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September 2023

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250 articles

September 30
- The most played live songs by 25 iconic rock bands
- “All our grief and sadness got directed at him”: Watch James Hetfield explain why Metallica hazed Jason Newsted in the ’80s
- "Christmas is overlaid onto the winter solstice, and that nods towards our pagan past.” Why Christmas is prog's favourite time of the year...
- “In my own mind there have been five bands called The Cure that I’m in”: Robert Smith on the ever-changing line-up of his goth trailblazers
- A beginner’s guide to '00s British indie in five essential albums
- 10 classic heavy metal albums that didn't sell nearly as well as they should have
- “Everybody thought I was dead. But as you can see, I’m very much alive”: how the reunited Red Hot Chili Peppers overcame acrimony, addiction and near-death experiences to make Californication
September 29
- “We played Black Sabbath songs because we wanted Ozzy to sing with us – he thought we were making fun of him.” How a 1986 Ozzy Osbourne tour lifted Metallica to the major leagues
- The 11 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- The best new prog sounds from Steven Wilson, Trevor Rabin, Kyros and more in Prog's Tracks Of The Week
- "We're like The Village People of rock. We’ve got the metal guy, the prog guy, the pop guy, the jazz‑funk guy and the country guy": How Flying Colors made Second Nature
- Watch Guns N' Roses frontman Axl Rose covering Led Zeppelin in 1986, before the world knew his name
- "I never liked school, and I never actually liked children": Watch The Smiths' Morrissey and Johnny Marr get grilled by school kids in this priceless 1984 TV footage
- "It’s more exciting to be influenced by what could be done rather than what is being done. That’s a progressive outlook.” Jesus Jones' Iain Baker on why he rates Bill Nelson so highly
- 10 rock stars who have appeared in ridiculous TV ads
- "The younger generation are totally vibing with this music, and they aren't really comparing it to other things": how Tempt are recreating the sound of the 80s for a new generation
- "Being right there with them at the Albert Hall will be pure joy, and I plan to make some huge slabs of Orbit noise when the moments are right": William Orbit's love letter to Hawkwind
September 28
- “We need to pump up the volume on this”: how Tina Turner and a roasting from his manager helped Bryan Adams turn Reckless from a flop-in-waiting into one of the biggest albums of the 80s
- These are the six essential Rod Stewart solo albums every rock fan needs in their life
- "It’s progressive at times, commercial at times. It’s eclectic." James LaBrie and Static Impulse
- "You're a bit like Metallica meets Perry Como": watch Faith No More's excruciating first British TV interview in this rare footage from 1988
- “It was brutal. I would wake up and not get out of bed. I couldn’t face having to tell the guys what was going to happen… that God wanted me to leave”: Neal Morse’s struggle with his final Spock’s Beard album
- Every Bruce Dickinson solo album ranked from worst to best
- “When Piotr died I thought maybe it’s time to say: ‘This is the end of Riverside'." How Riverside got back on track with Wasteland
- The 10 heaviest metal breakdowns of all time
- "If I had to deal with the pressure, I'd crack and end up as a high school water polo coach": The time James Hetfield guested as a weird version of himself on American Dad
- "They might just be the most underrated band ever." We asked Tobias Forge, Robb Flynn, Max Cavalera, Sharon Den Adel and more metal icons to recommend us some new music. Here's what they picked
- "Solitude is Candlemass's Paranoid": How a killer hangover inspired one of doom metal's most epic tracks
- “We’re at the festival and everybody else is a Viking and playing accordions… And then we watched what we were doing, like, ‘I hope this isn’t our fault!’” Ivar Bjørnson on how Enslaved avoided black metal to become prog
- The 10 best metal side-projects of all time
- "Why have they kept it a secret? It's Earth-shattering!": 10 musicians who claim to have encountered extraterrestrial activity in real life
- "I used to dread putting on those spandex pants. The eighties were just the worst time": Europe look back at the creation of their other classic, Rock The Night
