With 19 studio albums and 11 live albums released over the course of five decades, there's lots to consider when creating a quiz to tax the mind of even the most dedicated Rush fan.

So, how well do you know the Canadian prog legends? Are you the sort of fan who knows how many times Neil Peart hits his little cymbals at the start of YYZ or are you the sort of pedant who knows they're called crotales?

Well, it's time to Roll The Bones and test your knowledge in our quiz below. Will you display Grace Under Pressure or will you simply Stick It Out until the end?

These days Opeth are a highly-regarded prog band, with leader Mikael Åkerfeldt proudly boasting that his influences were always Genesis, Jethro Tull, Wishbone Ash and suchlike. But in their early days the Swedes played death metal – although they never looked the part.

Their development hinged on their key connection with the extreme Norwegian black metal scene, which, Åkerfeldt tells Loudwire, might not have been made if clearer photos of his band had been available.

“That whole Norwegian scene obviously came with that tale of weeding out other bands because they weren’t grim, necro enough – which I always thought was silly,” he says.

“We were accepted in the scene because there were no pictures of us – it was just silhouette pictures. At the time we had the fucking bell-bottoms and we were like the enemy. We looked the the hippies that they wanted to kill!“

Namechecking heavy bands including Bathory and Celtic Frost, Åkerfeldt continues: “When I met them – when I met Emperor early on, when they did their first or second album, they were just like me. Maybe they had a little bit of wanting to keep some mystery around them. But it was important; and some great music came out of that scene.

“I was never too much involved in the black metal scene because I was into Deep Purple, Scorpions and prog later on. I was never into being cool. I was only in it for the music, really.”

In 2012 he told Prog: “If they had the flares and beards and the record was from 1971 or 1972, that was what I wanted. I found a record by Yes and thought it looked cool, and then Genesis and King Crimson and so on – records that looked odd and I could afford. That was where it all started.

“I’d buy some records and go back to the guitar store, which was run by this guy who was around 60 and another guy the same age. They’d see what I picked up and be like, ‘That’s a really cool record! I saw them in ’72!’ They gave me loads of recommendations – like, ‘Have you heard Camel? You’d love them!’ So I’d pick up Camel records on my next lunch break. I became a fan of that type of music and it really helped my own band to progress.”

It was recently confirmed that Åkerfeldt has reunited with Steven Wilson for a second Storm Corrosion album.

Saint Agnes take their name from a 4th-century Christian martyr. Agnes of Rome had refused the hand of every noble in the city with the explanation that she was already married to God. Enraged, her suitors reported her to the authorities and she was beheaded as a heretic. Since forming in 2014, the London trio that share her name have not literally been put to the sword, but the journey leading up to their latest record, Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin, was especially fraught.

“Our last record, Bloodsuckers, was so difficult to make because my mum passed away unexpectedly right before we started recording,” explains singer Kitty A. Austen. “It was so traumatising and exhausting that, by the end, we wondered if we even wanted to keep doing this as a band.”

In 2025, an emotionally drained Saint Agnes headed into the studio and threw out all their self-imposed rules, deciding they had nothing left to lose. Where before they had written anthemic, guitar-based music à la Wargasm and Dead Pony, which leaned towards Radio 1-friendly punk rock, third offering Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin fuses eerie synth melodies with sludgy guitars, biting political commentary and utterly infectious choruses. The 10-track offering is a seething, industrial-pop triumph.

“We had no idea what we were doing – we just started experimenting,” says Kitty. “It was really fun to try something completely different. This record feels like who Saint Agnes truly are.”

From piano-led ballad Where Do I Begin? to bruising industrial anthems The Blood Beat (Angel In The Marble) and Get Them Out, Saint Agnes’s latest is an arrestingly atmospheric creation.

Part Nine Inch Nails, part Portishead, the trio found themselves rediscovering their love for music with each new track they penned. Yet even as the best songs of their career flowed out of them, the process of actually recording them slowly became a nightmare.

“Because the previous record was so difficult, we started this process with an outside producer to try something different,” explains guitarist Jon James Tufnell.

Yet as their producer kept getting called away to different projects, they realised that something had gone awry.

“Unfortunately, it quickly became apparent that [the producer’s] manager wasn’t enthusiastic about him taking the project at a lower rate, and kept interrupting our time to line up his next gigs,” Jon says. “In two weeks together, we only got a third of the tracking done… They insisted that we pay the full price of the entire recording budget for less than a third of the work. So, we had to go make the rest of the record ourselves.”

What was meant to be a carefree return to creativity ultimately became another gruelling challenge for the band, who are completed by drummer Andy Head.

“After the awful experience we had with Bloodsuckers, we really needed some wins, and, initially, we kept taking hits,” sighs Kitty. “Halfway through, we asked ourselves why we were doing this when it was so hard, but we loved the music so much that we knew we had to finish it, even if it ended up being our last record.”

This defiance bled into the final creation. Lyrically, Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin reflects Kitty’s internal struggles – from grief to anxiety – while holding up a lens to the increasingly bleak state of the outside world. While neither Kitty or Jon claim to be religious, biblical themes and imagery have been a constant source of inspiration throughout this record.

“Religion puts things into sharp relief with light and shade, and Christianity’s iconography is something I’m obsessed with,” explains Kitty.

“For me, the overarching pattern on this record is power – different types of power – and Kitty’s response to them,” adds Jon. “Every song is a story about coming to terms with power. Usually power that is sinister or hidden behind a veil of credibility, whether it’s a corporate figure, a religious character, a fake friend or a narcissistic partner.”

While 2023’s energetic Bloodsuckers gained them a cult following in the UK - and their track And They All Fall Down for videogame Dead Island 2 racked up almost two million streams - Your God Fearing Days… sees Saint Agnes discover a self-assured swagger, and a fearless sense of righteousness.

“We evoke religious themes positively or negatively depending on the context of the song,” says Kitty, “Gods Of War specifically addresses how the far-right uses Christianity as a cover for awful things. I saw a far-right march recently where people were carrying crosses like a crusade in the name of Christianity. Twisting the message of who Jesus was for nefarious means is really dark.”

Elsewhere, Good Boy is a sneering anti-capitalist anthem in line with their punk past.

“It’s all about choosing an alternative lifestyle away from the 9-to-5 grind,” reflects Jon. “About how scary it is to wake up at 55 years old and realise that you gave so much of yourself to masters you don’t even care about.”

With Your God Fearing Days… earning critical acclaim, and a US tour with The Rasmus on the horizon this autumn, Saint Agnes seem to be at the height of their creative power - and fully in control.

“We were so angry and defiant that it motivated us to make a brilliant record,” reflects Kitty. “I guess having your back against the wall is a massive motivator.”

Your God Fearing Days Are About To Begin is out now via Spinefarm.

It was the abrasive metal sub-genre that shot out of the early 80s like a punch to the gut.

Fast, heavy, and blatantly in-your-face, thrash metal was a fierce antidote to glam metal as well as a big ‘fuck you’ to the conservatism of the Reagan era. Thrash had its roots in myriad influences, from NWOBHM to Motörhead to punk rock, but in the end the sound was all its own, and as the thrash movement grew scenes began to develop around the world from the Bay Area to Brazil.

From the ‘Big Four’ of Slayer, Metallica, Anthrax and Megadeth to the newer crop of thrashers like Evile and Municipal Waste, here are the 50 greatest thrash albums of all time as voted for by Metal Hammer readers.

50. Evile – Enter The Grave (2007)

49. Forbidden – Forbidden Evil (1988)

48. Dark Angel – Darkness Descends (1986)

47. Sodom – Agent Orange (1989)

46. Slayer - Divine Intervention (1994)

45. Exodus – Fabulous Disaster (1989)

44. Possessed – Seven Churches (1985)

43. Exhorder – Slaughter In The Vatican (1990)

42. Kreator – Endless Pain (1985)

41. Death Angel - The Ultra-Violence (1987)

40. Sabbat – History Of A Time To Come

39. Blood Tsunami – Thrash Metal (2007)

38. Overkill – The Years Of Decay (1989)

37. Slayer – Christ Illusion (2006)

36. Celtic Frost – To Mega Therion (1985)

35. Testament – Practice What You Preach (1989)

34. Sepultura – Morbid Visions (1986)

33. Exodus - Tempo Of The Damned (2004)

32. Kreator - Violent Revolution (2001)

31. Slayer – God Hates Us All (2001)

30. Destruction – Eternal Devastation (1986)

29. Annihilator – Alice In Hell (1989)

28. Municipal Waste – The Art Of Partying (2007)

27. Megadeth – So Far, So Good… So What! (1988)

26. Kreator – Pleasure To Kill (1986)

25. Celtic Frost – Into The Pandemonium (1987)

24. Overkill – Horrorscope (1991)

23. Voivod – Dimension Hatröss (1988)

22. Testament – The New Order (1988)

21. Anthrax - Fistful Of Metal (1984)

20. Slayer – Show No Mercy (1983)

19. Megadeth – Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good (1985)

18. Slayer - World Painted Blood (2009)

17. Sepultura – Beneath The Remains (1989)

16. Anthrax – Spreading The Disease (1985)

15. Slayer – Hell Awaits (1985)

14. Testament – The Legacy (1987)

13. Power Trip – Nightmare Logic (2017)

12. Metallica – …And Justice For All (1988)

11. Slayer - South Of Heaven (1988)

10. Sepultura – Arise (1991)

9. Metallica – Kill ’Em All (1983)

8. Slayer – Seasons In The Abyss (1990)

7. Megadeth – Peace Sells… But Who’s Buying? (1986)

6. Exodus – Bonded By Blood (1985)

5. Anthrax – Among The Living (1987)

4. Metallica – Ride The Lightning (1984)

3. Megadeth – Rust In Peace (1986)

2. Metallica – Master Of Puppets (1986)

1. Slayer – Reign In Blood (1990)

Who are the Big 4 thrash metal bands?

The bands known as The Big 4 of thrash metal are Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer and Anthrax. They never all appeared on the same bill until June 16, 2010, where they performed together at Warsaw's Bemowo Airport in Poland as part of the Sonisphere Festival.

What is the heaviest thrash metal song?

Clocking in at 4 minutes and 51seconds, Slayer's controversial Angel of Death – a hellish retelling of concentration camp atrocities by SS doctor Josef Mengele – is fast, brutal and heavy in every sense of the word.

Who is the most popular thrash metal band? 

Although they're no longer considered a thrash band, Metallica are the most commercially successful band to emerge from the thrash scene and have sold over 125 million albums.

Who is the godfather of thrash metal? 

If you ask erstwhile Exodus guitarist Rick Hunolt, he will point to Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine as the Godfather of thrash metal. Anthrax guitarist Scott Ian is inclined to agree. "Without Dave Mustaine, maybe thrash metal never would have happened," wrote Ian in his memoir I'm The Man: The Story Of That Guy From Anthrax.

Who is the heaviest of the Big 4?

Have you seen the video of the metal fan screaming "Slayer" until he looks like he's about to pass out? He's just told you the answer in the most emphatic of ways.

Swiss deathcore sensations Paleface Swiss dropped a massive Halloween surprise by opening their Halloween show by playing three Slipknot covers – while dressed as Slipknot.

The band, who were headlining Core Fest at the EWS Arena in Göppingen, teased the crowd by using the Iowa band’s 742617000027 as their intro music, before the curtain dropped and the band appeared clad in red boiler suits and OG Slipknot masks. The five-piece then launched into the ’Knot’s 1999 classic [sic], followed by People = Shit and Psychosocial.

The performance saw frontman Marc ‘Zelli’ Zellweger wearing Corey Taylor’s original mask, complete with dreadlocks, while guitarist Yannick Lehmann wore Mick Thomson steel-plate mask, bassist Tommy Lee sported late Slipknot four-stringer Paul Grey’s famous pig mask, and drummer Luigi Paraventi was dressed as the much-missed Joey Jordison.

It’s not the first time Paleface Swiss have covered People = Shit, playing it at gigs in Mexico City and Dallas earlier in October.

Speaking to Metal Hammer in 2025, Zelli credited Slipknot with helping him channel and calm his teenage angst. “I'm not good at talking about emotions,” he admits. “I was walking through the streets of Switzerland listening to this really aggressive music, and I felt better. I’m not as angry as I could be because of the music. It took away all the anger that I had.”

He added that he had fanboyed out when Paleface Swiss appeared at the same festival as Slipknot in 2025

“I was right next to Clown’s green room, and he was like, ‘Excuse me, can I enter my room?’” said Zelli. “I would never be brave enough to say, ‘What’s up?’”

Watch footage of Paleface Swiss covering Slipknot at their Halloween gig below.

James Hetfield has revealed that Metallica asked Turnstile to open for them on tour – but the punk rock band turned them down.

Speaking on his James Hetfield’s Riff Life radio show, the Metallica frontman says he and his bandmates are fans of the Baltimore band, leading them to approach Turnstile about appearing on their M72 tour.

“We have seen them live, we wanted to get them on tour, and they said no. They’re doing good on their own already.

“But man, what a vibe they bring. They are so fun. Go see them play if you can. Just like many, many bands, they sound great on their records and recordings, but man, when you see them live, you totally get it.

“We’ve hung out with them a bit. Super cool guys, super fun. They’ve got a gal in the band now playing, which is fun.”

Hetfield has made no secret of his admiration for Turnstile. In 2024, he and Judas Priest‘s Rob Halford were filmed watching the band play Norway‘s Tons Of Rock festival.

Not opening for the world’s biggest metal band doesn’t seem to have affected Turnstile’s rise. The band’s most recent album, 2025’s Never Enough, reached No.9 in the US Billboard charts.

In the past few years, Turnstile have collaborated with everyone from Elton John to Paramore’s Hayley Williams. They recent tapped death metal veterans Obituary to open for them at a US show.

Metallica are currently in the middle of a much-talked about run of shows at the Las Vegas Sphere. They resume their M72 tour in 2027, presumably without Turnstile on the bill.

Nickelback bassist Mike Kroeger says the band have no plans to retire – although he doubts whether they'll live long enough to match the longevity of the likes of the Rolling Stones.

As the Canadian rock giants bask in the glory of the positive reviews for their new album Everything Under The Sun, Kroeger insists that their desire remains strong, even 30 years after the release of their debut album Curb.

He tells Trunk Nation With Eddie Trunk: "We started this about 30 years ago, and I don't know why we would stop. This is too much fun. And we've had the conversations.

"It may be inconvenient or whatever to leave home for six, eight months at a stretch, but what else are you gonna do? Are you gonna sit around and watch your stock portfolio or what? You gotta do something in this life.

"I believe one of the leading causes of death is retirement. I really do believe that creating things, learning new things, finding new challenges, I think it keeps you young."

As well as music, martial arts is another obsession of the Alberta native. And he applies some of the principles of combat sports to how he approaches his day job.

"I'm deeply into martial arts," he says. "And there's a concept in martial arts called the white-belt mentality, which is you go into every class as a beginner.

"No matter how long you've been doing it, no matter how much you know, you go into every class with an open mind and the assurance that you're gonna learn something you don't know. I think it's good for you."

However long they may remain active, Kroeger doubts they'll be around as long as the seemingly immortal Stones.

He says: We're gonna go on, and I don't know if it's gonna be like the Rolling Stones because I don't know if we're gonna live that long. Those guys are awesome. They just keep going."

Nickelback recently announced an extensive world tour in support of the new album.

Venom’s 1982 album Black Metal is one of the most influential records in history, detonating a chain reaction that would result in thrash, death metal and, of course, black metal itself – even if it was roundly mocked at the time. In 2011, Venom singer and bass-bludgeoner Cronos looked back on the making of a twisted masterpiece.

It may feel like the genesis of heavy metal should have been sparked when a lightning bolt hit a mountain, but in reality, the birth of the song Black Sabbath would not have made for a great fly-on-the-wall documentary. As momentous as this event was, something that happened over a period of several weeks punctuated by many arguments over who was making the next round of brews and interminable conversations over exactly which take of the line ‘Oh, no, no! Please God help me!’ was the most convincingly terrifying and how loud the bell should be in the final mix, would not have made for great cinema.

This is one of the reasons why full credit should be given to Conrad ‘Cronos’ Lant, the mainstay of extreme metal pioneers Venom for refusing to mystify the making of their iconic second album, Black Metal, in 1982, no matter how influential and important it went on to become. He’s quite candid about what is arguably the most important album in the birth of extreme metal ever recorded.

“We had no idea what we were doing was going to become such a big thing. So many bands were in the studio at the same time as us. How the hell could I have presumed that it would be my band who would be the lasting name? We weren’t trying to be the next Iron Maiden or the next this or that. We just wanted to do what we enjoyed. You had a band like [fellow Geordie NWOBHM outfit] Tygers Of Pan Tang always dropping Purple references; you know, ‘We want to be the next Deep Purple.’ Well, Venom never did that. We never said that. We said, ‘We are now, we are new, we are Venom.’

Venom formed in Newcastle in 1979 and coalesced into their early classic lineup of Cronos on bass and vocals, Tony ‘Abaddon’ Bray on drums and Jeff ‘Mantas’ Dunn on guitar the following year. There were several key environmental factors at work during this unholy conception. Newcastle in the late 1970s was a hard bitten, industrial city, destabilised and depressed by high unemployment and a profound lack of meaningful choice available to the majority, working-class inhabitants who lived there. It was a city where you “put on your father’s clothes when you were old enough and then went and did his job”.

Except, according to Cronos, “That wasn’t an option in 1979 – there were no jobs left.” Everything from the dark Satanic Mills of the English industrial revolution to the once-mighty ship yards had been forced to shut up shop, leaving most of the erstwhile sons of toil signing on and pissed off. The city was, in many respects, similar to Birmingham, the home of Black Sabbath, Judas Priest and half of Led Zeppelin, all favourite groups of the bassist. Except a decade later, many young Geordies had fallen under another spell as well as metal:

“Growing up in the 70s in the north of England, punk meant everything to me. The whole industry was dying, the ship- yards, everything. There was no future. There was no hope. Punk music was a way for the real people in this country to get a voice. It was the great unwashed getting a say for once, shouting, ‘Fucking hell, we’re not happy about this.’”

Seeing his desire to be in a metal band as a mission, he was drawn to work with Abaddon and Mantas simply because they struck him as the only people he had met who were as driven as him. Their chops were the last thing on his mind. And in return, the other two were keen to work with Cronos because he had access to a studio. Ironically, the only place they had played with any great regularity before they recorded their debut album, Welcome To Hell, was a church.

“Our practise room was a church, our first ever gig was in a church and our first demo was recorded in a church – I’ve still got the tapes; we sounded fucking terrible,” he says with a laugh. “There was this Methodist vicar who liked the idea of putting a few bob in his pocket, so we would set up on the altar just in front of the pulpit and away we went. The Vicar used to let us in and then fuck off. So we ransacked the place basically... ha ha ha! I’ve still got some of the big old candles and crucifixes that we nicked off him.”

Another influence on Black Metal was a feeling that they’d been misled by their record label, Neat, during the recording of their debut; an experience they were keen not to repeat. The frontman had worked overtime at the studios where he worked for months until he could afford to pay for a heavily discounted three-day period when it wasn’t in use. After blagging help and tape they were ready to roll. There was just one problem.

“We recorded Welcome To Hell in three days and they were just demos,” says Cronos. “We thought that if the label liked them we’d be given a green light and we’d have the chance to record them properly as a great new album over a week or so. But then when the record company heard the tapes they said, ‘No, we like it the way it is, we’ll put it out like that.’ We must have looked horrified... there were timing issues, there were tuning issues but they just said, ‘No, it goes out like that or not at all.’ They had our arms forced up behind our backs because there was no way in hell we were going to turn down an album. No fucking way at all. There was that kind of feeling, ‘Fucking hell. We’re going to blow this before we’ve even started.’”

The following year Venom still had everything to prove and the little that they had achieved to lose. The fact that their biggest supporter in the press, the legendary Geoff Barton, described Welcome To Hell as having “the hi-fi dynamics of a 50-year-old pizza”, really showed that they had their work cut out for them... and this is where Cronos’s tenacity revealed itself fully for the first time.

“We knew we had to record this one properly,” he says. “We knew what kind of tricks might be played on us, so we made sure all those songs were nailed before we went into the studio. And for me, Black Metal is our first proper album, because Welcome To Hell is just demos.”

He laughs as he describes the sheer luxury that was offered them during the week-long extravaganza. “We got the chance to overdub some solos. We got the chance to redo some vocals. Welcome To Hell took three days to record and mix and Black Metal took seven days. But we had our shit down so tight we knew all we had to do was to get a sound on the kit and a sound on the back line and BANG!, just nail the fucker.”

Black Metal opens with a literal assault on the listener. There isn’t even a run-in groove on the original vinyl album – the first sound you hear is a horrible noise the second the needle hits the groove (if you’re listening to the original vinyl it does this anyhow). It seemed that punk nihilism, the heavy industry of the area, a real desire to shock the listener out of complacency and a vicious sense of mischief were coming together in a screeching sonic scree.

“That is literally a chainsaw cutting into metal,” says Cronos. “Abaddon used to work in a steel factory. I was saying to him, ‘We really need to find this annoying sound to go at the start of the album.’ And he said, ‘Fucking hell, if you’ve ever heard metal grinding on metal, it’s a sound that will go right through you.’ We took huge chunks of steel into the studio, put them into a vice and away we went. It was a fucking incredible sound, menacing.”

This was simply one of many strategies that he was using to make the record lively, unexpected and unique. Cronos took a more literal approach to spooking out the listener on the track Buried Alive.

“I came to the studio with all these buckets of mud, sand and flour and we put some microphones inside some cardboard boxes in a stairwell. Then we got all these spades and slowly started filling in the boxes with the mud and soil. There were a load of guys into the studio when we did the whole, ‘We came into this world with nothing and with nothing we shall depart’ bit. They were doing the crying and whimpering as if they were at a real funeral, and the funny thing was we had to do this a lot of times because no one was whimpering or crying, people were actually trying to hold back laughter. And when we came back to listen to the tape the weird thing was that the actual laughter actually sounded like crying, and that’s what you can hear.”

Black metal as a genre would go on to mean many different things to many different people over the next three decades, but to Cronos it means exactly the same thing today as it did then.

“It was our way of distinguishing our music from the run-of-the-mill heavy metal that was coming out back then. When people were telling me that rock was dead at the end of the 1970s, I couldn’t help but wish that most of it was because it was that fucking lame. ‘Black metal’ was coined because I wanted to describe how different we were to other bands of the time, even how different we were to most ‘heavy metal’ bands of the time.”

