Features archive
January 2025
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148 articles
- January 22
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- “It was a very strange experience. It was like there was two people inside of him.” U2's Bono on the night he met Joy Division's “beautiful soul” Ian Curtis
- Metallica released their first music video on this day in 1989. This is how it ruined my life.
- “We cared so much about the music that we’d have these confrontational group therapy sessions… And then the switch went off”: Spirit didn’t know they were a prog band, but were always proud of their fearless diversity
- "The stunt co-ordinator said, 'Don't put your hand here - you'll blow it off.'" The story behind Ice Nine Kills' ultra-gory Terrifier 3 tie-in A Work Of Art
- "About halfway through the gig, I got down on my knees and prayed that God would forgive me and release me from this situation": The psychedelic early days of acid overlords and space travellers Hawkwind
- “From here I drew a line to Pink Floyd and painted my room black … who knows where I’d be now if I’d never heard them?” Mikael Åkerfeldt, Bruce Soord and others pick their favourite Camel albums
- "Hopefully Babymetal can teach me their dance routines, and I’ll teach them mine." How Eurovision helped Bambie Thug became Ireland's next breakout star
- "I never wanted it to be just about me": John Sykes on Blue Murder, the band he formed after leaving Whitesnake
- January 21
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- Best portable CD players 2025: Revive your CD library with these powerful portable players
- “Witness fulfilled so many dreams… I was in doubt about where to go after that”: VOLA’s battle to find a direction for latest album Friend Of A Phantom
- “It was the most explosive diarrhoea you’ve ever seen in your entire life!” The ballad of Heriot’s Debbie Gough and the guitar shop window pooper
- "I hadn’t heard of him, to be honest": Steve Jones on the return of the Sex Pistols and how new frontman Frank Carter joined the fun
- "A small subset of fans had a practice of showing up to gigs in Nazi regalia." System Of A Down's Serj Tankian on why supporting one iconic metal band was like "rock 'n' roll boot camp"
- “Our producer chopped down the songs to four minutes… the originals were much longer and stretched out”: King Crimson fan and Saxon vocalist Biff Byford narrowly missed out on being a prog musician
- “The director came up with this idea of flying at me with a helicopter. I thought, This will be the last thing I ever do.” Guns N' Roses guitar hero Slash on the making of the epic music video US President Donald Trump considers the greatest of all time
- January 20
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- "Don’t call it a happy album!" Katatonia and the story of Sky Void Of Stars
- “I was on my way to Vegas to marry a French boy, who was asleep on my lap, and I was listening to this song thinking, I'm living the dream. Then he woke up and said, I can't marry you.” Du Blonde on the eight songs that changed her life
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- "It’s a break from touring, it’s not a permanent stop." Floor Jansen on Nightwish, Yesterwynde and what comes next
- "The Boston Symphony hasn't changed its name, so why should Foreigner?": Mick Jones looks back on 50 often fractious years with one of rock's most successful bands
- "We would just take each song and try to raise it to the standard of a rock classic": The albums produced by Mutt Lange you should definitely listen to
- "Jean-Michel Jarre said he loved my music, but that I was too acoustic for him. That got me thinking": Urged on by fans, Mike Oldfield’s final album was a look back to his early years
- January 19
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- “Our best friends were drug dealers. We identified with them because we felt like outcasts, menaces to society”: The chaotic story of Aerosmith’s early years
- “The producer was saying, ‘You guys suck! You can’t play!’ I don’t know if that was a tactic to get us to perform better!”: How Cathedral reinvented doom metal for a new generation
- "Every night I was living out my teenage fantasy." Lzzy Hale talks joining childhood heroes Skid Row
- “At my level Spotify would be like a turkey voting for Christmas”: Billy Sherwood, Big Big Train,and other artists who pay it forward helped John Holden return to prog after he’d abandoned his ambitions
- “I become a Colossus of Maroussi, I can do anything!”: Michael Stipe on the period when R.E.M. became a stadium band and he embraced his inner showman
- January 18
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- “It’s the perfect encapsulation of youthful anger… It still sounds feral and savage to this very day”: The cult 1980s classic Ghost frontman Tobias Forge calls the perfect extreme metal album
- “Metal fans are still stigmatised. So I try and write lyrics with meaning, rather than standard metal lyrics”: How Megadeth‘s Dave Mustaine set out to bust a few myths with Super Collider
- Why does metal love Vikings so much? We interviewed Grand Magus, Wardruna and a college professor to find out
- “I thought Bowie was talented even though he lacked direction. I could hear the star quality in his voice”: Tony Visconti’s tales of David Bowie, Marc Bolan, Phil Lynott and U2
- “It was too Rod Stewart”: the huge Radiohead song that the band have distanced themselves from… and no, it’s not Creep
