Dave Everley

From the monolithic Metallica to rising stars like Green Lung, these are the greatest shows that Team Hammer saw this year

Necromandus were earmarked as the next Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath themselves - but their dreams were not fulfilled

The past 12 months may go down in history as a period of tumult and turmoil, but on the positive side, rock'n'roll is very much alive and well – as the best 50 albums of 2023 reflect

From Metallica to Sleep Token, Avenged Sevenfold to Babymetal, these are the best metal albums of 2023 - as voted by you!

He’s not out to mislead or deceive with his seventh solo album, but admits: “You can look for explanation, you can look for logic, but it’s not there”

Enigmatic trio King's X have never quite enjoyed the success they deserved, but they've made excellent music along the way – and these are their best albums

Paranoid? Sabbath Bloody Sabbath? Heaven And Hell? Hammer's top writers duel it out to declare Sabbath's best album ever

Every song from Led Zeppelin’s iconic fourth album from Black Dog to When The Levee Breaks, captured at different points in their career

The self-described “Cornish hippies” on their folk, art-rock, global music roots, new album Ubiquity – and how they owe everything to the kindliness of (pink) strangers…

From setting the stage for Sleep Token to making metal sexy again, Tobias Forge takes us inside the final days of Impera

Disillusioned with much of modern music and its presentation, Creeper up the drama and the slap and take things over-the-top with their new goth-rock vampire opera album

Creeper's Sanguivore is one of the albums of the year, and with it they - and in particular talismanic frontman Will Gould - have crafted a whole new world

From Metallica to Babymetal, Cattle Decapitation to Sleep Token, these are the best metal albums of the year to date

Slipknot's Corey Taylor heard the world’s dirtiest joke from Lemmy, hung out with Björk, battled Dave Grohl at table tennis, raided Metallica’s fridge, talked ‘weirdness’ with Mike Patton and almost joined Anthrax

The story behind Meat Loaf and Jim Steinman's mega-hit I'd Do Anything For Love (But I Won't Do That)

Kavus Torabi explains the themes behind the band’s third album after the death of Daevid Allen

Iron Maiden have made some absolute classics across their near-five decade career, so we got the Maiden megafans in our ranks to argue over which is the greatest album of them all

For Kiss, the 90s was a roller-coaster decade that took them from the lows of a shelved ‘grunge’ album to a money-spinning reunion to a cataclysmic fall-out. Roll up and step into the Psycho Circus

Not every band can be as huge as The Beatles or Led Zeppelin in America – just ask Slade, The Small Faces and Status Quo

Little Caesar should have been the next big band to come out of the late 80s Sunset Strip scene – but everything that could have gone wrong did go wrong