The influence of Black Metal is so vast it can barely be measured. As well as providing the name and many of the conventions for one of the healthiest sub- genres of metal still thriving today, it also set the foundations for much of what we now call extreme metal, in particular thrash, death, speed metal.

If many in the UK sneered at a perceived lack of technical prowess in Venom, this was easily offset by their growing legion of fans in the US. And it really didn’t hurt that some of them were in bands such as Metallica, Slayer and Exodus.

But of course, if we had to boil down the significance of this album to one time and place it would probably be to Oslo in the late 1980s/early 1990s. Everything about Venom was sacrosanct to the second wave of BM, or the practitioners of True Norwegian Black Metal, from the lo-fi aesthetic, the Satanic imagery, the desire to alienate the listener and even the style of dress.

“I was sent early demo tapes by acts like Burzum and Mayhem,” says Cronos. “They reminded me of early Venom in that it was guys who cared more about the passion of the music than the accuracy of it. It reminded me of our first two albums and how I was 10 years earlier, that enthusiasm and hunger. Of all the bands who came up after Venom – not Metallica and not Exodus – they were the only ones who had that ‘looseness’, that punk rawness, the piss, the shit, the snot, the vomit that we had. I could hear it in those young Norwegian bands who were going Hell for leather. Those guys still cite Venom as a big influence but they need to take more credit for what they did. They evolved the sound. I just think it was a shame that it was overshadowed by that church-burning bullshit.”

He’s keen to point out that the influence can often be felt in unexpected places: “I think the lasting impact of Black Metal for me is that it has earned us respect in areas that you wouldn’t expect. When you hear someone like Dave Grohl say how important it was to him when he was in school then that’s a big deal. Also it’s further-reaching than you think. It’s like when you meet a lawyer in a suit and he’s asking you for a Black Metal shirt. The secret Venom fans. Those are the kinds of things that last because you realise how important it was for a lot of other people as well.”

But ultimately, the strength of Black Metal is its raw, ugly sound - the noise you make when you genuinely don’t give a fuck and have nothing to lose.

“Absolutely. I think it’s about the intensity and conviction that you put into the recording. If you play with fire and vengeance you can get away with dodgy production because people pick up on the actual vibe of the performance in the studio and that’s how I think the first Venom records did OK. Because people weren’t going, ‘Oh I think there’s something wrong with the production,’ they were saying, ‘Fuck me!’ They got where we were coming from. They got the fact that we were young and full of ‘ARRRGHHHH!’”

Originally published in Metal Hammer magazine issue 225, November 2011

Steve Hackett recalls the moment he upset his former bandmates by recommending Yes for induction into the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame during Genesis’ own ceremony. It was the guitarist’s way of involving old friend Chris Squire, who’d wanted to attend but couldn’t be accommodated.

Genesis received the honour in 2010 and Yes were inducted seven years later – but Squire had died in 2015.

“He wanted to come along to the night that we were inducted,” Hackett tells UCR, “and I literally said, ‘Look, I can’t get you in.’ He thought I was trying to keep him out – and I said no, I wanted him there. That would have been great.”

“When I got to meet the press I said, ‘You know, I think Yes should be inducted too.’ That caused a bit of a stir with Genesis! They were standing four feet away from me, saying, ‘Is he with you?’”

Hackett believes Yes’ Rock Hall entry was important. “You could say Genesis were the first progressive band – or a band that had at one time been progressive – to be inducted. But shortly to be followed by the guys who had preceded us.”

Hackett, along with Phil Collins, Mike Rutherford and Tony Banks, didn’t play during their ceremony. “I know they wanted the band to perform, and at that point, you know, Phil was very unwell,” the guitarist says, adding: “That particular lineup of the band had not worked together for very many years.”

Phish performed a tribute set in the their place, and Hackett can’t forget singer-guitarist Trey Anastasio’s induction speech. “He got up and started saying nice things about not just Genesis, but also some of the techniques I'd come up with. I thought, ‘The guys are sitting here having to listen to this; they’re probably getting really peeved!’”

He reflects: “I think the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a great American institution. We haven't got anything like that in the UK. The wonderful thing is that people are not just celebrated while they’re living, but also when they pass. Some people get inducted too late to attend the ceremony – literally.”

Slayer played their first show on October 31, 1981 at a Battle of the Bands night in South Gate, California. Their flyer invited rock fans to experience their "assault on heavy metal" and they weren't messing about.

The term thrash was still a few years away, but ever since their first ever show, Slayer have remained dedicated to the cause (apart from taking a few years off after a 37-year run) and have enjoyed a career shot through with chaos and controversy.

While nobody can be into Slayer as much as Daniel Schler (the super-fan who shouted the band's name until he turned tomato red on the band's War at the Warfield DVD), this 20-question quiz will determine your dedication to their decibel devilry.

Test your knowledge by taking the quiz below.

Deep Purple frontman Ian Gillan is in hospital following a "medical emergency" that has forced the band to postpone two shows in Germany.

The band's appearances at Leipzig's Qi Arena tonight (October 31) and at Hamburg's Sporthalle tomorrow (November 1) have been pulled.

As it stands, the November 3 show in Dortmund is still scheduled to go ahead. Deep Purple have a string of European and UK dates booked through to November 25 before they head to Brazil, Chile, Argentina and Mexico in December.

No further information on Gillan's condition has been released.

The band say in a statement: "With great disappointment, Deep Purple must announce that they are unable to perform as scheduled tonight at the QI Arena (Leipzig) and tomorrow evening at the Sporthalle (Hamburg).

"This comes as a result of a medical emergency involving Ian Gillan, which has resulted in his current hospitalisation.

"We understand that this announcement comes at short notice and share the disappointment of all our wonderful fans that we are unable to perform in Leipzig and Hamburg.

"Deep Purple and their team are focused on finding a suitable time to reschedule both these shows. All tickets purchased will be valid for the rescheduled dates."

The remaining dates on Deep Purple's tour are listed below.

Deep Purple 2026 remaining tour dates

Nov 03: Dortmund Westfalenhalle, Germany
Nov 04: Berlin Uber Arena, Germany
Nov 06: Frankfurt Festhalle, Germany
Nov 07: Nuremberg Arena, Germany
Nov 09: Amsterdam Ziggodome, Netherlands
Nov 10: Strasbourg Zenith, France
Nov 12: Bordeaux Arkéa Arena, France
Nov 13: Nantes Zenith, France
Nov 15: Lyon LDLC Arena, France
Nov 18: Newcastle Utilita Arena, UK
Nov 19: Glasgow OVO Hydro, UK
Nov 21: Birmingham BP Pulse Arena, UK
Nov 22: Manchester AO Arena, UK
Nov 24: London Eventim Apollo, UK
Nov 25: London Royal Albert Hall, UK
Dec 05: Sao Paolo Suhai Hall, Brazil
Dec 08: Santiago Movistar Arena, Chile
Dec 10: Buenos Aires Movistar Arena, Argentina
Dec 13: Monterrey Arena Monterrey, Mexico
Dec 16: Guadalajara Arena Guadalajara, Mexico
Dec 19: Mexico City Estadio Fray Nano, Mexico

In 1975, future Night Ranger frontman/bassist Jack Blades quit his pre-med studies at San Diego State University and moved to San Francisco. The Bay Area’s vibrant club scene blew the then-20-year-old’s mind, and Blades was soon rubbing shoulders with the likes of Grace Slick, Grateful Dead and Carlos Santana. By 1977 he was in funk rockers Rubicon alongside former Sly & The Family Stone saxophonist Jerry Martini, who took Blades to Record Plant studio in Sausalito, where the controls were still hot from the recording of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. Heady stuff, for sure. But did he ever meet Sly?

“I did,” says Blades, still a ball of infectious energy at the age of 72. “In fact I auditioned for him at his house. But let’s not go there,” he adds, teasingly. “Otherwise I’ll take up this whole interview telling you about that insanity!”

Blades is in Reno, Nevada, where Night Ranger are several dates into a US tour. They’re promoting Best Of, a new compilation that includes impressively retooled versions of such gargantuan 80s tunes as Don’t Tell Me You Love Me and Sister Christian alongside deeper, more recent cuts. The band’s current line-up includes guitarist Kerri Kelli (Alice Cooper, Slash) and keyboard player Eric Levy, but Classic Rock is chatting to Blades and his fellow founding members Brad Gillis (guitar) and Kelly Keagy (drums, co-lead vocals).

Keagy describes Night Ranger 2026 as “weekend warriors”. Their shows are more intermittent these days, less cumulatively exhausting. “At this stage it’s mostly about having fun and communicating that to the audience,” Blades enthuses. “Because there’s nothing worse than watching some asshole up there going through the motions, is there?”

As Gillis notes, it has also become increasingly important for him and the rest of the band to stay fit. “I just turned sixty-nine on Monday,” he says, “so I’m trying to keep my health at a hundred per cent so we can deliver a great show. I’ve already walked around Reno for an hour, swam and lifted some weights,” he adds, chatting just past breakfast time. This is why recent YouTube footage of Night Ranger’s May 2026 headline slot at the Frontiers Rock Festival in Lombardy, Italy, shows Gillis looking sculpted, not pensionable.

Back in late-70s San Francisco, Gillis joined Rubicon the same day that Steve Perry joined Journey. Blades knows this because both bands were friends who used the same rehearsal rooms on Folsom Street. Gillis recalls being the last of “twenty-five to thirty” guitarists auditioning for Rubicon, a seven-piece with a Tower Of Power-like horn section and designs on being the next Sly & The Family Stone.

“We wanted to bridge the gap between funk and rock’n’roll,” says the guitarist. “Straight away I was doing five sets a night, five nights a week. We recorded our debut album at American Recording Studios in Hollywood, which was pretty exciting for a nineteen-year-old.”

That album, 1978’s Rubicon, yielded soft-rock minor hit I’m Gonna Take Care Of Everything, and prior to 1979 follow-up American Dreams the band played to 250,000 people at 1978’s Cal Jam II festival in Ontario, California. “Rubicon were supposed to open, but in the end they put us on late right after Aerosmith,” recalls Gillis. “We saw a lot of people leaving, but it was still an incredible experience.”

Future Night Ranger member Kelly Keagy, meanwhile, joined Rubicon at the eleventh hour. “Greg Eckler had left and they wanted another singing drummer,” he says. “I was just this little local guy, but at the audition I played the funky shuffle to [Rubicon song] Love On The Run and sang it too, and they were like: “Holy shit! This guy fits right in!

“I’d seen Ringo Starr sing Boys with The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl. It blew me away, because up until then the concept of a singing drummer was unknown to me. Later on I was inspired by people like Pete Rivera, who was the drummer and singer in [Detroit rock/soul act] Rare Earth.”

Keagy toured with Rubicon, but soon the funk was parked, never to return. The band imploded through lack of gigs and, shrinking to a trio, Blades, Gillis and Keagy formed Stereo in 1980, embraced hard rock, then changed their name to Ranger after they’d been joined by former Montrose bassist-turned-keyboard player Alan Fitzgerald.

“Fitz was producing a demo for Jeff Watson,” says Keagy, Watson being the estranged guitarist whom Night Ranger fired in 2007, and whose fretboard pyrotechnics were on a par with those of Gillis on Night Ranger’s first eight albums. “Fitz was like: ‘I know this other great guitar player kid. Maybe we could do a twin-lead thing, just explore it and see what happens?’”

Still operating as Ranger, and now a supercharged quintet with the addition of Watson, they began work on 1982’s Dawn Patrol at Allen Zentz Recording in Los Angeles with producer Pat Glasser. Slick, with big, radio-friendly choruses, synth pads and a side order of rampant shredding, their debut album had more Anglophile and Irish inspiration than was immediately apparent.

“We were all big Thin Lizzy fans,” explains Blades. “If you think about it, it’s the same – a singing bass player, and two guitarists doing harmonies, except we also had Fitz on keys. We could have gone in almost any direction, but we chose melodic hard rock. Brad could play funk or whip out a Black Sabbath solo; Kelly had played in a club band called Rags that played anything and everything.

"I could play slap bass like a motherfucker, but I’d grown up listening to Deep Purple, Judas Priest and Led Zeppelin and I’d soaked up that music like a sponge. We were also hip to that thing that [Motown records founder] Berry Gordy said about making sure your song started with a hook."

For wide-eyed 17-year-olds such as this writer, discovering Night Ranger via Tommy Vance’s famed UK radio slot The Friday Rock Show on Radio 1 was a buzz, Gillis and Watson’s dazzling lead guitar playing being a huge draw. Don’t Tell Me You Love Me’s guitar solos raised the bar, with Watson showcasing his eight-fingered hammer-on technique, and Gillis’s tremolo-arm mastery producing a distinctive, chirruping sound he still recalls stumbling across.

“The third tremolo system that Floyd D Rose ever built in his garage in 1977 was on sale at Don Wehr’s Music City in San Francisco,” Gillis recalls. “I just had to have it. So I traded in my white 1975 Les Paul Custom. Later on I was throwing shapes in the mirror at home, trying to get my look together for the stage, when I banged my guitar and heard this fast, trilling sound that I realised you could recreate by flicking the end of the Floyd Rose. That’s the sound you hear at the end of my solo on Don’t Tell Me You Love Me.”

Two things slowed Dawn Patrol’s passage to the album charts. After some 10,000 promo copies had been serviced to radio, it transpired that another band called Ranger already existed. So, keen to distance themselves from the Californian country-act namesake, Ranger became Night Ranger, as per the title of Dawn Patrol’s closing track. Unfortunately, the name change necessitated recalling existing copies of the record and a redesign of the band’s logo and album artwork, all of which took time.

Much more far-reaching was the death of Randy Rhoads, whose tragic death on March 19, 1982 while touring in Ozzy Osbourne’s band led to Gillis joining Ozzy’s ongoing US tour briefly as Rhoads’s stand-in. In limbo because of the delay to Dawn Patrol’s release, Gillis took over in Ozzy’s band from Gillan guitarist Berne Tormé, whose playing style had been adjudged to not suit the Blizzard Of Ozz and Black Sabbath material, valiant though his brief time at Ozzy’s side was.

Gillis joined Ozzy’s band in New York on April 5, 1982, in at the deep end and then some.

“I sat in my room all day with a cassette player and a little practice amp, desperately trying to learn the stuff,” he remembers. “But I’d only played seven of the eighteen songs in the set with the band before the first sold-out show to six thousand people in Binghamton. I was a scared little boy, I can tell you.”

Inevitably, the wheels came off, Gillis losing his place in some of the arrangements. “On the second night, Sharon [Osbourne] said: ‘Bradley, you’re doing great, but tonight don’t fuck up,’” he recalls. Gillis quickly found his feet with Ozzy, but he knew it was time to return to Night Ranger. There was huge potential there; a future playing his own music.

Meanwhile, the Ozzy gig was on his CV, kudos gained, and the experience continued to resonate.

That November, when Dawn Patrol finally gained release, it was in the same week as Speak Of The Devil, an Ozzy live album comprised of only the Sabbath, not Blizzard Of Ozz, material Gillis had played alongside bassist Rudy Sarzo and drummer Tommy Aldridge. “So suddenly I was on two LP’s that made the Billboard chart”.

Night Ranger toured Dawn Patrol hard. Two hundred-plus shows a year. Support slots with Sammy Hagar and Kiss. Rolling Stone panned their “sub-Broadway” ballads, but kids raised on Boston and Van Halen loved them, as did music television. The band’s railway-track set promo video for Don’t Tell Me You Love Me was shown on MTV “literally twenty times a day”, by Gillis’s estimation. “They had space to fill twenty-four-seven, and they didn’t have enough videos to do that, so it worked out well for us.”

Sing Me Away, the band’s second single, sung by Kelly Keagy, a man with the perfect voice for drive-time radio, somehow made less of a splash. The album was selling well, though, so there was nothing to fret about. Or was there?

“We barely had a moment to think,” recalls Blades. “Everything’s going great, and then suddenly we learn our record company Boardwalk has gone bankrupt. We’re calling them, but nobody seems to be home. So management immediately pulls us off the road and puts us into the studio to record the second album. We didn’t call it Midnight Madness for nothing.”

Back at Image Recordings in Hollywood, previously known as Allen Zentz Recording, Night Ranger were by now party-hearty celebs at famed Sunset Boulevard haunts the Rainbow and the Whisky a Go Go.

“There was crazy, out-of-control drinking back at the studio, too,” says Blades. “Wild parties with our buddies Mötley Crüe and all the other friends we could find. Glenn Hughes was staying at the Oakland Apartments [near Universal Studios in Hollywood] and so were we. Glenn was bit down in the dumps after making that incredible Hughes/Thrall LP that didn’t do much, so we got him to sing backing vocals on You Can Still Rock In America. That’s him doing all that really high, Deep Purple Burn-type stuff on the choruses.”

Back in the ascendant, Night Ranger were soon signed to MCA. Their next single, Sister Christian, a classic power-ballad written and sung by Kelly Keagy, reached No.5 in the US. Amid all the success, excess and excitement, it was easy to forget that the musical climate was changing. Or so the mainstream music press claimed.

“Suddenly all the features were about new wave bands like A Flock Of Seagulls or Haircut One Hundred,” says Blades. “All the headlines were like ‘Rock Is Dead’. I thought: ‘What the fuck! Rock is very much alive and fucking kicking for the tens of thousands of people we’re playing to every night!’ I wrote You Can Still Rock In America in a hotel room in Springfield, Illinois in response to that bullshit.”

Seven Wishes (1985) packed another huge power ballad, in the shape of Blades’s Journey-like Sentimental Street, which reached No.8 in the US. By 1987’s Big Life, though, pickings were slimmer. Then in 1989 Blades quit. “Too much craziness, drugs and alcohol,” he says. “Everybody was pulling in different directions.”

Prior to forming Damn Yankees with Tommy Shaw of Styx and Ted Nugent, Blades called his old buddy Vince Neil, told him he’d quit Night Ranger, and flew to Vancouver to hang with a newly sober Mötley Crüe while they made Dr. Feelgood. “Vince was great,” says Blades.

“We sat up till two a.m. every night, just talking everything through. Aerosmith were recording Pump next door, and one night me, Steven Tyler and Bryan Adams got around the same mic to sing backing vocals on Same Ol’ Situation (S.O.S). You couldn’t make it up.”

Blades credits his Vancouver escape with Mötley Crüe and subsequent major successes with Damn Yankees albums Damn Yankees (1990) and Don’t Tread (1992) as the period that enabled him to “get real. That was when I started to write about what was in my heart and soul,” he adds, noting that when he got back with Night Ranger from 1997’s Neverland onwards he was “writing from a different place”.

All through Classic Rock’s separate interviews with Blades, Gillis and Keagy, there’s an elephant in the room: why, exactly, was aforementioned guitarist and co-founding member Jeff Watson sacked by his bandmates after 2007’s Hole In The Sun? Whatever went down, it was messy and doesn’t seem to be a matter of public record.

“It was almost biblical how it affected me,” Watson told website Ultimate Classic Rock in a rare interview in 2015, alluding to his firing and the subsequent legal battle. “I really don’t want to jump into the details.”

When the question is asked, it lands bumpily. “We’re not going there,” Gillis says flatly, drawing a veil. “Please don’t ask about that."

So instead we talk about pastures new. Gillis says he’s working on an as-yet-untitled solo record which includes covers of The Cure’s Alone and Nine Inch Nails’ Hurt. “I’m singing about half of it,” he explains. “The other half has vocals from Gary Moon, who joined Night Ranger in the early nineties when Jack went off to do Damn Yankees.”

Blades, too, has extracurricular activities planned, including an October tour of Japan with Japanese guitarist Tak Matsumoto, whose Tak Matsumoto Group also features Eric Martin of Mr. Big on vocals and former Guns N’ Roses drummer Matt Sorum.

Night Ranger, meanwhile, play a huge show in Fukuoka, Japan in August with old pals Journey. Blades says they’d love to play in the UK again too, should there be enough interest.

“I’m a big Anglophile, and I always felt envious of bands like Bon Jovi, because their manager had them over there with you all the time.” What chance, though, of a follow-up to 2021’s ATBPO (And The Band Played On)? If the Stones can muster a new studio album at this late stage in the game, surely Night Ranger can?

“Brad and I were actually discussing that very thing over lunch yesterday,” says Blades, “so watch this space. ATBPO was great, but it was done remotely because of the pandemic. We’d love to do another LP face to face and shoulder to shoulder.”

Night Ranger’s album Best Of is out now via Frontiers Music Srl.

Mike Oldfield’s 26th album, Return To Ommadawn, would prove to be his last. Six years after its release in 2017 he announced his retirement. But he’d left his fans with a record many of them had asked for, as he told Prog just before its release.

“When I first began to think of what I should do for my new album, I went on social media and asked the fans for their opinion,” Mike Oldfield says. “So many of them seemed to want me to go back to the acoustic style of the first three albums, and Ommadawn appeared to be their favourite one.”

His decision was clinched by a comment from synth pioneer Jean-Michel Jarre. “He was doing a live Facebook chat with his fans and I went online to follow what was being said. One person asked him if he might ever collaborate with me, and his answer was interesting.

“He said that he loved my music, but that I was too acoustic for him. It got me thinking: if someone like him believes I’m an acoustic musician, it shows how important that part of my career has been. So with all this overwhelming evidence, I felt it would be very exciting to do a project again along those lines.”

Oldfield is keen to stress that this is a pure solo work. “I’m the only musician who is involved. I play everything. There are no guest appearances whatsoever.” Actually that’s not strictly true – those with keen ears will notice a very brief choral burst from children’s choir Penrhos Kids at the end of the record.

“I did wonder if people might be disappointed that the album doesn’t have a follow-up to On Horseback, the final song on Ommadawn,” he explains. “So I took one line from the choir who sang on that track and inserted it here. It’s a way of linking these two albums across more than 40 years; it’s not a new recording.”

He readily admits that he specifically designed the album for vinyl. There are just two tracks, titled Part I and Part II, each of which is around 20 minutes long. “I love vinyl and the way it brings people closer to music. As far as I’m concerned, if you listen to downloads, that has the same impact as what you hear in a lift! Of course, the album will be made available in all the usual formats. But for me it’s the vinyl one that matters.

“The cover is very elaborate and there’s a gatefold sleeve with photos I’ve taken of the instruments I used in the sessions. The aim is to give everyone hours of enjoyment as they try to identify all of them and what roles they played.”

