Kampen’s craziest death metal brutes expand their sonic universe

Epic, brutal and never knowingly sensible, The Monolith Deathcult don’t so much make death metal albums as audio-cinematic monstrosities, rich with multi-layered pomp and liberally interspersed with expert-level dicking about.

The third part in the Dutch mavericks’ largely incomprehensible trilogy is underpinned by the notion that they’re secretly destroying the world via some atrocious, possibly digestion-related act of chemical warfare. In contrast, the music is no joke. From Connect The Goddamn Dots’ hyperblasting Ministry worship and the murderous doom of The White Silence to rampaging death metal futurism of They Drew First Blood, this is another irresistibly eccentric masterclass in OTT bombast and wild extremity. No one else does DM quite like this.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Septicflesh, Strapping Young Lad, Ministry DOM LAWSON

MONSTER MAGNET A Better Dystopia NAPALM

Psych rock veterans trip out to their acid-fried inspirations

Now in their fourth decade, Monster Magnet have created a walloping cosmic squall that draws deeply

from early proto-metal and the psychedelic fringe of the 60s and 70s. Their latest is an all-covers collection that shines a light on some of the band’s most important – and obscure – influences. For many, only Hawkwind’s Born To Go will ring a bell, as they rev up the classic into a surging, psychoactive banger. The Fuzztones’ Epitaph For A Head and Dust’s Learning To Die take on a scorching vitality with a storm of reverb-drenched riffs, swirling polyrhythms and Dave Wyndorf’s barbarous, galactic howl. A druggedout paranoia permeated the early acid rock movement but here it’s pure pomp and swagger. Eclectic and enthralling, Monster Magnet have served up an ultra-heavy ode to the originals while making them entirely their own.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Amon Düül II, Michael Yonkers Band, Captain Beyond JOE DALY

MOUTH FOR WAR Life Cast In Glass 1126

Colorado’s metallic hardcore crew take heart from tragedy

This Colorado five-piece were formed by members of Bruise and Remain and their first full-length suggests they have a lot to offer the world.

Heartbreakingly, singer Trae Roberts wrote this album about his young sister who was killed in early 2020 and the first single, Manifesting You, is an accurate portrayal of the sound and tone. Taking metal and metalcore and injecting old-school hardcore and modern tinges into the mix, this album is packed with an arsenal of fierce, engaging tracks including Fear Is The

Product, I Don’t Want To Feel At All and Take My Place. The breakdowns are brutal, the gruff vocals are strong and emotive, and they even add a guest appearance from the vocalist of Dying Wish.

All in all, it’s an effort to be proud of.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Purgatory, Lamb of God, Code Orange NIK YOUNG

Our Hollow, Our Home make a collective show of catharsis

OUR HOLLOW, OUR HOME NADJA

Luminous Rot SOUTHERN LORD

Canadian doom-gazers offer an apocalyptic close encounter

On their latest, mightily impressive pedal-hopping orbit around the more abrasive recesses of shoegaze’s sonic cathedral, Aidan Baker and Leah Buckareff weigh in with an aesthetic spin on the alien ‘first contact’ theory. Taking wkhlu#fxhv#iurp#Vwdqlvôdz# Lem’s classic sci-fi novels, Solaris and Fiasco, the pair navigate purple surges of galaxy-sized flange and neo-psychedelic static as a bludgeoning drum machine counts away the moments to potential apocalypse. The distorted communiques of wrathful extra-terrestrials seem to momentarily emerge from the perpetual nimbus churn pervading Starres, yet more enduring revelations surface during the title track. A triumphant, martial stomp veiled in a mantle of peach fuzz, its otherworldliness resides in the powers of a sudden chord change, rising up from this album’s absorbingly tyrannical brand of woozy dreamsludge. It feels near monumental and downright euphoric.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Jesu, Sunn O))), My Bloody Valentine SPENCER GRADY

Burn In The Flood HOLLOW MUSIC

Southampton’s metalcore champions share their struggles

OUR HOLLOW, OUR

Home guitarist Tobias Young channelled the pain of losing his father to cancer directly into 2018’s In Moment // In Memory. Unafraid to tackle grief in its entirety, it remained unapologetic in its lyrical subject matter.

Heart-wrenching poignancy intermingled with technical precision as the record’s conceptual segues and impassioned tracks depicted a raw-yet-crushing wall of sound.

Three years on, OHOH are once again delving into their emotional arsenal, but instead utilising everyone’s personal struggles. Fuelled by blood, sweat and tears, Burn In The Flood is representative of a band wearing their hearts on their sleeves, from start to Seven Years (Shine A Light On Me)’s hair-raising, fade-to-black finish.

Straight out of the blocks, the title track raids the senses with a devastating combo of riffs offset by stirring bursts of electronica, before searing cleans clash enticingly with gut-punching roars; defiant cries of ‘So hand in hand we go, my friend, to burn in the flood!’ pushing it towards anthem status.

Covering similar ground, Failsafe and Nerv revel in emotionally charged melodies and huge choruses.

These aren’t the most immediate songs on the album, but only a few listens are required before they’re lodged firmly in your cranium. Earnest confessional-of-sorts Better Daze shows off OHOH’s razor-sharp melodic streak, but when it comes to lung-bursting metalcore, Remember Me (featuring a cameo from Crystal Lake’s Ryo Kinoshita) is a synapse-shattering display of fragility and ferocity that floods all the senses.

Although not as painfully raw as its grief-driven predecessor, Burn In The Flood’s melodies are rich, its guitars soar and the voices are carried with absolute conviction. Our Hollow, Our Home are still guaranteed to fill any room they walk into.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Polaris, Bury Tomorrow, While She Sleeps SOPHIE MAUGHAN

METALHAMMER.COM 93

S James Kent uncovers the bleak in the sleek

PROSPERINA Flag

SELF-RELEASED Eclectic Welsh progressives wring glory from their gloom

PERTURBATOR Lustful Sacraments BLOOD MUSIC

France’s synthwave guru goes deeper into the dark side

THE LAST TIME we heard

from James ‘Perturbator’ Kent in 2017, synthwave had reached critical mass.