- "When I started getting rolling it was considered charming or entertaining – or stupid – for girls to want to play music": a story of New York folk, punk, riot grrrl and beyond
September 27
- "We ended up with what I think is a beautiful record." How Opeth made In Cauda Venenum
- 10 iconic metal cover songs that are as good as the original (and in some cases even better)
- The 10 songs that defined Within Temptation's career
- “The old Genesis stuff is probably some of my favourite music ever created." Mastodon on their prog inspiration and recording The Hunter
- “A lot of early Genesis and Roxy Music comes from Family… I think we set a certain kind of style for the next generation”: Roger Chapman recalls Music In A Doll’s House
- "I could hear James down on the street, drunk. He was screaming, 'Cliff! Cliff! Where are you?'": What happened the night Metallica's Cliff Burton died
- "AC/DC is a cookie-cutter band. That’s what every band should strive to be": Danko Jones loves AC/DC's Fly On The Wall and he's puzzled why other people don't
- "It enabled me to be the fastest gun in the west for about five minutes:" Steve Hackett, Eddie Van Halen, and the murky origins of finger tapping
September 26
- "Hey man, the music sucks! Put on something good, will ya?: what happened the night Guns N' Roses created havoc in a Mexican restaurant
- The 10 best Bryan Adams songs
- “Prog fans were saying that simple songs are bad songs and that really annoyed me!" Pain Of Salvation on why songs were the focal point of the Road Salt albums
- “I was a drug addict and alcoholic, and I needed to do the right thing to get off drugs.” Watch Megadeth’s Dave Mustaine admit he stole his first guitar
- “We did not announce he was leaving as we hoped he would come back… It was very disappointing - we ended up thinking we would have to go for second best”: How Mystery moved on from Benoit David
- "We do it the old way. If people like our music then they play it." The Tangent and COMM
- “When the metal community heard a Metallica song with acoustic guitars, they lost their lunches.” How Metallica beat the gatekeepers and turned tragedy into an immortal ballad with Fade To Black
- 10 legendary heavy metal bands with no original members left
- “Band members complained of a loss of feeling in their hands after only one song”: When Tesseract set a world record by playing on a stage built from ice
- The Beach Boys albums you should definitely own
- "It's all a matter of perception - Southern soul music is what I like": Duane Betts on his debut album, a famous dad, and the term 'southern rock'
- "SHEPHERD'S P-I-EEEE!": that time Uriah Heep's singer was the voice of Ronnie James Dio in a TV advert promoting the UK's favourite minced meat and mashed potato classic
- "A view of political violence in Northern Ireland so simplistic that its lyrics could have been scrawled with a crayon": why The Cranberries' Zombie is the worst song ever written about 'The Troubles'
September 25
- “All of my albums are pretty exhausting," laughs Arjen Lucassen as he tells the story of Ayreon's Transitus
- “The interesting thing is that she copies Robert Wyatt’s phrasing exactly”: the weird connection between Whitney Houston and the 60s UK prog scene
- "This band brings the spectacle of Van Halen or Guns N’ Roses into the prog platform." Sons Of Apollo and their second abum MMXX
- “He asked if we could make music for his abstract dance performance. We had absolutely no clue whatsoever about that world, so of course we said yes!” Ring Van Möbius’s Six Drops of Poison project
- “We were fortunate enough to find our audience still waiting for us after almost six years”: Geddy Lee on Rush’s 21st-century return
- These are the best new rock songs you need to hear right now, featuring The Cadillac Three, Joanne Shaw Taylor, Micky Dolenz and more
- Ash's Tim Wheeler on looking back, Led Zeppelin, and learning every note of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s Free Bird
September 24
- Gregg Allman: the 15 best songs from one of the great southern songbooks
- "Singers tend to be sensitive, but drummers are troubled too, just in a different way": why I ❤️ John Bonham, by Matt Sorum
- "There’s not a ray of sunshine or hope in this album": Svalbard explain why new album The Weight Of The Mask is their darkest yet
- “I don’t have to go out covered head to toe in tattoos to maintain Iron Maiden’s image. Eddie does that.” Watch Bruce Dickinson explain why Iron Maiden use Eddie on all their artwork