However, Oldfield doesn’t have any plans to perform Ommadawn and Return To Ommadawn in the live environment: “It would just be too difficult. I’d have to find musicians who could play the parts in the way that I believe fits best, and that would be almost impossible to achieve.

“There are very talented people around who could duplicate what I’ve done, but it could never have the same emotional connection. The only way I could see this working is if you have 15 or more clones of me onstage!”

When comic book creator James O’Barr licensed The Crow to a movie studio for $1,500, he never expected it to get made, let alone become an enduring gothic touchstone.

Written gradually over nine years, starting in 1980, the original comic book story follows a young man named Eric Draven who returns from the dead to avenge the murder of his fiancée at the hands of a gang. The black-and-white panels drip with anguish, as Eric, face painted in a sinister scowl, stalks the rainy streets of a retro-noir city.

The film version, released in 1994, took this vision to the masses and became a cult classic. Under the eye of Australian director Alex Proyas, and starring Brandon Lee – son of 70s Kung Fu legend Bruce Lee – as bloodthirsty antihero Eric, it plugged into the zeitgeist, riding on the coattails of the emerging wave of industrial bands and playing a part in a 90s goth revival.

But The Crow also became infamous for a tragic event: Brandon Lee was killed during filming, due to an improperly loaded stunt gun, two weeks before he was due to get married.

The Crow was born out of tragedy. James O’Barr wrote it to help him get to grips with his own grief; his fiancée was killed by a drunk driver while they were still in high school.

“She was the polar opposite of me. I was dark and moody and sullen and hostile, and she was pure sunshine and happiness,” he recalls today. “My life was changed irrevocably, in one instant, for no good reason. All those negative traits in me were amplified after that.”

Following the loss of his fiancée, O’Barr enlisted in the Marines and was posted to Berlin. It was 1978, the height of the Cold War. He yearned for a routine to block out his misery, yet the isolation of military life only drove him further into his own head.

“I became big and strong and physically imposing, but the desired effect was not reached,” he remembers. “In fact, it was probably amplified a little more because I internalised it rather than speak out about it. Luckily, I had art as therapy.”

He began creating The Crow in 1980, at the same time as he discovered the downbeat post-punk and goth bands coming out of England – Joy Division, The Cure, The Comsat Angels and Bauhaus. He drew Eric Draven as the latter band’s singer, Peter Murphy, with a touch of Iggy Pop. The dank streets of Berlin also fed into his work.

“The populace was either angry about the outcome of World War II, or they were ashamed,” he says. “It was on everyone’s face, but it was not spoken of. I don’t have any recollections of the sun ever shining. It was a good visual analogy to the post-punk and darkwave stuff that I was listening to.”

After six years in Berlin’s darkness, O’Barr’s dad passed away, and he was reassigned to Michigan in 1984 to take care of his mother. Three years later, he got a job at the Ford dealership in Detroit, working on cars by day and drawing until two in the morning. The Crow was picked up by a local publisher and enjoyed a small run.

The Crow comic book came out in 1989 and became a cult success, though not enough for O’Barr to give up his day job. He was still working at Ford in 1992 when Hollywood showed interest in turning it into a film. He thought the violence and intense romance would put people off adapting it, but Tim Burton’s Batman had found worldwide success, and studios were hoping to cash in with similar films.

Brandon Lee was a rising star in Hollywood. Good-looking and charismatic, he appeared in 1992 action film Rapid Fire, but was keen to step out of his father’s shadow and prove he could do more than fight scenes. At 28 years old, he had a bright future in front of him, and he was due to be married a few weeks after filming.

The cameras began rolling in early 1993. O’Barr had initially been sceptical of Brandon as Eric, thinking the actor “too sweet” to play the vengeful role, but was won over when he saw him in the distinctive make-up and leather pants. O’Barr, who was on set most of the time, was struck by Lee’s humility.

“The whole film was shot at night in miserable conditions, in freezing rain,” he says. “Between takes, everyone would go huddle around a 50-gallon oil drum filled with wood, and start a fire to get warm, like vagrants do. A lot of the crew had brought their kids with them, and instead of going back to his trailer, Brandon would go over and spend time with them. He was personable, charming and genuine.”

On March 31, 1993, tragedy struck. Lee was filming a scene where Draven is shot and killed in his apartment, but when the take ended, the actor didn’t get up. The tip of a dummy .44 slug had become jammed in the barrel of the gun, and the force of the blank had sent it into his abdomen. He was rushed to hospital, but surgery could not save him from the injuries.

Alex Proyas, traumatised, flew home to Australia for a month. James O’Barr was on a promo trip in Detroit when he heard the news. He couldn’t bring himself to return.

“It felt amazing to be on the set and seeing the things I had drawn come to life,” he recalls. “But with Brandon’s death, it was like I fell back into that place I was when I initially began it. It’s a love story, but it’s couched in pain.”

Rumours began to fly; Lee had been killed on the lot, in mysterious circumstances, echoing his father’s passing. Bruce Lee had died of a brain swelling shortly before the release of his own breakthrough film, 1973 martial arts classic Enter The Dragon. Although the coroner had declared it as ‘death by misadventure’, unfounded theories circulated that he was the victim of the mob or a demonic curse.

With permission from Brandon’s fiancée and family, the crew returned to work two months later and finished the film in his memory. Aside from some script changes, they leaned on effects company Dream Quest to bring their vision to life, adding $8million to the $15million budget. Dream Quest used then-cutting-edge techniques to create seven new scenes, comprising 52 shots. In two cases, they digitally superimposed Lee’s face onto a body double. The footage of Lee’s death was destroyed.

When The Crow was released in May 1994, it was a surprise hit, becoming the Number One film at the box office on its week of release, and grossing more than $50 million domestically. Critics praised its dark visuals, although some felt it borrowed too heavily from existing films and wouldn’t have amounted to anything if it weren’t for fate’s cruel hand. ‘Were it not for Brandon Lee’s death… the movie itself would be little more than your basic heavy-metal occult revenge thriller, complete with rain-swept futuristic dreamscapes right out of Blade Runner and Batman,’ read one review in Entertainment Weekly.

Despite the ghoulish intrigue surrounding its production (there had been a string of minor accidents on set even before Brandon’s death), much of its success was down to timing – alternative culture was on the rise, and it exploded with the movie, which was accompanied by a zeitgeist-capturing soundtrack featuring The Cure, Nine Inch Nails and Stone Temple Pilots.

“It hit the American market just at the right time, where people were discovering post-punk – or what was called industrial in America,” says O’Barr. “Things were happening with the music and the dark fashion, and then The Crow came out and pushed it into the mainstream. So now you were cool to be wearing eyeliner, whereas you were a freak two years earlier.”

“Eric was my hero,” says former Him vocalist turned solo star Ville Valo. “The film happened right after grunge broke and was really grungy in a cool way. There were a few darker films, but I don’t think there was anything considered ‘gothic’ coming out of Hollywood at the time, and it had a bit of rock’n’roll. Eric was carrying a crow and a guitar.”

The Crow spawned a series of forgettable sequels, and a poorly received reboot in 2024 starring Bill Skarsgård in the title role. Yet nothing has dented the enduring appeal of the original. The Crow, like Eric Draven himself, proves there is life after death.

Every October, the coffin lid of Bobby ‘Boris’ Pickett’s career used to creak open and out would come his one, cobwebbed, hit. The Monster Mash, a novelty song about a monsters’ dance party, sold over four million copies, charted three times, and 60 years on remains the most popular Halloween tune ever.

“The whole thing was a complete fluke,” Pickett told me in 2005. “I never even wanted to be a singer. I was an actor.” He said he’d got the movie bug as a kid growing up in Somerville, Massachusetts, where his dad managed a local theatre. “I loved the horror films.”

When he moved to Hollywood in 1961, Bobby Pickett’s budding résumé included a penchant for celebrity impersonations – the best of which were scaremeisters Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff. As he hustled around for acting jobs, he picked up extra cash on weekends by singing at an Italian restaurant with a group called The Cordials. “We literally sang for our supper - spaghetti on Friday nights,” Pickett said with a laugh.

One of the songs they covered in their set was Little Darlin’ by The Diamonds. For a lark, in the middle of the song, Pickett would recite a monologue in his Karloff voice. “The audience loved it,” he recalled. So much so that fellow band member Lenny Capizzi suggested they should write a whole rock’n’roll song about monsters. “Lenny said: ‘Novelty records sell!’” said Pickett.

He continued: “So one day, in the summer of 1962, he and I wrote this song about a monster who gets up off his gurney and does the latest dance craze, which I thought should be The Twist. But Lenny said: ‘No, it’s Mashed Potato Time by Dee Dee Sharp.’ That was a big number one. So we called our song The Monster Mashed Potato. We shortened it later, but that was the original title. The whole thing took about two hours to write.”

Capizzi suggested they take it to Gary Paxton, best known for producing Alley-Oop by the Hollywood Argyles. This was a moment for Paxton, an eccentric music-biz character, right up there with Kim Fowley and Phil Spector.

During our conversation, Pickett told me a story about a now-forgotten novelty record Paxton had produced called Elephant Game, by Renfro & Jackson. When a local radio station refused to play it, because it was “too black”, Paxton organised some cheerleaders and a live elephant pulling a Volkswagen Beetle convertible to parade past the station in protest. He got arrested after the elephant began pooping in the street. But he did build a solid discography, later working with The Association, Tommy Roe and Paul Revere & The Raiders.

Of course, Paxton loved The Monster Mash as soon as he heard it, Pickett remembers. “He said: ‘This is a hit! I want to produce it!’”

They recorded it in one session at Gold Star Studios. Although a novelty song, it had a hard-swinging groove. Why? The backing band, dubbed The Crypt-Kicker Five, included Leon Russell on piano and Mel Taylor, drummer for The Ventures (dig that fill borrowed from their classic Wipeout). Then there were the sound effects. For the coffin opening, Paxton pulled a nail out of a piece of wood. For the bubbling cauldron, he and Capizzi blew straws into glasses of water.

“And to top it off, the three female backing singers were The Blossoms, with Darlene Love,” said Pickett.

When I asked Pickett why The Blossoms repeatedly sang ‘wa-ooh tennis shoe’ during the bridge, he laughed. “I never did know why they did that.”

The Monster Mash was released August 25, 1962. By October it was No.1 on the Billboard singles chart.

“I thought it was a lark, something horror movie freaks would enjoy,” Pickett said. “I couldn’t believe it.”

Aside from its catchy chorus and daffy charm, could there have been another reason it hit so big? “Well, it was the height of the Cuban missile crisis,” Pickett said. “So maybe it relieved people of the tension.”

The BBC banned the record upon its original UK release. “They said it was ‘too morbid’,” Pickett recalled. “But then it became a hit in England in the early seventies.” It did prove to be something of a perennial, charting again in the US in 1970 and 1973, and getting reliable airplay every October.

Pickett had a No.29 hit with its Christmas follow-up, Monsters’ Holiday. But over the years, spin-off singles Monster Swim, It’s Alive and Monster Rap failed to scare up any further chart action. He told me that his biggest champion was Dr. Demento, the underground radio personality who helped make Weird Al Yankovic a hit.

“Dr. Demento plays anything I record,” Pickett said, “which is a wonderful thing. He considers my discography to be important, so that makes me feel like it is.”

As for Pickett’s acting career, it peaked with a low-budget cult film called, appropriately, Frankenstein Sings! Meanwhile, Capizzi went on to be a successful screenwriter, with Must Love Dogs and Silver Linings Playbook.

Bobby Pickett passed in April 2007 at the age of 69, but he remained active until his final months. An environmentalist, he wrote two spin-off songs – Monster Slash, protesting against the exploitation of the rainforests, and the global warming-related Climate Mash, which envisioned George W Bush and Dick Cheney getting down with zombies and vampires at a party thrown by Exxon Mobil.

Over the years, The Monster Mash has been covered by everyone from the Beach Boys to Alvin & The Chipmunks to Bruce Springsteen. It also appeared on an episode of The Simpsons. In the end, Pickett’s “fluke” song was the trick that kept treating. He told me: “The Monster Mash paid my rent for over 40 years!”

The nights are dark, the veil is thin, and suddenly we're not the only people on the street wearing black. Yes, it's Halloween, so in celebration of every metalhead's favourite holiday, we've brought you a list of the spookiest tunes to soundtrack your festivities.

Whether it's haunting your local graveyard, shaking your bones at a metal club, tricking your neighbours or treating them to the sound of your speakers blasting this playlist, the fun starts here. Plus, each track has been handpicked by some of our favourite rock/metal bands, including London doom heroes Green Lung, 'wannabe witch' Taylor Momsen from The Pretty Reckless, British-Iranian prog metallers Lowen and plenty more. Happy Halloween and happy listening.

Shocking Blue - Daemon Lover

"Everyone will be picking Type O Negative so I’ll take the original slinky, seductive spook rock legends from the late Sixties - Daemon Lover is the perfect soundtrack for a romantic Halloween night in with a bottle of red wine, some black candles and a ouija board. Samhain blessings all."
Tom Templar, Green Lung

Cradle Of Filth - Lord Abortion

"There’s regular Cradle and there’s extra spooky Cradle, so this is hard! Let’s go with Lord Abortion, because it has that whole mid-section that’s extremely spooky. It’s an incredible song. It’s from the Midian album, which is how I discovered Cradle: when I was a kid, I’d stay up really late watching metal music videos, and Her Ghost In The Fog came on TV. It shifted my perspective a little bit."
George Clarke, Deafheaven

Bobby Pickett and The Crypt-Kickers - The Original Monster Mash

"I can’t remember who sings it, but it always gets me: The Monster Mash. And you’ve got to watch Carry On Screaming on Halloween, as well. Many, many moons ago, as a child, I remember that coming on TV, watching it, going to bed and absolutely shitting myself. Now I watch it and go, ‘How the hell could I have been scared of this thing?’ It’s ridiculous, and you’ll go, ‘Benji Webbe, you fucking saddo!’, but it’s brilliant, mate! Carry On Screaming and The Monster Mash: two things that have to happen on Halloween."
Benji Webbe, Skindred

Ozzy Osbourne - Steal Away (The Night)

"Honestly, the whole of Blizzard of Ozz is kind of perfect for this time of year, but something about Steal Away (The Night) by Ozzy Osbourne feels like what wild kids dressed up as ghouls in the early 1980's would be listening to as they ran around the neighbourhood trick-or-treating."
Chelsea Wolfe

Jimmy Page - Lucifer Rising

"This was intended as the soundtrack to the occult film of the same name by Kenneth Anger. The film took ages to make, and before Page got involved, Mick Jagger had done a load of music as well, also very weird. This ended up not being in it after Page and Anger fell out, but it's incredible. It's really atmospheric and haunting, and if you focus it gets really trance-like. Definitely one for if you're spending Halloween getting evil on your own."
Nick Ruskell, Witchsorrow

Opeth - Sorceress

"I love how uniquely evil this song sounds, and that it’s about a uniquely evil woman with unholy power. Whoever wronged Mikael Åkerfeldt so deeply to have inspired these lyrics has alchemised one of the best riffs in Opeth’s mighty discography. Witches are a Halloween staple, but Sorceresses are underrated - and far more threatening due to their innate blood-sprung power. Women can forge life with their bodies and take it just as easily. What a dark and beautiful reminder of our abilities." Nina Saeidi, Lowen

Type O Negative - Black No. 1

"On Black No. 1, Peter Steele says ‘every day is Halloween’, and that’s the vibe I get from Type O Negative. I love gothic music, because it’s a celebration of the purity of sadness. It feels good! There are tribes in the world who have a designated day, every year, where they are just really sad for having left childhood behind, for moving towards death, for things decaying… That’s the thing that Type O give me: it’s nostalgic, but more than that. Sometimes, it’s good to just be sad."
Ivar Bjørnson, Enslaved

Meshuggah - Future Breed Machine

"It's just so creepy! There's the machinery [sound effects] and then that riff comes in. The Swallowed By The World breakdown is very much a Meshuggah-inspired breakdown. There's always a time for Meshuggah in Cenobia's life, no matter what she's doing. They've always stuck with her."
Cenobia

The Cure - Lullaby

"The gothic atmosphere of The Cure, combined with the haunting lyrics 'Spiderman is having me for dinner tonight', makes this the perfect Halloween song. The wonderfully creepy music video captures the mood perfectly. It feels like you’re floating through a nightmare, but somehow, all you want to do is dance."
Eivor

Ghost - Satanized

"I mean, if we’re talking metal songs that are Halloweeny, pretty much anything by Iron Maiden should qualify. But I absolutely love Ghost. Satanized is perfectly spooky though, you could basically put that on or anything from their first album and have an instant Halloween party. It sounds like The Addams Family went, ‘Let’s make a band.'"
Luke Caley, Unpeople

The Pretty Reckless - Witches Burn

"I am a huge Halloween fan, maybe people don't know that about me, but it is my favourite holiday. We have a Halloween song on almost every record. Witches Burn is about the oppression of women through history, but also using witchcraft as the metaphor to get through oppression. So it's actually a deep song, but for a Halloween playlist, it's totally about witches. If I could be a witch in real life, absolutely I would. I watch Buffy and I just go, ‘I wanna float pencils. I wanna be Willow [Rosenberg]’. Like, fuck yes."
Taylor Momsen, The Pretty Reckless

Cradle Of Filth - Cruelty Bought The Orchids

"I think it's their best song. Big leads, the big Iron Maiden dual guitars - I love it when Cradle of Filth go a bit Thin Lizzy! And Cradle, they've got that vampiric essence to them. I love that album, Cruelty and the Beast, and what a song. That keyboard sound is genuinely spooky."
Serena Cherry, Noctule

Does Steven Wilson ever sleep? He’s about to release his third solo album in three years with the eerie, folk horror-inspired Requiem For A Village (the fifth if you count the two he’s put out under his experimental Bass Communion alter ego). And that’s not to mention his parallel career as the remixer to rock’s great and good, from Jethro Tull to Phil Collins.

But he’s already looking ahead, with multiple projects on the go, including Porcupine Tree, No-Man and Storm Corrosion, his long-dormant collaboration with Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt.

The latter released their sole, self-titled album back in 2012, but Wilson reveals that he and Åkerfeldt rented a studio owned by Benny Andersson of Abba to begin work in earnest on the much-anticipated follow-up.

“We spent a week in Stockholm earlier this year and created a 45-minute framework,” says Wilson of Storm Corrosion. “A single piece of music that is 45 minutes long, and it's fucked up. It's almost entirely acoustic, but it's very dark, very atonal in places, and very beautiful in places. It has a vaguely nautical theme about an old guy shipwrecked on an island.

“It’s not completely acoustic,” he continues. “Mike still plays some electric guitars. But Benny from Abba has this incredible collection of instruments and we set them up in the studio and we basically just went around playing all manner of stuff. I was like a man possessed for a week, and we ended up with this amazing piece of music. We haven't done the vocal tracking yet, but I'm really excited about it.”

Storm Corrosion remains one of the most beloved, if cult-ish projects Wilson has been involved in. “I think it's an acquired taste, but the people that love that record really love it,” he says. “Interestingly, if there’s one album that has some close affinity with Requiem For A Village, it’s the first Storm Corrosion album. It has this slightly dissonant feel - it’s almost like an avant garde folk record in places. I’m doing that a lot more on Requiem For A Village, but there’s a little bit of it on that record - that dark, uneasy feeling.”

Storm Corrosion isn’t the only iron Wilson has in the musical fire. “All my projects are always on the go,” he says. “There are Porcupine Tree songs that have been written, but we're a long way from it being an album's worth, so it could be years. I've got new No-Man stuff on the go. Me and Tim [Bowness, Wilson’s No-Man partner] have sketched out a double album's worth of material over the last couple of years. Again, we’re in no rush to finish it, but I still love collaborating.”

And then there’s a potential follow-up to Requiem For A Village itself – or even follow-ups. Wilson and Andy Partridge, the former XTC frontman who co-wrote lyrics for the new album, have talked about returning to the haunted landscape they’ve imagined up between them.

“We got to the end of the project and we were both really happy with it,” he says. “We went, ‘Hasn’t this got the potential for a sequel?’ Being prog, I obviously said, ‘It’s got to be a trilogy.’ And straight away, Andy said, ‘The second part will be about the people and the third will be about the animals, the birds or the dead.’ We might even do the sequel fairly quickly off the back of this one.”

Requiem For A Village is released on November 6. Read the full interview with Steven Wilson in the brand new issue of Prog, on sale now.

“Darling, he’s far too busy in the studio. That’s what happens when you get sick in Queen – you have to make the time up.”

In the South London offices of his band’s PR company, a characteristically flamboyant Freddie Mercury is entertaining the press. It’s the autumn of 1974, and Queen have almost completed their third album, Sheer Heart Attack. Almost. For Mercury’s bandmate Brian May there’s still work to do. It’s just a few months since the guitarist was felled by a virulent bout of hepatitis mid-way through their debut US tour, and subsequently hospitalised for a second time with a stomach ulcer, forcing him to miss initial sessions for the album. May is currently holed up in the studio, finishing off his guitar parts, hence his absence today.

It’s typical of Queen’s ferocious drive that they haven’t let a pair of potentially fatal medical conditions get in the way of the job in hand. Their first two albums – 1973’s Queen and follow-up Queen II, released earlier in 1974 – set them up as a unique proposition: one part Zeppelin-esque rockers, one part glam dandies, one part fantastical Aubrey Beardsley illustration made flesh. Their music, along with their billowing silk blouses and Mercury’s outrageous, 1,000-watt personality, has earned them as much scorn as admiration. Both responses have only fuelled their ambitions.

But now those ambitions are coming into sharp focus. Like its predecessors, Sheer Heart Attack is the product of an intense work ethic that stems from a desire to be bigger, bolder and better than everyone else. It’s a watershed for the band: this album will lay the groundwork for future success.

There are solid economic factors, too. The album needs to be a success to boost their ever-decreasing finances. Their management, Trident Productions, have put them on a wage that barely pays the bills, while seeking a return on their hefty investments in recording and studio costs. Combined with May’s illness, it’s fair to say, there’s a lot riding on it.

“The whole group aimed for the top slot,” says Mercury. “We’re not going to be content with anything less. That’s what we’re striving for. It’s got to be there. I definitely know we’ve got it in the music, we’re original enough… and, now we’re proving it.”