What began in the 2000s as bedroom DJs uniting 80s exuberance and vigorous electro beats had exploded into the mainstream, cramming dancefloors and soundtracking blockbusters. So, having helped popularise the genre with the Metroidvania vibrancy of 2012’s I Am The Night and 2014’s Dangerous Days, the Frenchman had grown bored of it. 2016’s The Uncanny Valley and especially 2017’s New Model EP proved darker, heavier, grimier – less nostalgic club night and more seedy underground orgy.

Lustful Sacraments is another bleak-sounding take on synthwave, albeit drawn more from post-punk gloom than violent beats. Inspired equally by Siouxsie And The Banshees and Las Vegas hedonism, it could soundtrack the party you throw before the day you die: sinful, energetic, plagued with nihilism.

Intermittently, this is a swaggering EDM bender.

Excess invigorates with its fast-paced beats, while a melodic synth line twirls. ‘Excess! Excess! Excess!’ a laddish chorus chants, like your mates cheering you on as you down one more drink, despite you saying you’d had enough. The bouncing Death Of The Soul could cram an Ibiza club, and Messalina, Messalina swaps between hurrying drums and smooth guitars, staying essential throughout. Then there’s Secret Devotion – an ominous rocker with an Ian Curtis-channelling drawl courtesy of True Body’s Isabella Moreno-Riaño. Subtle dread rings out from the title track’s echoing strums and distant spoken word; Dethroned Under A Funeral Haze is as slow as a dirge, before God Says’ post-rock concludes proceedings with a breathy, sobering comedown.

Finding the existential unease within the life and soul of the party, Lustful Sacraments is destined to be a diverse classic in, ironically, the genre Perturbator’s sick of.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Clan Of Xymox, Tides From Nebula, Dan Terminus MATT MILLS

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Prosperina have never been wedded to one genre, unafraid of segueing from an indie-inspired chorus to a knuckle-grazing doom riff, or peppering their arrangements with stoner grooves. But rather than rolling out a sonic mess, this Welsh outfit have sensitively blended elements to create something that is uniquely them. Deep Never’s deep bass and melancholy is a throwback to 90s melodic grunge but elsewhere the band toy with doomy tones and proggy passages like Runner In The Maze – an absorbing fix of gratifying jams and reverb-drenched vocals.

Flag takes a dim view of society, felt most potently on the dystopian stomp of Boot – a distillation of Prosperina’s melancholic but confident ambition.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Kyuss, Alice In Chains, Hard-Fi HOLLY WRIGHT

RAKTA & DEAFKIDS Live At Sesc Pompéia RAPID EYE

Brazilian noisemongers join forces for a mutual freakout

Live shows. Remember them? In the Before Times, São Paulo’s prime pairing of experimental noisefiddlers – that being Rakta and Deafkids – did one.

And it was… something.

Pick’n’mixing fragmented back catalogues and

collaborative efforts, these two bands work most effectively as a collective when reheating old gristle.

Deafkids’ seven-minute tribal freakout, Espirais Da Loucura, carves up an extra slice of uneasiness as Rakta’s Paula Rebellato ululates against a garbled sax sample. Likewise, Rakta’s Flor Da Pele enjoys (well, is forced to accommodate) an overdose of percussive intensity, by virtue of Deafkids’ blunt approach. The intensity and the pull-and-release groove create a thrill akin to Swans, but with much better haircuts.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Swans, Lightning Bolt, Killing Joke ALEC CHILLINGWORTH

WORLD SERVICE from around the globe

AROGYA Genesis

OUT OF LINE MUSIC

This Indian quintet ponder the complexities of mankind’s birth. The subject matter may be complex, but their melodic hybrid of metal, modern rock and synth is anything but.

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RISE AGAINST

Nowhere Generation

EXTERMINATED

Chicago’s melodic punk veterans hit another energy spike

BRUTE!

SPINEFARM

As catchy as it recognisable, this new 11-track offering from Chicago’s punk rock staples is packed with hooks, chuggy riffs and vocals that ache to be sung along to. While the title track houses the most intoxicating stadium rock chorus on here, Nowhere Generation reinforces the calibre of Rise Against’s hyper-accessible songwriting talent, from the early seductive melodies of Sudden Urge through the more urgent pace and slippery guitar solos in Broken Dreams, Inc. to even the earnest stringenhanced ballad, Forfeit.

Over two decades and nine albums deep and Rise Against’s momentum and spirit hasn’t dented an inch. Good on ’em.

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The Genesis Of Genocide This Philippines duo remain hung up on Suffocation and Deeds Of Flesh. But plagued by the dreadful snare-thatgoes-bong and with little substance, this is for is the initiated only.

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SPELLFORGER

Upholders Of Evil EP PERSONAL RECORDS

FOR FANS OF: Boysetsfire, Anti-Flag, Pennywise

Diving into the sandpit where d-beat-driven punk, speed and nascent black metal once kicked up a storm, these Indonesians have captured the postapocalyptic-grebos-intanks spirit to a tee.

