Album Review: Accept - Humanoid Reviewed by Drew McCarthy Accept seem to be one of those bands that for whatever reason never seemed to reach the same dizzying heights as their Heavy Metal counterparts such as Iron Maiden and Judas Priest which is a great shame, as on the strength of their back catalogue and the new album Humanoid, they deserve to be a lot more lauded than they seem to be. Humanoid is a very self explanatory title for the album, the cover depicting an evil looking robot surrounded by a crowd of downtrodden looking humans, with a futuristic, almost dystopian looking city in t ..read more

Live Review: Ingested - Rescue Rooms, Nottingham22nd April 2024Support: Fallujah and Melancolia Words: Dan Phipps Photos: Tim Finch It has been twelve months since Ingested were last in Nottingham where they absolutely destroyed the main room at Rock City in support of Cannibal Corpse. Now exactly 365 days later with the leap year in 2024 the band are back this time at Rescue Rooms to give the city another thorough kicking. Australian band Melancolia opens up the evening's event while the majority of the crowd are forming a very orderly queue for the bar. Now the band are technically profic ..read more

Album Review: Assassin - The Upcoming Terror / Interstellar Experience Reviewed by Gareth Pugh Most people will have heard of Germany’s finest Thrash exports: Kreator, Sodom, Destruction and Tankard, but there’s more to German thrash than the Teutonic big four, as they’re collectively known, and bands such as Protector, Death Row, Holy Moses and of course Assassin, also rose from the primordial pit, but without gaining the same amount of notoriety as their illustrious peers. Assassin officially arrived on the scene with the release of their debut album ‘The Upcoming Terror’ in 1987, a b ..read more

Album Review: Morgul Blade - Heavy Metal Wraiths Reviewed by Sam Jones It made me really happy to see Morgul Blade would soon have a new album out, when I thoroughly enjoyed their first record, Fell Sorcery Abounds. Formed in 2018 out of Pennsylvania, United States, the band are a traditional heavy metal act with one unique difference: their songwriting and themes, even their band name, are received from Tolkien’s worldbuilding. It’s what drive me to their first album, aforementioned, in the first place for my adoration of Tolkien’s works has remained with me since I was sixteen. Now, three ..read more

Album Review: Full of Hell - Coagulated Bliss Reviewed by Rob Barker Coagulated Bliss is the sixth full-length album by the Maryland heavyweights Full of Hell. A crushing blend of heaviness and unrelenting brutality - even the quieter (if I can call them quieter?) few seconds here and there within the tracks doesn't take away from the devastating power of this hate-fuelled audio attack. The short track length for most of the songs make for a powerful, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it punch to the face, not dissimilar to Converge’s No Heroes/Jane Doe era car-crash-level madness. Full of Hell credit t ..read more

Album Review: Darkness – Blood on Canvas Reviewed by Matthew Williams At a time when my most of my music listening is taken over by stoner and progressive rock, with all their groovy and sun kissed vibes, it’s always great to get back to basics and where my heavy metal journey started back in 1988, with a bit of thrash!!! Ironically, it’s with a band who themselves began their journey in the 80’s firstly as Destroyer, but then become more well know as Darkness, not to be confused with those cheeky rock chaps from Lowestoft by the way. German thrashers Darkness are back with possibly their mo ..read more

Album Review: ACxDC - G.O.A.T. Reviewed by Patrick O'Reilly ACxDC, or to give them their proper name, Anti-Christ Demoncore make, quite appropriately, one hell of a racket. Celebrating their 21st birthday this is a band who have been around the block a few times, yet this is only their second album. G.O.A.T is an acronym for Greatest of All Time and although I wouldn't quite go as far as describing the band as such they are definitely in the upper tiers of bands in the grind/power violence/ punk genres. A blistering start to the album comes courtesy of track ‘Wanna See a Dead Body’ and from ..read more

Live Review: Blind Guardian - Academy, Manchester13th April 2024Support: The Night eternal Words: Dan Barnes Photos: Julian Tanner If my calculations are correct, then this is only the twelfth show the German Power Metal juggernaut that is Blind Guardian have played the soil of the United Kingdom. And if you remove the three Bloodstock appearances – 2002, 2009 and 2017 – and any London shows, it’s only the band’s fifth venture into the wilds of the nation. That said, this is Blind Guardian’s second trip to Manchester and any chance to see the Teutonic legends in concert is to be grasped wit ..read more

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