“I first met Queen in November 1973, when Mott The Hoople were rehearsing for their tour,” recalls Peter Hince, then a 19-year-old Mott roadie (and later one of the key members of Queen’s crew). “We were in Manticore Studios in Fulham, a converted cinema. It was freezing cold, everyone in scarves and coats. Then Queen came in in their dresses, their silks and satin. Even then, Fred was doing the whole thing, running up and down and doing his poses. My first thought was basically, ‘What a prat.’”

It wasn’t an uncommon reaction. Formed from the ashes of May and drummer Roger Taylor’s old band Smile in late 1970, Queen initially struggled to make a name for themselves. When eventually they did, they found themselves polarising opinion. While they had their admirers, they had also inadvertently become whipping boys for some sections of the British music press.

“We were just totally ignored for so long, and then completely slagged off by everyone,” Brian May acknowledged. “In a way, that was a very good start for us. There’s no kind of abuse that wasn’t thrown at us. It was only around the time of Sheer Heart Attack that it began to change. But we still got slagged off a fair bit even then.”

The opprobrium heaped on them may have hurt them individually, but it only strengthened their collective resolve. Where their first album owed a debt to Led Zeppelin, the follow-up raised the bar immeasurably. Divided between ‘Side White’ and ‘Side Black’ to reflect what Mercury called “the battle between good and evil”, it brought both operatic bombast and ballet-pumped daintiness to their heavy rock thunder – often in the same song.

“They planned everything in their heads,” says Gary Langan, then an assistant engineer at Sarm Studios in East London, who worked on two Sheer Heart Attack tracks. “Nothing was left to chance. That’s what separated them from other bands. You had to earn Freddie’s respect to get close to him. He used to scare the pants off me. The aura around that guy was astonishing.”

Mercury was born Farrokh Bulsara, to Indian Parsi parents, on the island of Zanzibar, just off the eastern coast of mainland Africa. His formative years were spent at boarding school near Bombay, where he learned to play music and formed his first band, the Hectics. In 1964, when he was 17, civil war broke out in Zanzibar and the Bulsara family fled the island to settle in the altogether less dangerous environs of Feltham, Middlesex.

It was here, in the chrysalis of suburbia, that Farrokh Bulsara would ultimately transform himself into Freddie Mercury. The latter was an entirely self-created character, as camp and outrageous in public as he was shy and driven in private. By the time of Queen II, Farrokh Bulsara was a ghost known only to his family and closest friends; to everyone else he was Freddie Mercury.

Not that the rest of the band were content to exist in Mercury’s shadow. Three very distinct personalities, they each brought a different aspect to the band: May the studios intellectual, Taylor the louche rock’n’roller, Deacon the quiet man whose musical contribution would often be overlooked. It was a frequently combustible combination, albeit one with a shared vision.

“Do we row?” said Mercury in ’74. “Oh, my dear, we’re the bitchiest band on earth. We’re at each other’s throats. But if we didn’t disagree we’d just be ‘yes men’. And we do get the cream in the end.”

Fittingly, it would be Mott The Hoople who taught Queen how to be a rock’n’roll band. In October 1973, the foursome embarked on a 24-date UK tour with Ian Hunter’s survivors. Queen had released their debut album the previous July; the follow-up was already recorded, although it wouldn’t be released for another four months (a source of growing tension between band and management).

The two bands couldn’t have been more different. Mott were veterans of the rock’n’roll wars: they’d had their ups and downs, and had even split up before David Bowie threw them a lifeline in the shape of All The Young Dudes. They’d been there, done that, and rolled their eyes in wry resignation at the thought of it all. By contrast, Queen were young, hungry and at least striving for something approaching glamour. The rocks thrown their way hadn’t dented their drive for success in the slightest.

It quickly became apparent that Queen weren’t the usual makeweight support band. “They were quite pushy from day one,” says Peter Hince. “They demanded more space on stage, they were quite arrogant. They’d got this very clear idea of what they were going to do: ‘We’re gonna go for it.’ But you could see that they were already very good.”

For Queen, the tour was an invaluable lesson. They studiously watched the headliners. One of the songs in their own set was a prototype version of Stone Cold Crazy, a song that would later appear on Sheer Heart Attack.

“On tour as support to Mott, I was conscious that we were in the presence of something great,” said Brian May. “Something highly evolved, close to the centre of the spirit of rock’n’roll, something to breathe in and learn from.”

Typically, Freddie Mercury found playing second fiddle harder to swallow. “Being support is one of the most traumatic experiences of my life,” he would later pout.

The Mott tour finished with two shows at Hammersmith Odeon on December 13 and 14, but there was no rest for Queen. The next day they kicked off their own short tour at Leicester University. Shortly afterwards they flew to Australia to play their first show outside Europe; less happily, it ended with the band getting booed off by the roughneck audience.

By the time Queen II was released in March 1974, the band were finally matching their own self-belief. With a following wind behind them from the Top 10 success of Seven Seas Of Rhye, they kicked off their first proper UK headlining tour, starting in Blackpool, taking in such glamorous rock’n’roll destinations as Paignton, Canvey Island and Cromer, and peaking with a prestigious gig at London’s famed Rainbow Theatre.

There was a riot at a show in Stirling, when 500 audience members refused to leave the venue after the final encore, forcing the band to barricade themselves in the dressing room (the next night’s show in Birmingham was cancelled when the band were detained for questioning by the disgruntled Stirling police force).

For Freddie Mercury it was proof that Queen’s destiny was in their own hands. “You have to have confidence in this business,” said the singer. “It’s useless saying you don’t need it. If you start saying to yourself: ‘Maybe I’m not good enough. Maybe I’d better settle for second place,’ it’s no good. If you like the icing on the top, you’ve got to have confidence.”

While Queen’s star was rising in the UK, America was another matter. Barely known beyond a few Anglophile hipsters, they would need to start from scratch to build up anything resembling a Stateside following. Handily, their friends in Mott The Hoople were there to help them out again.

“We went out on tour with them. They were very nice people,” says Mott’s Ian Hunter. “Very intelligent. So we said, ‘Okay, do you want to come to America as well?’”

On April 16, Queen played their first US show, in Denver, Colorado as support to Mott. Remarkably, despite the band’s name and Mercury’s stagecraft, the more macho sections of the American audiences didn’t take against them.

“They were more like a normal group,” Hunter recalls. “They were playing rock songs, but with their own slant on it. They did say that they picked up a lot of their stagecraft from Mott, you know? You’ve got to pick it up from somewhere.”

This big-brother-little-brother dynamic was evident off stage, as was the support band’s desire to be successful. At one point the two bands found themselves staying in a set of apartments owned by Spartacus star Kirk Douglas.

“There was a bit of a do in my room,” says Ian Hunter, “and Fred’s marching up and down saying: ‘When are these silly bastards going to figure it out?’ Meaning the Americans. I said to him: ‘It’s a big country, you’ve got to go around three or four times before it happens. It’s not like England, where you can conquer it in a day!’ He was very, very impatient. It was hilarious.”

The lavish offstage behaviour that became synonymous with Queen were a few years away, but there were still some memorable moments. Not least when the tour crossed paths with Bette Midler, then a brassy singer who’d made her name on New York’s gay bath-house circuit.

“She was doing a theatre in the same town as us,” Hunter remembers. “She latched onto Luther (Grovesnor, aka Mott guitarist Ariel Bender). And then we had Bette’s mob come back to the hotel with us. There was us, Queen, Bette and these seven-foot guys in feather head-dresses and what have you. Ha ha! It was so much fun.”

On May 7, Mott and Queen began a six-night residency at New York’s Uris Theater. But disaster struck the morning after the final show, when Brian May fell ill. The guitarist was diagnosed with hepatitis, possibly picked up from a dirty needle when they were inoculated before that ill-fated Australian show. Distraught, the band were forced to pull out of the tour, and May, against doctor’s orders, was flown home. Their plan to conquer America had been derailed. At least for the time being.

“To us it was out of the blue,” says Ian Hunter. “They were on the tour and then they’re not. Next thing we knew, they had the album out and it was doing extremely well.”

“I felt really bad at having let the group down at such an important place,” Brian May said in 1974. “But there was nothing to do about it. It was hepatitis, which you get sometimes when you’re emotionally run-down.”

Laid up in hospital after returning from America, May was feeling guilty and frustrated at inadvertently curtailing his band’s American ambitions. Understandably keen to rejoin his bandmates who had started work on their next album without him, he’d already begun writing while convalescing. One of the songs he was working on, Now I’m Here, reflected the disconnect between touring the US with Mott The Hoople and his living in a pokey bedsit in West London with his girlfriend. “It came out quite easily,” said the guitarist. “Where I’d been wrestling with it before without getting anywhere.”

It was a six weeks before May recovered from his bout of hepatitis. After being discharged he immediately rejoined the others in the studio. But something was wrong. May was constantly being sick, and he couldn’t eat anything. He was taken back to hospital, where doctors discovered that he had an undiagnosed stomach ulcer, which had been aggravated by the hepatitis.

“I was stuck in hospital for a few weeks, and they did some stuff to me which was like a miracle,” said May. “I thought I was dead. Being ill like that may even have been a good thing at the time, because although it was pretty hellish going through it, I felt glad to be alive and I became able to hold things in perspective more and not get so wound up and worried about them to make myself ill.”

By the time May returned to the sessions for the second time, work was properly under way on the new album. It was a strange experience for the guitarist, although not a negative one.

“It was very weird, because I was able to see the group from the outside, and was pretty excited by what I saw,” he later said. “We’d done a few things before I was ill, but when I came back they’d done a load more, including a couple of backing tracks of songs by Freddie which I hadn’t heard, like Flick Of The Wrist, which excited me and gave me a lot of inspiration to get back in there and do what I wanted to do.”

Sheer Heart Attack was recorded between July and October 1974. As with its two predecessors, the album was produced by Roy Thomas Baker, a larger-than-life character who could more than match Mercury in the charisma stakes.

“Every one of our musical and production frustrations came out on Queen II,” said Baker. “The idea for the third album was to get together and do some ‘simpler’ songs for a change; real little, short songs. And it was very successful on that level.”

Unlike Queen and Queen II, Sheer Heart Attack was conceived in the studio, albeit through necessity rather than by design. “Nobody knew we were going to be told we had two weeks to write Sheer Heart Attack,” said Mercury. “And we had to – it was the only thing we could do. Brian was in hospital.”

Despite the setback of the cancelled US tour, there was no doubt among the band that Sheer Heart Attack would take them to the next level. The black-and-white approach of Queen II had been reigned in, replaced by a kaleidoscopic range of sounds and styles. Leading this new approach was Killer Queen, an outrageously camp ditty that was closer to Noël Coward than to Robert Plant.

“That was the one song which was really out of the format that I usually write in,” said Mercury. “Usually the music comes first, but the words, and the sophisticated style that I wanted to put across in the song, came first.”

Many have claimed to be the inspiration behind Killer Queen, most notably Eric ‘Monster! Monster!’ Hall, the future football agent who then worked as Queen’s radio plugger. According to Mercury, the title chartacter was pure fantasy.

“No, I’d never really met a woman like that,” he explained after the album’s release. “I can dream up all kinds of things. That’s the kind of world I live in. It’s very flamboyant.”

If Killer Queen was the best-known song, it was hardly representative of the album, largely because the band didn’t chain themselves to one style. No band other than The Beatles had dared throw as many different styles into the mix with as much confidence. That state of affairs in Queen was helped by the fact that all four members pitched in with the writing.

A convalescing May delivered the rockers, including Now I’m Here and opener Brighton Rock (working titles: Bognor Ballad, Southend Sea Scout and Happy Little Fuck). Bookended by a picaresque tale of two seaside lovers sung in high and low registers by Mercury, it was a showcase for an extended May guitar solo dating back to Blag, a song by his old band Smile.

By contrast, Mercury threw in everything from waspish glam rock (Flick Of The Wrist, a reflection of their increasingly strained relationship with their management) to old-fashioned vaudeville (Bring Back Leroy Brown, complete with ukelele solo from May). Most prescient was In The Lap Of The Gods, a two-part, near-operatic epic that laid the groundwork for Bohemian Rhapsody the following year.

In this creative environment, the rhythm section also rocked up with material. Taylor, who had written a song for each of their previous albums, contributed Tenement Funster, a lachrymose salute to the rock’n’roll lifestyle, and an overlooked Queen gem. John Deacon chipped in with the slight but perfectly formed Misfire. The furious Stone Cold Crazy – an influence on the future members of Metallica, and hence a cornerstone of the thrash metal movement – was credited to all four members, even though it dated from Mercury’s pre-Queen band Wreckage.

For a band who were frequently mocked for being shallow, there were plenty of hidden depths, not least on Mercury’s delicate Lily Of The Valley. The singer’s sexuality was the subject of much debate in the press; apparent double-bluffs such as his famous proclamation that “I’m as gay as a daffodil, dear” deliberately clouded the issue. But while Mercury was still living with girlfriend Mary Austin, he reputedly told his closest friends that he was gay.

“Freddie’s stuff was so heavily cloaked, lyrically,” Brian May said in 1999. “But you could find out, just from little insights, that a lot of his private thoughts were in there, although a lot of the more meaningful stuff was not very accessible. Lily Of The Valley was utterly heartfelt. It’s about looking at his girlfriend and realising that his body needed to be somewhere else.”

All such personal distractions were kept out of the studio. “They worked 15 hour days,” says Gary Langan, who worked as tape operator on Now I’m Here and Brighton Rock. “When we finished work at Sarm, we’d meet them at a club called the Valbonne in Soho. That’s when they let their hair down.”

This drive for perfection ensured there was no fat on Sheer Heart Attack. Just two songs failed to make the final album. One was May’s imperious reworking of the national anthem, God Save The Queen, later resurrected for 1975’s A Night At The Opera. The other was the song that gave the album its title, the frantic, Taylor-penned Sheer Heart Attack. Little more than the bare bones of a song when they started, the drummer failed to finish it in time. They finally got around to recording it for 1977’s News Of The World album, underpinned with the sneering key lyric: ‘I feel so inar.. inar… inar inar…inarticulate’. The band in the next studio at the time? The Sex Pistols.

By the time Sheer Heart Attack was released on November 1, 1974, Killer Queen had already given Queen their first Top 3 hit. Now I’m Here followed a couple of months later, complete with touching nod to unofficial mentors Mott The Hoople (“It was nice,” recalls Ian Hunter, “but there was no money attached to it”). Between the two, Queen embarked on their first proper world tour, headlining. This time there were no illnesses or riots, though they were greeted by scenes approaching Beatlemania when they arrived in Japan in April 1975. The effort that went into Sheer Heart Attack had paid off.

Forty years on it stands as Queen’s most pivotal album. They had greater success later, but none of it would have be possible without the groundwork laid down here. “That was the album that showed the world what they were capable of,” says Gary Langan. “If that album hadn’t been as successful as it was, then something like A Night At The Opera probably wouldn’t have been accepted.”

Freddie Mercury put it more succinctly. “We were in a prolific stage and so much was happening with us, dear,” he said afterwards. “We felt the need for a change of sorts and, as ever, we felt able to go to extremes. As usual, we put ourselves under pressure. That’s just us.”

Originally published in Classic Rock 159 (July 2011)

Bryan Adams might be a globally recognised superstar having sold more than 100 million albums and singles during a career spanning almost five decades, but the Canadian musician isn't traditionally known as a singer of protest songs. This, however, may yet change, as the 66-year-old Ontario-born singer/songwriter has just released a new single featuring barbed criticisms of US President Donald Trump.

The song, titled Lake Ontario, is Adams' response to Donald Trump's well-publicised (and much-mocked) decision, earlier this year, to sign an executive order instructing US federal agencies to rename Lake Ontario, the body of water straddling the border between Canada and the United States, 'Lake America'.

In his lyrics for the song, set to feature on the forthcoming album, How's It Goin', Adams pulls no punches when referencing Trump's order, and suggests that the US President's motivation for the act was to distract public attention from other contentious issues that have arisen during his divisive second term in the White House.

The lyrics in one section of the song run:

"Things weren’t going his way in Iran / So like a baby tossing the toys from the pram / He may have thought it best to throw a low blow / And create a real dog and pony show. But it feels like another distraction / While the Epstein files were getting traction."

In a pointed press statement announcing the release, Adams says, "Empires and regimes, dictators and kings, they all come and go. Lake Ontario is forever. This is a song for all the sane people on both shores who know that the current madness will pass, and that Lake Ontario will always be Lake Ontario."

Adams' new record has been described by the musician as a "love letter" to his homeland. His 17th studio album, How's It Goin', is scheduled for release on November 6, on BAD Records.

We await Donald Trump's response with bated breath.

Lamb of God have announced that the 2028 edition of their bespoke metal cruise Lamb of God Presents Headbangers Boat will sail from May 27 to May 31, 2028 from Southampton, England to La Coruña, Spain, the gateway to the rocky shores of the Costa da Morte (Coast of Death).

Artists already booked to perform aboard the Norwegian Jewel for what will be the fifth staging of Lamb Of God's curated cruise include Paleface Swiss, Bleed From Within, Heriot, Shadows Fall, and Kublai Khan TX, with many more acts to be announced before launch.

As is customary, the members of Lamb of God will also curate and host exclusive activities. Frontman Randy Blythe will sit down for an in-depth conversation and Q&A, and drummer Art Cruz plans on spinning a “Heavy In The Mix” DJ set. The Headbangers Poker Tournament includes the chance to win a spot at the Final Table with co-founding bassist John Campbell, so prepare your best poker face and watch out for (card) sharks. Shipmates can also battle for glory in Masters of Metal: The Trivia Massacre, and sing themselves hoarse at the Scream for the Sea Metal Mayhem Karaoke. We're also informed that invitations will be extended to join in with the Swag Swap where apparently one can "trade booty with your metal brethren", about which we're not going to ask any further questions, tbh.

A press statement adds: "The adventure starts in Southampton, where rich maritime history meets charming coastal scenery and classic British culture. Before setting sail, cruisers can explore the medieval city walls, visit the SeaCity Museum, check out vintage aircraft or an art gallery, challenge cabin mates to an arcade game showdown, or just stroll through the bustling city centre. Traditional British fare, cosy local pubs, waterfront views, and centuries of seafaring history make it the perfect port to start from, and a fine spot for a pre-sail grog or two.

"Once your sea legs have mastered a circle pit on a boat, it’s land ho for a spectacular shore excursion in La Coruña, a stunning coastal city in Spain’s Galicia region packed with historic charm, beautiful beaches, and vibrant Spanish culture. Visit the iconic Tower of Hercules, the oldest working Roman lighthouse in the world, a UNESCO World Heritage Site dating back to the late 1st century A.D. Find the Iron Age-era Monte dos Bicos petroglyphs in the sculpture park, potter along to the 16th century fortress Castillo de San Antón (Castle of San Antón), wander the charming streets of the Old Town, and stroll the scenic waterfront promenade - or just chill at the beach! Save some doubloons for onshore vittles by way of fresh seafood and traditional Galician tapas. Anyone for Sangria?

"Shore excursions will not be available to reserve until 4-6 weeks prior to sailing. Cruisers will be able to book an excursion upon receipt of their official booking number."

For full details, including information about ticket pre-sales, prices, and packages, go here.

Happy Halloween! It's the last chance to dance of Spooky Season, and there's a whole heap of brilliant new metal songs for you to sink your teeth into as we hit the weekend.

But first, the results of last week's vote! Japan's Zilqy took third place with Misfit Toys, while Vindicta proved they've got hooks to spare on Idol(l)s. But our overall champions for the week were the returning alt/goth force The Yagas, Vera Farmiga once again proving herself the queen of Halloween on the 80s flavoured Runaway.

We've got a diverse selection for you to dive into this week, ranging from veteran legends like Saxon to rising stars Sleep Theory, underground brutes Entheos and Crucivore and even a couple of Halloween-friendly tunes. Don't forget to cast your vote in the poll below - and have an excellent weekend!

Mean Ghouls - He's A Serial Killer

Not so much channelling the Misfits as exhuming the corpse and reanimating it, Mean Ghouls' debut album ...And The Horror Goes On is out today. The band are celebrating with the brilliant horror-punk ditty He's A Serial Killer, thundering into Halloween weekend with a sense of flair and infectious energy.

Entheos - Hell Is A Part Of Me

There's something proggy and off-kiler about the new Entheos single. Taken from new album Empty On The Inside, which came out last week, Hell Is A Part Of Me brings to mind the sonic acrobatics of Jinjer without feeling like they're trying to imitate anyone, vocalist Chaney Crabb showing off some seriously impressive range across the song's runtime.

Imminence - Crestfallen

There's no shortage of violins in modern metal - it seems everyone has a symphonic gene in them somewhere - but nobody is using the instrument quite like Imminence. The Swedish band's latest single Crestfallen balances minimalist vocal melodies and production with a keening violin line that really elevates the track, making it feel at once anthemic and devastating. New album Axis Mundi came out at the start of the month and is well worth exploring.

Blind Channel - Messiah

Blind Channel's new album Painstream is out today and the Finns have commemorated the fact with a new single in the form of Messiah. The nu metal bounce of their previous era looks to be gone entirely; instead this is a stirring modern metalcore ballad, pounding riffs meeting a big, ascendant chorus that betrays the band's massive ambitions.

Yoth Iria - Dare To Rebel

Hailing from Athens, Yoth Iria play black metal very much in the vein of Hellenic BM icons Rotting Christ. What that means is there's no frosty blastbeats and Norwegian style shrieks here, instead Dare To Rebel is a thunderous march of resistant force, almost cinematic in quality whilst never sounding baldly commercial. Taken from new album Gone With The Devil, consider this song a perfect entry point to a very different school of black metal mastery with a triumphant, old school heavy metal edge.

Saxon - Medusa

From one Hellenic icon to another. Granted, Biff Byford's boys are from Barnsley, but they're going full Clash Of The Titans on new track Medusa, putting their not inconseriable pedigree of old school heavy metal riffs to work in a fist-pumping, NWOBHM tune about the gorgon Medusa. New album Gods Of Thunder is due January 22.

Crucivore - The Banished Torment

There's a whiff of Cradle Of Filth like gothic theatricality to Crucivore's The Banished Torment. The Portuguese death metallers otherwise bear no resemblance to Dani Filth's cohort, but the song's intro definitely feels like something we could've heard on Midian, before we're flung headfirst into a pulverising meatgrinder of riffs and gargled growls. New album Desecration is out November 13, so keep your eyes out.