- “We were weeping like little babies, trying to figure out whether to continue, and if so how”: How HIM pulled back from the brink to make their final album Tears On Tape
- “Wordless vocals wail around the memory of his lost love, manifesting a grief too terrible to put into words”: David Crosby’s solo debut proved his prog credentials
- “It’s the most spontaneous thing I’ve ever been involved in”: the story of Mad Season, the grunge supergroup that Mike McCready hoped would save Layne Staley
- January 17
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- "Being sober was a real different experience from a band that was always wrecked": How Mötley Crüe cleaned up and made their biggest album
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- "I thought, What is this? I don't understand what I'm hearing, but wow!" Nine Inch Nails' Trent Reznor on the "life-changing" record which blew his teenage mind, and why soft rock legends Barry Manilow and Billy Joel may have influenced his songwriting
- It's the return of Prog's Tracks Of The Week! Cool new proggy sounds from Coheed & Cambria, Don Airey, Wardruna and more
- “We didn’t know we were creating a new style… we took sounds from anywhere and everywhere”: Tony Visconti, Roger Dean and the making of Osibisa’s debut album
- "I first heard it when I started taking acid": Devin Townsend picks the soundtrack of his life
- January 16
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- “All you have to do is turn on the TV and you’re inundated by complete lies from people who are supposed to be running this country”: How distortion, chaos and a world gone mad shaped R.E.M.’s game-changing album Document album
- "He said, 'The last thing I want is you guys going on David Letterman and the freakin’ drummer’s singing." How Mastodon left sludge metal behind for cosmic prog metal on Oblivion
- "My first concert was The Black Crowes, but my second was ZZ Top. That would've been the cooler answer!" Brat's Liz Selfish: 10 Records That Changed My Life
- “He couldn’t understand amidst the noise that I was the other singer! I almost enjoyed it better that way”: The underwhelming moment when Yes’ Jon Davison met predecessor Jon Anderson
- “Hendrix took a look at my first album and said: ‘I’ll try it this way’. I don’t appreciate that. But then I can’t play the guitar like him”: The chaotic story of Arthur Lee and Love, the 60s renegades who helped invent the LA scene
- “Turn the lights off, put the music on, close your eyes and start to have a waking dream… it might even inspire people to create movies that could be scored with this music”: John Carpenter’s second career in prog
- January 15
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- “I borrowed an iPod for a flight and put Moonmadness on it. Flying through the clouds, I was listening to Air Born thinking, ‘This is great!’” Why Baroness ex Peter Adams loves Camel
- 4 brilliant new metal bands you need to hear this month
- "My friend’s mom had connections with the Grateful Dead and could score good acid." Kyuss legend Brant Bjork was destined for a life in rock'n'roll
- "We were even rebelling against the people who embraced us": A brief history of cult Paisley Underground psychonauts The Dream Syndicate
- “Something we did do was throw out the rulebook”: Arch Enemy discuss “chaotic” new album Blood Dynasty
- “He was wearing a red satin suit and he’d closed his eyes to do existential-style doodles. Then he got ink on his suit and was pissed off”: Why Captain Beefheart is The Primevals frontman Michael Rooney’s prog hero
- "I did have a multitrack tape of that, but it got mislaid": The secret history of Led Zeppelin’s lost masterpiece
- "The whole evolution of electric guitar-driven, album-oriented music can be traced directly back to him": The Bob Dylan albums you should definitely listen to
- "I sometimes struggled to convey what we were just talking about, and not everyone understood it": A story of Ghost's concert movie, logistical complexity and Hollywood finance
- January 14
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- "When you're young you've got all this violence in you, and that music released it for me." U2's Bono on the "genius" musician he considers an "exorcist"
- "I certainly did not imagine that a son of mine would get rich from being obnoxious!" In 1987, the Beastie Boys were portrayed as the world's most outrageous, offensive band, a danger to civilised society. Their parents found it all hugely amusing
- "We’ve played shows on mushrooms in the past." Blood Incantation made one of 2024's trippiest, most ambitious metal albums, and we're starting to see why
- “I thought it was just going to be a fun little party record, but my grief started leaching into the music”: Devin Townsend is slightly embarrassed by his new album, and that’s a good thing
- “It’s a case of writing something you thought was wryly amusing, then it just won’t leave you”: Horrified by his own mission statement, Public Service Broadcasting’s J. Willgoose Esq. calls himself a pessimist with impostor syndrome
- "Fake blood starts pouring from an amateurish-looking skull incorporated into a plank of wood": A night out with Iron Maiden before they were famous
- January 13
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- "We had turned into grotesque prog creatures": How Rush reinvented themselves
- The 50 best metal songs of 2024
- Feel old yet? These classic metal albums turn 20 in 2025
- "It's interesting that metalheads resonate with us.” Kalandra mix ethereal prog, Nordic folk and, er, bird songs. So why can't metal fans get enough of them?
