IN THIS MOMENT: “THIS ALBUM IS LIKE GODZILLA!” 264 December 2014
GUNS N’ ROSES | OZZY OSBOURNE | BLACK VEIL BRIDES | WITHIN TEMPTATION | IN THIS MOMENT | THE AMITY AFFLICTION | KROKODIL
FREE!
ONE M AAA ONTH’S PASS TO WOR TH EVERY £3.99 FO R READ ER!
“W E W E R E G A F*C K I N R” MONSTE
HOW ROCK’S LAST OUTLAWS SPARKED A REVOLUTION
DECEMBER 2014
MHR264.cover.indd 1
PRINTED IN THE UK
£4.75
10/27/14 8:32 AM
FEAR AND LOATHING IN LOS ANGELES
GUNS N’ ROSES
38
Before the legend, there was simply a band. We look inside the chaotic formulative years of Guns N’ Roses, talking to the people who witnessed the madness first-hand.
50
54
BLACK VEIL BRIDES
They’ll unlikely ever win over metal’s most diehard crusaders, but Black Veil Brides could yet prove a crucial force in rock music. We chat to Andy Biersack about keeping the flame alive.
72
OZZY OSBOURNE
IN THIS MOMENT
Has anyone in the history of anything ever had a more chaotic career than the Prince Of Fucking Darkness? We get the Double O to take us back through some of his darkest moments.
Stroppy diva or misunderstood starlet? We talk to the unshakable force of nature that is Maria Brink ahead of her band’s career-best grasp for glory, Black Widow.
ROB ZOMBIE 08
Bloodstock 2015 is now guaranteed to be monstrous, because Mr. Zombie is headlining and bringing his brand new stage show with him!
METAL HAMMER, 2 BALCOMBE ST, LONDON, NW1 6NW EMAIL heresies@teamrock.com WEB www.metalhammer.com
Editorial
NECROPHAGIA 11
The horror metal originators are back with a terrifying new album. It’s all about witchcraft, necromancy and, erm, fucking.
RISE OF THE NORTHSTAR
64 WITHIN TEMPTATION
14
They’re obsessed with Manga and the streets of Tokyo and they have great taste in hats. Meet the new kings of rapcore!
’s Whaotur y on CD? free.14 P
DEFTONES 18
Sam Carter from Architects shares his love and enthusiasm for Chino Moreno and his groundbreaking Sacramento comrades.
Editor-In-Chief alexander milas alexander.milas@teamrock.com Deputy EDITOR merlin alderslade merlin.alderslade@teamrock.com production EDITOR vanessa thorpe vanessa.thorpe@teamrock.com REVIEWS and subterranea EDITOR JONATHAN SELZER jonathan.selzer@teamrock.com features EDITOR amit sharma amit.sharma@teamrock.com online EDITOR luke morton luke.morton@teamrock.com EDITOR-at-large dom lawson dom.lawson@teamrock.com
Art Art director JAMES ISAACS james.isaacs@teamrock.com Art Editor LEWIS SOMERSCALES lewis.somerscales@teamrock.com Contributors: Terry Bezer, Paul Brannigan, Daniel Cairns, Cheryl Carter, Chris Chantler, Toby Cook, Joe Daly, Malcolm Dome, John Doran, Jerry Ewing, Connie Gordon, Jason Hicks, Stephen Hill, Emma Johnston, Dave Ling, Gavin Lloyd, Edwin McFee, Chris McGarel, Ken McIntyre, Joel McIver, Greg Moffitt, Mörat, Catherine Morris, Ben Myers, Dayal Patterson, Avi Pitchon, Adam Rees, Alastair Riddell, Sarah Worsley, Holly Wright, Nik Young. Subbing: Jayne Nelson. Design: John Woolford PHOTOGRAPHERS: Derek Bremner, Stephanie Cabral, Mick Hutson, Will Ireland, Tina Korhonen, John McMurtrie, Kevin Nixon, Jake Owens, Ester Segarra, James Sharrock, Travis Shinn cover: Neil Zlozower/AtlasIcons
senior editorial team Editorial director Scott Rowley creative director Brad MERRETT Editor-In-Chief alexander milas Editorial operations manager ALEX BURROWS
SLIPKNOT
Digital team
30
Corey Taylor tells us which album he’s most proud of, which makes him put his foot on the gas and which he wishes he’d never heard.
