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February 2025

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February 28
- Watch drummer Kenny Aronoff hear and drum along to Yes's Changes for the very first time
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- Think you know rock music? Test yourself with The Classic Rock Quiz
- Great new prog you must hear from Cosmograf, O.R.k., Jenny Hval and more in this week's Tracks Of The Week
- Heavy metal, classic rock, prog and beautiful Mediterranean sunshine collide at Spain’s Rock Imperium - one of the most stunning and unique festivals in the world
- "Not safe for work. Or the bus. Or brunch with your parents. Or your jealous boyfriend": Watch Halsey walk a latex-wearing man around like a dog in their new NSFW music video for Safeword
- Slayer are teasing a return to the UK
- Rick Wakeman announces huge The Official Broadcast Collection
- Neil Young & The Chrome Hearts announce massive London show
- "If you can live through the dinosaur period, you become a legend": The albums by Nazareth you should listen to... and one to avoid
- “It seemed to me that America was ruled by the gun… if you don’t like the President, shoot him”: Flag-burning prog innovators The Nice found trouble on stage and off it
- "A five-year spell that did a fine job of revitalising one of rock's finest frontmen": The albums that found Ian Gillan riding NWOBHM's slipstream into the charts, together at last
- “An already fabulous performance feels even more vital… sudden twists and turns are thrillingly kinetic”: Camel’s 3-disc reissues of Mirage and Moonmadness
- Nandi Bushell is back, and this time she's playing Led Zeppelin in stilettos
- The sons of Kiss icons Paul Stanley and Gene Simmons have recorded 10 songs together
- Architects sound absolutely livid on The Sky, The Earth & All Between - and it's made for one of the best metal albums of 2025 so far
February 27
- Limp Bizkit to play Reading and Leeds 2025, more than 25 new names also added
- Sleep Token have shared sheet music for what might be a new song - here's what it sounds like
- Slipknot's Corey Taylor and Bad Omens' Noah Sebastian have covered Kansas' Dust In The Wind and it's the most gorgeous song you'll hear all week
- Previously unreleased 1981 Klaus Schulze concert from Hamburg to be released
- "There are some things AI can’t replace, and that is drinking two-litre bottles of cider and ****ing yourself in a field." We're going to miss Ithaca dearly, and this interview with Djamila Azzouz shows why
- "People are baffled if I say I love Taylor Swift." Modern metalcore icon Chris Motionless on being a Swiftie, ice hockey and why Motionless In White are taking their time on a new album
- "I started crying. I was completely overwhelmed by how special it was that we were there": How a band of Dutch retro-rockers ended up recording at two legendary recording studios
- Kurt Cobain's hair and GG Allin’s blood-signed used underwear is going up for auction
- “Haven’t we been f***ing great tonight?!” Prog metal legends Opeth bring a career-spanning setlist, staggering visuals and more than a little self-confidence to sell-out London show
- "There was a decadent, hedonistic atmosphere in Berlin. It was a great time for making music": Marillion look back on the making of the album that tore the band apart
- The Sheepdogs have announced a short UK tour - and they may visit some pubs while they're at it
- “ELO, Judas Priest, my dad’s piano playing – that’s prog!” Tennis hero Pat Cash discovered Saga in Steve Harris’ private pub, introduced Tony Iommi to Bigelf and got Robert Plant to take up his sport
February 26
- Status Quo announce long-awaited expanded edition of classic Status Quo – Live! album
- "What’s seen me through is that unflinching belief in the music": Billy Idol launches Dream Into It, his first album in over a decade
- Avenged Sevenfold, Deftones, Bring Me The Horizon, Sleep Token, Bad Omens, Evanescence and more announced for Louder Than Life 2025
- "Someone get Papa Emeritus on the phone." Green Lung just confirmed they're doom metal's breakout band with a massive London show
- Pink Floyd At Pompeii to be released on film, vinyl and CD with new Dolby Atmos mix
- Get new Skunk Anansie album The Painful Truth on white splatter vinyl, exclusively through Classic Rock
- “Want to scare people these days? Forget about Satan and drugs. Bring on the evolutionary biologist”: Nightwish were accused of seeking to shock by working with Richard Dawkins. Instead they explored the poetry of science
- "You can only be what the public thinks you are for so long before it becomes boring": The story of how Metallica got themselves an orchestra – and the album that followed
- “It was awkward – Yes sort of told me never to come back”: Oliver Wakeman had to tour with the prog progenitors while knowing he’d been replaced. Surprisingly, he genuinely enjoyed the trip
- Every Pink Floyd album ranked from worst to best
- "We came out and started rocking and almost everybody in the club walked out": Nita Strauss remembers the worst gig of her life
February 25
- Full lineup announced for Rocklahoma 2025 festival
- “Strap in for one of the most fun summer shows of your life!” Killswitch Engage, Parkway Drive, I Prevail and Beartooth to co-headline ultra-stacked US metalcore tour
- “The last six years have been full of some of the worst times I’ve been through”: A documentary about Ozzy Osbourne will hit Paramount Plus later this year
- Pre-order your exclusive The Darkness Dreams On Toast Classic Rock bundles, with limited edition signed vinyl and glow-in-the-dark cassette variants
- “I was thinking, he has to go.” Architects vocalist Sam Carter initially wanted guitarist Adam Christianson fired following 2024 controversy
- Big Big Train announce new Scop EP as companion to upcoming Bard reissue