- “I said to my mates, ‘Can you believe this record is going to come out on the same label as Thin Lizzy?’”: the unlikely birth of Def Leppard and the story of their debut album On Through The Night
September 23
- "I Believe In A Thing Called Love inspired me to start my own glam rock band": Lord Of The Lost frontman Chris Harms picks the 10 songs that changed his life
- “He found things that other people wouldn’t think of finding in there”: how Jimi Hendrix turned Bob Dylan’s All Along The Watchtower into one of rock’s greatest songs
- 10 metal bands who changed genre and immediately ruined everything
- A beginner's guide to '80s goth in five essential albums
- “Like no one else… Theirs was the sound of a progressive new future for rock”: the prog roots of Jane’s Addiction major label debut Nothing’s Shocking
- “I’m thinking to myself, ‘Freddie Mercury is cooking me breakfast”: how Queen and James Bond turned Highlander into one of the great cult movies of the 80s
September 22
- Every Pearl Jam album ranked from worst to best
- "I felt that we were becoming stagnant, too controlled and led into areas that I didn’t feel too connected with." How Dream Theater continued their renaissance with their self titled 2013 album
- “If people had the right mindset they could make a lot of money from peace!” Banco del Mutuo Soccorso challenge the status quo with Orlando: Le Forme Dell’Amore
- “Mike said he’d do it as one long piece of music on one condition." How Transatlantic made The Whirlwind
- The 10 best new metal songs you need to hear this week
- Cool new prog sounds from Amorphis, Chelsea Wolfe, Teeth Of The Sea and more in Prog's Tracks Of The Week
- “Some people would like us to be doing the Son Of Snow Goose until we drop… people just don’t want you to change, but change is inevitable”: Andy Latimer’s unreleased Camel music
- "It was very dark...too mature for her." Believe it or not, Limp Bizkit's Fred Durst once wrote songs for a Britney Spears album
- "It was trance robot music for girls. I wasn't interested in the guys at all": the birth of Queens Of The Stone Age from the ashes of Kyuss
- Black Friday speaker deals 2023: Crank up the volume because these speaker deals are still live
- “To protect your freedom, you have to be active": How Within Temptation's new album Bleed Out was inspired by a world in crisis
- "I want to quit while I’m ahead": John Lees is taking Barclay James Harvest to Huddersfield for two final UK shows and he's bringing an orchestra
- John Lydon gave his most x-rated interview to two puppets: a foul-mouthed rabbit and a profane, chain-smoking panda
September 21
- "There’s a lot of similarities in watchmaking and Anthrax." Here's what members of some of your favourite metal bands went and did after quitting the music industry
- “I woke up and there was this black shape at the bottom of my bed”: Black Sabbath by Black Sabbath – how paranormal activity, horror films and classical music inspired the first heavy metal song
- "It’s a hard album for me to listen to... It kinda makes my skin crawl”: Dave Grohl and Krist Novoselic on the triumph and tragedy of Nirvana's final album, In Utero
- "We had heard about fans in Russia being sent to prison just for owning our records": a story of Uriah Heep, KGB agents, guns, girls and gallons of vodka
- “A mechanic charged our producer £666. He was so freaked out he insisted he pay £667.” Inside the legend that Iron Maiden’s The Number Of The Beast was cursed
- “To get an award from the prog world meant a lot to me because prog rock was in our blood when we started." The story of Voivod and The Wake
- “Gong is like a boat – people can get on and off again if they wish. It just keeps on floating down the river.” How Steve Hillage and Daevid Allen reunited after 35 years
- “We were just a progressive metal band going about our business… the next minute we’re on the world’s stage!” But playing to 160 million people hasn’t changed Voyager
- "They were the kind of guys you’d see drinking and fighting on the docks on a Friday night": Why I ❤️ AC/DC, by Cheap Trick's Rick Nielsen
- "It's sex, drugs and rock'n'roll. Those are our languages. We probably speak those better than we do English": Why The Bites might herald the return of the good-time Hollywood party band
September 20
- "I became obsessed with completely reinventing my wheel": What ever happened to Zack de la Rocha's two-decades-in-the-making debut album?