Sleep Theory - Giving In

With less than a week to go until they return to the UK to play arenas with Papa Roach, Sleep Theory have offered a taste of where they're going next on Giving In. The answer is: bigger, harder and more anthemic than before. Giving In is a bounding track that feels perfectly suited to massive rooms, and next week we'll surely be able to road test that theory.

Wulfgang - You Mean Nothing To Me

If you've found yourself missing when Queens of The Stone Age had riffs, boy oh boy do you need to hear Wulfgang. The British group evoke the same kind of tonal stoner groove, but deliver the clattering beats and wailing guitars that have been absent from Homme and co. since Era Vulgaris, You Mean Nothing To Me keening guitars bringing to mind a sense of despair and decayed state that is so satisfying to behold.

Nina Saeidi & Wyatt E. - The Branch That Yields Peace Has Been Cut For The Oil Of Its Fruit

Nina Saeidi's already made a name for herself as the bewitching vocalist in UK prog metallers Lowen, but now she's branching out in a surprise team-up with Belgian doom metallers Wyatt E. The conjoined force will release the album Armour Of Surrender on January 29, and although the title of the first single - The Branch That Yields Peace Has Been Cut For The Oil Of Its Fruit - might be wordy, it also clearly communicates a message about current global events amdist a dense, atmospheric song with distinct Middle Eastern tones.

Void Sector Zero - Extraterrestrial Disassembly

Who doesn't love a bit of cosmic thrash? With a bass tone that sounds like they've plugged directly into a generator, Void Sector Zero are clearly having lots of fun in the progressive thrash sphere on Extraterrestrial Disassembly. Featuring members of Necrophagist, Abigail Williams and Revocation, plus guest contributions from Alkaloid's Morean, there's a clear love for challenging, progressive music with some great, ominous droning vocals. Debut album Dead Space Enigma is out December 11th and we can't wait to hear what directions they go in.

Sunborn - Silent Attraction

They might all be wearing masks - and there's definitely some R&B/pop melody in the track - but thankfully France's Sunborn aren't tied up in the whole "masked and mythological" schtick. Instead, Silent Attraction is a juddering, skittery track that leaps between tech and alt. metal elements that feels indebted to the Sleep Token playbook without ripping it off wholesale. Its unique, and we're keen to see what else they've got in store.

Queen legend Brian May and award-wining English composer Daniel Pemberton have shared their happy memories of working together on the soundtrack for this year's Masters Of The Universe movie.

Released in June, the film had been a long, long time coming. It was first announced in 2009 by Sony Pictures International, and since then, the script has had a number of re-writes, various directors have come and gone, and a series of actors have been linked with the role of the comic book icon. It starred Nicholas Galitzine as Adam Glenn/He-Man, 30 Seconds To Mars frontman Jared Leto as the skull-faced, blue-skinned evil sorcerer Skeletor, and Idris Elba as Man-at-Arms.

Brian May announced his involvement in the project back in March, and in a new interview with Rolling Stone, composer Pemberton says that working with Queen's guitarist on the soundtrack was something of a dream come true.

The English composer, whose credits include TV shows Slow Horses and Black Mirror, along with films such as Molly's Game and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, says that he is a long-time fan of Queen's score for
1980 sci-fi movie Flash Gordon, and their work on 1986’s Highlander, and says that, from day one, he envisaged the Masters Of The Universe "as if it was written by a rock band like Queen." He recalls a conversation with director Travis Knight which centred around the idea ‘Wouldn’t it be amazing to get Brian May to play on this?'” When Pemberton realised that he and May would be at London’s Abbey Road Studios at the same time, he successfully pitched the proposal to the Queen legend.

"He-Man was a big thing with my son," May tells Rolling Stone, “and everything that my son got into, I got into, obviously. It’s all, for me, great memories, great nostalgia... It’s like we didn’t even need to explain to each other. It just all happened very easily and with great joy.”

“During this process, I sort of realized Brian’s guitar, the Red Special, is the equivalent of the Sword of Power in He-Man,"Pemberton adds.Which sounds ridiculous, but it’s really genuine. Only one person can wield this power, which is Brian."

"This movie will make a lot of people smile a lot," May predicted back in March. ""I have the POWER!!!!"

Terrace chants, Steve Marriott’s dog and Hendrix’s guitar pedal… the lesser undulations in Pink Floyd’s 1971 textural opus Meddle built a cultural tsunami. In 2011 Prog revisited the unsung masterpiece that changed the band – and its genre – for ever.

Ping. That sound, like a sonar signal.
Ping. Or a radio signal from deep space.
Ping. Or a heart monitor, measuring out a life.
Ping. Incrementally.

The ’ping’ on the opening and close of Echoes was, as we all know, produced by Richard Wright playing a single note on a concert grand piano and feeding the signal through a Leslie rotating speaker. It’s a perfect opening – as iconic in its way as Elvis Presley belting out ‘Well since my baby left me...’ at the start of Heartbreak Hotel, or death knocking at the door at the start of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Echoes is the centrepiece of Meddle, an album now widely regarded as the one where Pink Floyd got everything just right. In Meddle you can almost hear The Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here – and even The Wall. You couldn’t necessarily say the same about Atom Heart Mother or Ummagumma. Those albums, brilliant as they are in their way, are still the sound of the Floyd finding their way, trying to escape from the shadow of their brilliant erratic insufferable genius ex-front-man Syd Barrett.

They had come a long way from the hallucinogenic whimsy of Piper At The Gates Of Dawn and its less satisfactory follow-up A Saucerful Of Secrets. The psychedelic chaos was left behind and a new Pink Floyd emerged. They were still adventurous and experimental, but they were also more structured and stable.

By the end of the 60s they had developed into a formidable live touring band. Meddle, an album that revelled in its use of the recording studio, was also the first album to capture some of the potency and excitement of the live experience. After its release nobody called them ’the’ Pink Floyd. The kids who bought it in 1971 didn’t ask, ‘Where’s Syd?’ – they increasingly asked, ‘Who’s Syd?’

It’s now generally agreed that Meddle was the point where Pink Floyd as we know them really began. There’s the fizzing energetic opener One Of These Days which is the blueprint for half of the songs on Dark Side. The soundtrack music they’d recorded was there to serve a function: it was atmospheric. But they weren’t great songs. One Of These Days is Pink Floyd 2.0.

While in their early incarnation they were a pop band as well as a psychedelic free-form freakout band – Arnold Layne and See Emily Play both being hits – the subsequent years saw them completely lose interest in the singles chart. In that way they were going with the flow of their contemporaries, becoming an albums focussed band. But One Of These Days, a great song (despite not having words other than a spoken phrase) proved they were still able to turn out something approachable when they felt like it. It remains one of the best Floyd songs ever recorded. According to David Gilmour in a recent interview, it’s one of the songs where their work was at its most collaborative.

“We’d done the individual solo tracks and decided that we worked better together,” says Nick Mason. “There wasn’t any great plan when we did Meddle other than it would be a group effort. We weren’t under any pressure from EMI to release anything. There was no concept. I don’t think we had anything already written when we went into the studio. After Ummagumma and Atom Heart Mother, we thought, I suppose, that we should maybe make a group album, something that was maybe a reflection of where we were going live.”

“It’s got that sound, hasn’t it?” says Steven Wilson, a long-time champion of Meddle. “That 1971 sound. It’s so warm and organic and so golden; and there’s something about that. Things were just coming out of psychedelic music and the influence was still there, not completely gone.”

It’s an album that they started without any overarching ideas as to what it was going to be. Although Echoes is the centrepiece, there are other songs like One Of These Days and Fearless that are just as important.

“They were just back from the US,” recalls engineer John Leckie, first recruited as a tape operator but eventually credited as engineer. “I remember Dave Gilmour had just got the same wah-wah peddle that Jimi Hendrix used. The seagull sound you hear on Echoes is that, the Cry Baby. Hendrix died in the middle of recording, which I think affected them a bit.”

They had also worked in Italy on the soundtrack for Michelangelo Antonioni’s counter-culture film Zabriskie Point. The band arrived tired and jet-lagged and were booked in the studio from midnight until six. It was to prove a frustrating experience as the Italian director rejected a lot of the music they’d recorded.

“I don’t think he exactly hated it,” says Nick Mason, “but it’s difficult when someone else has the music in mind for a particular sequence of film. Antonioni wanted total control, and the only way he could have control of the music was to be able to select from lots of different versions.

"Whereas when we’d worked with Barbet Schroeder [director of More and La Vallée, both films with Floyd soundtracks] he would give us the brief, we’d go off and do it; generally he said, ’Yes, fine’ and we moved on. Zabriskie Point was a bloody hard slog.”

Much of Meddle’s success is down to the fact that their label, not really having much of a clue about Pink Floyd other than that they sold lots of records, pretty much left them to their own devices. “We’d just signed a new contract that gave us a slightly reduced royalty in return for unlimited studio time, ” Mason says. “I think only The Beatles had a similar deal at the time.”

Pink Floyd were one of the first bands to be allowed to produce their own albums. Peter Brown – who’d worked with them on Atom Heart Mother – and Leckie recorded and engineered the bulk of the recording work at London’s Abbey Road studio. “They were left alone,” recalls Leckie. “Colin Miles, the only person at EMI who could ’relate,’ used to turn up occasionally with a couple of bottles of wine. Maybe some spliff. They worked hard, though; it wasn’t a party.”

Floyd weren’t at the stage where they could afford a garage full of sports cars, but they were making a fairly good living from touring and recording. They were starting to experience success in the US and had just returned from there when they started work on Meddle. Leckie remembers the atmosphere in the studio was good: “They weren’t really different to any other band. It was quite energetic; everyone had a say. Nick came up with a lot of the crazier ideas. It’s his voice through a ring modulator that you hear on One Of These Days saying ’One of these days I’m going to cut you into little pieces.’ Rick contributed a lot. Roger and Dave were running the show but everybody was contributing..

As the band recorded at Abbey Road, sometimes bringing in ideas they’d worked on at home, they continued to gig, setting up the gear in the studio then going off at night to play headline shows at colleges and polytechnics. “We were trying out a lot of stuff live at that time,” says Mason. Echoes, at that time a series of unconnected parts labelled Nothing (there was Nothing Part One through to Part 36) eventually took shape when they debuted it at a gig in Norwich in April, listed under its working title Return of the Son Of Nothing.

The band were now pushing the possibilities of the studio. Mason remembers: “Abbey Road had just invested in an eight-track, but were ready to go 16-track. So we went to Air studios, which was great. A very different atmosphere – EMI was very established, had the big canteen... there was already a lot of change, though. The Beatles did that a few years before. But Air was state of the art.”

It was the possibilities offered by 16 tracks that changed everything. “Yes, by definition, though unfortunately it made the process of recording slower,” says Mason. “There were almost too many options. Mixing took a hell of a lot longer.”

They also recorded at a third studio, Morgan in Willesden. “Morgan was one of the first British studios to go 24-track, though not at that time,” says Leckie. “What’s interesting is that years later I recorded some of the first Stone Roses tracks there, when it was called Battery.”

Although they had worked on longform pieces before, Echoes was a bit of a departure. Songs like Interstellar Overdrive and A Saucerful Of Secrets came from the Syd era when the band were more improvisational. These were essentially extended jams. Atom Heart Mother was conceived as a sort of quasi-classical piece.

Echoes incorporated several ideas, different passages and moods, but it was a structured and planned song. Its creation involved trial and error. A lot was thrown out. But it was a song with a final, almost definitive form. The version you hear in the film Live At Pompeii or the BBC sessions isn’t markedly different to the version on Meddle. Interstellar Overdrive, particularly in the Syd era, was never the same twice.

“Echoes, for me, is the quintessential, ultimate epic,” says Wilson. ”It just has a perfect shape. They hadn’t tried to cram too many ideas into it, so it still has a lot of room for building up and breaking down and improvisation, and it has that lovely song sequence that bookends the piece.”

“I’m sure one of the reasons they did Echoes was Roy Harper,” says Leckie. “They shared management with Roy and he was a big mate of the band. He was always around and he was working on Stormcock. I’d worked with Roy; I think played a big part in my being hired for Meddle.”

Stormcock, a groundbreaking 1971 album, includes four epic acoustic songs, all between seven and 13 minutes long. “I don’t think it was any kind of one-upmanship with Roy,” says Mason. “He was extraordinary. I loved the fact that he could do a song differently every time. He’d record with a band but the acoustic version would be just as good. And he never used them. God knows where those recordings are.” Harper, of course, would later join the band on Wish You Were Here to sing Have A Cigar.

Mason reflects: “We quickly worked out that doing a song like Echoes was comparatively easy because of the repetition. Listening to it now, it sounds a bit overlong – it could be chopped, which would make a better piece.” Ah, and maybe Leonardo Da Vinci thought in later life that the Mona Lisa would have been improved by wiping the smile off of her face.

The album also includes three absolutely perfect short songs: One Of These Days, Pillow Of Winds and Fearless. Fearless includes the Kop Choir singing You’ll Never Walk Alone. Naturally John Peel flogged it to death on the radio. “Fearless is still the one that everyone in Liverpool plays,” says Leckie. “Not just for the football chant, but those churning acoustic guitars. That’s the one The La’s and all those bands tell you is the classic Pink Floyd track.”

Waters (a lifelong Arsenal supporter) played the acoustic parts using an open tuning, which gives the song its ringing quality. It’s a sound that does indeed surface in the work of bands like Echo & The Bunnymen and The Teardrop Explodes. It’s been covered by a wide range of artists, from ex-Marillion frontman Fish to The Black Crowes by way of Midwestern indie ’slowcore’ band Low.

A Pillow Of Winds – inspired, according to Nick, by the game of mahjong that he, Gilmour and their respective partners used to play while on holiday together – is a fairly straight love song. It’s one of the pastoral pieces they’d toyed with before in songs like Julia Dream and Grantchester Meadows. “There’s a couple of songs at the end of side one that maybe you could say are filler,” Wilson allows, ”but certainly One Of These Days, A Pillow Of Winds and Fearless are as good as anything they recorded. I think Fearless does always get overshadowed because of the pieces they played a lot live.”

San Tropez was not composed collaboratively; it was written by Waters and was brought to the studio in a completed form. The notorious Seamus – a great sense of humour test – was named after ex-Small Faces then-Humble Pie frontman Steve Marriott’s dog. “Steve would always be around the studio,” says Leckie. “They noticed that it would start barking in tune with the music.”

The dog that appears in the film version in Live At Pompeii is in fact another one, a female Russian Wolfhound named Nobs. Owned by Madonna Bouglione, daughter of circus director Joseph Bouglione, the pet took a bit more coaxing for her performance than Seamus did.

Live At Pompeii, a good snapshot of where the band were in 1971, was one of the first films of this kind. It prefigures the rock video by filming a performance in an exotic location without an audience. “Steve O’Rourke [Floyd’s then manager] said, ‘This French-based documentary maker wants to do a film,‘” Mason recalls. “The deal we did turned out to be very hard work and we never saw any money from it for a long time. On the other hand it turned out to be a very useful, and I think a very good, film.

“Pompeii was a controlled environment as there was no audience, so we could cut, stop and reshoot. But the open air and the dust and everything else made it feel like a real live show. There was a bit of grit to it.” Although some reels were lost: “It was Dave and Roger from One Of These Days, which is why it’s mostly me,” the drummer says.

Meddle was released in October 1971 in the US and November in the UK. It was packaged in a sleeve that Hipgnosis partner Storm Thorgerson revealed was his least favourite Floyd sleeve: “I think Meddle is a much better album than its cover,” he said. It was supposed to have been a close-up picture of a baboon’s bum. The band told him they wanted something to do with water, maybe an ear underwater. It certainly matched the mood of the album in a way that somehow you don’t feel that an ape’s anus would have done.

Regardless of its packaging, it reached No.3 on the UK album charts – Atom Heart Mother had been No.1 – while it bombed in the US. “If in doubt, blame the label,” says Mason. “We felt at the time that Capitol [Floyd’s North American label] was really an old fashioned company; it was the label of Frank Sinatra and Dean Martin and the executives were all old. I don’t think they really approved of us. They didn’t understand it. Consequently, they never worked the records.

“EMI, on the other hand, saw the potential particularly from European sales. And they decided to make it a hit. That’s the thing – the success of Dark Side Of The Moon had nothing to do with the loveable moptops who made it. It was all the record company.” The band lost patience with Capitol in the US and secretly signed with Clive Davies to Colombia.

Obscured By Clouds, the soundtrack to La Vallée, was recorded in a matter of weeks later that year. Then they started work on Dark Side. They had an appetite for work – yet they would never record at this pace again. “No, because we got spoiled,” says Mason. “After Dark Side we were a number-one band. And also, the pressure was on. You couldn’t just go in and knock another album off. You had to think about it; not repeat yourself.”

Wilson notes: “You feel that Floyd were still a band that were playing live, going out there and experimenting, and I think by Dark Side that had gone. They’d become great sonic architects – but a lot of the danger and a lot of the hangover from that period of experimentation had been gradually refined out of their sound.”

It’s a sobering lesson to read the contemporary reviews of an album now considered an undisputed classic. Some writers seemed to miss the point: one compared Meddle unfavourably with More and Ummagumma. Arguments as to whether it belonged in the same file as Fragile, Tarkus or Nursery Cryme now seem fatuous. Floyd, like Yes, ELP and Genesis, were just slightly ahead of the technology that was available – 24-track bands in an eight-track era.

After Meddle and Dark Side, something was lost; the ambition became to create and sometimes meticulously over-egg the pudding in the studio. It culminated with The Wall and was probably what ultimately tore the band apart.

Working on Meddle gave Mason the confidence to start producing himself. Later that year he worked on The Asmoto Running Band, the second album by whimsy-prog oddballs Principal Edwards Magic Theatre. He later produced Robert Wyatt’s classic Rock Bottom and The Damned’s second album Music For Pleasure (though apparently he got the gig because they couldn’t get Barrett).

After the one-off solo album Nick Mason’s Fictitious Sports in 1981, he worked with Rick Fenn and then jazzer Mike Mantler. But being rich as Croesus, he’s under no pressure to get in the van and go gigging. “I’ve been thinking about doing something for a while,” he muses. He won’t be pushed on details.

And what about another Pink Floyd reunion? Mason only recently appeared on stage with Waters and Gilmour, performing Outside The Wall at one of Waters’ massive O2 shows. He says touring or playing with one of the pair is a possibility. "I’d love to do something like Live8 again,” he says. Then he adds, perhaps enigmatically: “If it was to be arranged."

Was that a hint? Or was it what we want to hear – that the journey that really got underway 40 on Meddle hasn’t quite come to its end?

For over a century, horror has continued to terrify, confuse and inspire cinema goers, challenging us to face our darkest fears and indulging in the kind of taboos that no other film genre dare touch. From early masterpieces of German silent cinema like Nosferatu and The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari to modern classics such as Get Out, Midsommar and The Witch, horror has continued to be at the forefront of innovation in film, creating countless icons and unforgettable, pant-wettingly scary moments along the way.

With that in mind, here are the 50 greatest horror movies in history, as picked and dissected by our panel of writers and horror fanatics. Only one rule was put in place: only one entry per franchise allowed. We had to give ourselves a fighting chance, after all...