- Rachael Yamagata teams up with TESSAN to inspire journeys through music and connection
- “You’re 17, it’s a normal dumb night, then someone’s screaming, ‘Get on the floor!’ I’m gonna die. This is the end of my life”: The armed hold-up that set the Flaming Lips’ Wayne Coyne on the road to music
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- The miraculous journey of an Angry Young Man: The Elvis Costello albums you should definitely listen to
- January 12
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- "These eighteen months have been the hardest thing I've ever been through in my life": Jesse Malin on the spinal stroke that left him paralysed from the waist down and the long road to recovery
- "All had this feeling that it was something really momentous": Bruce Dickinson looks back on his solo albums and forward to Iron Maiden's big year
- "It's only afterwards that you realise, 'Hey, Kayak could really have been something'": the story of the Dutch proggers and their 2018 album Seventeen
- “I like to push some of those buttons. I like the fact that people have a problem with what we’re doing”: How Metallica kicked back against the 1990s haters with Reload
- “Part of the attraction for Lou Reed was that I had an ample supply of hash”: how a British 70s cult hero became a member of famously grumpy Lou’s crew
- “We really weren’t compatible. It was kind of cool, but there was a lot left to be desired”: The singer who briefly replaced Ozzy Osbourne in Black Sabbath in 1977 – and then was forgotten
- “We were supporting a third-rate slide guitarist in an empty roadhouse”: Pulp guitarist Mark Webber on the Britpop legends’ weirdest ever gig
- “We demonise the concept of being angry. But it needs to be used as a tool”: The game-changing 2015 album that reinvented metalcore
- “I’ve had prog dates because of our concerts… the great thing is that you don’t have to explain your weird musical tastes!”: Focus guitarist Menno Gootjes’ prog life
- January 11
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- “Our manager started making up rumours that I was back on heroin and the band were breaking up”: How Aerosmith defied grunge and a giant meteor to become bigger than ever in the 1990s
- “Metal is the only genre that’s open to so many different types of music. That’s why Babymetal is here right now”: How Babymetal smashed the barriers and defied the haters to become Japan’s biggest metal band
- “We were doing things that would have been beyond us with Ozzy. With Ronnie James Dio, there were so many more options”: How a reinvented Black Sabbath saved themselves from oblivion with Heaven And Hell
- “You only get caught when you’re successful”: Robert Plant and Jimmy Page on the time Willie Dixon came calling for his Whole Lotta Love songwriting credit
- “Prog rock is to music what sci-fi is to literature: a desire to further the imagination, to push the music to the edge”: How William Shatner learned to love prog and make an all-star album with all the humanity of classic Star Trek
- “Arnold Schwarzenegger wanted to talk to me. They thought I would be right for the part of The Terminator”: WASP frontman Blackie Lawless’ wild tales of Lemmy, Gene Simmons and The Village People
- “We’re all doing things. I think that keeps Creed healthy”: Mark Tremonti on the importance of Creed’s members working on other projects
- January 10
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- "They’d usually freak, there’d be a lot of threats, a lot of aggression." Why shoegaze legends My Bloody Valentine had to hire their own security guard to protect audiences from angry security guards at their gigs
- "They seemed to come out of some New York film where it was all flick-knives on the street." The Damned's Dave Vanian on the gig that changed his life
- The Hourglass Effect's gorgeous new EP Inner Ocean is the burst of country-fried rock 'n' roll you need to get you through winter
- “People prefer to deal with the shadows rather than dealing with the truth”: 10 epic songs that showcase Orphaned Land’s ferocious pursuit of a better world
- "Cannibal Corpse have made it to a level where they’re playing to thousands." Gatecreeper want to make death metal as big as possible
- "System Of A Down isn’t working right now, so do you want me to just sit around and wait?" How Shavo Odadjian ditched nu metal for deathcore with Seven Hours After Violet