- "Stark naked like the day he was born, beaten, bruised, bloody and tripping, this icon of modern music ran like Jesse Owens through the complex": The night Butthole Surfers' Gibby Haynes gatecrashed a Nick Cave show on acid
- "There’s no reason why Judas Priest and KK's Priest can’t coexist happily": K.K. Downing on reuniting with Tim 'Ripper' Owens, nu metal and why he won't ever rejoin Judas Priest
- "I’ve been lucky to work with some really decent people who have come back for more." Stephen W Tayler's fascinating life in music
- “People assumed we couldn’t be bothered to be there, which just wasn’t the case”: Martin Barre’s take on the Jethro Tull Grammy upset with Metallica
- “Lars Ulrich and Bob Rock said, ‘Go back and work on it’”: James Hetfield used to really not like Metallica’s Enter Sandman
- “It took an hour for the band to break back into their own press conference”: 30 years ago today, Depeche Mode hosted the first ever online Q&A. It didn’t go well
- “I understood anger, I identified with outsiders... when I looked at the shiny happy people, they didn’t make sense to me”: rage, race, revolution and the fabulous rebirth of Corinne Bailey Rae
- “I got snookered in by bad people… what I would call cataclysmic behavioural stuff”: How it all went wrong for Billy Corgan’s post-Smashing Pumpkins 'supergroup' Zwan
- 10 times massive metal bands played ridiculously intimate concerts
- The Guess Who say they're ambassadors of their own catalogue, that they have a responsibility to deliver it with integrity. But they're also blown away by their own new music
- "Someday I would love to sing Yesterday with McCartney, just an acoustic guitar and our two voices": Graham Nash may be 81, but he still has unfinished business
September 19
- "If there was a day in my life I could take back, it would be that day": The death of Gram Parsons - a story of drugs, theft, and a burning corpse
- The Myles Kennedy albums you should definitely own
- "Negative Energy destroyed me in the best way": How Vexed turned tragedy and trauma into one of 2023's most emotionally explosive albums
- “I wouldn’t say I was angry, but I was definitely prone to ‘anger moments’… I would explode. The gear-trashing was the real thing”: How Muse took on the world and won
- "Our first album was the first NWOBHM album." Saxon's Biff Byford on being heavy metal pioneers, touring with Motorhead and rocking Top Of The Pops
- 10 heavy metal supergroups who weren’t so super
- “I loaded a truck with a bed and other household items… If the cops had pulled us over I’d have been busted”: The law-stretching story of what could be Fates Warning’s last album
- “Bernard is absolutely furious and it's all live on television”: New Order look back on the band’s most disastrous TV appearance ever
- “I love that nobody knows who Sleep Token are!” These are the up-and-coming metal bands Corey Taylor thinks you should be listening to
- "They were everything I wanted to hear at that moment. I fell in love with them": Kings X frontman Dug Pinnick on the moment he discovered AC/DC
- By day he's the manager of football's Queens Park Rangers, by night he sings in a rock band: These are the 10 albums that changed the life of Gareth Ainsworth
- Start Me Up was an abandoned, reggae-flavoured jam that almost never saw the light of day. Then it became a classic and earned The Rolling Stones a $14 million payday
- Jimi Hendrix: murder, the mafia, and the multiple mysteries surrounding the death of rock's most influential guitarist
September 18
- “The best prog albums are the ones that take a long time to get into." How Gazpacho made Fireworker
- "Poor Nigel Godrich was in a state": why The Strokes 'lost' follow-up to Is This It recorded with Radiohead’s producer Was Not It
- “I’ve been very lucky throughout my life as a player." Soft Machine drummer John Marshall remembered
- Bam Margera, toilet chats and Dave Grohl's tongue: how Love Metal finally took HIM worldwide, and proved Ville Valo was a rock star like no other
- “I know what’s like to be an unfeeling bitch bent on revenge so it came naturally to me”: Garbage’s Shirley Manson on the time she played a Terminator
- “I said, We’ll learn it, and then he played it differently every time!” Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera on the night Bob Dylan gave him the run around
- "I’ve been asked every question about Pink Floyd there possibly is – at least twice!" When David Gilmour released Rattle That Lock, the spectre of the day job still loomed large
- “When we talk about progressive rock, the most important part of that is the ‘rock’”: Extreme’s Nuno Bettencourt on how Yes and Genesis delivered “simplexity”