- “It wasn’t even worth asking John about the reunion tour”: Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones hasn’t spoken with John Lydon since 2008
- “The busker in my high street is terrible! He never gets any better. I had this idea: he doesn’t realise he’s dead and carries on”: Steven Wilson’s desperate desire to believe in ghosts inspired his last fully prog album
- Watch Toyah Willcox run her fingers seductively through Robert Fripp's hair as they perform Blondie's One Way Or Another
- "We killed every night. So I knew I had something": The epic saga of one of rock's great live acts, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
- "Vibrant, electric, mystical and powerful": Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes release cover of Led Zeppelin's The Lemon Song
February 24
- "We wade through sweet treacle every day, to make things for others to love": The Darkness ponder their place in the world on pumping new rock tune Walking Through Fire
- "Join us as we celebrate the Summer of Democracy!" Neil Young announces European and North American dates with the Chrome Hearts
- “I wish Kurt Cobain were here so he could hold our wondrous grandchild”: Skate legend Tony Hawk reflects on “transformative” Nirvana show he saw in 1991
- Trio of rock, funk and punk guitarists team up with Til for new range of online lessons
- Stranger Things star Jamie Campbell Bower shares gorgeous cover of Sleep Token’s Euclid
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- “The music industry is 80 percent, 90 percent kids who are privately educated”: Sam Fender says music is “rigged” against working class
- An unreleased solo album by Ghost mastermind Tobias Forge seems to have leaked on Youtube
- Disturbed announce arena-scale The Sickness 25th-anniversary UK and Europe tour, Megadeth opening
- “Peter Gabriel started singing over my solos. I was pissed off – ‘You’re singing on my bit!’ But that half-minute is probably our peak”: How Genesis made Supper’s Ready, arguably their greatest song
- "Much darker and more despondent album than the raucous title track might suggest": Little Feat successfully capture a grim early-70s vibe on Dixie Chicken
February 23
- Black Sabbath's Live... Gathered In Their Masses concert film is now free to watch on YouTube
- "There was so much I wanted to tell him, like how much has changed on Earth without him": Scott Weiland's son Noah covers Stone Temple Pilots' classic Sex Type Thing
- “With the success came all the trappings and we tried every one of them. The drugs, the travel, the women. Our lives were forever changed”: The chaotic story of Black Sabbath, the band who did more than anyone to invent heavy metal
- “Things had got pretty bad. I don’t know what demons Steven was fighting, but we definitely both had our ups and downs”: How Done With Mirrors put Aerosmith back on the long road to redemption
- “The one core thing about metal is that rebellious nature. You’re allowed to be yourself no matter what side of the spectrum you are”: How Halestorm went from teenage rockers to globe-conquering metal stars
- The 10 best Smashing Pumpkins B-sides and outtakes
- “Once you heard death metal, there was no turning back. Thrash was out of the window. It seemed silly, music for wimps”: The chaotic story of Nihilist, Unleashed, Entombed and the bloody birth of Swedish death metal
- “All anyone wanted to hear was awful new wave garbage like Elvis Costello and The Police. Rock groups like ours were strangled us to death”: The rise and fall of Starz, the 70s rockers who should been the next Kiss
February 22
- "Kendrick, let's go ahead and shock the world." Disturbed's David Draiman wants to collaborate with superstar rapper Kendrick Lamar on this generation's Walk This Way
- Watch official pro-shot footage of Post Malone and Nirvana members performing Smells Like Teen Spirit for Saturday Night Live's 50th anniversary
- “We were just boozers and mounds of cocaine. Cocaine eventually is bad, but we were young kids. It didn’t hamper us”: The epic life and crazy times of Mick Fleetwood, the heartbeat of Fleetwood Mac
- “Religion never accepts the balance that exists in a human being. It’s just a one-way street. That’s always going to cause conflicts”: How Dimmu Borgir made an irreligious symphonic black metal classic with In Sorte Diaboli
- “It was carnage. We partied on the road, then I’d get home and start the party all over again. I thought, ‘If this carries on, I might die’”: The explosive story of The Darkness’ OTT hard rock masterpiece Permission To Land
- “We were heartbroken. The world had lost a big talent. But as a band we had lost much more”: The rollercoaster story of AC/DC’s Back In Black, the 50-million selling album that emerged from tragedy
- I’ve just discovered how many classic seventh records exist and it’s blown my mind
- “A fan said the teaser was 36 seconds long and already better than The Astonishing… another said they already knew they wouldn’t buy it. You’ve got to love that stuff”: When Dream Theater slimmed down for Distance Over Time
- “I always thought that Pink Floyd were a band for people who don’t like music or rock’n’roll”: Jack Bruce’s wild tales of Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Leslie West and more
February 21
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- Spiritbox, Babymetal, Gojira, Architects and more announced for the most metal WWE videogame soundtrack in years
- The 50 metal albums you need to hear in 2025
- Chester Thompson teams up with Neal Morse in new group Cosmic Cathedral - listen to first new music now
- Great new prog you must hear from Karmakanic, Earthside, Bjørn Riis and more in this week's Tracks Of The Week
- I used to work in concert ticketing. When did it become such an utter hellscape?
