heavy metal
Album: Slipknot - The End, So FarThursday, 29 September 2022
Make no mistake about it, Slipknot are massive. 23 years after their recording debut, they’ve had 8.5 billion streams, their sixth album, 2019’s We Are Not Your Kind, hit the top of the charts in 12 countries, including the US and the UK, and... Read more... |
Album: Parkway Drive - Darker StillWednesday, 07 September 2022
Away from the spotlight of mainstream music the metal scene thrives, unbothered with how much attention it picks up. When bands like Architects reach number one in the UK charts, it is huge, but unimportant. Instead the scene is preoccupied with its... Read more... |
Album: Boris - Heavy RocksMonday, 08 August 2022
Boris are an eclectic Japanese band, with over 20 albums to their name. Following their creative instincts and often recording live with no overdubs, they are never less than brave, making music that takes no prisoners. They are masters of sounds... Read more... |
Supersonic Festival 2022, Birmingham review - a hot and heavy weekend in DigbethTuesday, 12 July 2022
Last weekend saw the long-awaited, post-Covid return of Birmingham’s urban festival of sonic strangeness, and yet again it was a time to wallow in the sounds of previously unknown or vaguely heard about artists, while trying not to melt as... Read more... |
Alice Cooper & The Cult, Resorts World Arena, Birmingham review - rock’n’roll veterans bring it onWednesday, 01 June 2022
Rock’n’roll has been credited with incredible powers of rejuvenation many times before, but if there are two men who seem to have seriously benefitted from its mystical power, it’s Alice Cooper (74 years old) and Ian Astbury (60 years old). These... Read more... |
Album: Def Leppard - Diamond Star HalosThursday, 26 May 2022
This album starts and ends so brilliantly. It kicks off with a salvo of three tracks that remind you exactly why Def Leppard became one of the biggest bands in the world in the mid Eighties. They distilled the things they most loved growing up – T... Read more... |
Album: Reef - Shoot Me Your AceFriday, 15 April 2022
I have a theory about Reef. In the mid-Nineties, when the Somerset outfit appeared, they were reviled by London music journalists. This was mostly because they sounded like a hoary, unreconstructed early-Seventies blues-rock band. Those same... Read more... |
Album: MWWB - The HarvestWednesday, 23 March 2022
Wrexham band MWWB were known until recently as Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard. Perhaps they changed their name because its freak-friendly quality could be mistaken for spliffed Half Man Half Biscuit-style silliness. MWWB are no bong-head novelty act.... Read more... |
Album: Sabaton - The War to End All WarsFriday, 04 March 2022
Demonstrating how much the world really can change in a very short time when things spin out of control, Swedish power-metal five-piece Sabaton’s album now seems especially tasteless. It’s also a scalpel-sharp example of how important context is to... Read more... |
Album: Napalm Death – Resentment Is Always Seismic – A Final Throw Of ThroesMonday, 07 February 2022
Resentment Is Always Seismic – A Final Throw Of Throes is not so much a brand new album from Napalm Death, but a collection of tunes that were recorded during, but left over from, the sessions for their last disc, Throes Of Joy In The Jaws Of... Read more... |
Album: Boris - WMonday, 17 January 2022
This is just boggling. The Japanese rock trio Boris have been together in the same lineup for over a quarter of a century – and it’s longer still since their original formation – but they’re outdoing themselves record by record. Their last record,... Read more... |
theartsdesk on Vinyl 66: Etta James, BABii, George Harrison, Helloween, Cat Stevens, Gnod and moreMonday, 20 September 2021
As the summer folds away on itself, theartsdesk on Vinyl returns. Beset by backlogs at pressing plants and delayed by COVID, it's finally here, jammed to the gunwales with commentary on a grand cross section of the finest music on plastic. Dive in!... Read more... |
