Under the needle

As a genre that’s been relentlessly blamed and belittled, marginalised and misunderstood since the dawn of its notoriously devilish inception, no form of music lends itself to radical and fiercely independent self-expression more instinctively than metal. And with over 30 years spent relentlessly pushing and progressing their crushingly majestic craft to untold heights of brutal, ritualistic brilliance, Rotting Christ certainly know more than a thing or two about creating mus

With a band name rather hilariously borrowed from a trashy ’90s romance novel, you’d be correct in assuming these irreverent Americans have precious little concern for established genre norms and conventions. And with ingenious, genre-crossing new record ‘Future Cult’ fresh in the can this month, frontman Rick Giordano explains how a simple frustration with derivative mainstream metal soon evolved something infinitely more intriguing. “Wanna make some shitty metal? Cool, you

Image by Stella Mouzi www.stellamouzi.com Making the tricky transition from meticulously engineered studio perfection to the electrifying, utterly unpredictable dynamics of live performance is seldom a seamless process, least of all for a band whose blistering and bewilderingly complex legacy underpins more than two decades of genre-defying extreme metal. On the night that finds the Greek metal titans primed and poised to decimate the London Underworld, uber-talented drummer

As if the epic pairing of Septicflesh’s brimstone-scorched orchestrations together with the raggedly scabrous delights of Inquisition wasn’t a tantalising enough proposition already, UK support Stahlsbarg are a strikingly sinister additional bonus. Across madly accelerating stints of snaking, densely muscular groove and frostbitten tremolo that bears precious little resemblance to the gentle, rolling hills of their native Suffolk, theirs is a sound steeped in blackened, unmis

From brilliant, psychologically precarious scribes to ingenious compositional minds plagued by mental illness and addiction, it’s long been acknowledged that human suffering frequently breeds rare and exquisite works of art. And with its disquieting bouts of bludgeoning ultra-violence, coldly immersive atmospheres and rasping maniacal verses that audibly ooze raving lunacy, few albums originate from a more authentic place of raw and expansive emotion than Shining’s ‘X - Varg

SHINING'S NIKLAS KVARFORTH TALKS BLACK METAL AND SELF-DESTRUCTION As a famously troubled personality who’s long been famed for grisly acts of self-mutilation, violence and inflammatory behaviour, few musicians could be better equipped to shed some exploratory light on black metal’s self-destructive tendencies than infamous Shining frontman Niklas Kvarforth. From his life-altering exposure to the genre at the tender age of twelve to the emotionally draining making of forthcomi

Above clubbing hotspot Heaven’s faintly fermented and unmistakable aroma of many a misspent Saturday night, Myrkur’s sumptuous vocals seamlessly unravel with an airy, crystalline purity utterly removed from this earthly realm. Stripped of instrumental backing, her lone, crooning verses are stunningly expansive in scope, while the band's blackened numbers see the songstress dabble in intermittent bouts of gargling screams atop an insanely paced hail of bone-scraping tremolo an