50. The Substance (2024)

Coralie Fargeat's delirious, hilarious and disgusting, Oscar-nommed romp became one of the most talked-about movies of 2024 upon release, and for good reason. Its fabulous skewering of ageism and female beauty standards were delectably spiky enough, but mixed in with some truly foul, explosive moments of body horror and a career-best performance from Demi Moore and you had the makings of a modern classic. MA

49. I Saw The TV Glow (2024)

Strange, surprising, unexplainably unsettling and, at its core, emotionally devastating, Jane Schoenbrun's second film remains one of the most unique horrors of the 2020s so far. What at first appears to be a charming commentary on the power of TV as a route of escapism instead reveals itself as a harrowing allegory for the trans experience, Owen's stiflingly claustrophobic final breakdown and bizarre, surrealist epiphany affecting enough to stick in the brain long after the credits have rolled. MA

48. Saw (2004)

Its endless, diminishing-quality sequels may have exhausted Saw as a franchise, but you can’t argue with the impact of the first film. Far more than an endless gore-fest, Saw asked questions of the viewer, both in acts of literal escapology and more suggestive, moral conundrums, all while placing us in a unique but simple setting. It gave us one of the most surprising end twists in cinema history and introduced us to a brand-new horror icon in Tobin Bell’s sadistic Jigsaw. SH

47. Obsession (2026)

Yes, it's everyone favourite viral mega-hit, but there's a reason we all became, well, obsessed with Obsession this year. A simple premise - lonely dude wishes a girl he loves would love him back, very quickly regrets it - was elevated to greatness courtesy of a deft direction job by newcomer Curry Barker and, of course, a quite remarkable performance by Inde Navarrette, whose Nikki installed herself as an immediate horror icon. Tackling themes of sexism, incel culture and male entitlement, it's also genuinely scary, tense as hell and packing some shocking moments of violence. What more could you want? MA

46. Candyman (1992)

Pinhead wasn’t the only horror icon spawned from the mind of Clive Barker, Tony Todd helping cement Candyman in the horror pantheon in his stunning 1992 debut as the titular character. The Bernard Rose-directed movie drew a thread between macabre folklore and socio-political commentary amidst an unsettling ghost story with gothic romance overtures that would do Dracula proud, loaded with stunning imagery and cerebral themes that remain insightful 30 years after release. RH

45. Paranormal Activity (2007)

Oren Peli’s Paranormal Activity relaunched the stagnant ‘found footage’ genre with a demonic vengeance. The low-budget, DIY format makes this tale of domestic haunting feel eerily real — from casual home video footage to prolonged shots of the main characters sleeping in bed. The stillness and silence weigh heavy as you frantically scan the screen for anything out of place. Paranormal Activity was so terrifying that it spawned six sequels. ‘Intense’ doesn’t do it justice. EC

44. Drag Me To Hell (2009)

Sam Raimi returned to the horror stylings on which he made his name with this spiritual successor to his Evil Dead trilogy, following the plight of doomed banker Christine as she tries to shake off the curse of an elderly Roma woman. Drag Me To Hell packs scares, laughs and creeping terror in equal measure - not to mention one of the most enjoyably shocking rug-pulls of a finale in modern cinema. MA

43. Raw (2016)

A collision of coming-of-age teen drama, classic cannibalism horror and a study of society’s hierarchical structures, Raw is a brilliantly shocking, unique piece of cinema. The story of vegetarian veterinary student Justine being peer-pressured into trying meat for the first time and it inspiring an insatiable bloodlust in her, Raw is a movie packed with the kind of stomach-churning images that will sear themselves into your psyche long after the credits roll. SH

42. Bride Of Frankenstein (1936)

It’s often noted that James Whale’s gothic masterpiece is one of cinema’s greatest sequels, outdoing Universal’s original 1931 Frankenstein with heightened pathos, classier visuals and sharper scares. It’s often noted that Elsa Lanchester’s brief title role provided horror aesthetics with one of the most abidingly iconic and imitated appearances of any female character ever. Less often noted is the delightfully zany comedy sequence featuring a miniature Henry VIII in a jar. CC

41. Rec (2007)

For many, the found footage horror boom peaked with Jaume Balagueró and Paco Plaza’s terrifying Spanish flick documenting a reporter and her cameraman stuck in an apartment block as a zombie plague wreaks havoc. Rec’s visceral scares were effective enough, but it was the awe-inspiring twist in the film’s final arc that truly elevated it, adding a horrifying supernatural element to proceedings that turned the nature of the outbreak on its head. MA

40. Let The Right One In (2008)

At a time where ‘vampire’ had become a by-word for ‘twinkly mopey twat’, Tomas Alfredson’s Let The Right One In reminded us all of the true essence of the fanged denizens of the night. Part-vampiric horror and part coming-of-age story, Let The Right One In contrasts stark loneliness with utter brutality in a captivating mixture that asks one key question: what does it mean to be a monster? RH

39. Us (2019)

Jordan Peele’s second movie isn’t tightly wound like his debut, but Us demonstrates how well he burns studio money. Essentially a feature-lengthTwilight Zone episode with Trump-era doses of cynicism, a family’s holiday is ruined when their doppelgängers rock up on their porch. Creepy stuff ensues. Peele takes his time unpacking class identity without ever forgetting the scares, leaning on Lupita Nyong'o’s Oscar-worthy performance to quell quibbles concerning length or plausibility. AC

38. The Blair Witch Project (1999)

The Blair Witch Project’s shoestring budget, 16mm camcorders and marketing campaign convinced cinemagoers the cast had actually died. Sure, on the surface it’s just some teens trampling through a forest in search of the fabled Blair Witch. But the fear – palpable, pant-pissing fear – spilling from the improvised dialogue and ramshackle script is undeniable. A divisive but deserved classic that dragged the found-footage subgenre from the woods and into the mainstream. AC

37. Audition (1999)

Takashi Miike’s meet-cute from Hell is infamous for its unflinching final act, to which the entire torture porn movement owes the strongest of pints. A pervy but ultimately well-meaning widower stages a fake audition to meet the girl of his dreams, settling on a quiet woman with bigger gaps in her résumé than Boris Johnson. Echoing Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Audition grabs your throat and yanks you towards its disgusting dénouement. AC

36. It (2017)

Andy Muschietti’s adaptation of Stephen King’s 1986 novel gave new life to horrors we’d previously only read about or seen in the clunky 1990 TV mini-series. Fans of Tim Curry’s original performance as Pennywise the child-killing shapeshifting clown found room in their blackened hearts for Bill Skarsgård’s unique rendition. The nostalgic 80s setting and undeniable chemistry of the kids in the Losers Club make this one helluva compelling watch. EC

35. It Follows (2014)

Writer and director David Robert Mitchell unleashed pure nightmare fuel with his breakout horror It Follows. The clever premise of a sexually transmitted supernatural stalker keeps you on edge the entire runtime. You’ll find yourself scouring every shot for the shapeshifting entity as the story unfolds and the tension builds. Mitchell’s mythology for the It Follows ‘curse’ is so clear-cut that you’ll be left obsessing over escape strategies long after the credits roll. EC

34. The Babadook (2014)

You can’t get rid of the Babadook! On the surface, Jennifer Kent’s debut paranormal psychological horror is about a dark, top-hatted entity that haunts you when you read its storybook. Underneath, you’ll find a churning tale of depression, grief, and parenthood. Essie Davis’ performance as a frayed parent-on-the-edge is underpinned by the genuinely chilling character of Mister Babadook — dark, long-fingered, and looming. It’ll literally haunt your dreams. EC

33. The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari (1920)

Film critic extraordinaire Roger Ebert once called this German Expressionist nightmare “the first true horror film”. That alone would qualify The Cabinet Of Dr Caligari for greatness, but what pushes it even higher in the scary movie echelons is that it’s still compelling viewing. The cinematography and jagged set designs are high art in themselves. Just be sure to dodge the “full sound” version and stick on the one soundtracked by post-rockers Toundra. MM

32. Train To Busan (2016)

Snakes On A Plane, on a train, sitting opposite 28 Days Later. Yeon Sang-ho’s public transport putrefactory leaves little room for nuance, tropes stuffed in like sausages to rolls. A workaholic, deadbeat dad takes his daughter on a high-speed railway from Seoul to Busan – turns out it’s packed with zombies. Unlucky, mate. Train To Busan is an absurdly, gleefully over-the-top box-office buster, yanking every emotion harder than the emergency brake. AC

31. Suspiria (1977)

Dario Argento’s sumptuous masterpiece - packed with stylish gore, hung with supernatural mystique and scored with the throbbing occult prog of Goblin - is a timeless, dizzying feast for the senses. The narrative, concerning a murderous conspiracy around a German ballet school, artfully drifts in and out of reality, Suspiria one of few films that effectively approximate a nightmarish quality (albeit a nightmare that is beautifully cinematographed and immaculately soundtracked). CC

30. Carrie (1976)

Who can forget that iconic image of Sissy Spacek, wide-eyed, doused in pig’s blood? Brian De Palma’s body horror is a masterful adaptation of Stephen King’s debut novel about the titular Carrie, a bullied teen girl who uses her gift of telekinesis to take revenge on her classmates. The combo of relatable teen trauma and the supernatural makes this a timeless classic. It’ll break your heart as it sends chills up your spine. EC

29. Sinners (2025)

An absorbing Southern Thriller that takes a delicious turn into full From Dusk Till Dawn-style vampire survival horror, Ryan Googler's triumphant epic took notes from the likes of Quentin Tarantino, Spike Lee and Jordan Peele to craft something fresh, exciting and deliriously vibrant. Michael B. Jordan rightly won praise - and an Oscar - for his dual role as the Smokestack Twins, but from Miles Canton's vulnerable Sammy and Jayme Lawson's magnetic Pearline to Jack O' Connell's riotous Remmick, this was a true ensemble masterpiece that had everyone on top form. Plus, that music scene is an instant all-timer, horror or otherwise. MA

28. Ring (1998)

Ring’s morose muffin-top looms large over Western cinema, inspiring everything from shite J-horror remakes including The Grudge to ‘pass it on’ features like It Follows and Smile. The premise is simple: you see a videotape and die seven days later. Ring’s bare-bones ghost story is what makes it irresistible, drawing on Japanese mythology as kindling for a slow burn. When it ignites with the scare towards the end, though? Actually iconic. AC

27. The Descent (2005)

Before Neil Marshall spent seventeen years wasting everyone’s time and money, he made The Descent: part creature feature, part PSA against spelunking. Six women explore a cave, it’s not what they expected, they stumble across something. It goes south. Cramming the laddy banter of his previous movie – 2002’s immaculate Dog Soldiers – into what is basically The Thing underground, Marshall crafted a perfect survival horror flick featuring one of 2000s horror’s enduring final scenes. AC

26. Dracula (1958)

"It never occurred to any of us to use anyone else but Chris Lee," said producer Anthony Hinds of the perfectly cast title role, a hypnotic performance bringing to life Stoker’s immortal Count in lurid Technicolor for the first time. “Heroic, erotic and romantic” is how Christopher Lee assessed the character, his powerfully seductive portrayal forever altering the perception of the Vampire King from creepy monster to goth sex symbol. CC

25. Shaun Of The Dead (2004)

Edgar Wright and Simon Pegg struck gold with black comedy’s most quotable screenplay. Paying homage to Romero and Fulci while stacking scenes with top-tier wit and genuine pathos, this is your classic zombie outbreak movie centred around two guys who just can’t be arsed with it. Wright’s manic cinematography is electric here, the practical gooeyness still holds up, and the Don’t Stop Me Now scene remains unrivalled for laugh-out-loud violence. AC

24. Hereditary (2018)

When referring to ‘that moment in Hereditary’, you could mean at least three. Ari Aster flicks through a Rolodex of grief for his feature-length debut, casting Toni Collette as a mournful mother, daughter and wife whose family tree is hewn. She embodies trauma, unable to find her place while nefarious forces work their magick. Beautifully shot, fist-in-your-mouth shocking and tense to the point of prolapse, Hereditary is a feel-shit hit. AC

23. The Omen (1976)

A multi-Oscar-winning box office smash, enacting Book of Revelation prophecies about the coming of the Antichrist in the form of a little boy? There’s a pseudo-Biblical profundity (and a very 70s sense of pessimism) about The Omen that struck a powerful chord with much bigger audiences than horror films were used to. Several perfectly executed and memorable supernatural kills ensure that The Omen strikes a powerful chord with the hardened gore-hounds, too. CC

22. The Fly (1986)

David Cronenberg is the undoubted king of body horror, and The Fly is his masterpiece. Featuring an all-star cast that contains the likes of Geena Davis, Eric Stolz and horror legend Vincent Price, the show is stolen by an awesome performance by the enigmatic Jeff Goldblum. The marriage of Cronenberg’s unsettlingly gruesome and bizarre visuals and Goldblum’s character Seth Brundle’s descent from a geeky, socially awkward scientist into a part-man-part-fly hybrid monster is absolutely perfect. Horrific, disturbing, upsetting and, yet, an oddly touching tale. SH

21. Rosemary’s Baby (1968)

Rosemary’s Baby is part body horror and part Satanic thriller. Director Roman Polanski filmed the reputedly ‘cursed’ film in the gothic decadence of New York’s Dakota building and used long, unbroken shots to create an unsettling, ominous atmosphere. Despite appearances, baby-stealing Satanic witches aren’t the only horror in this film. The treatment of vulnerable women in domestic danger is a prevalent theme and a nightmare that is still very real in our modern society. EC

20. 28 Days Later (2002)

The 80s and 90s murdered the zombie’s credibility, as the monster tumbled from George A. Romero masterpieces to languishing in cash-ins, ripoffs and lowbrow parodies. Then 28 Days Later made them cool again. Danny Boyle’s most freakish film updated the undead for the 2000s by making them faster and more contagious. Its scenes of widespread desolation and endless missing person flyers also evoked very real post-9/11 horrors. MM

19. The Witch (2015)

Robert Eggers announced himself as one of horror’s most exciting new auteurs with this stunning directorial debut, which stitched together authentic 17th century gloom and doom with supernatural scares and an earthy, visceral terror that lurked just underneath the surface. It provided a breakout role for Hollywood star-in-waiting Anya Taylor Joy, and even introduced horror’s unlikeliest new icon in the form of a big, badass goat called Black Phillip. Delicious. MA

18. The Wicker Man (1973)

Christopher Lee always insisted that The Wicker Man was the best film he ever had a hand in making. The metal-as-fuck former Nazi-hunter plays shadowy antagonist Lord Summerisle, who leads a cult on a Scottish island that antagonises policeman Neil Howie before sacrificing him to their Pagan gods. Its depictions of orgies and heathenism shocked the early 70s establishment, while today the acting and central mystery maintain it as essential viewing. MM

17. Nosferatu (1922) 

For pilfering Dracula’s plot without authorisation, Bram Stoker’s widow wanted all copies of this German silent classic destroyed. Thankfully, the evil Count Orlok survived – 100 years and counting – to provide horror cinema with its first great iconic antagonist (despite barely nine minutes of screentime). There are no jump scares or gory thrills, but the distinctive, pioneering visuals, genre trope innovations and haunting atmosphere of sinister unease remain powerful a century on. CC

16. An American Werewolf in London (1981)

How could you not love An American Werewolf in London? Zombie SS officers, one of the greatest fake-out jump scares in history, some brilliantly gory prosthetics and even a young Rik Mayall: John Landis’ horror-comedy is a phenomenally dizzy thrill from start to finish. It also features the finest monster transformation scene in cinema history, deservedly picking up the first ever Academy Award for Best Makeup in the process, and kickstarted the horror and comedy mash-up that gave us everything from Evil Dead 2 to Shaun Of The Dead and beyond. SH

15. Hellraiser (1987)

Visually arresting, darkly subversive and horny as fuck, Hellraiser isn’t just one of the best British horror movies ever - it’s an alternative culture cornerstone whose influence runs through film, music, fashion and more. Clive Barker did a fine job of bringing his gruesome visions to life, but it was an imperious performance by Doug Bradley as the Lead Cenobite (soon to be known as Pinhead) that helped birth one of horror’s most enduring franchises. MA

14. Psycho (1960)

Even though you know it’s coming, the lurch from Marion Crane’s story of petty embezzlement to her motel shower slashing by deviant taxidermist Norman Bates still feels masterfully disorientating. Although Alfred Hitchcock’s careful, discreet sequence of shots comprising the infamous murder might not alarm many audiences today, the swivel-chair reveal of the dead mum’s skeletal face can still send popcorn flying, while Anthony Perkins’ chillingly plausible performance remains deeply unnerving. CC

13. Jaws (1975)

Never let it be forgotten that one of the first summer blockbusters was a horror. Jaws was the moment Steven Spielberg truly broke through as a director, balancing bloody spectacle with scenes that could be lifted directly from a tense socio-political thriller were they not nestled in a larger-than-life creature feature. From its iconic soundtrack to its starkly terrifying opening scene that traumatised generations from going in the sea, Jaws remains the high watermark for the changes horror can enact on cinema as a whole. RH

12. Dawn Of The Dead (1978)

George A. Romero’s wicked upheaval of consumerism follows four survivors holed up in a shopping mall, battling through undead hordes, mental musical cues and Tom Savini’s sinewy practical effects. Each character is fully fleshed-out – watch the 2004 remake to see how right Romero got it – which makes the frantic final act all the more harrowing. Often imitated, rarely bested, cinema’s most ripped-off zombie export still bites over forty years later. AC

11. Midsommar (2019)

Ari Aster’s second effort shunned the claustrophobic, supernatural mania of Hereditary in favour of an expansive, trippy, folk horror epic. Instantly iconic and sprinkling just enough visceral scares over its ever-heightening sense of creeping dread, Midsommar was far more than Wicker Man for a new generation: it was a brooding, layered genre masterpiece, hung around an emotionally devastating performance by Florence Pugh and filled with hidden terrors that would take repeat viewings to fully unwrap. MA

10. Scream (1996)

Scream is a horror film made for horror fans. Wes Craven’s teen slasher knows its DNA inside and out, outlining horror film tropes one minute and subverting them the next. Its campy, self-aware, ultra-quotable dialogue is every inch as infamous as its iconic ‘Ghostface’ killer. The ghoulish white mask has been adopted by seven other killers across the five-film franchise, giving rise to the idea that the murderer is always someone you know… EC

9. Get Out (2017)

Before 2017, Jordan Peele was “that other guy” in the Key & Peele sketch show, with his biggest cinematic foray being the buddy cop box office bomb, Keanu. Then he made Get Out and became horror’s most hyped director. This psychological mindfuck was perfectly placed in Trump’s America, highlighting the casual racism of a seemingly liberal society. Add in a masterful lead turn by Daniel Kaluuya and you get a modern classic. MM

8. Evil Dead II (1987)

Of all four films in the Evil Dead franchise, Evil Dead II nails Sam Raimi’s trademark ‘splatter comedy’ tone perfectly — not too serious, not too silly. Lead actor Bruce Campbell’s physical comedy heightens the inventive practical effects and clever camerawork to give ED2 a fun, original vibe that has lasted the test of time. Plus, the ending has a geyser of blood and a fistfight with a giant demonic tree. Need we say more? EC

7. A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

Freddy Kruger is arguably the most instantly recognisable figure in horror since Dracula. Although he would become cartoonish and wisecracking as the years progressed, it’s still easy to see why. The story of a claw-handed, severely burned and disfigured child murderer who kills you in your sleep remains a magnificently unique idea. What else would you expect from a horror master like Wes Craven, who brings the idea of the sins of the parents being handed down to their children to life in a beautifully ghastly way. SH

6. The Texas Chain Saw Massacre (1974)

It’s almost ironic that Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre earned so much controversy for its brutality, given that the film was essentially a scathing critique of America’s meat industry. But therein lies the beauty of what Hooper created; a garish, cheap aesthetic that has been (and still is) copied endlessly right up to this year’s brilliant X, more about tension and abject terror than on-screen gore or spectacular kills. Looking back, the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre seems almost quaint and conservative, much of the run-time spent menacing heroine Sally Hardesty (Marilyn Burns) while most of the film’s most gruesome turns are left to the viewer’s imagination. But then, that’s exactly what the best horrors are all about: forcing us to confront our own twisted fears. RH

5. Halloween (1978)

John Carpenter and Debra Hill’s Halloween didn’t invent the slasher genre, but it may as well have! It’s a masterclass in slow-building suspense, peaked with moments of pure terror, driven by Carpenter’s unbroken tracking shots and spine-tingling score. It somehow captures the ambience of All Hallows’ Eve in all its ghoulish potential. Halloween was so groundbreaking that it became a 13-film franchise and turned Jamie Lee Curtis into horror’s favourite ‘scream queen’ while making a household name of its masked babysitter-killer, Michael ‘The Shape’ Myers. Other holiday-themed horrors would soon follow suit, including Prom Night and — most notably — Friday the 13th. EC

4. The Shining (1980)

Even if it was just Jack Nicholson going batshit in an empty hotel where blood gushes out of lift doors and creepy twins haunt the corridors, The Shining would be a great horror film. In fact, legendary auteur Stanley Kubrick given free rein on inspirational source material from best-loved author Stephen King made for an endlessly fascinating and profound cinematic experience. Everyone who sees The Shining comes away with their own set of theories and interpretations, and every viewing yields unsettling new details - indeed, there’s an entire feature film delineating the film’s codes, clues and themes, 2011’s Room 237. CC

3. Alien (1979)

Before Alien, the realm of science fiction horror belonged almost solely to black-and-white B flicks like Attack Of The 50 Foot Woman. However, when Ridley Scott marched into 20th Century Fox’s offices and pitched his next film in three words - “Jaws in space” - it ignited the genre’s first timeless classic. Alien’s premise is devilishly simple: seven intergalactic truckers getting picked off on a claustrophobic spaceship. However, ingenuity’s everywhere, mostly in the form of the extraterrestrial creature plucked from the nightmares of H.R. Giger. It’s no surprise that the hideous image launched a horror institution now four decades old. MM

2. The Thing (1982)

Released in an era where celebratory, family-friendly sci-fi romps like E.T. and Star Wars were being eaten up by cinema goers, The Thing was criminally overlooked upon release, written off by critics as a shameless gore fest lacking emotional depth. How ridiculous that all seems now: John Carpenter’s greatest work is a masterful commentary on Cold War paranoia, toxic masculinity, nihilism and ‘othering’, racked with tension and otherworldly horror. Its all-male cast put in performances that remain mostly understated but utterly compelling, while Ennio Morricone’s simplistic but chilling score and Rob Bottin’s genre-defining SFX rounded out a film that remains peerless. MA

1. The Exorcist (1973)

The tale of a sweet little girl possessed by an ancient Mesopotamian demon, The Exorcist broke box office records around the world and regularly appears on cineastes’ greatest ever movie lists (even without the horror qualifier). It is a uniquely affecting and accomplished production with an ending that emphasises noble self-sacrifice and heavenly love overcoming demonic hate. And yet, insanely, from 1988-1999, it was illegal to own a copy in the UK. When The Exorcist was reissued to cinemas in 2000, the much-parodied gross-out sequences which had so traumatised ‘70s audiences - rotating head, projectile pea soup, filthy blasphemous invective, self-abuse with a crucifix - provoked more snorts of laughter than screams of terror, but the film’s deep sense of emotional disturbance remains starkly undimmed.

Jason Miller’s careworn Father Karras, wracked with grief, guilt and inner turmoil over his mother’s death and his crisis of faith, is one of horror cinema’s most complex heroes; the demon Pazuzu gets a treasure trove of sassy quotable lines (“Your mother sucks cocks in Hell, Karras, you faithless slime!”); and Mike Oldfield’s hippy prog opus Tubular Bells became forever associated with the epic battle between good and evil playing out in a child’s bedroom. CC

Oslo, 2011. The Nordic World Ski Championships. In the city’s University Square, a massive gramophone sits at the centre of a neon-lit stage. Dancers wrapped in fluorescent wiring contort at the back, and a stream of runway models strut across the front, clad in an array of alien-looking garments. In one of the most surreal sights in metal history, Norwegian black metal band Satyricon douse this display in evil with the venomous sound of their diabolical hymn, K.I.N.G. How the fuck did we get here?

“It was bizarre!” frontman Satyr remembers today. “The production was done by NRK, which is Norway’s equivalent to the BBC, and if you do anything with NRK, they will do it exactly the way that they want to. They’re not gonna sit down with a band and go, ‘How do you want it, guys?’

Obviously in a winter country like Norway these events are deeply rooted in our sporting culture, and I guess they wanted to take it and combine it with something else that is uniquely Norwegian and show it to the world. I have no idea who came up with the idea to blend it with a fashion show!”

To understand the song that got them there, we have to back up a few years. For the first decade of their existence, the band consisting primarily of Satyr and drummer Frost had been one of the Norwegian scene’s great chameleonic innovators.

From the medieval Scandinavian folk influences of their 1993 debut album Dark Medieval Times and the following year’s The Shadowthrone, to the widescreen apocalyptic visions of 1996’s Nemesis Divina, to the sudden stark shift into grinding industrialised grimness on 1999’s Rebel Extravaganza, Satyricon had gained a reputation for the radical. Metal’s mainstream was starting to notice them.

“The change for us was the Pantera tour in April/May 2000,” considers Satyr. “The way it felt to me was, up until that point, any black metal band was perceived as a crazy thing with churches burning and people getting killed… Eventually all of that would go away. When we appeared on the billing of that tour and we were playing Brixton Academy, not looking intimidated by the size of the stage, I felt that was the first time that the media started to see that bands from this scene were still here.”