- “Chris Squire was super fun. I love it when musicians retain their childlike qualities; that’s where music comes from”: Tal Wilkenfeld’s prog connections include David Gilmour, Todd Rundgren and Trevor Rabin
- "It just seemed like another really good way to bring people together": How Slash re-electrified the blues for the hard times
- "That song has been my passport, my bank manager and my lover down through the years": Cutting Crew's Nick Van Eede on (I Just) Died In Your Arms, gangster rap and Tanzanian bandits
- January 9
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- "Johnny Rotten came in, turned to Iggy and said, Oo the f***'s that – your manager or something?" David Bowie on his first encounter with the Sex Pistols
- Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse Of The Heart was originally written for a Nosferatu musical: “If anyone listens to the lyrics, they're really like vampire lines. It's all about the darkness, the power of darkness and love's place in the dark"
- "Snoop Dogg said he’d had over a billion streams and made less than $43,000 – that should scare the **** out of everyone." Ice-T on Body Count, dream collabs and more
- "At the time I was very interested in drugs. Drugs was chic." Blondie's Debbie Harry on the 'fashionable' drug scene she found in 1960s New York
- The 20 best metal albums of 2024 - as voted by the readers of Metal Hammer
- The blow that ended it all: How the return of Jane's Addiction was floored not by musical differences, but by a punch thrown by their singer
- “A lot of bands were bigger than us, but few can claim to have such a diverse catalogue of music… I know it’s all been worthwhile”: Gryphon’s Dave Oberlé looks back
- "Slash is the reason I picked up a guitar, when I was nine": Meet Grace Bowers, the teenage guitar sensation who's getting the attention of the A-list
- "We've been to hell and back, and we came out the other side": Bullet For My Valentine almost broke up, but a billion streams says they're ready to celebrate
- January 8
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- "It's journalistic complacency and claptrap." Robert Plant never liked the idea of Led Zeppelin being labelled a heavy metal band
- “We started by playing an old song and it was a case of the hairs standing up on your arm. I felt straight away that we were back”: The power of music compelled Beardfish to return
- Cradle Of Filth announce new album The Screaming Of The Valkyries – but that Ed Sheeran track isn’t any nearer: “We’re not absolutely sure how it will emerge, but it’s been done”
- "I went to an award show with my **** out, just wearing chains. Lordi thought I looked cool.” Five minutes with nu gen provocateur Mimi Barks
- “Andrew Loog Oldham asked if we were songwriters. I said we were – then I had to go away and figure out how you wrote songs”: The Nice helped found prog and merged classical music with rock, then they were gone
- A back catalogue to epitomise the American Dream: The Van Halen albums you should definitely listen to
- "I had 24 hours a day, seven days a week to take drugs": Peter Perrett and the long road to a genuine late-career masterpiece
- "To connect with a little band called Body Count says a lot about David Gilmour": Ice-T on Law & Order, not blowing up the planet, and breathing new life into a Pink Floyd classic
- "We get the electric guitars going and we hit it hard": Brothers Osborne's TJ Osborne on playing out, coming out, and the fine line between country and rock'n'roll
- January 7
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- “He heard this outrageously bad dance version. He was enraged; we love that song. The producer said, ‘You should cover it’”: Oceans Of Slumber’s return to prog metal
- Ramones would have been gifted Bruce Springsteen's first hit single if Springsteen's manager hadn't intervened
- “This record is about unapologetically accepting that you are the sum of all of your parts”: Halestorm discuss their next album, inspired by Motörhead, country and Skid Row
- “We’d been paying Rick Wakeman £25 a week and Yes offered him £100… We had his son Oliver with us for a while, and he left for Yes too!” Dave Cousins and the life and times of Strawbs
- "Neil would do a full hour of unrelenting drumming before he went on stage to play for another three": A personal tribute to Neil Peart
- David Gilmour solo albums: the essential guide
- January 6
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- The 10 best punk, metal and classic rock songs soundtracking season two of SAS Rogue Heroes, the loudest, most explosive show on TV