DIGITAL PRODUCTION EDITOR EMMA JOHNSTON DIGITAL ART EDITOR AARON STANDEN DIGITAL ART EDITOR MARK CRITCHELL EditorIAL DESIGNER JEFF LEE
PARKWAY DRIVE
commercial Director Jimmy Docherty T 01698 894357 E jimmy@teamrock.com advertising sales manager JOHN BISCOMB T 020 7042 4255 / 07770 648 533 E john.biscomb@teamrock.com head of events and partnerships IAN WILLIAMSON T 020 7042 4102 / 07985 450 389 E ian.williamson@teamrock.com head of digital and mobile Simon Binns T 020 7042 4105 / 07507 865 936 E simon.binns@teamrock.com Senior sales Executive laura richardson T 020 7042 4261 E laura.richardson@teamrock.com Sales Executive lucy hellings T 020 7042 4104 E lucy.hellings@teamrock.com Sales Executive Richard Pita T 020 7042 4141 E richard.pita@teamrock.com Advertising Operations Manager Fabio Zancani T 0207 042 4178 E fabio.zancani@teamrock.com Lead Commercial Designer Piotr Swioklo T 0207 042 4175 E piotr.swioklo@teamrock.com Commercial Solutions Executive Lyn Connolly T 020 7042 410 E lyn.connolly@teamrock.com
commercial
34
Winston lets Hammer hop on his boogie board for a trip beneath the blue. We weren’t scared 60 AMITY AFFLICTION at all, honest…
THE AMITY AFFLICTION
marketing & Circulation HEAD OF Marketing alix thompson T 020 7042 4051 E alix.thompson@teamrock.com Marketing MANAGER Hannah burch T 020 7042 4058 E hannah.burch@teamrock.com Marketing Executive Lydia Higgins T 020 7042 4028 E lydia.higgins@teamrock.com Marketing Executive Antonella Matia T 020 7042 4025 E antonella.matia@teamrock.com Membership Marketing Manager Rob Singh T 020 7042 4359 E rob.singh@teamrock.com direct marketing MANAGER ashley hickman T 020 7042 4026 E ashley.hickman@teamrock.com Head Of Retail Distribution Jonathan Beeson T 020 7042 4023 E jonathan.beeson@teamrock.com
60
They’ve long conquered their homeland, and now the Aussies metalcore mavericks may just be coming for us.
WITHIN TEMPTATION
Directors
64
Has it really been a decade since The Silent Force?! Sharon den Adel helps Hammer celebrate a classic.
AT THE GATES 70
One of the greatest bands in metal history are back! We find out what made the Swedes finally return to the studio.
GOING UND ERG RO
UN D
PRIMORDIAL
116 Rallying the metal masses
VOICES
120 New maps of Hell!
CANDLEFEST, OLD MAN GLOOM, FEN, BONG, THE DEATHTRIP
109 FEED THE RHINO
Su sc anb d s ribe ££ ave P.12£s! 9
REVIEWS MACHINE HEAD
84 Can Robb Flynn top The Blackening’s furious fire?
OPETH, BLACK VEIL BRIDES, JUDAS PRIEST, ELECTRIC WIZARD, DRAGONFORCE, MARMOZETS, FEED THE RHINO, monster magnet
CHAIRMAN JOHN MYERS CEO BILLY ANDERSON chief operations director alan clarke managing director CHRIS INGHAM Commercial director Jimmy Docherty finance director stuart kilby insight director Cameron pirie chief digital & INNOVATION DIRECTOR CiarÁn o'toole head of radio hugh 'moose' evans head of tv stephen mccreath hr director jill johnston
ADMIN executive pa maggi mccaffrey logistics & security rab lowe BACK ISSUES T 0844 848 2852 next issue on sale NOVEMBER 11, 2014 Printed by William gibbons DISTRIBUTED by SEYMOUR DISTRIBUTION LTD, 2 EAST POULTRY AVENUE, LONDON, EC1A 9PT • TEL 020 7429 4000
© Team Rock Limited 2014.All rights reserved. No part of this magazine may be used or reproduced without the written permission of the publisher.Team Rock Limited (company number 395795) is registered in Scotland.The registered office of Team Rock Limited is 191 West George St, Glasgow G2 2LD.All information contained in this magazine is for information only and is, as far as we are aware, correct at the time of going to press. Team Rock Limited cannot accept any responsibility for errors or inaccuracies in such information. Readers are advised to contact manufacturers and retailers directly with regard to the price of products/services referred to in this magazine. If you submit unsolicited material to us, you automatically grant Team Rock Limited a licence to publish your submission in whole or in part in all editions of the magazine, including licensed editions worldwide and in any physical or digital format throughout the world.Any material you submit is sent at your risk and, although every care is taken, neither Team Rock Limited nor its employees, agents or subcontractors shall be liable for loss or damage. We are committed to only using magazine paper which is derived from well managed,certified forestry and chlorine-free manufacture.Our paper suppliers have been independently certified in accordance with the rules of the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council).