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NIK YOUNG

JONATHAN SELZER

SCAR OF THE SUN Inertia NAPALM

Progressive metal mastery from the hard streets of Greece

These Greek prog metallers’ third album blends expansive melodies with soaring choruses and a layered narrative combining social trials and tribulations with a plethora of scientific terminology. The vast soundscapes of I Am The Circle and The Fallible Experiment are enough to draw you in on first listen, while the trilogy of Quantum Leap Zero tracks will continue to divulge layers in their lyrics no matter how many times they’re played. This two-pronged attack of sumptuous music and challenging subject matters takes great skill to pull off successfully, yet Scar Of The Sun have done it with ease. For those willing to give this record the time to reveal its secrets, the rewards are rich and plentiful.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Opeth, Tesseract, Devin Townsend ELLIOT LEAVER

Malave, they smear Phantom Indigo in similar excesses of mucus-thick sludge, clogging up time puzzles of their own devising while Moore hops between haunted, obnoxious growls and porcine squeals. But, on the instrumental piledriver The Forgetting Curve and during the title track’s contagious groove, the inebriating murk momentarily parts and palpable refrains take shape. It’s brief respites such as these that distinguish Seputus from Pyrrhon. And yet, Phantom Indigo’s confounding eccentricities, while getting theoretical ballast from neurologist Oliver Sacks’ Hallucinations book, readily evoke passages of Daniel Paul Schreber’s Memoirs Of My Nervous Illness – an account of demonic possession plucked from the depths of spiralling madness.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Pyrrhon, Artificial Brain, Gigan SPENCER GRADY

SETH

La Morsure Du Christ SEASON OF MIST

Bordeaux’s cult black metallers replenish their roots

SEPUTUS

Phantom Indigo WILLOWTIP

JAMES REXROAD/PRESS

Pyrrhon members delve into the hallucinogenic depths

The music made by Stephen Schwegler and Doug Moore in their Seputus guise doesn’t vary greatly from their day jobs in New York tech-death confounders Pyrrhon.

Along with bassist Erik

Although musically, Seth’s 1998 debut album, Les Blessures De L’Âme is still revered in their native France, its epic, visceral edge has been traded for a more intricate approach in the two decades since.

Until now. Yet to suggest La Morsure Du Christ is a simple nostalgia trip would be reductive. They might have switched back to French lyrics, but it’s in service to their current frontman Saint Vincent’s spiteful yet clear enunciation. And while Seth have seemingly

reverted to their early style, they’re now infused with a newfound sense of melody and far less simple arrangements.

Corsepainted and blasphemous as it may be, La Morsure… is a far more complex, contemporary and successful synthesis of past and present than it seems at first bite.

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Red Fang: Portland’s 12th best quiz team

FOR FANS OF: Emperor, Thorns, Vorkreist OLIVIER BADIN

RED FANG Arrows RELAPSE

SHEVILS

Miracles Of The Sun SELF-RELEASED

Nordic hardcore punks get their own erection

Hiding the sailor hat, taking the rocket out of your arse and hoping nobody twigs you’re just ripping off Turbonegro has worked wonders for many young Norwegian bands, so it’s refreshing to hear Shevils somewhat buck that trend. Alright, Monsters On TV and We Failed This World’s yappy choruses are straight-up Hank Von Hell, but that’s just a wee fragment of their fourth full-length. Songs like Ride The Flashes and Idiot Task Force clumsily two-step to the rhythm of melodic US hardcore like Have Heart more than, say, the smörgåsbord of Scandi stuff ranging from Kvelertak to Wolfbrigade.

It’s a tempting table to swipe from, so that Shevils manage to sound quintessentially Norske without bottling it and revealing their Turbojugend Chapter is impressive.

Nothing on Miracles Of The Sun will redefine your idea of punk, but it’s tremendous fun.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Have Heart, Verse, Fugazi ALEC CHILLINGWORTH

Portland’s stoner sultans adjust their sights

FOR MORE THAN

a decade we’ve come to rely on Red Fang, always knowing they’ll bring some of the dirtiest yet catchiest riffs around, while oozing an enormous sense of fun from every orifice. However, the stoner quartet we find in 2021 are a familiar yet mutated being, with the spacey exploration that began to seep through on 2016’s Only Ghosts seemingly consuming the whole of this fifth effort. The full-throttle tracks are still there, most notably in the form of the rollicking, fuzzy twang of My Disaster and the short, sharp stomp of Rabbits In Hives. But from the rumbling mire of opener Take It Back onwards it’s clear that this is a darker, more nefarious version of Red Fang, with subtle synths and a procession of menacing moods throughout.

Having worked with superstar production duo Ross Robinson and Joe Barresi last time around, Arrows welds its more adventurous approach with traditional boisterous heft thanks to returning producer Chris Fun. His knob-twiddling makes use of the fur-covered tones yet still delivers the grunt when it’s required. Anodyne’s weird psychedelic verses give way to an avalanche of a chorus, while the monolithic stomp of Fonzi Scheme is set off-balance by some extremely angular strings.

Even on the more melodic refrain of the title track the vocals sound more monstrous than usual, while the trippy slow-burn of Days Collide is given a jolt of life two and a half minutes in to shake the beast from its cavernous slumber.

Longtime fans needn’t worry, as there’s still plenty of humour to be found buried just beneath the surface, and Arrows will certainly deliver the ideal soundtrack for 43 minutes of raucous headbanging, beer swilling and whatever extra-curricular activity is required. There’s just a bit more to chew on afterwards.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Torche, High On Fire, The Melvins ADAM REES

METALHAMMER.COM 95

SILVER LAKE BY ESA HOLOPAINEN

Silver Lake By Esa Holopainen NUCLEAR BLAST

Amorphis guitarist embarks on a sublime solo journey

SOMNURI Nefarious Wave BLUES FUNERAL RECORDINGS

Brooklyn riffmongers bring panache to their punch

THERE’S A DECEPTIVE elegance

to Somnuri’s brand of meaty metal. This comes across as the power trio – led by ex-Tower drummer Justin Sherrell, here assuming the role of guitarist/vocalist – possess a mysterious adeptness at simultaneously sounding like gilded seraphs while peeling off thick slabs of syrupy slick sludge metal.

They’re the musical equivalent of a cauliflowereared MMA fighter tuxedo-ing up for a charity ball; an executive chef creating a gourmet meal out of kitchen scraps; or the manifestation of an angel on one shoulder shouting at the devil on the other. Somnuri are three impressively hirsute headbangers with an uncanny skill at crafting delicate sonic horizons as incoming storms rumble, illuminate and threaten in the near-distance. And they do so despite employing a moniker that belies the roughshod roots of their Brooklyn HQ by sounding like the starting goalie of Finland’s Olympic ice hockey team.

