Mark Cross from Firewind and Matt from Highland Fire Festival join us on episode 39 of Ragnarok Radio.

Mark is of course the highly acclaimed drummer for Greek metallers Firewind, he talks to us in Glasgow about joining the band back in 2006 and the release of The Premonition last years follow up to Allegiance.

Also included is an interview with Matt from Highland Fire Festival and vocalist for Scottish folk metal act Fortrius. Highland Fire is set to take place at The Ark in Edinburgh on August 1st the bill currently features Waylander, Northern Oak and Ravenage. The myspace page for Highland Fire Festival contains more information about the event and ticket purchasing.

Also included on the show are the following tracks

Firewind - Head Up High
Pain - Zombie Slam
Thurs - Raise Your Sword
Ensiferum - Blood Is The Price Of Glory
The Unravelling - Where Will It End
Seven Thorns - Artificial Night
Sorcerer’s Spell - Lead Us To Anthror
Mystical Fullmoon - May Wisdom Bless My Path
WolfP.A.C.K - War

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So here we go again. 2009 marked the 7th Anniversary of Download at the historic Donington Park. With few highlights last year (Kiss, Disturbed and Spinal Tap-esque backdrop malfunctions during Judas Priest aside) 2009 didn’t need to do much to surpass

Friday
Hollywood Undead – A suitably nu-metal opening to a day featuring the Bizkit, Korn and Faith No More. Everything about this band screams 1999, from the masks to the lumpen, downtune riffs and rhymes about bitches and hoes. Still strangely enjoyable though (3/5). In This Moment – The only interesting things about this band are the delectable Maria Brink and her mighty scream. Fact (2/5) Staind (3/5) Surprising heavy showing from Aaron Lewis and co, makes you wonder why they’re so fucking morose on record. Billy Talent (4/5) really enjoyed this band. Great tunes, new material sounds ace and they got the crowd pumping. KsE (5/5) Superb, tight as hell and that’s just Adam D’s hotpants. They would have been the band of the day if it weren’t for the acts that followed. Howard’s vocals weren’t always spot but with mass sing-along’s to belters like ‘Rose of Sharyn’ and ‘My Last Serenade’ it didn’t matter one bit. Limp Bizkit (5/5) Fucking superb they were. Was curious to see how this would go down but opening with ‘Break Stuff’ was the right move. It really was genuinely exciting to see the Bizkit back on stage tearing it up. Phenomenal. Korn (4/5) Tough act to follow but Korn delivered a set with their typical vigour and passion. ‘Thoughtless’ was a very nice surprise but the Pink Floyd cover was a bit of an energy sapping misfire, especially after the one-two punch of ‘Blind’ and ‘Got the Life’. Faith No More (5/5) A set full of heaviness and wonderful eccentricity. Watching Mike Patton go from charming crooner to screaming madman was totally enthralling. Seeing the lighters out for ‘Easy’ was awesome, as was a bizarre yet brilliant cover of Lady GaGa’s ‘Poker Face’.

Saturday
A heavy night of Donington partying meant that the first few bands were missed out. Bad times. But Hatebreed (3/5) and their hardcore racket made up for that. Made the hard choice to miss Down’s mainstage set in order to get a decent spot for Static X and in the process caught a very respectable showing from Charlie Simpson’s Fightstar (3/5). Their Deftones-esque noise might not be anything particularly new but they put on a set full of passion and decent tunes. Static – X (4/5) made their long overdue Download debut with a set that mixed old favourites like ‘Push It’ and ‘Black and White’ with choice cuts from their new record like ‘Stingwray’. The sight of the lovely Mrs Tera Wray Static bringing on shots for the band was quite awesome too ;). The Answer (3/5) offered something more akin to Donington’s rich heritage with their bluesy old school sound. Perfectly enjoyable but their sounds lacks variety and I couldn’t help but feel their set dragged a bit towards the end. You Me At Six (1/5) are tuneless, hookless emo pish, plain and simple. Nothing special or remotely interesting about them whatsoever, what a certain publications see in them I don’t know. Chris Cornell (4/5) A lot of faith was lost in the golden voiced one with his recent foray into hip hop with Timbaland, and things didn’t get off to a great start when he decided to open with one of those cuts, an admittedly catchy ‘Piece of Me’. Thankfully he saw sense after that and stuck to treating the crowd with classics like ‘Black Hole Sun’ and ‘Jesus Christ Pose’. The Prodigy (5/5) brought the second stage proceedings to an end with a brilliant set, featuring a number of cuts from their superb new record ‘Invaders Must Die’. Standard bearers like ‘Firestarter’, ‘Breathe’ and ‘Smack My Bitch Up’ drove the crowd mental. Only disappointment was their space age stage set being wasted in the evening sunlight.

Sunday:
Trigger The Bloodshed (3/5) and Suicide Silence (3/5) both produced sets brimming with death metal venom that while wasn’t to this reviewer’s tastes, certainly woke everyone up on a hot Sunday morning. God Forbid (3/5) delivered a more straightforward but still crushing metal assault before Sevendust (5/5) tore the house down with a superb set that brought in one of the biggest crowds of the day. It was amusing to see everyone politely nodding throughout Journey’s (2/5) set, sit down, go mental for ‘Don’t Stop Believing’ then sit down and politely nod some more. Dream Theater (4/5) was much more interesting and lying down basking in the sun while they played ‘Pull Me Under’ was one of the best moments of the weekend. Shinedown (3/5) drew a huge crowd to the second stage for their set but blew it somewhat due to Brent Smith inane chat in-between songs. Great band but less cheesy Linkin Park-esque banter the better. Next it was over to the main stage to catch ZZ Top (2/5) who were disappoint dull so back over to catch Buckcherry (2/5) who were probably the biggest letdown of the weekend, due to Josh Todd’s endless strutting and pouting. Papa Roach (5/5) thankfully were much better, playing a blinder of a set which left closing this year’s proceedings to Trivium (5/5). They were very poor the last time they played but by god, did they make up for it this time around. The whole band seemed right up for it, especially Matt Heafy who was laughing and joking in a way never witnessed before. Even technical gremlins couldn’t stop them and they brought Download 2009 a close with a thrilling ‘Pull Harder on the Strings of Your Martyr’. Great weekend.

