Music and Metal

Melvins Lite – Freak Puke

Experimental craziness from the long-running grungers' reduced incarnation

24 May 2012

You can never really expect every album by these insanely experimental men to sound the same. Even after 29 years of performing and recording together, The Melvins (or Melvins Lite, in this case) somehow manage to remain enthusiastic and creative in an…

Interview - Barney Greenway of Napalm Death

The grindcore pioneers talk about new their album, metal and Joy Division

2 Apr 2012

Napalm Death are musical pioneers, they invented grindcore, mixing death metal with hardcore punk and made music harder, faster and nastier than anyone that had gone before. Famed for their ferocious live shows, political edge and refusal to compromise…

New Edinburgh venue The Third Door launches mini-festival Qabalala

26 Mar 2012

In the past month it’s seemed there’s been precious little to get excited about on Edinburgh’s clubbing and live scene, but let’s put the hand-wringing to one side for a few paragraphs and remember that people are still out there trying to get things…

Every Time I Die - King Tut’s, Glasgow, Wed 7 Dec 2011

Relentless stream of three-minute blitzkrieg salvos

17 Jan 2012

King Tut’s is sold out tonight, and rightly so. US noiseniks Every Time I Die are one of the most engaging bands in the broad church of metal, preaching their inimitable brand of plunging rock ‘n’ roll since way back then in 1998. Trash Talk do a good…

Korn – The Path of Totality

Blistering new dubstep direction from the nu metal overlords

25 Nov 2011

They’ll forever be known as ‘the godfathers of nu metal’, but on Path of Totality Korn have taken a massive side step. Sure the guitars are still heavy as hammers but they’ve gone dubstep. And we’re not talking the odd breakbeat this is a full on…

Opeth - HMV Picture House, Edinburgh, Thu 10 Nov

Mesmerising show from the Swedish prog metallers

16 Nov 2011

Prog metal (from Rush to Mastodon) is an acquired taste but Sweden’s Opeth are at the top of their game and it is in the live arena where you can really appreciate their musicianship. You can watch each musician and really piece together their input…

Various artists - Songs For Dying

Vibrant collection of tunes exploring noise genres from techno to metal

16 Nov 2011

(Pjorn 72) The local Noiserati and associates’ recent reclaiming of their techno and/or metal roots helped their clan avoid a nihilistic dead end. As this bumper fifteen track compendium of clings, clangs, sci-fi slapstick, sepulchral drones…

Alice Cooper - SECC: Clyde Auditorium, Glasgow, Mon 31 Oct

2 Nov 2011

Could there be a more perfect date for Alice Cooper to play Glasgow? And the Halloween freakshow starts early with protopunks New York Dolls still pouting after all these years. A muted response from the crowd in this vast arena lessens the impact but…

Interview - Manowar get ready for their first UK tour in 16 years

Q&A with the most awesome metal act in the world

21 Oct 2011

Manowar are the very embodiment of epic metal excess and they return to the UK for their first full tour in 16 years playing their debut album Battle Hymns in its entirety as well as other thunderous metal classics. We catch up with outspoken bassist…

Corrupted - Garten der Unbewusstheit

Japanese doom metallers' moody follow up to El Mundo Frio

18 Oct 2011

Osaka’s enigmatic Corrupted have been shape-shifting their doom-laden and dystopic sound with each release over the past 15 years, to refer to them as a sludge band in their current phase seems bone-idle. Garten der Unbewusstheit (Garden of Unawareness…