Lead-off track Tied To Stone bursts from the proverbial gate sounding like

96 METALHAMMER.COM

early 00s techcore on a stoner rock bender with Botch-inspired staccato pulsations and hammer-on/pull-off riffs counteracted by major chord washes and a soaring, humming vocal baritone. By the time Nefarious Wave reaches its third offering, Desire Lines, a seamless transition has been made to the top of a particularly hazy and gastrointestinal tract-rumbling stoner/ sludge subsection that juxtaposes Phil Arman’s blower bass and Phil SanGiacomo’s frenetic drum fills with Sherrell’s echo-drenched croon, before Beyond Your Last Breath returns to steamroll with furious class and violent panache.

There are a couple of moments during the album’s back end where the band appear to run out of gas. Parts of Watch The Lights Go Out and In The Grey spend a bit too much time highlighting meandering flash instead of playing to the actual song. But overall, Somnuri’s second full-length exudes a deft balance between dexterity and destruction.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Mastodon, Torche, Converge CONNIE GORDON

Spurred on by record producer Nino Laurenne and the pandemic, Amorphis songsmith Esa Holopainen has assembled his first solo project.

Featuring a frankly eargasm-inducing array of guest singers – including Leprous’s Einar Solberg and Katatonia’s Jonas Renkse – the nine-track opus is a genre-fluid, often remarkable affair that makes you wonder why the guitarist didn’t strike out alone decades ago. Tackling topics such as mental health and drawing inspiration from Pink Floyd, the waltzing, grandiose and gorgeous Sentiment is a standout, as is The Division Bell-meetsMorricone-flavoured title track. Best of all is the hook-laden power ballad Fading Moon, which should bring the house down once live shows return.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Amorphis, Katatonia, Leprous EDWIN MCFEE

UNGFELL Es Grauet EISENWALD

Mad, midnight hikes through the snow-capped gates of Hell

Digging deep under the Alpine snow to unearth something nefarious and vile, Ungfell have taken a big step up for their third album. Es Grauet is raw and

ragged for much of its 40minute duration, but there’s a fuller, heavier sound that previous records only hinted at. This Swiss duo’s vision is broad, with woozy woodland ambience and disarming bursts of plainsong and acoustic folk filling the gaps between explosive, macabre epics like Tyfels Antlitz and Mord Im Tobel. Replete with the twinkly charm of clonking cowbells, Es Grauet paints a grim but darkly magical view of life in the moonlit mountains, where riffs will scythe your head off for all eternity.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Cultes Des Ghoules Mork, Selvans DOM LAWSON

VOLA

Witness MASCOT

Danish prog metallers go makeor-break for the mainstream

Witness sits between being a milestone release for Vola or a millstone to their creative ambitions. 2018’s Applause Of A Distant Crowd saw them strike a winning balance between djent, pop and prog, and Witness largely continues that happy marriage. Jacob Hansen’s mixing embraces the band’s natural maximalist tendencies whilst lending a familiar mainstream metal sheen to Straight Lines and Napalm.

But there’s also a sense that parts of Vola’s sound have been over-simplified and neutered to get there.

Luckily, These Black Claws turns out to be Witness’s ace in the hole – a collaboration with hip hop duo Shahmen that sounds like nu metal gone prog with thrilling anthemic potential.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Pain Of Salvation, Soen, Tesseract RICH HOBSON

TEALBRIDGE/PRESS

Somnuri’s riffs stand at the high end of low-end

WHITE MOTH BLACK BUTTERFLY The Cost Of Dreaming KSCOPE

Tesseract polymath adds a sinister edge to his alt-pop project

Less than six months after releasing Ruins, a reimagining of his 2019 solo album, Castles, Dan Tompkins is back with the third album from his experimental pop sideproject. The Cost Of Dreaming takes WMBB’s chamber pop in a more electronic, direction. Occasionally, the effect is bright and ethereal. On tracks like Portals and Bloom, the Tesseract singer’s strident voice – the band’s selling point for most metal fans – takes centre stage aside gossamer-light vocals from bandmate Jordan Turner.

Elsewhere, a menacing undertone pushes things in a sinister direction. Take Pray For Rain’s pulsing, nightmarish synths harbour a chorus, that Depeche Mode would kill for, and the unnerving Use You tackles domestic violence. This is a brave and bold addition an already impressive back catalogue.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Skyharbor, Depeche Mode, Massive Attack DANNII LEIVERS

WORM SHEPHERD In The Wake Ov Sòl UNIQUE LEADER

US blackened deathcore mob still seeking more strings to their bow

The opening moments of this debut full-length album promise much: strummed acoustic chords,

a brief tinkling of the ivories and an explosive descent into characteristic blackened deathcore. To say Worm Shepherd stick rigidly to the formula would be a little harsh, but deviations are fleeting at best and contribute relatively little to the album as a whole. The peppered symphonic elements at least give the impression of some sense of grandiosity and ambition but at 50 minutes, it doesn’t take long before In The Wake Ov Sòl loses its oppressively brutal power. If Worm Shepherd concentrated and expanded on some of their more unorthodox ideas, such as the Danny Elfman-meetsWhitechapel pomposity of Wretchedness Upon The Gates, they could bring something new to the scene rather than simply mimic it.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Whitechapel, Mire Lore, Chelsea Grin REMFRY DEDMAN

WRISTMEETRAZOR

Replica Of A Strange Love PROSTHETIC

Millennial metalcore revivalists get nostalgic for savagery

Over the last few years, the likes of .gif from god, Seeyouspacecowboy and Frail Body have been on a quest to bring back the early 00s metalcore and post-hardcore boom of Cave In, Thursday and Botch, and Wristmeetrazor wear those influences on their sleeves more than most. Before you even press play the cover of Replica Of A Strange Love looks like it could have been released on Trustkill in 2001. For those who loved the sound of early Eighteen Visions a song like Sycophant will feel like a gloriously nostalgic comfort blanket, while younger folk will

surely be shocked at just how unrelenting and savage metalcore can sound when it hasn’t had all of its edges shaved off. They never hit the heights of their heroes, but Wristmeetrazor’s intentions are laudable.