Satyricon grabbed this opportunity by the horns, in their own rebellious style. On 2002’s Volcano and particularly 2006’s Now, Diabolical, from which K.I.N.G. is taken, Satyricon hewed out a sound that would make them one of the biggest black metal bands of the era. While bands such as Cradle Of Filth and Dimmu Borgir were achieving massive success by embracing symphonic bombast and studio gloss, Satyricon stripped everything back, relying on a rock-solid rhythmic backbone and production that’s remarkably dry.

Often called ‘black’n’roll’ – although Satyr makes it clear that he despises that particular term, reasonably pointing out that the likes of Venom, Bathory and Celtic Frost in their earliest forms would be called that by today’s standards – this was a dramatic reconnection with the outlaw rock’n’roll roots from which black metal was initially spewed.

“The late 90s were a difficult time, because keyboards in black metal stopped appearing as complementary and became very dominant,” Satyr explains. “For me, it felt like the wrong interpretation of this music. This type of music is riff-driven. I always said that there was an element of protest on Rebel Extravaganza by making something more misanthropic and with aesthetics that were very different to the pompous theatrical imagery that was popular around then.

“Now, Diabolical was trusting more that a song could be more powerful if we strip it of unnecessary elements,” he continues. “When you think of Iron Man by Black Sabbath or Let There Be Rock by AC/DC, you think of the signature riff, and when you have a riff that can carry a whole song on its shoulders, everything from this point onwards is about what complements that part.”

K.I.N.G. is Satyricon’s ultimate exercise in this primordial mastery of fundamentals. Frost, one of black metal’s most capably infernal blasters lays down an immutably disciplined backbeat, while that riff that Satyr lovingly calls his “song-carrier” pounds with a greasy blackened AC/DC-like insistence. It is the rare genuine black metal floor-filler, a song as malevolent as it is easy to get down to (as those dancers at the fashion show would demonstrate). They even got longtime AC/DC engineer Mike Fraser to mix it.

“He got us the rates to go to Bryan Adams’ Warehouse Studio in Vancouver with the best analogue gear, like nothing we’d seen before,” recalls Satyr fondly. “[Mike] knew very little about black metal, but I wanted someone who does that simplicity with really good sound, and he was doing all kinds of crazy shit. If you listen to Now, Diabolical in 2026 it sounds really good to this day.”

Slithering atop this robust groove is Satyr’s own vocal, not budging an inch from a black metal growl but punchily hitting each bark on the beat with curt enunciation as he describes the physical characteristics of this great demonic monarch, feasibly making it black metal’s answer to Big Fish Little Fish Cardboard Box.

Along with the proclamations across the album of burning pentagrams and the coming of the Dark Lord, the sense is of some great dark epoch being ushered in, Satyricon laying out the red carpet for this Satanic sovereign preparing to rule the Earth.

“I was very drawn to and fascinated by secret societies and occult lodges, Freemasonry, and this esoteric world,” Satyr explains of his fixations during the making of the album. “Some of the photos we took for the album were in the old auditorium of the original University of Oslo, where that Ski Championships ceremony would actually end up taking place, because it has this grand hall, Masonic vibe.

I was reading that almost all rulers of the Earth have been following some sort of religion or have been a member of some sort of cult or secret society, and that’s where the real power lies. That transcends national barriers, cultural barriers, and moments in time. That idea helped shape the lyrics and also the visual design of that record.”

These grand ideas of occult philosophy and covert power might not have translated so clearly to the music video for K.I.N.G., however. Born during an unlikely sweet spot between black metal bands dealing with strictly underground resource pools in the 1990s, and music videos becoming a less financially supported art form in the 2010s and 20s, Satyricon racked up a stream of shockingly high-budget MTV clips for songs such as 2002’s Fuel For Hatred and Now, Diabolical’s other single, The Pentagram Burns.

But the K.I.N.G. video, where the band find themselves in the midst of some strange, demonic, drug-fuelled party surrounded by grasping revellers in carnivalistic dress is one Satyr feels less connected to today.

“I felt it was a bit pretentious!” he laughs sheepishly. “Why on Earth are we having a scene here where someone is trying to push Frost down the stairs? What is that about? The director had very set ideas about how he wanted it to be, and it was difficult for us to fully understand how he saw it. We’d be doing scenes asking, ‘You’re sure about this?’

"The Pentagram Burns [featuring fire and dancers] was completely different, and that was exactly the right representation of the album to me. With K.I.N.G., if we’d had Slipknot’s budget we probably would have gone back to Roadrunner and said it was not the right video for the song. But we were not Slipknot, we were Satyricon.”

Regardless of aesthetic mismatch, it’s a vivid time capsule of this moment where Satyricon, playing a dangerous and even sexy kind of extreme metal, were able to rub shoulders with the mainstream. A challenging but defining moment came two months after the album’s release, at 2006’s Download festival, where Satyricon found themselves opening the main stage on a day topped by the biggest metal band of all, Metallica.

“We made it late to the stage, due to some incompetent crew I immediately fired after that show, but it showed the best parts of Satyricon, because for the few songs we now had time to play, we made sure to absolutely own that stage,” he recalls.

“I remember walking out and looking at that sea of 80,000 people, and this enormous runway that was on the main stage. I thought to myself that the first thing I needed to do, to show that we were not just there to get the day started, was to walk on that runway. We’re not saying, ‘That catwalk is for Metallica later tonight!’ – we’re gonna go out and own it. I think that in Satyricon our greatest quality is when it’s something of particularly big importance, a particularly big occasion, that’s where we excel – so let’s go out there and show them.”

Satyricon play Damnation Festival on Sunday November 8.

Phil Collins has shared a video of his conversation with Steven Wilson from last month's launch of the new reissue of his debut solo album, Face Value.

Prog was in attendance at the Odeon Luxe West End in London's Leicester Square, along with a star-studded audience that included comedian and former Prog Awards host Al Murray, both Nick Beggs and Craig Blundell from Wilson's live band and Guy Pratt from Pink Floyd and Nick Mason's Saucerful Of Secrets.

Wilson's new immersive audio mixes are featured on the new reissue of Collin's solo debut album, Face Value, which celebrates its 45th anniversary this year, and he interviewed the Genesis singer and drummer for a good 45 minutes, discussing the making of the album, the influences behind it, not least the often-overlooked jazz-fusion that makes up much of the second half of side one.

Wilson recently announced that he will sit down with Al Murray for an evening’s conversation at the Bush Hall in Shepherd's Bush, where the pair will talk about Requiem For A Village and the wider world that the album sits in. Wilson will sign copies of Requiem For A Village after the talk. The event takes place at 8pm on Tuesday 10th November. Get tickets.

The new reissue of Face Value is out now. Get it here.

Last night (Thursday October 29), it was announced that the great Patrick Stewart had passed away aged 86 following what was described by his family as a "brief" battle with with Alzheimer's and Lewy Body Dementia. The beloved actor was a titan of film, TV and theatre, known to millions around the world for his iconic roles as Captain Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek: The Next Generation and Professor Charles Xavier in Fox's X-Men film franchise.

Those two roles saw Stewart play empathetic, heroic and selfless leaders - which was what made his casting as a cold, calculating Neo-Nazi all the more surprising when it was announced he'd be playing the lead villain in 2015 horror-thriller, Green Room.

Released by A24, the studio behind smash hits including Backrooms, Uncut Gems, Moonlight and Hereditary, the Jeremy Saulnier-directed flick features Stewart as Darcy, the boss of a racist right wing gang terrorising a hapless punk band who got booked for a gig in the middle of nowhere in the Pacific Northwest. Turns out the gig is full of violent Nazis, and things quickly go south.

"Darcy Becker is a bad guy," Stewart remarked in promo for the film. "He's a really bad guy. And I have to be honest and say that I think it was that aspect that seduced me.

"I was sitting in my house in West Oxfordshire, and I settled down on a Saturday evening to read this script. I found it to be a page-turner! And it scared the shit out of me. I was alone, in my house; at some point in the story I poured a large scotch, because it was so unsettling, that sense of being in a situation, surrounded by people you can't reason with. If it does this to me, when it's on screen, it might really have a lot of impact."

Working on Green Room also enabled Stewart to educate himself on a culture he'd been largely ignorant to - the punk rock scene. "I had nothing in common with these musicians," he told The Daily Beast, speaking of the fictional band in the movie, The Ain't Rights. "I don’t especially care for their music!"

Stewart - a lifelong socialist - did however find himself fascinated by the rebellious nature of punk, noting that he "believed in this world" and was "quite drawn that element of protest, of violent musical objection."

Director Jeremy Saulnier, on the other hand, was already all too familiar with the world of punk rock - and some of its dark subcultures. Growing up just outside of Washington D.C., Saulnier played in a local hardcore band and would encounter Neo Nazi punks at shows.

“When we started going to shows across the bridge in Washington, D.C., as a 15-, 16-year-old kid, just seeing Nazis in the light of day at matinee shows was unnerving,” he admitted. “This was back when D.C. was the murder capital of the United States, per capita. It was a grimy, grungy, scary place, and I felt very unsure and out of my depth. That stayed with me.”

Green Room received rave reviews upon release, critics hailing it as a taut, tense and affectingly violent piece of work. Singled out for particular praise was Patrick Stewart for his unnerving turn as Darcy - an instant classic villain and proof of the great man's refusal to ever submit to typecasting.

Countless fans will rightly remember Stewart as their Captain, their Professor X. But many horror aficionados will also attest to the fact that he made for a pretty damn good baddie, too.

Tom Morello has paid tribute to late Star Trek actor Sir Patrick Stewart

The Rage Against The Machine guitarist and self-professed Star Trek “nerd” made an uncredited cameo in the 1998 movie Star Trek: Insurrection, appearing alongside Stewart in one brief scene.

“God bless you and thank you for your brilliance and your humanity, Captain,” wrote Morello on Instagram.

Stewart, who died of Alzheimer's disease and Lewy body dementia at the age of 86, rose to international fame playing Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the TV series Star Trek: The Next Generation, which ran between 1987 and 1994, reprising the role in four feature films.

Morello’s non-speaking, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in Star Trek: Insurrection saw the guitarist play a Son’a officer, one of the movie’s bad guys, while sporting prosthetic alien make-up.

“If you didn’t know I was in it, then you’d miss me. I was so heavily made up,” Morello told Metal Hammer in 2006.

Cult Of Luna leader Johannes Persson has explained how Nine Inch Nails mainman Trent Reznor snuck a song by his old metal band Khoma into a blockbuster film.

The Swedish singer/guitarist, who works as a casting director when he isn’t walloping audiences with post-metal, was in charge of wrangling extras for 2011’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo, which was directed by David Fincher (Seven, Gone Girl, Mindhunter) and starred ex-James Bond Daniel Craig.

Though the two never met, Persson and Reznor were colleagues on the project, as the alt-rock star was hired to compose the score. Talking exclusively to Metal Hammer, Persson reveals that during production, Fincher and his wife/producer Ceán Chaffin asked him to send over all of his music.

“Three, four weeks later, I was standing by this mountain next to David,” Persson continues, “and he hit me in the ribs with his elbow. He said, ‘I love that song.’ What? ‘The song that Trent picked.’ Trent Reznor?!”

Fincher then explained that Reznor had chosen Khoma’s 2006 track The Guillotine for inclusion in the film. “The only thing I could say was, ‘I wrote that song in 10 minutes!’” Persson remembers. “His response was, ‘Imagine how good it would have been if you spent 15 on it!’ Ha ha! But it wouldn’t have been. Sometimes things just happen.”

Cult Of Luna members Persson and Fredrik Kihlberg (guitars) started Khoma with singer Jan Jämte in 2002. The band made four studio albums between 2004 and 2012 but have since descended into inactivity. Persson tells Hammer that the band “could have become really, really big”, yet their momentum was scuppered by the members having outside interests.

“[Jämte] worked as a journalist and then he went back to university,” he says. “I think everybody thought, ‘When we get the tour offers, studying can wait.’ But that wasn’t so.”

Persson co-founded Cult Of Luna in 1998, and Kihlberg joined the lineup in 2004. Along with Neurosis and Isis, they are considered one of the biggest and most influential bands in the post-metal scene. Their 2016 collaborative album with American vocalist Julie Christmas, Mariner, charted in Sweden, Finland, Belgium and Switzerland.

The band will release their 10th album, In The Shadow Of Your Shadow, on November 6. They have a string of European and UK tour dates confirmed for February and March. Tickets are available now.

It's been 1147 days since Aerosmith last stepped onto the stage together, and more than six years since drummer Joey Kramer was part of the package.

Since abandoning the Peace Out... Farewell Tour after just three shows in 2023 – when frontman Steven Tyler suffered vocal cord injuries and a fractured larynx during a show in Elmont, NY – it's often seemed unlikely that the band would ever play again.

"I'm not sure I would want to go out and book another 40-city tour," said Joe Perry last year, explaining that Tyler was no longer interested in hitting the road. "It's a long way to the top, and staying there takes it out of you, especially an Aerosmith tour."

Perry also offered a glimmer of hope. "I would bet that there's an Aerosmith show left," he said. "There's been talk about doing a documentary, that might be part of it."

While Perry toured with the Hollywood Vampires and his own Joe Perry Project – joined by fellow Aerosmith guitarist Brad Whitford – bassist Tom Hamilton formed a new band, Close Enemies, whose debut album was released in March. Meanwhile, drummer Joey Kramer was working his way back to fitness after suffering a series of health problems: a shoulder injury, an ankle injury, and triple-bypass heart surgery.

"When you've got five knuckleheads that all think the same way that we do, anything can happen," Kramer said earlier this year. "How did we all get put together to begin with, you know? It's sort of incomplete, the way that it ended – or tried to end."

Tyler was also on the mend. He returned to the stage in 2024 when he guested at a Black Crowes show in London, then at his Jam For Janie charity fundraiser, before appearing with Perry for the first time since 2023. The duo also appeared together at a Joe Perry Project show, and at MTV's annual Video Music Awards, where they joined Yungblood onstage to pay tribute to Ozzy Osbourne.

Everything had fallen into place. Which gets us to where we are today: The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles and Aerosmith & Friends' California: Dream On, an all-star, Back To The Beginning-style celebration of the Bad Boys from Boston, hosted by Bill Burr. Would Joey Kramer perform? Are all five founding members of Aerosmith officially back in the saddle again?

The full setlist is below, with a core house band that includes Don Was, Nuno Bettencourt, Kenny Aronoff, Chad Smith, Andrew Watt, Mike Inez and others backing several guest musicians before the Black Crowes, Guns N' Roses and Aerosmith arrive to complete the historic night.

Aerosmith and Friends: California Dream On setlist

Make It (Sully Erna, Godsmack)
Lightning Strikes (Sully Erna, Godsmack)
Lord Of The Thighs (Warren Hayes)
Walkin' The Dog (Warren Haynes)
Livin' On The Edge (Billy Idol and Steve Stevens)
Draw The Line (Sammy Hagar)
Helter Skelter (Sammy Hagar)
Never Loved A Man (Heart)
Janie’s Got A Gun (Heart)
Rag Doll (Eric Church)
I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing (Eric Church)
Let The Music Do The Talking (Black Crowes)
Write Me A Letter (Black Crowes)
Combination (Black Crowes)
No More No More (Black Crowes)
Chip Away The Stone (Black Crowes)
Nobody’s Fault (Guns N' Roses)
Last Child (Guns N' Roses)
Seasons Of Wither (Guns N' Roses)
Welcome To The Jungle (Guns N' Roses)
Paradise City (Guns N' Roses)
Toys In The Attic (Aerosmith with Dave Grohl on drums)
Back In The Saddle (Aerosmith with Dave Grohl)
Sweet Emotion (Aerosmith with Dave Grohl)
Dream On (Aerosmith with Dave Grohl)
Train Kept A Rollin' (Aerosmith with Dave Grohl, Johnny Depp on guitar)
Walk This Way (Aerosmith with Joey Kramer and John Douglas on drums)

Although they’ll forever be associated with the hedonism of Screamadelica, the so-called Bunker Trilogy – named after their then recording studio in London – was where Primal Scream flexed their muscles and hung red meat on their musical bones.

Derided as ‘dance traitors’ in the wake of the Stones-cribbing Give Out But Don’t Give Up, 1997's Vanishing Point (9/10) is less a recalibration and more a reaffirmation of where the band’s core values lay. Born of punk, liberated by dance and in thrall to the bottom end, their fifth album convincingly embraces funk and dub dynamics as well as the obligatory nod to rock’n’roll. And it’s with the addition of former Stone Roses bassist Mani to their line-up that Primal Scream move on up, with the dense and driving Kowalski becoming one of the most uncompromising singles to have gate-crashed the Top 10

Augmented by My Bloody Valentine's Kevin Shields, 2000’s XTRMTR (9/10) is the most politically charged and sonically aggressive of the three, its juddering electronics and industrial abrasion anticipating the fractured century to come. The relentless Swastika Eyes remains its calling card, while the driving white noise of Shoot Speed Kill Light sounds like a machine at breaking point.

Yet for all its confrontational intent, the album occasionally comes unstuck when Bobby Gillespie’s weedy vocals are exposed, nowhere more so than on the laughable rapping on Pills. Even so, its combination of righteous fury and aural extremism makes up for its shortcomings.

Evil Heat (2002, 9/10) suffers by comparison simply because it doesn’t have the first mover advantage of its predecessor, yet in many ways it’s every bit its equal. With righteous anger and deeper electronic grooves, any fat is trimmed for a more streamlined experience. The pounding Miss Lucifer is short and sharp, while the krautrock-referencing Autobahn 66 remains one of their most beautiful moments. Elsewhere, the reworking of rocker City from David Holmes’s Bow Down To The Exit Sign tightens the original, and Robert Plant adds spirited harmonica to The Lord Is My Shotgun.

Together these three albums reveal a band unwilling to stand still, frequently mutating without ever abandoning their instinct for confrontation. Although more records followed, few captured the same sense of danger, invention and possibility.

The Bunker Trilogy bundle is available from the Primal Scream webstore.

David Bowie’s bid to persuade guitarist Adrian Belew to leave Frank Zappa’s band in 1978 included a series of bitchy interactions between the big stars, as the future King Crimson guitarist recalls.

He’d been with Zappa for around a year when Brian Eno heard him perform and tipped off Bowie, who was looking for a new guitarist. it led to a change of direction for Belew, who admits he still feels uncomfortable about some elements of the situation.

Recalling the trio’s uncomfortable dinner ahead of the move, Belew tells Ultimate Guitar: “Well, we didn't stay very long. David asked Frank three questions. Frank answered all three of them with, ‘Fuck you, Captain Tom.’”

The jibe about Bowie’s Major Tom character landed. “And so we said, ‘Well, okay then,’ and we got up and left the building,” Belew continues. “And then David said to me, ‘I thought that went rather well!’ And that is the true story.”

He adds: “There was a night when Frank had a little fun with me. There was a song called Maybe You Should Stay With Your Mama and he changed the lyric to ‘Maybe you should stay with your David!’ It was just fun.”

Zappa’s current tour was coming to a close, with a three-month paid hiatus ahead for his band. Meanwhile, Bowie wanted Belew to join a tour that was scheduled to last four months.“My manager called me in Europe,” he recalls, “and said, ‘Well, this is for real – David Bowie’s people have offered you a tour, so you need to make a decision.”

He went to discuss the situation with Zappa at the back of their tour bus. “I said, ‘Well, here, Frank, I could just stay on your retainer for three months, or I could go play with David and come back. What do you think I should do?’

“And he said, ‘You should go play with David,’ and he shook my hand. Everything that Frank did was a handshake, and that was that.”

As fate would have it, Zappa fired his entire band at the end of the tour, while Bowie’s road trip was extended over 18 months. “So, that's how I ended up not being in Frank’s band for more than a year,” Belew reflects. “I planned to stay there. I was really happy. I loved working with Frank. And of course, I loved working with David too.”

He emphasises that he never fell out with Zappa: “Any time I was in LA I would always go up and visit; we remained on very good terms. I’m sorry that it happened that way for Frank, having put so much effort into my career, and I will never forget him for what he's done for me. But that’s the music business.”

Belew is currently touring North America with King Crimson offshoot Beat, featuring fellow Zappa exes Steve Vai and Terry Bozzio, plus Crimson’s Tony Levin.

Foo Fighters have delved into the deeper recesses of their back catalogue to release a cover of Gerry Rafferty's 1978 classic Baker Street.

The Foo's version of Baker Street was first released in November 1997 on a limited-edition EP accompanying the album The Colour And The Shape, alongside covers of songs by Killing Joke, Prince and Gary Numan. It also appeared on some versions of the My Hero single the following year, and on Medium Rare, the Record Store Day covers compilation released in 2010.

The recording also resurfaced on 10th anniversary editions of The Colour And The Shape in 2007, but has been largely missing from Spotify and other streaming platforms due to licensing and distribution limitations.

Dave Grohl & Co. originally recorded Baker Street for BBC Radio One's Evening Session in April 1997, and the song has made sporadic appearances on their setlist in the decades since. It returned this week as the band reprised it during their four-night residency on Jimmy Kimmel Live!.

Grohl also played Baker Street at an event honouring late Red Hot Chili Peppers guitarist Hillel Slovak at the Silverlake Conservatory in Los Angeles earlier this month, where he dedicated the song to "all the people who were around in the 70s listening to AM radio when their mom and dad drove them around in their Ford Maverick."

Foo Fighters will kick off their stadium tour of Australia next week, and return to the Antipodes for two dates in New Zealand in January, followed by shows in India and South America. Full dates below.

Foo Fighters: Take Cover tour 2026/27

Nov 05: Brisbane Corp Stadium, Australia
Nov 07: Townsville Country Bank Stadium, Australia
Nov 10: Sydney Accor Stadium, Australia
Nov 12: Newcastle Mcdonald Jones Stadium, Australia
Nov 14: Melbourne Marvel Stadium, Australia
Nov 17: Adelaide Coopers Stadium, Australia

Dec 12: Los Angeles Kia Forum, CA*

Jan 19: Christchurch One New Zealand Stadium, New Zealand
Jan 22: Auckland Western Springs Stadium, New Zeland
Jan 25: Perth Hbf Park, Australia

Jan 29: Bangalore Bengaluru Live, India
Jan 31: Mumbai Mahalaxmi Racecourse, India

Feb 18: Belo Horizonte Arena MRV, Brazil
Feb 20: São Paulo Estatdio Morumbis, Brazil
Feb 23: Montevideo Estadio Centenario, Uruguay
Feb 25: Buenos Aires Estadio River Plate, Argentina
Feb 28: Santiago Parque Estadio Nacional, Chile
Mar 03: Lima Estadio San Marcos, Peru

*KROQ Almost Acoustic Christmas with Weezer, Sublime, Interpol, Joyce Manor, Julia Wolf, Almost Monday, and The Linda Lindas!