- Machine Gun Kelly made guitar “cool” again, claims Polyphia’s Tim Henson
- Genesis share 2025 remaster of Lamb Lies Down On Broadway title track as box set release shifts to June
- "The lyrics were hastily written in the pub, hence the fact that it lacked a final verse": Recorded in secret, Sweet's Fox On The Run was given a second life by the Guardians Of The Galaxy
- "This is the first time in my career we’ve had to speak to the local police about civil unrest": Mark Tremonti on the political climate, being a guitar hero and Frank Sinatra
- “It’s a slam-dunk lost classic”: How Rush and Pink Floyd led James Dean Bradfield to Man – a band he’d previously dismissed
- "It couldn't get any better than that, and it didn't": David Lee Roth teaches a lesson in how not to conduct a solo career in five albums
February 20
- "It’s timeless. It was always in its own world; it didn’t fit into any category.” Tangerine Dream and the story of Phaedra
- Steeleye Span announce Spring tour and update on new studio album
- This nu metal band want YOUR ideas for song titles and lyrics: “If we pick yours we’ll give you a shoutout on the album credits”
- Bloodstock festival announces one-day Winter Gathering event headlined by doom legends Candlemass
- A mysterious new band has been added to Download 2025 and the internet is convinced it’s Sleep Token-related
- "It’s gory and romantic and brutal and I think that’s what keeps people coming back again and again." Why metal is obsessed with vampires
- Goth is the coolest it’s been in decades – and these 9 rising metal bands prove it
- "Wrapping blues tradition in boundary-breaking innovation": Every Led Zeppelin album ranked from worst to best
- “People talk, a couple of hundred quid changes hands – and you’re in the charts. That got us going”: The Yes Album was very nearly Yes’ final release. But fate intervened three times
- "Our band’s chemistry was really coming together. This whole new world opened up to us and we were off drugs. And then Jeremy died": The anarchic early years of one of rock's most enigmatic groups, The Mars Volta
February 19
- "I could have said a few words if Rick Wakeman would have shut up": Bill Bruford on the "civil war" at the heart of Yes's tumultuous induction into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame
- "He would have been perfect! Maybe it's not too late!": Ozzy was once asked to audition for Pirates Of The Caribbean but Sharon wouldn't let him
- "He was such an interesting man. A funny combination of intensity and craziness." King Crimson's Jamie Muir remembered...
- “I hate that I had to write the previous album. It became dangerous to play the music and stab myself in the heart”: Swallow The Sun had to escape from Juha Raivio’s personal hell. The solution was new album Shining
- “He’s really, really good, and he’s definitely more melodic than me”: Slayer’s Kerry King names the guitarist who “plays circles” around him
- Cradle Of Filth's Dani Filth compares Spotify to "daylight robbery", says he "owes it" to his fellow metal artists to not have an account on the platform
- Staying in Birmingham to see Black Sabbath? Local hotels have increased their prices by up to 725%
- "The vocals make David Vincent sound like Sabrina Carpenter." This Consequence is the heaviest Killswitch Engage album in over a decade. And it absolutely slaps
- “Sometimes you guys need to shut the **** up and enjoy or not enjoy”: Skunk Anansie’s Skin gives her unfiltered thoughts on hate comments
- "When I met him he was this hippie dude, living up in the hills taking magic mushrooms." The making of Bon Scott: AC/DC frontman, sun-worshipper and night-crawler
- “Posh tossers singing about nothing because they had nothing to protest about… it was part of the job to destroy Genesis and Yes”: Punk pioneer Captain Sensible loved plenty of prog – but had to hide it
- “As I was leaving the stage, I put my arm around Niall and said, ‘I think we got away with it’”: And So I Watch You From Afar were brave enough to debut their album Megafauna in full at a festival
- Thirteen minutes of previously unseen Led Zeppelin footage has surfaced after lying in a drawer for 45 years
February 18
- Kiss may have retired, but you can now buy a 24-karat gold edition of Strutter for just $50,000
- "It’s not like anything else. I liked it for that. We'd always take a different path": The story behind The Kinks' brilliantly subversive classic Lola
- Rick Buckler, drummer from The Jam, dead at 69
- Killswitch Engage fans! Grab the new issue of Metal Hammer with an exclusive cover and t-shirt, only through Louder
- Everything you need to know about the Black Sabbath reunion and Ozzy Osbourne’s final concert
- “History shows it’s often the combination of art and science that overcomes the greatest challenges we face”: Massive Attack to headline London’s first fully battery-powered festival this summer
- John Lydon is "pissed off" about the Sex Pistols replacing him with Frank Carter: "they’re trying to trivialise the whole show to get away with karaoke"
- King Crimson percussionist Jamie Muir has died aged 82
- Placebo frontman Brian Molko charged after labelling Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni a "piece of s***, fascist, racist” and a "Nazi" during festival appearance
- Machine Head announce new album Unatoned, hear ferocious single Unbound here
- Listen to Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante guest on re-recording of Pvris’ My House
- The Rock’n’roll Activist: Nine albums by Tom Morello you should listen to... and one you should ignore
- “I don’t believe I have to forgive them. They replaced me when I was sick. They even said I had ruined the band”: Styx fired Dennis DeYoung in 1999, but he still wants a reunion for the fans
- "Something that was a big event for me had become an instrument of ridicule": The Kinks' Dave Davies on the double-edged sword of solo success
- "There's never been a blueprint for the dictatorship of the proletariat": That time Aerosmith appeared on Saturday Night Live with Tom Hanks and discussed the decline of communism in Eastern Europe
February 17
- "The feedback is humbling and inspiring": Jimmy Page reacts to fan response to Led Zeppelin movie
- “I’d get up in the morning, practise scales at my piano, go off dancing, and then in the evening I’d come back and play the piano all night.” The story of Kate Bush's debut album The Kick Inside