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RESURRECTIONS Unearthing the latest metal reissues Satyricon’s Satyr the wild

FOR FANS OF: Poison The Well, Seeyouspacecowboy, The Bled STEPHEN HILL

YOO DOO RIGHT

Don’t Think You Can Escape Your Purpose MOTHLAND

Cosmic Canadians take a psych rock trip across the ages

There’s something impressive about a band who can pull from half a century’s worth of experimental music and make it all sound seamless.

Yoo Doo Right accomplish this with their debut – a seemingly effortless mix of 60s psych, 70s krautrock and 90s post-rock that peeps in on labels like Kranky, Quarterstick and Dischord. The cracked orchestral flourishes of Godspeed You! Black Emperor give way to elasticated riffing and deliciously blown-out crunches, merging lightdappled prettiness and hypnotic surges one moment and looming, oppressive drones the next. While psychedelia can often wibble off into nothingness and post-rock can frequently fail in its fussy attempts to impress, YDR avoid such pitfalls thanks to muscular heave and a vibrant sense of purpose. The sound, scope and palette are all huge, and so, thankfully, is the songwriting talent.

QQQQQQQQQQ FOR FANS OF: Mogwai, And So I Watch You From Afar, Flower Travellin’ Band ALEX DELLER

SATYRICON’S FIRST TWO albums emerged in

1994, a pivotal time for Norwegian black metal. Dark Medieval Times [7] still feels like the scene’s wide-eyed little brother, all haphazard arrangements and weedy guitars. Some atmospheric folk passages and Frost’s drumming showed promise, but The Shadowthrone [8] was more confident and assured – a textbook document of its magical era, with Satyr’s eccentricities coming to the fore on these Napalm reissues. Five years later Birmingham got hold of black metal, and roughed it up with a drum machine, frenzied soloing and psychotic attitude. Result: ANAAL NATHRAKH’s demo compilation Total Fucking Necro [8]. Their subsequent debut, The Codex Necro [8] (both Metal Blade), edged the duo’s vicious cacophony closer to industrial and grindcore, for a perfect storm of anti-social sonic terror.

A profound influence on black metal was 80s German thrash, and we can enjoy a deep dive into its darkest corners with two demo collections: DESTRUCTION’s Bestial Invasion Of Hell (1984) [8] and ASSASSIN’s Holy Terror/Saga Of Nemesis (1986) [6] (both High Roller). The former is more familiar, the frantic trio pulverising even at this earliest stage, and a great job has been done to bolster the creaky sound. Assassin’s demos, however, sound irredeemably slapdash; there are killer moments, but for 1986 it’s fairly undistinguished.

A profound influence on German thrash was the NWOBHM, and two fine, reissued exemplars are BLITZKRIEG’s Theatre Of The Damned (2007) [7] (Mighty Music) and RITUAL’s Valley Of The Kings (1993) [7] (High Roller). The former is a solid compendium of mid-paced ripping yarns with Satan’s commanding frontman Brian Ross in prime storyteller mode, the latter a versatile, out-of-time curio of mystical hard rock. Finally, High Roller have reissued Maryland doom legends THE OBSESSED’s second LP, Lunar Womb (1991) [9], a scorching classic of soulful, blue-collar stoner groove that should have set Wino and co on the path to fame and fortune, but didn’t.

CHRIS CHANTLER

METALHAMMER.COM 97

LIVE REVIEWS

KORN

STRANGER THINGS: THE DRIVE INTO EXPERIENCE, LOS ANGELES, CA, USA

Bakersfield’s nu metal standard bearers reach new heights

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98 METALHAMMER.COM

Fieldy shows how he turned the metal world Upside Down

THE SET

Victimized Cold Insane Falling Away From Me You’ll Never Find Me Thoughtless Coming Undone Throw Me Away Justin Black Is The Soul Freak On A Leash Alone I Break Dirty Can You Hear Me Ball Tongue Narcissistic Cannibal Here To Stay

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PRESS/STEVE THRASHER

AN ANCIENT CHINESE proverb

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Korn put on a Monumental rooftop performance

METALHAMMER.COM 99

ROADBURN REDUX VARIOUS VENUES/O13, TILBURG

The Netherlands’ revered underground music fest transfers its spirit online Mercy Machine swagger and clatter with rare suhvhqfh#dqg#ordgv#ri#zrqn|#ulļv1#Gholyhulqj# one of the festival’s best-sounding sets, THE OCEAN’s immaculate reading of 2020’s Phanerozoic II hammers home their status as prog-leaning, post-metal heavyweights.

paint wide psychedelic soundscapes you a singularly immersive experience, driven simply get lost in. by an exploratory spirit that’s made it more Easily one of the heaviest bands around, a cultural experience than a regular music in every sense of the word, BODY VOID give festival. That approach has been transferred us a barbaric and deeply unsavoury rendition to Roadburn Redux, a four-day livestream of Fawn, from new album Bury Me Beneath event that feels holistically bound This Rotting Earth. WITCH MOUNTAIN to unifying ideal in a way that no have a sturdy catalogue from which to other online festival has managed draw, but their languorous cover of yet. From the amount of care and Soundgarden’s Limo Wreck is a wellcraft that’s gone into the pre-recorded chosen curveball, sung with miraculous and specially commissioned live restraint and charisma by vocalist Kayla sets and documentaries, even Dixon. Few people on this earth have a remotely it does what Roadburn’s suhvhqfh#wkdw#Ľoov#wkh#urrp/#hyhq#zkhq# always done: make you feel for they’re not really there. STEVE VON a while like nothing else exists.

