You can trust Louder Our experienced team has worked for some of the biggest brands in music. From testing headphones to reviewing albums, our experts aim to create reviews you can trust. Find out more about how we review.

It’s been a long time since the UK underground has harboured such a dazzling array of talent, and while this is obviously something to be celebrated, it does also mean any new band has a hell of a bar to vault over to really stand out from the crowd. Bearing this in mind, it’s really no surprise that the debut album from Leeds trio Nomasta screams ‘potential’ more than ‘essential’. This is a band who deal in an extremely satisfying brand of doom-laden metallic riffing, and on the rhythmical twists and turns of the brilliant Sir Impaler manage to concoct a fantastically wild noise. That quality isn’t consistent throughout, unfortunately, and the band could do with a dirtier production job to really accentuate the spite they so evidently have, but there’s loads to suggest they could slip snuggly into the top tier by their second or third album. Nomasta are ones to watch.

Since blagging his way onto the Hammer team a decade ago, Stephen has written countless features and reviews for the magazine, usually specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal, and still holds out the faint hope of one day getting his beloved U2 into the pages of the mag. He also regularly spouts his opinions on the Metal Hammer Podcast.