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- Tool, Guns N' Roses and Rival Sons added to Black Sabbath's Back To The Beginning final show line-up
- “The facts don’t matter. Whoever has the better story wins!” When Pink Floyd, Arthur Brown, Rush and others got in trouble with the law, the results were remarkably prog
- "I feel like crying, that was beautiful." Spiritbox's Alexandra Palace show is the end of an era: where they go from rising stars to metal's next big thing
- "A glossy heavy metal album that doesn't quite have the songs to make it stand out from the crowd, despite the talent of the players": John Sykes, Carmine Appice and Tony Franklin conjure up a cult favourite on debut Blue Murder album
- "I'm not planning on doing a set with Black Sabbath": Ozzy says he'll only do "little bits and pieces" with Sabbath at final reunion show
February 16
- "I've never asked for help in my life": David Johansen thanks fans for support as he continues to receive around-the-clock medical care
- Watch Post Malone join the surviving members of Nirvana for a frenzied blast through Smells Like Teen Spirit
- “She grew up in Russia and bootlegged banned Deep Purple and Scorpions albums. It’s one of the reason I married her”: Kansas’ Joe Deninzon left the USSR and built a musical world out of a surprising coincidence
- “We jumped offstage and took our masks off and started swinging at people at the end of one song”: The wild story of Slipknot vs Mushroomhead, the masked band feud that lit up nu metal
- “I had some criticisms of Dark Side Of The Moon. One or two of the vehicles carrying the ideas were not as strong as the ideas that they carried”: How David Gilmour attempted to lay the ghost of Pink Floyd to rest
- “Go down in a ball of flames, you deserve it!”: safe to say that Thom Yorke is not a huge Muse fan
February 15
- “Axl only wanted to play industrial and Pearl Jam-sounding crap”: the story of Slash’s Snakepit and how it marked the beginning of the end for Guns N’ Roses mark one
- “We ended up hating Rick Rubin. He didn’t get what made this band happen”: The rollercoaster story of Wolfsbane, the British metal band who should have been superstars
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- “Anybody down there on acid seeing this figure flying down with flames coming out of his head must have thought God was coming”: The crazy life of Arthur Brown, the wildman who set rock’n’roll on fire
- “Death happens to everyone and if it hasn’t happened yet it’s going to happen. So what better way to deal with it?”: How Mastodon found light in darkness with The Hunter
- “Paul McCartney was an unusually dour person and John Lennon was drunk and inanimate”: Todd Rundgren’s wild tales of The Beatles, New York Dolls, Grand Funk Railroad and more
February 14
- Steven Tyler's recent live performance got Aerosmith fans' hopes up – but the vocalist will never tour again
- Watch video for Billy Morrison's Gods of Rock N Roll featuring Ozzy Osbourne
- "Thank you so much for really changing my life with your music": Watch Paramore's Hayley Williams do a surprise performance of crushcrushcrush with Finneas at his show in Nashville
- “Ozzy called me a rock-and-roll icon, and I was like, Whoa!” Having helped honour Ozzy Osbourne at last year's Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame ceremony, Billy Idol admits he's “knocked out” to be among the nominees for induction this year
- “You deserve more and we have more.” Pulp announce summer arena shows in the UK and Ireland, and frontman Jarvis Cocker is teasing more news to come
- “The wolves are howling with great soul, great passion... it's jazz, the jazz wolf of the Arctic tundra.” Former Police drum legend Stewart Copeland on recording his new album with wolves, hyenas and a black-footed albatross
- Ace new prog you must hear from Solstice, Vennart, John Lodge, Dim Gray and more in this week's Tracks Of The Week
- “We listened to it and said, No, that's crap, and put it aside.” Brutally dismissed by one music critic as “like a turd floating down a river of ****”, one of rock's most romantic songs is getting a 50th anniversary re-release today
- Happy Valentine's Day to goths everywhere as Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy hooks up with Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor for new single Swoon
- First-ever pic of classic Police line-up revealed as Stewart Copeland announces his Wild Concerto
- “Even at their most blistering there’s a blazing technicality to everything they do”: Jinjer’s virtuosic Duél is not for the faint-hearted
- “A classic style of hopeful, melancholy which will pleasantly trigger Moody Blues fans”: John Lodge’s Love Conquers All EP
- "A ninth album would have been about riffs - interestingly constructed riffs and hypnotic music": Jimmy Page looks back on the tests and turmoil of Led Zeppelin's final albums
- "Fuelled by despair as usual but also simplicity, the songs are rock throughout": Manic Street Preachers show that rage never sleeps on Critical Thinking
February 13
- 40 years ago, The Breakfast Club annoyed me for many reasons – but mostly for the way it ruined Simple Minds
- “You’re getting ’druff everywhere, dingwad!” This shampoo advert about a metal band with dandruff is the cringiest thing you’ll see today, or your money back!
- “When I met Bono for the first time, I was like, ‘I used to sing Pride (In The Name Of Love) in my rock band growing up!’” Lady Gaga used to front a classic rock band who covered U2 and loved Led Zeppelin
- "My funeral was cancelled, so I’m taking the show on the road instead." Halsey announces 32-city North American tour with Evanescence, The Warning and more among the "ensemble cast" supporting
- Thom Yorke unveils new collaboration with electronic artist Mark Pritchard
- New six-disc edition of Tangerine Dream's Phaedra to be released to celebrate the album's 50th anniversary
- “Way Of The Exploding Dickhead is a modern parable, without the parable bit.” Noise-rock veterans mclusky announce first album in over 20 years, share two new songs, and reveal UK and Australia tour plans
- Five truly brilliant and cruelly underrated British rock albums turning 25 this year which I can't believe no-one else is banging on about
- "It was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill to play these amazing iconic songs with the man who composed them": Jimmy Page & The Black Crowes detail massively expanded edition of Live At The Greek
- How to watch highly anticipated new Sly & The Family Stone documentary Sly Lives!