TILL manages without trying. His set is Wkhuh#frxog#eh#qr#ehwwhu#nlfnrļ# more meditation than concert; his than KAIRON; IRSE!, their equally husky voice towers atop gentle heavy and psychedelic mix pulling arrangements for piano, cello, synths, your head right out of everyday life French horn and guitar, wrapping your and onto a higher plane. A blizzard soul in warmth. of state-of-the-art extreme metal, Whether they’re performing their Neptunian Maximalism go AUTARKH’s playthrough of new album, Temple, or working as the ballistic with the mystic debut album Form In Motion is backbone of the dark metal supergroup d#pdjqlĽfhqw#vkrfn#wr#wkh#v|vwhp1# THE NEST – featuring vocalists from The Nest initiate their own rite club Twisted, esoteric and avowedly grim, Dool’s Ryanne van Dorst, Primoridal’s it’s the sound of the future eating Alan Averill and The Ruins Of Beverast itself. There is no Redux performance mainman Alexander von Meilenwald as emotionally charged as GOLD’S – WOLVENNEST are the force to be commissioned piece This Shame reckoned with this weekend. The Should Not Be Mine, which deals with Belgians transform homes into temples singer Milena Eva’s experiences of and screens into shrines as they worship sexual violence. It’s a display of pain, the dark and open the gates of hell with rage, healing and being a survivor, their psychedelic doom. NEPTUNIAN wrapped in post-rock and harsh MAXIMALISM make drone that sounds synth sounds. Dávid Makó, aka like a carnival at the end of the world.

THE DEVIL’S TRADE, looks like Absurdly gripping and, yes, aimed Tom Hardy’s Charles Bronson and squarely at dedicated space cadets, Set has a rapt, wracked voice that prises Chaos To The Heart Of The Moon is exactly rshq#orvw#prphqwv#wr#Ľqg#d#krvw#ri# the kind of mind-blowing sonic spectacle minerals glistening within. Featuring that Roadburn was designed for.

Maybe INTER ARMA’s covers performance members of Oranssi Pazuzu and Dark Buddha Featuring Oranssi’s Jun-His and Hexvessel’s doesn’t have the highest production value of Rising, DUST MOUNTAIN are an airier if Mat McNerney and all the neon lighting you the weekend, but it has “most fun” written qr#odvv#idu0uhdfklqj#dļdlu#wkdq#wkhlu#gd|#mrev/# could wish for, HAUNTED PLASMA are the doo#ryhu#lw1#Wkh#ulļ#ehdvwv#sd|#wulexwh#wr# their Middle Eastern-tinged mystic musings most mesmerising krautrock-infused Cro-Mags, Venom, Minor Threat and… Tom olnh#frplqj#dfurvv#h{sdwuldwhv#mdpplqj#lq#d# darkwave band you’ll ever hear. Explaining Petty. In a COVID-free world, this would be bar in Marakesh at 2am. REGARDE LES the close-knit, cosmic nature of Finland’s wkh#vhw#iru#hyhu|rqh#wr#udlvh#wkhlu#Ľvwv2ehhuv# HOMMES TOMBER’s eerie and aggressive set Tampere scene, Mat explains that it comes dqg#mxps#lqwr#wkh#prvkslw1 makes you miss real shows. It’s a shame they from the kinds of digressions you get while DAWN RAY’D serve up two exclusive new can’t premier their superb album Ascension in sharing saunas, and there’s the same intimate, tracks, cementing their growing reputation a crowded, dark room with the sheer force communal sense of ritual throughout dv#wkh#Ľhulhvw#ri#Ľuheudqgv1#Wild Fire I and II of the music assaulting your body.

HEXVESSEL’s spellbinding rendition of their explore both extremes in the Brits’ sound, POLYMOON look like young 70s renegades debut, Dawnbearer. Shot in a barn amidst from excoriating black metal to ornate and but sonically span decades, taking pastoral lqfhqvh/#Ľu#vsuljv#dqg#rwkhu#lwhpv#wkdw# wintry chamber folk. If only BADA could live prog-psych and shoegazy textures to states wouldn’t look out of place in Midsommar, it’s in all our attics! Shot in time-lapse between of kaleidoscopic radiance, as if memories of dq#dfw#ri#ghyrwlrq#dqg#jhqwoh#frqmxulqj#zlwk#d# dusty wooden beams and timid rays of light, o|vhujlf#mrxuqh|v#duh#ľrrglqj#edfn1#Li#wulss|# deep, emotional undercurrent that feels like the group featuring organist powerhouse meandering isn’t your thing, MAGGOT it’s the most natural act in the word – the Dqqd#yrq#Kdxvvzroļ/#jkrvw#lq#dqg#rxw#ri# HEART’s turbocharged post-punk is the Roadburn ethos incarnate.

DOM LAWSON/JONATHAN SELZER/CHRISTINA WENIG the frame as they summon their magic and perfect, spiky antidote. Songs from last year’s

100 METALHAMMER.COM

WOLVENNES: LOTTE SCHRANDER/NEPTUNIAN: NIELS VINCK/NEST: NIELS VINCK/GOLD: PAUL VERHAGEN/OTHERS: PRESS

ROADBURN HAS ALWAYS been

Wolvennest tune into a cosmic frequency

Gold’s Milena Eva: a show of inner strength

Steve von Till meditates on life, the universe, healing your wounded heart Hexvessel: Mat McNerney finds old habits die hard

METALHAMMER.COM 101

102 METALHAMMER.COM

PUSCIFER

CRYPTOSIS

METROPOOL HERTOG JAN ZAAL, ENSCHEDE

When Dutch thrashers Distillator rebranded as Cryptosis in 2020 after seven years and two albums, they marked out a new epoch of ambitious songwriting.