- “Eddie’s singing on it changed the feeling of the lyrics, it became more meaningful”: the inside story of Eddie Vedder and Chris Cornell's duet on Hunger Strike
- Grizzly death metal, electrifying hardcore, sludgy thrash and extreme weirdness...here are the best new bands you need to hear this month
- “A Black Sabbath audience was not our audience… but we knew how to sell it. We were never being serious musos – it was always, ‘We’ll entertain you, so you’ll enjoy it!’” The first two years of Gentle Giant
- “It gives you a sense of pride. That’s your language you’re singing." Meet Shepherds Reign, the fearless Samoan band putting Polynesian metal on the map
- "My hair caught fire and my hearing was never the same again": Relive the explosive moment Keith Moon blew up his drums on live TV
- "There's nothing original about me, it’s all about him": Inside the mind of guitarist Akio Sakurai, the Jimmy Page fan whose devotion is the subject of a new film
- These are the best new rock songs you need to hear right now, featuring Dirty Honey, Chris Shiflett, L7 and more
September 17
- Setting pigs alight, blowing up microwaves and (literally) rubbing himself the wrong way: Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson once hosted a TV show about people catching fire for no reason
- "I think this will be the last ‘traditional’ Within Temptation record": Sharon Den Adel and Robert Westerholt on how war, AI and experimentation has shaped their new album Bleed Out
- “I slugged James in the mouth – what would you do if someone pelted you?” Back in the ’80s, Dave Mustaine admitted he “earned” getting fired from Metallica
- “Experimental tunings, daring approaches to form and a genuine improvisational sensibility”: David Crosby’s proggiest album, made against the odds
September 16
- "All the dramas in my life caught up with me." Corey Taylor on Slipknot, sobriety, and going solo
- “If it’s my time, it’s my time – I’m ready to die.” Revisiting Heavy Metal In Baghdad, the most gripping metal documentary ever made
- “The band didn’t break up. It’s just that there won’t be any more new music. And I need an outlet; music has been my life for over 30 years”: Fates Warning’s Ray Alder looks ahead
September 15
- The best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- Great new prog music from John Lodge, TesseracT, The Flower Kings and more in Prog's Tracks Of The Week
- 10 terrible heavy metal albums that sold shockingly well
- 10 songs AC/DC need to play in their comeback
- A beginner's guide to Feeder in five essential albums
- “The crusty thing becoming a fashion was really quite odd… people thought it was a real movement so we pretended that it was for a bit, and got quite far up the charts because of that”: the rise of Ozric Tentacles
September 14
- "Heavy metal is about having the biggest ****. Indie is the opposite": Tobias Forge went from being a teenage headbanger to the arena-conquering mastermind behind Ghost. These are the lessons he's learned
- "After 41 years away, we didn’t want to come back and sound like we belonged in the past." How Gryphon reinvented themselves
- "People think, ‘Oh, Steven Wilson writes everything and the musicians are just doing what he’s written.' That’s not the case." How Porcupine Tree made The Incident
- "All I’ve ever wanted to do is spread positivity through music": How Skindred's Benji Webbe went from ska-loving orphan to reggae-metal innovator and the "unofficial mayor" of Newport
- Déjà vu? Was Olivia Rodrigo's 'scary' MTV Video Music Awards production malfunction inspired by a Metallica tour stunt, or was that a SHEER COINCIDENCE? You decide
- The 10 best heavy metal mascots of all time
- “It’s futile trying to be the fastest or write the craziest riff on the planet”: Watch James Hetfield explain why Metallica ditched thrash on the Black Album
- “I suppose it will turn some people off. It’s not a typical prog album… But I’m always laughing and having fun. I wanted a band that reflects that”: Arjen Lucassen celebrates the Golden Age Of Music
September 13
- 10 metal bands who completely changed and immediately made a masterpiece
- "We figured if you were in a band, you got girls and it was a whole moment of ‘Well, I’ve got to lose my virginity before I’m 30’." The inspiration for Tinyfish's The Big Red Spark
- "They were just nodding out in bed, just wasted. It was disgusting and gross": The night Dave Grohl finally realised that his Nirvana bandmate Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love were abusing heroin
- “If Napoleon had one of these, he’d have beaten the English at Waterloo”: Watch Bruce Dickinson try to sell copies of Iron Maiden’s Live After Death to strangers on the street
- “Just like the pied piperrrrr!” Watch Metallica’s James Hetfield sing Symphony Of Destruction by Megadeth (and no, it’s not A.I.)