- “I’ve always wanted to be in a metal band… Pantera and Dream Theater are great”: Carl Palmer on his desire for a life beyond classic prog, the final ELP show, and why he wishes they’d had a guitarist
- “I bought some fake diamond earrings for 28 dollars”: What Linkin Park spent their money on after Hybrid Theory sold 14 million copies will definitely surprise you
- Former King Crimson bassist Peter Giles now a gold medal-winning athlete at the age of 80
- "We all appeared on stage wearing robes and holding candles:" Joe Satriani on G3 pranking, handling Yngwie Malmsteen and the Halloween costume he'd rather forget
- “Things come more difficult to him than to anyone I’ve ever met…he doesn’t con himself into thinking he knows what he’s doing”: Peter Gabriel, in the words of his collaborators and admirers
- "I was debagged on a regular basis. And in Chicago I barely held on to my underpants": From Genesis to revelations with Peter Gabriel
February 12
- "Roses are pink, violets are blue, I love Whitesnake and these are for you!" David Coverdale would like to wish you a Happy Valentine's Day
- Soundgarden, Oasis, The White Stripes, Joy Division/New Order among new nominees for the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame
- “I think this is all happening out of necessity. The boys and I have expressed our need to play music again.” Letlive announce 2025 reunion tour with US, UK, Europe and Australia dates
- "It was the ‘giggle grass’, so everything struck me as hysterically funny for about three hours." Grand Magus frontman J.B. Christofferson on laughing fits, Beowulf and heavy metal's next generation
- Lacuna Coil fans! Pick up this exclusive Metal Hammer bundle with an art card signed by Cristina and Andrea, only available here
- Asia to perform first three albums over three nights at Trading Boundaries in April
- "My disability restricted me so much." How Alt Blk Era beat the odds to become Britain's most exciting new alternative band
- “They said, You boys will never do this show again!” The Doors' Robby Krieger and John Densmore share their memories of being banned from America's most legendary TV show
- “For one complete tour I had an FBI agent in every town”: Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia once had so many stalkers that the feds had to step in
- “I would hide out before the show, play the set, hide out after, not be sociable, not have fun, and that just started wearing thin on me”: Jesse Leach explains his 2002 Killswitch Engage exit
- "Do you know Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love?": Over in Santa Monica, a Lithuanian guitarist and a Ukrainian violinist are busking their way to YouTube fame and fortune
- "His voice is extraordinary": Nine albums by Paul Rodgers you should listen to... and one you should ignore
- “Amid the turmoil over the increased use of synths, there’s a perfect balance of both sides of their character”: 12 great Rush songs of the 80s
- "He used to go around carrying a large case with a hammer in it. And if you weren’t getting paid, they’d break somebody’s knees": The heroes and villains of the Black Sabbath journey
February 11
- "All we wanted was to stamp out Queen and Aerosmith": Inspired by Keith Moon and Star Trek, Come Sail Away took Styx to places they never expected
- "My parents were academics and not thrilled about me joining a thrash metal band." Testament's Alex Skolnick talks thrash, Clash Of The Titans and what it was like joining Ozzy Osbourne's band
- "Gothic metal’s crown isn’t going anywhere anytime soon." Lacuna Coil go heavier than ever on Sleepless Empire with help from guests Ash Costello and Randy Blythe
- “Please join us to help celebrate the final ride of our irreverent thoroughbred.” Patti Smith announces 50th anniversary celebrations for Horses, unveiling dates in the UK, Europe and US at which she'll perform her classic 1975 album in full
- Watch a stunned Justin Hawkins perform a song with The Darkness when he thought he was going to play laser tag instead
- “It reminded me of Charli XCX”: Spiritbox’s Courtney LaPlante responds to THAT red carpet Poppy mix-up
- Watch Tom Morello cover AC/DC with Slash and System Of A Down’s Shavo Odadjian at California wildfire benefit shows
- “My new voice can seem quite startling – maybe even polarising. It caught me the same way. I struggled with it”: The humbling experience that’s made Mercury Rev into a different animal
- “I thought I’d have to sell my house. The manager suggested we got part-time jobs”: Marillion were facing oblivion. Then they made This Strange Engine and found a way forward
- "Ten years ago I was a scientist in a lab coat and had never sung in front of anybody in my life": From microbiologist to musician - the unlikely rise of Stephen Wilson Jr
- Vince Neil's private jet involved in fatal crash at Scottsdale Airport: Mötley Crüe release statement
- If you ever wanted to hear a schmaltzy country and western song about a girl wearing an old Guns N' Roses t-shirt, now's your chance
- "Come along for a nightmare you won't forget!": Alice Cooper adds more dates to Too Close For Comfort tour
February 10
- "We were up in places no one else was thinking about": Nine albums by the Allman Brothers Band you should listen to... and one you should ignore
- Kendrick Lamar and SZA announce UK and European stadium shows on co-headline Grand National Tour following Compton rapper's triumphant "too loud, too reckless, too ghetto" Super Bowl half-time show in New Orleans
- "A towering two-hour concept work on a Norse saga scale." Motorpsycho and Ståle Storlokken's The Death Defying Unicorn is a "battered, barnacled beauty."