Wkh#ghflvlrq#zdv#pruh#wkdq#mxvwlĽhg>#wkh# songs of the band’s debut, Bionic Swarm – released just a month before – take on a new physicality in the live setting thanks to weeks of intensive rehearsals that have seen the band essentially rebuild the record from the ground up. Early thrashers Decypher and Death Technology#wdnh#rļ# like a jet engine, showing that the oldschool motor the band used as Distillator hasn’t been entirely scrapped. But when wkh#edqg#wdnh#wkhlu#irrw#rļ#wkh#shgdo# things really#wdnh#rļ/#zlwk#hohphqwv#ri# prog, symphonic and black metal trickling in to augment their sound. The MVP award surely goes to sound engineer Olaf Skoreng for perfectly balancing the band’s many disparate elements. Be it the spooling bass and techno-prog approach of Prospect Of Immortality that bears shades of Voivod, the Dimmu Borgir-ish grandiose symphonic black metal of Mindscape or even the Tom Araya-esque howl that brings it all home on Flux Divergence, Cryptosis emerge from their debut live performance as an exciting, enthralling new force in cosmically tinged progressive thrash.

MAYAN THEATER, LOS ANGELES

Maynard James Keenan’s alt-rock enigmas wrestle with their identity

thing to say, but those artists who have a strong vhqvh#ri#ylvxdov#kdyh#ghĽqlwho|#ehhq#wkh#pruh# successful of the livestreaming wars. Stand still in a t-shirt and jeans and play the hits in your rehearsal room and you aren’t going to be uhphpehuhg#pxfk>#sxw#rq#d#vhulhv#ri#flqhpdwlf/# character-led explosions of psychedelic imagery, colour and bizarre set pieces, as Puscifer have, and you’re much more likely to stick in our brain for the long haul.

In their second dip into the livestream market, Maynard James Keenan’s oddball collective have decided to play their 2015 album, Money $hot, in its entirety. That in itself is enough to give this particular evening a real sense of being noteworthy, what with it being the most complete record of their storied career. Still, a Pusicfer show wouldn’t be a Puscifer show without some dry tomfoolery from Keenan as his alter ego, and we begin with a slurring Billy D. confronting dqg#rļhqglqj#vrph#oxfkdgru#zuhvwohuv#lq#d#edu#

before we’re transported to a ring where the band strike up the album.

Unlike the aforementioned plug-and-play approach of, frankly, far too many metal bands gxulqj#vlplodu#vwuhdpv/#lwġv#pdjqlĽfhqw#wr#vhh# Puscifer create an entire world around Money $hot.

From the band themselves, looking resplendent in suits and masks while the luchadors cause chaos on the sidelines, to the ever-switching orfdwlrqv#zh#Ľqg#rxuvhoyhv#lq#dorqjvlgh#wkhp/# ending in something that bizarrely looks like the Aztec Zone from The Crystal Maze, the Rocky Horror Picture Show-meets-Ed Wood production values gives this a real sense of value for money.

Of course, all this would count for nothing if the songs were stinkers, but Money $hot’s hefty title track, the country twang of Grand Canyon and the unforgettable The Remedy with its trollbaiting chorus are all wonderfully satisfying rock songs, brought to life by a band with a true sense of theatre and imagination.

STEPHEN HILL

RICH HOBSON

INSOMNIUM

PRIVATE VENUE, JOENSUU

PRESS/STEVE THRASHER

IT SEEMS LIKE quite the Captain Obvious

Seven years ago Insomnium released Shadows Of The Dying Sun, a polished chapter in their melancholic canon, and the fans recently voted it as their favourite album to hear live in full. So, tonight, in the band’s hometown of Joensuu, the melodeath Finns are happy to oblige. Even the pandemic version of Lqvrpqlxp#rļhuv#pxfk#ri#zkdw#zhġyh# come to expect from these consummate pxvlfldqv>#wkh#vwdjh#lv#rqo|#d#olwwoh#vpdoohu# than usual and there’s no dialling back on sound quality, granting Markus Vanhala wkh#lghdo#duhqd#wr#vkrz#rļ#klv#Ydq# Halen-level soloing. “Boys, what is the qh{w#vrqjBĤ#dvnv#Qllor#VhyÆqhq/#eulhľ|# forgetting the order, but a quick reminder leads them into a vehement version of the frostbitten Black Heart Rebellion.

Tonight comes with a few rare tracks, including the “weeping ballad” Lose To Night but the highlight is seeing their newish guitarist Jani Liimatainen come into his own as a musician and a singer.

Closing the night, a despondent Niilo expresses his disappointment at having to debut their new song on a livestream but they do The Conjurer and its climactic khiw#mxvwlfh/#hqglqj#lq#d#eod}h#ri#ľdvklqj# lights and synchronised headbanging.