- The “very boring” frontman who aims to be “a hybrid of Peter Gabriel and Freddie Mercury” on stage: Saga’s Michael Sadler
- "You can get in a terrible mess if you play the wrong things": Watching Queen's Brian May discuss his Red Special guitar, his sixpence 'plectrums' and secret "tasty guitar techniques" in this rare British TV interview from 1976 is guitar nerd nirvana
- A beginner's guide to Sonic Youth in five essential albums
September 12
- “Obviously we will have people who love Mike Portnoy, who won’t be able to accept the change and will probably still be bitter." How Dream Theater survived the loss of Mike Portnoy and made A Dramatic Turn Of Events
- "I tried for two weeks and never heard a word back." The strange story of Hulk Hogan's phantom 'audition' for Metallica
- “This is just another single from one of the countless groups who have come to London in the vain hope of making good”: When the roots of King Crimson were planted by Giles, Giles & Fripp
- Black Friday music deals 2024: Everything you need to know as the big sales weekend approaches
September 11
- The 10 most underrated Metallica songs
- “Marrying a rock band to an orchestra was seat-of-the-pants stuff… even if we had to have extra rehearsals because they weren’t playing it right, they charged us”: Barclay James Harvest’s early days
- A beginner's guide to Sinead O'Connor in five essential albums
- “It was mind-blowing!" Dropping Beethoven, breaking America and making extreme metal cool for the 2000s: the story of Children Of Bodom's Hate Crew Deathroll
- "Fans would go mad and start practising black magic on each other." How a drastic change in style, army-dodging and one “annoying hook” saw In The Shadows turn The Rasmus into goth rock superstars
- These are the best new rock songs you need to hear right now, featuring The Struts, Steven Wilson, Danko Jones and more
- “I fell in love with Moving Pictures, although my husband and my guitar player laugh at me because they say it’s the worst record of Rush’s whole career”: How Beth Hart discovered prog
September 10
- Win a pair of tickets to see The Dead Daisies play live in Nuremberg
- "None of us could have ever dreamt it was going to happen": the true story behind Led Zeppelin's secret Bombay sessions
- “The way things are going, maybe psychedelics could be a good thing. It’s a doom-laden world at the moment.” Hawkwind's Dave Brock calls it as he sees it
- "The Dark Side Of The Moon has already been done and so has The Six Wives Of Henry VIII! And I had no clue what else to write about!" Tony Kaye on why it took him so long to record his first solo album
- The 50 best live albums ever
- “From that day on, wherever we were we turned on the radio and heard ourselves": the song that sought truth and meaning and turned Kansas into superstars
- "You have your chosen family in life, and then you’ve got your blood brothers. And this band is my family": How Royal Thunder came back from the abyss
September 9
- Remember when Lamb Of God tore through a classic Sacrament track and jumped off some amplifiers live on Late Night?