- “This is the worst pain I’ve ever experienced in my entire life.” New York Dolls frontman David Johansen has stage four cancer and a brain tumour, and would love your help
- "It is what it is. I’m the singer, get off my case." Oasis' Liam Gallagher isn't terribly bothered that thousands of Oasis fans are heartbroken having had their dreams of seeing the band shattered by Ticketmaster cancelling their reunion tour tickets
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- Sharon Osbourne explains how Black Sabbath’s original members reunited ahead of farewell show: “When they heard it was for charity, it was easy”
- Kiss' Gene Simmons says there are no more big rock bands: "They don't exist. Name one, if you can think"
- "He smashed his iPad. He smashed headphones. My lyrics got torn up and thrown on the ground – he goes: ‘F*** off, Brandi": Elton John threw some "classic" temper tantrums during the volatile making of his new collaborative album with Brandi Carlile
- “For some Journey fans, it’s their first time listening to prog rock. And they like it!” Ross Valory is pleasantly surprised at the success of his debut solo album
- Type O Negative’s guitarist is open to Peter Steele tribute shows with different singers: “The band seem to transcend into a whole new generation”
- The Smashing Pumpkins announce 2025 UK tour including a huge London show at Gunnersbury Park with Skunk Anansie and White Lies
- “Few bands could have so effortlessly handled Wembley as this”: Papa Roach put on a nostalgic classic in London’s most historic arena
- “It didn’t feel that good. There was nothing special about it, other than it had belonged to Kurt Cobain.” Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt wasn’t impressed when he got to play the Nirvana frontman’s guitar
- “She fell in love with Pink Floyd, The Beatles and David Bowie and combined them all in her neoclassical way”: Even though Kate Bush refused to produce Gavin Friday’s Virgin Prunes, he still loves her
- "A stonewall classic and a fine ending": Screaming Trees mix psychedelia with melancholy on swansong album Dust
- "For those about to collect, we salute you": Royal Mail launch range of AC/DC postage stamps
- "It was pretty shocking to understand what's actually going on": The Black Keys slam "mind-blowing" state of music industry in first interview since tour debacle
February 9
- “When Paul pitched into We Are The Champions, it wasn’t anything like Freddie would have done yet it carried the spirit of the song”: How Queen + Paul Rodgers resurrected one of rock’s most iconic bands
- “I used to walk in a venue with a beer in each hand, with a hard-on and looking for a fight”: Overkill’s Bobby ‘Blitz’ Ellsworth is the thrash survivor that cancer and a stroke couldn’t kill
- "I’ve been whipped, stabbed and had to have surgery. Most recently, I got licked on the tongue by Alice Cooper's snake." Nita Strauss shares the battle scars that shaped her into a modern guitar hero
- “Ritchie has firm ideas about how things should be, and there were things that we disagreed on”: Ritchie Blackmore once asked former Deep Purple bandmate Ian Gillan to join Rainbow
- “This is a band with no limits. If there’s a metal fan on the moon, we’ll be there”: How Iron Maiden’s epic Somewhere Back In Time tour took them where other metal bands dare not go
- “We feel that music should be used in order to make serious statements”: how The Smiths turned from a good band into a great one on Meat Is Murder
February 8
- "I said, “We’re a band, we want to make a record.” He said, “Oi dunno much about records… If you wanted a cowshed, I could probably ’elp yer!” Pendragon's Nick Barrett looks back on their 40-plus year career...
- “That TV celebrity that I became, I didn’t like it. My heart is in music. I hated every second of it”: How Ozzy Osbourne rediscovered himself with the Scream album
- “Almost overnight after the Sex Pistols, prog rock came to a halt”: 1977 was the supposedly the year punk killed prog. The truth is very different
- “There were death threats flying around. They were burning my effigy at punk bonfires”: The tumultuous story of Peaceville Records, the underground label that helped shape extreme metal
- "I found myself preoccupied by death." Meet Ante-Inferno, the British band bringing black metal to the seaside
- “I played bass in the guitar war between Hendrix and Johnny Winter. It was so loud!”: Stephen Stills’ wild stories of Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Public Enemy
- “She blends her beloved characteristics with those of King Crimson, Genesis and Porcupine Tree”: Tori Amos’ From The Choirgirl Hotel is prog in its truest sense
- Ten reasons why Tears For Fears made two of the most influential albums ever
- “In six months, we got through 300 bottles of vodka, 400 bottles of whiskey and cases of beer. It was insane”: The unbelievable story of Def Leppard’s 80s hard rock masterpiece Hysteria
February 7
- Oasis ticket fiasco rumbles on as thousands of fans have tickets cancelled in Ticketmaster 'bot' crackdown
- "He immediately tore open the doors of what could be." Gene Simmons recalls being blown away by Ace Frehley's Kiss audition
- "It was a show none of us will forget." If you're still devastated about missing Imagine Dragons on their Loom world tour, dry your eyes: a film of their orchestra-enhanced show at LA's iconic Hollywood Bowl is coming soon to a cinema near you
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear this week
- "They put a sad cone over my vomit!" A Complete Unknown star Elle Fanning reveals why Timothée Chalamet thought she was "wasted" at her first Bob Dylan show, and why she was bummed when an invite to meet the iconic musician wasn't at all what she expected
- Cool new proggy sounds you must hear from McStine & Minnemann, Gleb Kolyadin, Marko Hietala and more in this week's Tracks Of The Week