Article by Timmy Ogilvie

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Episode 38 of Ragnarok Radio features two very metal interviews with Joakim Brodén of Sabaton and Concept of Time.

Sabaton featured with their song ‘Primo Victoria’ in episode 1 of the podcast, we’re of course happy to welcome the Swedish heavy metal stars back to Ragnarok! They recently released their new album The Art of War and Joakim discusses it with us.

We’re cramming this show full of metal though with a double feature! Also included is our interview with Glasgow band Concept of Time where they talk about the Scottish scene and their upcoming release out this July called A New State Of Thought.

Also included in this show are the following streamed tracks

Sabaton - Ghost Division
Kiuas - Through The Ice Age
Redline Intensity - The Dark Disciples
Worwyk - The Mind
Brother Firetribe - Break Out
Concept Of Time - Eternal Sleep
Lunarium - Heritage Taken
Zwartketterij - Raise Hell Heavy Metal
Hiss of Atrocities - Red

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Episode 37 of Ragnarok Radio is our Sauna Open Air special featuring interviews with Perttu from Apocalyptica and Laura of Medeia who both played at the event.

One of the first during the festival season Sauna took place in Tampere, Finland from 5th to the 7th of June. If you were there checking out the Finnish metal and drinking in the rain hope you had a great time!

The show also features some of the bands who appeared on the day, hopefully we’ll be able to give you an insight into what the metal scene is like in Finland. Kiitos to everyone who made this show possible!

Apocalyptica - Grace
Tarot - Pyre Of The Gods
Evile - Enter The Grave
Swordmaster - Guardians Of The Waves
Medeia - Through Sacrifice
Finntroll - Maktens Spira
Backmask - New Revolution
The February Solution - No Escape
Beyond The Grave - Conflict Zone

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It’s been a long time since our last show but Ragnarok Radio the metal podcast is back!

This show focuses on Scumstock the north east’s heavy metal festival that took place last easter, if you were there and gave us a few minutes of your time on the day then you’ll more than likely hear yourself.

Our main interviews during this show are with Def Con One, Antton formerly of Venom - talking about the legandary black metallers last album ‘Hell’, Ben from Risen Prophecy, Ted from Zero and Adam from The Drift (formerly called Vomicide).

Anyway hopefully it’ll give you a taste of what the day was like at Independent in Sunderland!

As usual the show features the following metal tracks…

Artesian Well - The Jungle
Uncerta - Bitter pills
Five Ways Of Asphyxiation - Fringe of Doom
Book of Job - This Ones for Heath
Def Con One - Hypocrisy
Fallen Fate - Asphyxihate
Boadiceas Grave - Dead Skies Rising
Secta Rouge - Time needs a Skeleton
Thoughts Of Ruin - The Despised

If you want to find out more about Scumstock you can check out their myspace page.

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Welcome to Episode 35 of Ragnarok Radio where we meet Warlord Nygård of Turisas to talk about touring with Dragonforce, Finnish folklore influences and the genre of ‘Battle Metal’. You can catch the live experience of a Turisas show on DVD with their release of ‘A Finnish Summer With Turisas’, we’d of course like to thank Warlord and all the bands who appear on this episode of the podcast.

The following hardened metal warriors appear in episode 35…

Turisas - Rasputin,
Lunarium - Trollslayer
Forefather - Cween Of The Mark
Spearhead - Decrowining The Irenarch
Bastard Of The Skies - Foe
hAND - I Find Myself
Nerrus Kor - Irreligion
Cilice - God Of Lies
Hand Of Grief - 2 Bagger

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Episode 34 is the first in our show’s new format!
From now on featured segments will be uninterrupted so you can listen to interviews in their entirety without breaks.

This edition of the podcast contains our interview with Scottish Pirates Alestorm. The interview took place just after they left the studio recording their new album and before embarking on their American tour. You can catch them on tour right now in the US supporting Tyr until the 30th of March.

Thanks go to the Alestorm guys for chatting to us while the ale was indeed flowing!

The show also contains the following blistering Metal tracks…

Alestorm - Curse Of Captain Morgan
W.E.B - Ressurection Hades
A Thousand Lies - When Im Gone
Adestra - Not The Outlaw
Pantheon - Area Of Invasion
Temtris - Masquerade
Unearthly Trance - Permanent Ice
Black Sister - Vikings From Hell
Mindless Torture - Ashes

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Check out our latest videos of Municipal Waste playing at Glasgow Barfly. You view them here and here

We had a request for these to be put out on the site, hope you enjoy them Thrashblaster93!

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Photos from the Municipal Waste show in Glasgow’s Barfly are now online at our flickr account! Theres also a couple of videos to accompany this which we’ll also be posting in the next few days.

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Check out our latest Metal video added to youtube. Its Blood Island Raiders playing Moorings Bar in Edinburgh!

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