HOLLY WRIGHT

METALHAMMER.COM 103

THE HOME OF

POPPY UNKNOWN VENUE, LOS ANGELES

lights up a path to the dark side MILLIONS WERE INTRODUCED

PRESS

to Poppy through her surreal, borderline disturbing YouTube videos. In front of an opaque screen, in a robotic, childlike yrlfh/#wkh#vlqjhu#Ľophg#khuvhoi#uhshdwlqj# khu#rzq#qdph/#hdwlqj#frwwrq#fdqg|#dqg# wdonlqj#wr#pdqqhtxlqv1#Lw#zdv#doo#sduw#ri# a high-art dissection of celebrity and politics that has won her a cult-like iroorzlqj#Ğ#vr#idu#716#ploolrq#shrsoh#kdyh# watched a video where she converses zlwk#d#ģvhqwlhqwĤ#sodqw1#\hw#pdq|#phwdo# idqv#Ľuvw#ehfdph#dzduh#ri#Srss|#lq#534</# when she played at WWE NXT in Orlando Florida, soundtracking wrestler Io Shirai’s entrance with her Fever 333-collab, Scary Mask. Her self-described “post-genre” 5353#doexp/#I Disagree, was the sonic htxlydohqw#ri#d#juhpolq#hdwlqj#diwhu# plgqljkw=#wkh#fryhu#duw#vkrzhg#wkh# vlqjhu#lq#vxshulpsrvhg#frusvhsdlqw/# zkloh#wkh#pxvlf#pxwdwhg#iurp#vxjdu|# fkruxvhv#lqwr#prqvwurxv#qx#phwdo1 Wkh#hļhfw#lv#mxvw#dv#mduulqj#wrqljkw1# Wkh#ixwxulvwlf#srs#rq#Srss|ġv#534;#uhfrug/# Am I A Girl?, showed tentative signs of heading in a heavier direction, but on I Disagree/#vkh#frpplwwhg#wr#lw#zlwk# dsorpe1#Wkh#Ľuvw#73#vhfrqgv#ri#wrqljkwġv# olyhvwuhdp#rshqhu/#Concrete, traverses groaning NIN-style electronics, barbed pdwkfruh#jxlwduv#dqg#d#Ede|phwdo0vw|oh# fkruxv#wkdw#ghvfhqgv#lqwr#d#qljkwpdulvk# oxoode|1#Vxuurxqghg#e|#pdvnhg# pxvlfldqv/#Bloodmoney#kdv#khu#vwrpslqj# grzq#d#uxqzd|#lq#forps|#errwv#wr# fodqnlqj#Frgh#Rudqjh#hļhfwv/#ehiruh# vfuhdplqj#khuvhoi#krduvh#dplg#slqn# ľdvklqj#qhrq1#Play Destroy and Fill The Crown#yhhu#pdqlfdoo|#ehwzhhq#fxwhv|# fkruxvhv#dqg#lqgxvwuldo#ulļv1#Phdqzkloh/# wkh#rqolqh#fkdw#dw#wkh#vlgh#ri#wkh#vwuhdp# lv#prylqj#doprvw#wrr#idvw#wr#uhdg#dv#udelg# idqv#lgrolvh#hyhu|#o|ulf/#zlqn#dqg#pryh1 With no banter between songs, the tracks rattle by in a focused parade of euhdwkohvv#whpsr#dqg#vrxqg#fkdqjhv#wkdw# fkhuu|0slfn#iurp#wkh#dow0urfn#rufkdug1# Wudqv#uljkwv#dqwkhp#Am I A Girl? nods to Ghshfkh#Prghġv#jolwwhulqj#gdunqhvv#dqg# Sit/Stay#uhihuhqfhv#Frpelfkulvw/#Jduedjh# dqg#Julphv/#lq#wkdw#rughu1#E|#Bite Your Teeth/#vkhġv#rq#khu#nqhhv#lq#d#pdhovwurp# ri#uxlqhg#ehdwv#dqg#plolwdqw#guxpv/# before I Disagree’s pastel-coloured qlklolvp#eulqjv#wklqjv#wr#dq#deuxsw#forvh1# Wklv#odwhvw#shuvshfwlyh#rq#phwdo#ohdyhv# our heads spinning.

DANNII LEIVERS

METALHAMMER.COM 105

What’s the worst thing about being in a band?

“People with families always say the same thing: being away from family while on tour. But the worst thing about being in this particular band is… how much beer we have to drink!”

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever been given?

“I’ve never had anyone hand over a nugget of truth like in the movies,

from being, ‘What are you talking about!?’ to, ‘That might happen…’”

FIVE MINUTES WITH

Clutch and Mastodon – on different tours, but with similar approaches – we learned to always be courteous and polite. Basically, don’t be dicks!”

When was the first time you felt like a rock star?

“I’ll tell you if that happens! There are moments where I feel lucky to be where I am, but I think with ‘rock stars’ there is a level of feeling responsibility for being where you are that I don’t really have – it’s all just lucky alignments!”

What’s been your worst experience on drugs?

“The one and only time I did crystal meth, I started band practice at midnight and ended it by dropping our bandmate at his community service job… at a blood bank… where I gave blood, because I thought that would get the drugs out of my system!”

When was the last time you cried?

“I saw this college basketball player who made the game-winning shot, and gave this post-game interview and started crying, so I started crying too.”

How have things changed in the past five years for Red Fang?

“The biggest thing is that everything seems more stable. For our first six or seven years, everything was changing and it wasn’t until Only Ghosts [2016] that it felt like we hit a stride. Getting asked to do things like chat-shows [the band were on David Letterman in 2014] went

“I GAVE BLOOD BECAUSE I THOUGHT IT’D GET THE METH OUT OF MY SYSTEM!” 106 METALHAMMER.COM

RED FANG talks mindfulness, stability and crystal meth WORDS: RICH HOBSON • PICTURE: JAMES REXROAD

You’ve said this record is closer to 2011’s Murder The Mountains. How so?

“Our first record was mostly just Bryan’s [Giles – guitar, vocals] songs that got arranged together. Murder The Mountains was the first fully collaborative Red Fang record and was the most successful expression of what this band is capable of. This record is getting back to that much more collaborative process. It’s a bit crass, but I remember the first royalty reporting we got from Relapse Records, and I messaged back because I thought there had been a typo with too many zeroes!”

Sonically, it’s incredibly diverse – from the Melvinsy sludge of the first two tracks to a noise rock-ish mid-section and straight-up stoner/ psych towards the end…

“If you’ve got three or four different guys writing songs, the records will sound diverse! It’s one of the things I loved about Led Zeppelin or The Kinks – their records aren’t consistent from one to the next; each album has a variety of sounds, styles and tones.

It makes everything more interesting.”

What’s inspired the new album?

“The lyrics – on my part at least – were my dissatisfaction with the things that were going on in the world at that point. It’s very anti… the guy who was president, right? He was infuriating to me. To be fair there’s a lot of political correctness on the left – and I consider myself a progressive and a leftist – that is counter-productive and helped Trump gain traction, so that’s where some of the inspiration came from too.”

Word has it the title track was inspired by meditation?

“Sort of! About 2013, my ex-wife and I started splitting up, and around that time I got into meditation. I was all over the place emotionally and mentally, so meditation made it easier to tune some stuff out. It’s not just sitting with your eyes closed – it’s being in an experience; not thinking, ‘What time is the Zoom call’ when I’m brushing my teeth or w whatever, but focusing on what I’m doing. The idea of ‘separating the a Arrows is about g dread the pain when it’s coming a stuff is inevitable, so why bother adding more pain? You don’t need to be pierced by both arrows, right?”

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