- “How dense was I, singing those songs and not realising those things were happening to me?” Linda Thompson on struggling to sing, struggling to perform live and why her kids aren’t her greatest achievement
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- January 5
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- “It feels like our last punk single, this mad little blip on the radar”: the story behind the Manics’ 2000 hit The Masses Against The Classes
- “We had to rush on to cover up this cacophony of brass players who couldn’t see what they were doing, having a go and failing miserably”: When Balaam And The Angel tried to emulate ELP, it didn’t go well
- January 4
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- “He was a great guitar player. He’s not looking at what he’s playing, he really knows the instrument”: Joe Satriani says Kurt Cobain was an underrated guitar hero
- “We were the biggest of our generation of metal bands. We’d done it through hard graft and killer songs. None of that trendy image rubbish”: How Saxon’s Wheels Of Steel turned them into the NWOBHM’s first stars
- ‘John Belushi always used to try to get off with my ex-wife. I’d say: ‘John, I can hear you, you fat git’”: Ronnie Wood’s wild tales of Jimi Hendrix, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan and Axl Rose
- “F*ck rock stars, tonight we’ve got musicians!”: saluting Self-Pollution Radio, Pearl Jam’s chaotic and star-studded foray into broadcasting
- 10 underrated indie-rock records released in 2000 that deserve your attention
- “I had no illusions about losing popularity – in fact, I almost did it intentionally. A guy from the label said, ‘Are you crazy?’ I said, ‘Yes, but I assume the consequences’”: John McLaughlin’s career outside the lines
- January 3
- January 2
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- Watch Rush, Chris Cornell, Dave Grohl, Heart, Tom Morello, John Fogerty, Chuck D and more jamming on Robert Johnson's blues classic Crossroads in 2013
- “People would say, ‘He took a trip and now he’s weird.’ He wasn’t weird at all”: Mick Rock’s “surprisingly simple” friendship with Syd Barrett, and other psychedelic adventures
- “The world my kid is going into is insane. I can’t write positive lyrics”: How In Flames defied the haters and the apocalypse to make A Sense Of Purpose
- “It shouldn’t work but it comes out brilliant… You can spend hours studying what they did and still not fully get it”: Nik Kershaw’s passion for Gentle Giant
- 25 things we’re looking forward to in 2025
- January 1
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- The decade the blues mutated: A beginners' guide to 80s blues in 10 essential albums
- “The combination of music and sex was something I had never encountered in any other group”: How the Rolling Stones married sex, blues and rock’n’roll and launched themselves to notoriety
- “I thought, I gotta have some real track marks before I quit heroin.” The Lemonheads' frontman Evan Dando knows that he's lucky to be alive
- "My anger is a gift. But it's consuming me." Inside the rebirth of Jason Aalon Butler's genre-splicing punk machine, Fever 333
- Mystic Festival is boasting one of 2025's best lineups and one of the most unique and great value metal festival experiences in the world
- “Some thought it inspired; others heard an epic train wreck… His palette broadened, the songs lengthened, the lyrics became more personal”: The prog credentials of Sufjan Stevens’ The Age Of Adz
- “Who is gonna sing that to who? Cos you sure ain’t singing it to me and I sure ain’t singing it to you”: the reason that Prince turned down Michael Jackson’s request to do a duet on an 80s classic
- "It’s actually Sid Wilson’s favourite Slipknot song." Inside nu metal's greatest deep cuts
- “I got him a drink and it went from there”: how Damon Albarn and Noel Gallagher buried the hatchet and became unlikely friends and collaborators
- “I chose to leave, to focus on myself… It was a very difficult, painful, sad time for everyone”: Vincent Cavanagh had to quit Anathema to become The Radicant
- "He was trying to numb the past, dull the present and look for comfort in the future. He found it there and it killed him": Dan Aykroyd on the tragedy of John Belushi and the making of The Blues Brothers
- "We just went in and just destroyed San Francisco, and that was it": Jimmy Page on Led Zeppelin's historic arrival in America