- “His vocals were often trammelled in Nightwish… but here he lets loose throughout”: Marko Hietala blends love and instinct on Roses From The Deep
- “We’ve got one song with Serj from System Of A Down and we just finished a second Babymetal collab”: Polyphia are making a “heavy” new album stacked with special guests
- "This song is for everyone who's ever felt defeated but chose to fight another day": Watch the video for Bryan Adams' muscular new single Roll With The Punches
- "Behind those dark glasses and unsmiling visage, he presented an inscrutable presence." Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge remembered
- "Oh my God, this is mind-blowing": The makers of Becoming Led Zeppelin say they found some amazing unseen footage from later in the band's career
- "There's a rejuvenated feel to this reunion album": Dream Theater's dream team return with a sharper-edged heaviness to the sound on Parasomnia
- “Most is more than familiar… but there’s a sense of excitement in having this chemistry back in place”: Dream Theater’s Parasomnia largely lives up to the hype
February 6
- "The demos we made were closer to what we dreamed of than our later sessions": Queen are releasing their De Lane Lea demos on vinyl for Record Store Day
- "It doesn't wholly demystify them, but it reveals the human brilliance at their heart": Becoming Led Zeppelin strips away the mystique to present the birth of a legend
- New book sheds further light on the rise of Marillion, Pallas, Twelfth Night, and the 80s prog revival
- “Tom Morello is going to play with the drummer from Tool and they’re going to have Billy Corgan with them”: Sharon Osbourne spills details on running order for Black Sabbath’s farewell show
- Are Tenacious D back?! Jack Black and Kyle Gass confirm first new music together since going on hiatus last year
- "Countless musicians and friends lost everything." Nick Cave, PJ Harvey, Jarvis Cocker, Primal Scream, Red Hot Chili Peppers duo and more donate unreleased songs to new benefit album to aid Californian wildfire relief
- The Allmans' legacy continues as The Brothers announce first live shows since 2020
- "The daddy of prog metal drumming finally came home with the milk." Mike Portnoy is back with Dream Theater, and he's helped them make a banger of an album in Parasomnia
- "They take your song and put it on the radio and it ends up becoming f***ing propaganda." How Scars On Broadway's They Say helped Daron Malakian move on from System Of A Down
- Jethro Tull consider "all God's children" on new Curious Ruminant track The Tipu House
- Black Sabbath albums ranked, from worst to best
- “If I were you, I’d get a haircut and disappear”: When author William Burroughs gave Daevid Allen permission to call his band The Soft Machine
- "I’d listen to that song and dream about my future": The Struts' Luke Spiller picks the soundtrack of his life
- "I was exhausted, I had a lot of doubt, and I was a nightmare": Elton John announces collaborative album with Brandi Carlile
February 5
- "He was the backbone of Soft Machine." Founding member and keyboard player Mike Ratledge dead at 81
- I front a metal band and this is what it's like having hundreds of phones pointed at you every night on stage (spoiler: it's really weird)
- R.E.M, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Chelsea Wolfe and more to appear on Good Music To Lift Los Angeles, a 90-song benefit album to help victims of the Californian wildfires, available for one day only
- "People characterised both of our bands as being arrogant and cocky." How Bullet For My Valentine and Trivium helped revitalise metal in 2005
- Black Sabbath to reunite to play final show at blockbuster Birmingham event this summer, with Metallica, Slayer, Gojira, Anthrax and many other metal icons supporting
- “Being dramatic is their charm, but here they let go of a degree of preciousness, allowing themselves to react to the audience’s gusto”: Riverside are charged up on Live ID
- Nadine Shah, Lankum's Darragh Lynch, Lisa O'Neill among guest vocalists joining The Pogues for their first UK headline tour in 13 years
- "While I survived the 90s, not all of me did." Alice In Chains icon Jerry Cantrell on riffs, extreme metal and the best rock record to come from Seattle
- Nine albums you should listen to by the members of Guns N' Roses... and one you should ignore
- “You couldn’t put a bigger band in a smaller room”: The story of the greatest Metallica live album you’ve (probably) never listened to
- "The business has changed so much, and not for the better": Uriah Heep's Mick Box on why he's calling time on Uriah Heep as a touring act
- “He wasn’t too pleased about that song. I can understand why… I wish we’d never done it”: By the time Barclay James Harvest upset The Moody Blues, they already had form
- "They would literally laugh in my face": From Haitian voodoo to slavery, sex and school shootings, Lower is the album Benjamin Booker's old label didn't want him to make
- "I wondered if he had brought sandwiches": Jimmy Page only agreed to take part in the Led Zeppelin movie after a seven-hour meeting and an unexpected trip to a boathouse
February 4
- Footage of Bill Murray singing Bob Dylan has gone viral and it's fair to say Timothée Chalamet won't be losing any sleep
- Beabadoobee lines up North American headline shows around her Coachella and Bonnaroo festival performances
- “Pigeonhole this band at your own peril”: Why you should adore Katatonia – and where you should start with their enormous back-catalogue
- "I remember it like some people remember the Kennedy assassination. It made me want to be weird." How watching one episode of iconic US TV show Saturday Night Live in 1980 changed future Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl's life forever
- Order your limited edition Steven Wilson x Prog bundle – featuring a coloured vinyl version of The Overview and a signed art print!