- “We hired a real coffin, and the funeral-home people were like: You will look after it, won’t you?" Pat Travers on serenading a corpse, Thin Lizzy, and making peace with the past
- "I often see debates about album lengths on prog forums, and I’ve always been of the view that a record must be as long as it needs to be." How Cosmograf made Heroic Materials
- "I thought, 'who wants to shoot me?'": Dino Cazares on enemies, Fear Factory's new singer and getting the seal of approval from Metallica
- Watch R.E.M's Michael Stipe and Radiohead's Thom Yorke swap bands for one night only in this rare archive footage
- “They had their own code… They would communicate with each other via eye contact and head movements. It was amazing how many long, nuanced phrases they could play that way”: How Rush made Signals
- "I feel like any experience of humanity I’ve ever learned is from working in pubs": Meet Gallus, whose fiery mix of pessimism and furious energy is turning heads
September 8
- The best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- “It was the biggest place I’d ever played and the first time anyone had ever seen me”: Watch Bruce Dickinson play his first-ever Iron Maiden show in 1981
- “We don’t see any point in repeating ourselves." The story of Motorpsycho's The Tower
- Brand new prog music from Trevor Rabin, Voivod, Soen and more in Prog's Tracks Of The Week
- "There’ll always be questions like, ‘What’s going on with Mike Ratledge?’ Or a question about Robert Wyatt." Soft Machine on life in the new millennium
- "Legends Of The Shires sounded like a great British prog album to me, and that’s what we wanted to make.” Threshold on double concept albums and reuniting with former singers
- 10 amazing metal bands who only released one album
- “It’s a song about River Phoenix, wanting to share an experience with him that I couldn't because he had died”: R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe on the song he wrote for his late friend River Phoenix
- 10 thrash metal bands from the ’80s that should have been absolutely massive
- “There’s two days missing from my life. Apparently, we had a really good time!” That time The Cure's Robert Smith went on a two-day bender with David Bowie's guitarist, then offered him a job
- "It was something I didn’t know how to handle. That did a lot of damage to me" Wolfgang Van Halen on Eddie, Mammoth II, and his time as "the biggest enemy of every forty-to-fifty-year-old man" in the world
- "It's becoming something bigger than yourself, where what you're wearing is just as important as what you're playing:" How Greta Van Fleet are dressing for success
September 7
- 10 metal bands from the ’90s who should have been absolutely massive
- The success of this summer's Outbreak and Supersonic festivals mean a line has now been drawn in the sand: no longer can heavy music festival bookers utter the lie "We would book more women/people of colour, but there aren’t any”
- “Get me in on the right key, do whatever you want in the middle, and don’t make a sham out of the ending”: pianist Mike Garson on the joy of working with David Bowie at his most bold and free
- Watch Halestorm's Joe Hottinger show why Marshall's Studio JTM is the perfect evolution of its iconic original amp
- “Henry Cow ended up taking me for a curry then driving me home - best gig ever!” Jakko Jakszyk’s highs and lows
- “It was me and Thom in a room trying to do something that wasn't what we’d done before”: How Radiohead reinvented themselves, and rock music, with Kid A
September 6
- "Big Balls made my dad laugh so hard": Wolfgang Van Halen on how he bonded with dad Eddie over Dirty Deeds Done Dirt Cheap
- Horror, hate and, er, Jim Carrey: How Hammer Smashed Face made Cannibal Corpse the world's most famous death metal band
- "It was like Guns N' Roses being lectured by anarchists": Therapy?'s Andy Cairns picks the 10 songs that define his career
- “It actually changed something culturally." James Hetfield wrote Nothing Else Matters because he missed his girlfriend. It'd make ballads cool again, outrage Metallica elitists and, eventually, help Miley Cyrus mend her broken heart
- “Prog still lived deeply inside the four of us, but with Asia we sliced away the fat": How Heat Of The Moment turned Asia into a lean, mean, multi-million selling machine
- “You could hear real outsider music easily - mix all that up with working class attitude and you've got the essence of the stew”: How Ohio became the unofficial home of the world's weirdest music
- The 50 best AC/DC songs ever
- “Scott Stapp is an egomaniac, he’s a punk and he thinks he’s Michael Jackson!” Limp Bizkit and Creed once feuded and didn’t stop until Scott Stapp challenged Fred Durst to a boxing match
- “There are so many progressive artists to whom I owe so much… Roxy Music are a major part of who I am today:” Tom G Warrior’s passion for prog