NEIL ZLOWZOWER/ATLASICONS ER MARC CANT
The gang chill out at Ballroom, Long BeaFender’s ch, day before getting signeds
stor y: at made hi dour, The night th Trouba e Th g in play , 1986 February 28
MARC CANTER
38 metalhammer.com
Letting their Appetite loose: the band at the start of their rise to fame
there isn’t a metal band on the planet that hasn’t been affected by Guns N’ Roses. THIRTY years on, the impact of their turbulent inception is being felt as keenly as ever. W O R D S : D AV E E V E R L e Y
decades. Ask any musician from any band in any genre, and they’ll pretty much all tell you how important Guns N’ Roses are to them. In terms of music, in terms of attitude, in terms of lifestyle. “Guns N’ Roses is my favourite band of all time,” says M Shadows of Avenged Sevenfold. “I love that band. You can compare us all you want – they’re a huge reason why I’m in cene: exterior of a club, the Sunset a band, and even write music. My dad gave Strip, Hollywood, an undetermined me Appetite For Destruction when it came out.” night in the mid-80s. The imaginary “The first time I heard Guns N’ Roses, camera in your head pans across the I instantly fell in love,” offers Asking sidewalk, taking in the otherworldly Alexandria axeman Ben Bruce. “It was just the images. Crowds of people of unspecified perfect recipe. Everything about and indistinguishable Guns was dangerous and exciting; gender cluster in pools of neon, they were the living embodiment some of them gripping half-full of rock‘n’roll in its truest form. beer bottles, others clutching They turned heads across the globe empty shot glasses. The chatter and wrote one of the best albums of of voices and clack of high heels is all time.” drowned out by a choir of Harley Shadows and Ben would be the Davison engines roaring by. first to admit that they’re standing Someone throws a bottle over their on the shoulders of giants. Guns shoulder, not caring where it lands. Steven Adler was one of GN’R’s ten middle fingers N’ Roses didn’t invent rock’n’roll or It arcs up and down, then smashes carnage, but they perfected it. At their in the busy street. Someone laughs, cliché-defying best – that is, at any point and they all head towards the door. between 1985, when they formed, and Cut to: the club’s interior. The 1991, when they got so big and bloated imaginary camera weaves around the you could see them from space – they truly tightly-packed crowd, cutting through were the most dangerous band in the the Aquanet hairpsray smog as it heads world. “We were a train wreck,” says towards the front of this tiny venue. On original drummer Steven Adler today. “But the club’s stage, five junkie-looking men you couldn’t take your eyes off us.” in last night’s make-up and last week’s Guns N’ Roses still exist, of course, leather trousers are train-crashing though in radically different form. through a new song they’ve just written While Axl Rose would disagree, they’re called Welcome To The Jungle. The drape overshadowed by their own legend. But behind them reads ‘Guns N’ Roses’, with even legends have to begin somewhere. a logo to match. Besides them, a trio of barely-clothed women gyrate in their underwear. It’s hot and getting hotter... uns N’ Roses was built on chaos. In The song rattles to a halt and the singer late 1982, a 20-year-old kid from – a rail-thin streak of sinew and rage with the hick city of Indiana named Bill an explosion of flaming candy-floss hair Bailey arrived in Los Angeles Izzy and Axl cosy up at The Troubadour and a tomcat’s howl – opens his mouth. in search of fame, fortune or “You have to excuse me,” he spits. anything in-between. One of the “I haven’t been asleep in 48 hours, I think. I am coming down on my fuckin’ dope. So this next song is about getting too fuckin’ high. This song is called My Michelle.” Welcome to Hollywood, baby. Thirty years on, such scenes have slipped from reality into myth. But Guns N’ Roses were all too real. They waltzed with the Devil down Sunset Strip, danced with Mr Brownstone in long-vanished clubs, and rose above Hollywood on a pillar of flame that would go on to engulf the world. They were – and still are – the great leveller; a seminal force in rock and metal’s evolution over the past three
MARC CANTER
”I watch MTV and it’s hard not to throw shit at the TV set because it’s so fucking boring. Even the bands around here in LA are the same way, the whole music industry. We meet these people and they say, ‘Do this, do that.’ And we go, ‘Fuck it, fuck you!’ Because it’s just not us. We do whatever we want to...” Axl Rose, 1986
metalhammer.com 39
IN THIS MOMENT
words: Stephen Hill. Pics: Mick Hutson.