- 4 brilliant new metal bands you need to hear this month
- "Fear is not a good mindset for musicians. Rock 'n' roll was not born out of fear." From Igor Stravinsky to Public Enemy, here are 10 bold, brilliant albums to inspire and fire revolution
- Hawkwind announce new studio album There Is No Space For Us
- Solstice storm the Prog Magazine Readers' Poll and announce new studio album Clann
- Even Spotify is getting in on the Spiritbox jokes, calling Courtney LaPlante ‘Poppy’ on its Kickass Metal playlist
- "The goal is world domination." Spiritbox are on the cover of Metal Hammer as one of the most exciting bands in modern metal prepare to unleash Tsunami Sea
- They've toured with Slipknot, become unlikely ambassadors for Ukraine and smashed main stages at festivals. Now Jinjer have made their darkest, angriest album yet with Duél
- Steven Wilson's return to the prog fold features on the front cover of the new issue of Prog Magazine, which is on sale now!
- Arctangent 2025 announces headliners Wardruna and Tesseract, adds over 50 bands to the lineup
- Celebrating 50 years of Iron Maiden with exclusive all-new interviews - only in the new issue of Classic Rock
- "There was a rumour that I had a secret underground water park in my backyard": Papa Roach's Jacoby Shaddix on overnight success, the path to sobriety and the nu metal resurgence
- “I came into the studio on the last day and said, ‘I think you better hear this one.’ It was kind of a curse.” When Kansas cracked the charts with a song they didn’t want to record
- "Ted Nugent came down to the dressing room and said ‘Guys! You have to calm down!'": The turbulent story of the Scorpions
- "Sh*t happens, and you just have to move through it": The Black Keys announce first US tour since cancelling last US tour
February 3
- "This is one of my favourite songs in the whole world": Watch Steven Tyler return to the stage with Nuno Bettencourt and Mick Fleetwood
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- "It was crazed, almost Charles Manson–like." Before he started Def Jam, and produced everyone from Slayer to Johnny Cash, Rick Rubin played guitar in a noise-rock band called Hose, and recorded one of the worst Led Zeppelin covers ever committed to vinyl
- “Support your local artists, support your local bands”: Watch Gojira accept the Grammy Award For Best Metal Performance that they’ve deserved for many, many years
- Rick Wakeman announces The Return Of The Caped Crusader Pt 2 tour dates for October
- “It was a really angry time; there was lots of litigation between me and the guys. So It was a much-needed release”: Once Fish escaped his Marillion train wreck, he scored a Top 5 album
- “I am...really happy to be here.” Watch the cringe-inducing moment an interviewer mistakes Spiritbox singer Courtney LaPlante for Poppy on the Grammys red carpet - and Courtney's classy response
- AC/DC announce return to Europe with Power Up ⚡️ 2025 dates
- "Gary Moore may have been many things but he was no Paul Rodgers": Gary Moore finds grit but lacks groove on Corridors Of Power
- “It’s ludicrous a song like that would go on an album at the height of our fame, but it got the most notice because it was so bizarre”: The Police’s Andy Summers on success, psychedelia and working with difficult people
- Gojira, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and St. Vincent win the rock and metal prizes at the Grammys
- "It got bad because it just turned into this weird dark thing. It became cloak and dagger shit": Toto's Steve Lukather on how cocaine took over Los Angeles in the 1980s
February 2
- Trivium and Bullet For My Valentine promised “the metal tour of 2025” – and The Poisoned Ascendancy may well have delivered
- "It was horrifying and beautiful at the same time." Belinda Carlisle on the punk rock album that changed her life
- “We had our share of arguments doing this record, a lot of them, but those arguments should escalate our art”: How Deftones rose above musical tension and a horrific tragedy with Gore
- “We were young and excitable and we wanted to do something different. We wanted to wrest Irish music away from its custodians”: The inspirational story of Horslips, Ireland’s original Celtic Rock band
- “Neil is the only one that would be a big fan of the band and then get rid of Eddie”: how Pearl Jam and Neil Young came together to make Mirror Ball
- “They explained about this movie called The Breakfast Club. They apparently had a song for us. We said: ‘No chance!’”: How Simple Minds went from punk to stadium rock, via an 80s Brat Pack classic
- “It had a 13-minute spoken-word black mass on the B-side”: The mysterious late 60s album that Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt says invented Satanic rock
February 1
- "Steely Dan had the capacity to be both inscrutable and popular, an enviable place to be": Steely Dan's tunes are rich and assured on the nonchalant Katy Lied
- “That’s what he said: ‘I’ve killed Jim Morrison.’ He provided the gear”: Marianne Faithfull saw the best and worst of the late 60s and early 70s music scene
- “Some do yoga, take drugs or go to a football game and start a fight. Music is what we do”: Soen embedded modern truth and old-school songwriting in fourth album Lotus
- “I’ve always embraced my musical schizophrenia, and this is just another room in that mansion of personality”: How Them Crooked Vultures became modern rock’s greatest one-and-done supergroup
- “The joke has always been, ‘Zakk, are you from the South?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, South Jersey! Down near the shore, bro!’”: Why Zakk Wylde swapped Black Label Society and metal for southern rock on Book Of Shadows 2
- “Stevie Ray Vaughan was a little worse for wear. He was eating KFC out of a box and then ate the box as well”: Jeff Beck’s wild tales of Jimmy Page, Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Van Halen and Frank Zappa
- 10 huge hits given away from one artist to another
- “At first people thought, ‘Knucklehead Americans!’ and now they’re starting to figure it out”: How Five Finger Death Punch silenced the haters with The Wrong Side Of Heaven Volumes 1 and 2