September 5
- “As soon as I heard it, I just started laughing!” How Alien Ant Farm’s bizarre cover of Michael Jackson’s Smooth Criminal turned them from D-listers to nu metal giants (at least, for a short while)
- "We were a bit embarrassed because this was the raging punk scene": How the "slight reggae" of The Police's Roxanne turned a teacher and two prog rock renegades into unlikely superstars
- “She's got a fire raging in between her thighs, I got a hose to put it out, try this for size”: a deep dive into terrible heavy metal lyrics about sex
- 10 iconic metal bands with one bad album
September 4
- "Hearing it was my punk rock revelation, the moment where the skies open and you go, Oh, a lot of that music which I’ve liked up until now isn’t so important anymore": Tom Morello on the album without which Rage Against The Machine would not exist
- “As a child I had people harass us with their big Confederate flag when we were driving from a theme park." Oceans Of Slumber take a stand
- “At first when we met, he was Gavin Harrison the world-famous drummer, but since then he’s become a mate." The Pineapple Thief take a big step up
- “The label were less than pleased to be confronted by a 10-minute track with Robert Fripp on it… For Steven Wilson and I, that was the beginning of us having a genuine audience”: Tim Bowness recalls No-Man’s escape from pop
- “Of any song that I've ever written, it's most blatantly about my time in Nirvana”: the story behind the Foo Fighters song Dave Grohl wrote about his Nirvana bandmates while crashing on Kurt Cobain's couch
- "We weren't trying to replace Layne Staley": How Dave Grohl and Elton John helped a reborn Alice In Chains pay tribute to their fallen frontman on Black Gives Way To Blue
- "Some people were like, ‘Oh, you ****ing ripped off Iron Maiden!" How a near-tragic experience, an iconic video and definitely NOT ripping off Iron Maiden helped Papa Roach's Last Resort become nu metal's first post-2000 mega-anthem
- These are the best new rock songs you need to hear right now, featuring Måneskin, Steven Wilson, Michael Des Barres and more
September 3
- 10 up-and-coming black metal bands every self-respecting metalhead should listen to
- "There was a lot of pot-smoking going on at the listen-backs": Gráinne Duffy on the Californian vibes of new album Dirt Woman Blues
- The most underrated albums by 10 major prog bands
- “Leaving aside any bias over Radar Love, it brought their progressive leanings right to the surface”: Golden Earring’s Moontan
- "In all honesty I’d forgotten how good we were back then": former Marillion frontman Fish on Kayleigh, the song that changed the band for better and worse
September 2
- There are certain people you meet and you just know they won’t be around forever. Jim Morrison was one of those people. He could have died 100 times": Alice Cooper on The Doors' Jim Morrison
- “I used to look at myself all dolled up like some guy in Def Leppard, and think, ‘Who do you think you are?’”: how Gary Moore ditched hard rock and saved his career with Still Got The Blues
- “He got onstage and preached rock’n’roll, which was very much the inspiration for what I did”: 30 musicians on the singers who changed their life
- “Sales is not a mark of success": 10 rock bands from the '90s who should have been absolutely massive
- Greta Van Fleet interview: "Then one of the biker gangs said 'Hey, come to our place out in the woods, guys, and play for us'"
- 10 classic metal albums where the first song is the best
- "It was if Merlin himself could not have concocted a spell more perfect": how Stevie Nicks turned to mythology to conjure up Fleetwood Mac's Rhiannon
September 1
- "At almost 72, I’m realising that there are things I won’t be able to do forever, such as singing Over My Head." The return of King's X with Three Sides Of One
- “Die! Death! Rot! You’re in a never-ending hooooooole!” Watch Conan O’Brien’s hilariously disastrous attempt at death metal vocals
- “It’s like our Ace Of Spades. I’ll have to play it forever!” How Roots Bloody Roots made Sepultura nu metal superstars – before the band tore themselves apart
- “Chet Baker gave me a drum kit. Years later, I discovered he'd stolen it from his own drummer!” How Magma’s Christian Vander got his start
- Job For A Cowboy, Dying Wish, Nervosa and more: here are the best new metal songs from the week that you need in your life
- The 20 most underrated Iron Maiden songs
- 11 modern metal guitar heroes every self-respecting player should know about
- Cool new prog music from Bruce Soord, Beatrix Players and more in Tracks Of The Week
- "It ain't rocket science. It’s pure rock'n'roll": Def Leppard's Joe Elliott on the wild genius of AC/DC’s Powerage
- "We just hadn’t a clue how to make a single. We'd never done one before": how Roxy Music borrowed a motorcycle and broke all the rules to create Virginia Plain