With a much-improved sound and a new record deal, In This Moment look set to finally hit the big leagues. Maria Brink tells Hammer it’s been a long time coming. Brink might lead you to believe; she’s the single-minded he trendy Holborn Studios of East London’s control freak, dictator of a band of faceless, everyman ultra-hip Hoxton is not the sort of place that puppets. And In This Moment is nothing more than the backing we at Metal Hammer are used to inhabiting. band of her own, solo vanity project. Populated, as it is, by expensively attired, Of course, as the saying goes, you should never judge chiselled-looking arty types standing in front a book by its cover, and Maria Brink is one hell of a colourful of fish tanks and framed pictures of Kate Moss, book. When she does arrive, immaculately attired (and looking airbrushed and beautiful, whilst talking in overly with perfectly coiffured hair), she is a magnetic presence, loud voices about the various shoots of celebrities that immediately and effortlessly sucking all of the focus of the happen daily. In Studio 5, Radio Times are shooting One room toward her and working the camera with a natural ease Direction... or five quiff-sporting, homogenised stage-school during the ensuing photoshoot. She is also hugely apologetic brats that look exactly the same as One Direction. Who they about the delay and nothing but polite and friendly actually are we never do find out, because we are in the studio throughout our time together. next door. And today it doesn’t seem like a particularly fun “I’m sorry about that,” she begins “we really didn’t expect environment to be in; there are worry lines, furrowed brows it to take so long.” and concerned glances being exchanged between the various Well, when a band take so much care over their image it’s management and label folk that look after In This Moment. obvious that things need to be just so, right? It’s been a good couple of hours since we were meant to speak “Well, the basis is in the music,” Maria counters. “It’s true to Maria Brink, but so far we’ve yet to see a glimpse of the that our imagery is strong, but I would like to think that if band’s enigmatic frontwoman. Due to, so we’re told, a pair someone was in bed of rogue and unreliable listening to us in the hair straighteners. dark then they would As our minds start still be able to pick up to wander, it’s hard not on the themes that we to imagine some huge are trying to evoke. diva strop is taking We try and create these place. Because that’s movies, these visuals, what the legend and Maria has her integrity intact even as we are just preconception of Maria
“Metal is supposed to be about being true to yourself”
72 metalhammer.com
Maria’s son approves her outfits, but some are more suitable for the schoolrun than others...
metalhammer.com 73
Massive Xmas offer!
Worth
£474!
time only, For a limitedbscribe to when you sumer (ONLY Metal Ham e year!) £55 for on et an You will g pack: t ultimate gif
tickets 2 x Hamm(werorfeths£2t60VII )* 1 x Annual TeamRock+ subsorcthrip£47.8ti8)on (w 1 x Sonic Editions Voucthh£2er5) (wor 1 x Annual tastecard (worth £80)
Get it for yourself. Give it to someone else. It’s only £55! Order online: www.myfavouritemagazines.co.uk/MHXMAS14 Or Call: 0844 848 2852 (Quoting code MHXMAS14) Lines are open 8.00am-9:30pm weekdays and 8.00am-4pm Saturdays *Accommodation not included. Must be over 18 years old. TERMS AND CONDITIONS: Savings compared to buying 13 magazine issues from UK newsstand. All gift prices are correct at the time of printing. This offer is for new UK print subscribers paying by Direct Debit or Continuous Credit Card only. You will receive 13 issues in a year. Gift is available to new UK print subs paying by Annual Direct Debit or Continuous Credit Card. Please allow up to 60 days for delivery of your gift. Gift is subject to availability. In the event of stocks becoming exhausted, we reserve the right to replace with items of a similar value. We only have 200 units of the Gift Pack available. Full details of the Direct Debit guarantee are available upon request. If you are dissatisfied in any way you can write to us or call us to cancel your subscription at any time and we will refund you for all unmailed issues. Prices correct at point of print and subject to change. For full terms and conditions please visit: myfavm.ag/magterms. Offer ends: November 30, 2014.