Find Foo Fighters Tickets.

System Of A Down drummer John Dolmayan, who is also the proprietor of Torpedo Comics, a store in Irvine, CA, and the publisher of two comic books, Ascensia and Dead Samurai, has purchased a copy of what's been described as the "Mona Lisa of books": the first issue of Action Comics.

Dolmayan purchased the comic, which was published in 1938 and features the first appearance of Superman, for $825,000 – more than ten times the average annual salary in the US – and it's his second copy.

Earlier this year, Dolyman shared a picture of another copy, saying, "I dreamed of owning this book for years. I know it’s just a materialistic possession, but damn, it makes me happy when I look at it."

The drummer's latest copy of the comic was sold at New York Comic Con earlier this month by Metropolis Collectibles.

“John has loved comic books for his entire life," says Vincent Zurzolo, president of Metropolis and its sister company, ComicConnect. "And when he’s not touring with System, he is wheeling and dealing comic books."

In January, Metropolis sold a copy of Action #1 that had previously been stolen from actor Nicolas Cage and recovered 11 years later, for $15 million, the highest price ever paid for a comic book. Cage had originally purchased the comic for $150,000 in 1992, and sold it after its recovery for $2.2 million.

Dolmayan also paid $317,000 for a copy of Action #1 on behalf of a client in 2009.

"It is considered by most people as the most important book," Dolmayan said the following year. "It kind of ushered in the age of the superheroes."

System Of A Down begin 2027 with a run of stadium shows in Brazil, Australia and New Zealand with Faith No More, and play four nights at the Rose Bowl in California in June. Full dates below.

System Of A Down: 2027 tour dates

Jan 15: Rio De Janeiro Maracanã Stadium, Brazil
Jan 22: Sydney Olympic Park Accor Stadium, Australia
Jan 27: Melbourne Marvel Stadium, Australia
Feb 01: Brisbane Suncorp Stadium, Australia
Feb 07: Wellington Hnry Stadium, New Zealand

Jun 05: Pasadena Rose Bowl Stadium, CA
Jun 06: Pasadena Rose Bowl Stadium, CA
Jun 10: Pasadena Rose Bowl Stadium, CA
Jun 12: Pasadena Rose Bowl Stadium, CA

Find System Of A Down tickets.

At the time of BB King's death in May 2015, the man born Riley B King in mid-20s Mississippi was the undisputed King Of The Blues. The ‘Blues Boy’ survived brutal racism, extreme poverty and even a brief association with U2 to endure as the ambassador for a style of music that has defied being written off countless times.

Stylistically, BB King’s first few albums were heavily indebted to his idol T-Bone Walker, but by the early 60s he was his own man, and a powerful influence on a gang of white kids in London that included Peter Green, future Rolling Stone Mick Taylor and those two’s predecessor in John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, Eric Clapton.

“If you’re not familiar with his work,” said Clapton, “I would encourage you to go out and find an album called Live At The Regal, which is where it all really started for me as a young player.”

Released in 1965, Live At The Regal, the first of BB King’s masterpieces, finds an artist in complete control of his audience. While many blues performers were backtracking on their careers to satisfy a new white Delta blues-obsessed audience, King gave his predominantly black followers exactly what he wanted: progression. His music took on elements of jazz, funk and soul while never obscuring his first love, the blues.

When he did cross over to a young white rock audience at San Francisco’s Fillmore Auditorium on June 6, 1968, it was on his own terms. At a time when his contemporaries Muddy Waters and Howlin’ Wolf were talked into cutting career-low psychedelic shit to pander to the hippies [Electric Mud in ’68 and The Howlin’ Wolf Album in ’69 respectively], BB King went in the opposite direction. With The Thrill Is Gone, from his ’69 album Completely Well, he recorded a new, sophisticated blues, augmented with orchestral strings.

Even in his dotage, BB King maintained a punishing touring schedule. No one, to paraphrase one of his classics, paid a higher cost to be the boss, and despite his wealth, he feared slowing down: “If we don’t work, how we gonna eat?”

That work ethic, forged in the poverty he experienced as a child, is there in his discography too. When he released Completely Well in 1969, he was already on his 17th studio record.

Skid Row have found their new frontman. The New Jersey veterans have announced that Justin Sargent, a Broadway star who's starred in productions of Rock of Ages, Bonnie & Clyde and Spider-Man: Turn Off the Dark, has been picked for the role after "months of conversations, rehearsals, and time spent together."

Sargent has also worked extensively with Windborne Music, a well-established Virginia-based production company, on shows featuring the music of Led Zeppelin, Def Leppard and the Rolling Stones.

"I've been singing Skid Row songs for years, but never imagined I'd actually be joining the band!" says Sargent. "It's an incredible honour to be part of something with such a legendary history. The chemistry and energy we’ve found together over the past several months has been amazing.

"I have tremendous respect for the band’s legacy, but I’m even more excited about what lies ahead. I can’t wait to get out there, connect with the fans, and give them everything I've got. Let's go!"

"Honestly, for me, it felt like he had been here from the beginning as soon as he walked in the room," says Skid Row bassist Rachel Bolan. "He was one of us. A lifer. Then he sang with so much power and conviction, it blew me away. It was amazing."

"We were so fortunate to receive so many audition submissions from singers wanting to front the band," adds guitarist Dave "Snake" Sabo. "We wanna thank everyone for their time and effort. There are some truly amazing singers out there!

"But I think that the moment Justin walked in the door, we all kind of knew he was the guy. Everything about him: his voice, his attitude, his demeanour – it all just fit. We can't wait to hit the ground running and get back to doing what we love to do."

The first fruit from the new partnership is a lively cover of The Who's 1971 classic Won't Get Fooled Again, which, if nothing else, certainly proves that Sargent can do that scream.

The track, which will be released as a limited edition 7" single on October 30, was produced by Nick Raskulinecz, who worked on Skid Row's 2022 studio album The Gang's All Here, their sole album with singer Erik Grönwall, who departed two years later to focus on treatment for leukaemia.

Sargent is Skid Row's fifth lead singer since the departure of Sebastian Bach in 1996. He follows Johnny Solinger (1999-2015), Tony Harnell (2015), ZP Theart (2015-2022) and Grönwall.

Fans will get their first opportunity to see Sargent in action when the band head out on tour next year. His debut show is currently scheduled to take place at The Show at Agua Caliente in Rancho Mirage, CA, on March 3. The band are also on the bill at next year's Welcome To Rockville and Sonic Temple festivals. Full dates below.

Skid Row 2027 tour dates

Mar 05: Rancho Mirage The Show at Agua Caliente, CA
Mar 20: New Buffalo Four Winds Casino, MI
Apr 02: Kansas City VooDoo Lounge at Harrah's, MO
Apr 03: Welch Island Event Center, MN
Apr 09: Mashantucket Foxwoods, CT
Apr 10: Atlantic City Borgata, NJ
Apr 16: Wheatland Hard Rock Live, CA
Apr 17: Reno Silver Legacy Casino, NV
Apr 18: Shelton Little Creek Casino, WA
Apr 23: Quapaw Downstream Casino, OK
Apr 24: Grant Choctaw Casino, OK
May 09: Daytona Beach Welcome to Rockville, FL *
May 14: Columbus Sonic Temple, OH *
May 29: Niagara Falls OLG Stage at Fallsview Casino, ON
Sep 25: French Lick French Lick Resort, IN

* Festival date

Avenged Sevenfold guitarist Zacky Vengeance has defended the use of generative AI – in a statement he says was at least partially written by generative AI.

The 44-year-old, who co-founded his Grammy-nominated heavy metal band in 1999, has taken to X (formerly Twitter) to reply to a fan who said that AI-generated artwork can “kick rocks and burn”. He counters that he “fully embrace[s]” AI.

He adds that while he loves “physical art and the talented people who create it (myself being one of them)”, he believes “the majority of designers I have worked with over the past 20 years are lazy and allowed themselves to be replaced [by AI] due to complacency and greed”.

“I prefer my prompts and the collective hive mind and efficiency of the future,” he continues. “Just my opinion but I embrace it. Also it will absolutely kill us all.”

He adds in a follow-up statement, which he admits he wrote using a generative AI programme, “Every major technological advancement has been met with fear and resistance. AI is no different. It’s not the death of creativity or human ingenuity; it’s an expansion of what’s possible.

“The problem isn’t the technology itself, but how people choose to use it. Rejecting AI won’t stop progress. Learning to harness it responsibly will help shape the future – this message was made using AI.”

The guitarist continues in another post, criticising people who scream “‘fuck AI’ while consenting to terms and services giving away all your personal data to be used by AI that provides you an algorithm created by AI which then shares it to other like minded individuals via AI so they can scream ‘fuck AI’.”

The use of generative AI in creative spaces has been a topic of fierce debate since the acceleration of the AI boom a few years ago. While champions of the technology hail its ability to quickly and cheaply generate images, detractors highlight the heavy electricity usage and water consumption of AI data centres.

The extent that AI has impacted the job market is also being explored. Stanford University’s Institute For Economic Policy Research (SIEPR) found earlier this year that “a tough job market for new graduates may be partly due to AI”.

Vengeance isn’t the only champion of AI in the band. In 2023, vocalist M. Shadows wrote on X that he’d “love to help facilitate our ‘sound’ to producers and fans to create original [Avenged] songs using this technology”.

Avenged surprise-released a new EP, Statica, in July. The four-track set divided fans, as they doubled down on the electronic sound explored on 2023 album Life Is But A Dream… and used lots of AutoTune. Nonetheless, a follow-up Statica album has been teased for the near future.

The nu metal renaissance is in full swing, and it seems its not just the style and fashion that's made a comeback. Relative hardcore newcomers Haywire tried to film a guerilla gig at New York's Times Square, but soon found themselves bringing another tradition back: getting their stunt ended by the police. Well, if it's good enough for Rage Against The Machine, System of A Down and Alien Ant Farm...

Formed in Boston in 2023, Haywire - listed on Spotify as Haywire 617 - have taken to the genre's reputation for wild gigs like ducks to water. The band's most recent album I Don't Wanna Say Goodbye was released on October 1 via Roadrunner, and the group celebrated with a series of shows across the US including Furnace Fest and Sick New World.

The band had also apparently planned to record a music video Sleep Now In The Fire style at Times Square on October 28, but only managed to get through a song-and-a-half before police arrived to shut the event down. Footage captured for the show sees them draw a massive and excitable crowd who become dismayed when the band get the plug pulled, booing the police on-scene loudly.

Watch footage below.

But while their plans for a music video might've been scuppered, there's still plenty of Haywire activity in the pipeline.

They'll be hitting the UK for headline shows in January, before linking up with Comeback Kid in Europe. They've also lined up festival appearances including Copenhell and Rock Im Park/Rock Am Ring over the summer, plus more North American shows in between.

See the full list of UK dates below.

Haywire I Don't Wanna Say Goodbye UK Tour 2027

Jan 2: Greyfriars, Nottingham
Jan 3: Rebellion, Manchester
Jan 5: G2, Glasgow
Jan 6: The Grove, Newcastle
Jan 7: Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Jan 8: Castle & Falcon, Birmingham
Jan 9: The Corn Exchange, Newport
Jan 10: The Garage, London
Jan 12: Daltons, Brighton

Korn, Blink-182, Judas Priest, Alice In Chains, Pierce The Veil and Bad Omens are among the more than 150 artists confirmed for Florida heavy metal festival Welcome To Rockville next year.

The four-day weekender will return to Daytona International Speedway from May 6 to 9, with Korn headlining the opening Thursday, Bad Omens topping the bill on Friday, Pierce The Veil headlining Saturday and Blink-182 closing proceedings on Sunday.

Joining them across the five stages that weekend will be a reuniting Faith No More, Ice Nine Kills, Papa Roach, The Prodigy, Danzig, I Prevail, Cypress Hill and many, many more. See the full list of announced performers below.

Tickets are on sale now via the Welcome To Rockville website, including four-day, two-day, single-day and various VIP passes.

The event will mark Faith No More’s first North American show since they went on hiatus in 2016, and there will be multiple other special sets. Meshuggah will perform as part of their 40th-anniversary North American tour and Machine Head will be making a US-exclusive appearance.

In addition, glam legends Skid Row will be back onstage after three years away to celebrate their 40th anniversary. It will be their first gig with new vocalist Justin Sargent.

Welcome To Rockville 2026 took place from May 7 to 10 and was headlined by Guns N’ Roses, Foo Fighters, Bring Me The Horizon and My Chemical Romance.

Welcome To Rockville 2027 lineup:

• Blink-182
• Korn
• Pierce The Veil
• Bad Omens
• $uicideboy$
• Faith No More
• Papa Roach
• MGK
• The Offspring
• Alice in Chains
• The Prodigy
• Good Charlotte
• Knocked Loose
• Marilyn Manson
• Knocked Loose
• Judas Priest
• Ice Nine Kills
• Danzig
• Bilmuri
• Circa Survive
• I Prevail
• Till Lindemann
• Cypress Hill
• 311
• Seether
• Stone Temple Pilots
• Hot Mulligan
• The Pretty Reckless
• Poppy
• Lil Jon
• Bullet For My Valentine
• She Wants Revenge
• President
• Wage War
• In This Moment
• Meshuggah
• Boys Like Girls
• Black Veil Brides
• Dashboard Confessional
• Kublai Khan TX
• Julia Wolf
• Cobra Starship
• Clutch
• Rico Nasty
• Machine Head
• Kerry King
• Pendulum
• Coal Chamber
• Sleep Theory
• Sullivan King
• Chad Gray
• Loathe
• Sugar Ray
• Everlast
• Testament
• Escape The Fate
• Skid Row
• Hanabie.
• Waka Flocka Flame
• Superheaven
• P.O.D.
• Imminence
• Steve-O
• Thursday
• From Ashes To New
• Kim Dracula
• Forever The Sickest Kids
• The Amity Affliction
• Magnolia Park
• B.o.B
• Saosin
• Violent Vira
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U2 have added to their 2027 The Greatest Show On Earth touring plans, putting 12 dates in the UK and Europe to the itinerary.

The Irish rock legends will hit the road from April to July, promoting their upcoming album Carnaval de Luz. The tour starts with two dates at Strawberry Arena in Stockholm on April 26 and 28, then continues through Paris, Lisbon, Amsterdam, London and Berlin before wrapping up at Stadio San Siro in Milan on July 5 and 6. Every city except Lisbon and Berlin gets two shows.

See the full tour layout below. An artist ticket presale starts on November 5 at 10am local time, ahead of general sale at the same time on November 6. Get presale access by signing up via Ticketmaster before 11:59pm CET on Sunday, November 1.

In addition to the stadium shows, the band will put on an intimate London gig on Tuesday next week (November 3). A limited number of tickets are available via a BBC Audiences ballot, which is open until midnight tonight, October 29.

The news follows the announcement of a string of Central and South American dates earlier this month, scheduled for Mexico City, São Paulo and Buenos Aires for February and March. Those dates are also listed below. According to press materials, North American shows and extra Spanish stops will be revealed soon.

The title The Greatest Show On Earth may seem cocky, but, as singer Bono and guitarist The Edge revealed in a New York Times interview earlier this week, it ties into the band’s belief that they can still outdo themselves creatively and onstage 50 years after forming.

“We genuinely think that we might just write the best song we’ve ever written next week,” The Edge insisted, “or do the best show we’ve ever done next tour… that’s why I’m still in this band.”

“I’m jealous when suddenly we’re left out of the pop charts,” Bono admitted. “That’s a personality flaw, because, yeah, 66 and wants to storm the pop charts, somebody should throw some cold water over this fella! But actually, deep down, it’s because I don’t want those ideas to be left out of the mainstream, because my favourite artists stormed the mainstream.”

Carnaval de Luz (Spanish and Portuguese for “Carnival Of Light”) is out on November 13 via Island. It marks the band’s first album of new original material since 2017’s Songs Of Experience, the follow-up to 2014’s controversially inescapable-for-Apple-users Songs Of Innocence. The yet-to-be-released track Torn features a posthumous performance from country-pop queen Dolly Parton, who died aged 80 in August.

U2 2027 tour dates

Feb 23: Mexico City Estadio GNP Seguros, Mexico
Feb 26: Mexico City Estadio GNP Seguros, Mexico
Mar 10: São Paulo Estádio MorumBIS, Brazil
Mar 12: São Paulo Estádio MorumBIS, Brazil
Mar 23: Buenos Aires Estadio River Plate, Argentina
Mar 25: Buenos Aires Estadio River Plate, Argentina

Apr 26: Stockholm Strawberry Arena, Sweden
Apr 28: Stockholm Strawberry Arena, Sweden
May 05: Paris Stade de France, France
May 08: Paris Stade de France, France
May 27: Lisbon Estadio da Luz, Portugal
Jun 05: Amsterdam Johan Cruijff Arena, Netherlands
Jun 06: Amsterdam Johan Cruijff Arena, Netherlands
Jun 18: London Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, UK
Jun 19: London Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, UK
Jun 30: Berlin Olympiastadion, Germany
Jul 05: Milan Stadio San Siro, Italy
Jul 06: Milan Stadio San Siro, Italy

Find U2 tickets.

Eloy Casagrande has finished laying down drum tracks for Slipknot’s long-awaited eighth studio album.

Talking to ex-Stray From The Path drummer Craig Reynolds on the Downbeat podcast, the Brazilian drummer, who joined Slipknot in 2024, says that the band have “a lot of songs” in the bank.

He calls the process of making his first album with the Iowan nu metal force “crazy”.

“We started the process last year, at the end of ’25,” he continues. “Me and Jim Root [guitars] started exchanging some riffs, some drum beats … and I think it was the first time, in February or March, that we played together. The process started with me and Jim and Clown [percussionist Shawn Crahan] in the studio, just jamming.”

Casagrande adds that the trio would jam for “at least three or four hours a day” and record the sessions, then listen back and cherry-pick the best bits. Former Faith No More producer Matt Wallace, whom Root previously confirmed is overseeing the new album, was present at these early rehearsals.

Elsewhere in the interview, Casagrande reveals that Arsenal, the standalone single which Slipknot put out last month, was written in a different way, starting with a vocal melody from frontman Corey Taylor.

“That’s a song that he sang [for] me at the beginning of the year,” the drummer explains. “Then, Jim wrote the riffs to the song. So that song didn’t come from a jam. That’s a Corey Taylor song.”

Despite the progress on the new album, 2026 has been far from a banner year for Slipknot. Longtime turntablist Sid Wilson was let go from the lineup in August, five months after it was announced that the DJ and his ex-fiancée Kelly Osbourne had called off their engagement. Then, Arsenal was met with a fiercely divided response from fans; the single currently has 105,000 likes on YouTube against 78,000 dislikes.

At the end of September, the now-eight-piece group announced a 2027 world tour, including a show at London’s Wembley Stadium, but faced backlash for having Marilyn Manson as their main support act in South America and the UK.

Manson, real name Brian Hugh Warner, has been accused of misconduct by more than a dozen women; he’s settled out of court with multiple accusers and maintains his innocence. A lawsuit from former personal assistant Ashley Walters alleging sexual assault and battery has been given a trial date in November 2027; Manson denies any wrongdoing.

Slipknot haven’t officially commented on the controversy over touring with Manson, but guitarist Root has washed his hands of responsibility for the decision, writing in an Instagram comment that he “stay[s] out of the logistics of touring and all that”.

Casagrande joined the band in April 2024, replacing Jay Weinberg following the American drummer’s shock firing the previous November. The news of his hiring broke mere weeks after he abruptly quit Sepultura; the Brazilian quartet quickly hired Greyson Nekrutman to fulfil the dates on their ongoing farewell tour. Weinberg went on to replace Nekrutman in thrashers Suicidal Tendencies, before departing in January.

Last year, Casagrande appeared on the Modern Drummer podcast and explained the meaning behind his Slipknot mask, which features what resembles a bullethole in the forehead. He revealed that he had been mugged in São Paulo two years prior and had a gun pointed at his head. He considers himself “lucky” the perpetrator “decided to not shoot”.

Tool singer Maynard James Keenan has revealed that he joined the Los Angeles progressive metal stars following a dare from someone he knew.

Talking in the new issue of Metal Hammer, the 62-year-old says that he was criticising the local alternative music scene when someone “challenged” him to do it better himself, essentially telling him to put up or shut up.

“I got challenged to be in a band, actually,” Keenan explains. “It wasn’t to do with Adam [Jones, guitarist] or Danny [Carey, drummer]. Somebody challenged me when I was being critical about the things I was seeing in LA. It was like, ‘If you think you can do better...’ I knew I could. It was an accident, but I took the call and I’m going to be here a while.”

The singer’s confidence was ultimately well-placed, as Tool became one of heavy music’s biggest bands. They’ve sold more than 14 million albums worldwide and won three Grammy Awards. Their last three albums – 2001’s Lateralus, 2006’s 10,000 Days and 2019’s Fear Inoculum – have all debuted at No.1 on the US Billboard 200 chart.

Elsewhere in the interview, Keenan discloses how Tool’s success somewhat backfired, as he was chased out of Los Angeles by “vampires” in the music industry. He now resides in the small, remote town of Jerome, Arizona.

“Not stalkers, but we had a lot of lawyers and agents, bookers… people trying to get into us,” says Keenan. “All these vampires that wanted to financially benefit from a safe relationship with successful artists. Those vampires drove me out of LA, not the fans. There’s nothing wrong with the fans – there’s some obsessed ones who can get a bit mathy and weird, but that’s the nature of the fan. Fanatics. My exit from LA was because of this parade of vampires.”

Despite having hip replacement surgery in August, Keenan is back on the road with his avant-rock project Puscifer, having kicked off a European tour at Annexet in Stockholm, Sweden on October 25. The singer will do double duty on a Central and South American tour which kicks off in Mexico City on November 25, fronting Puscifer and his rock band A Perfect Circle for separate sets at each stop.

Meanwhile, according to drummer Danny Carey, Tool are working on a new album with a tentative 2027 release date. Carey told the Spiral Out Network in February that the band also hope to perform at Las Vegas multimedia venue The Sphere, following in the footsteps of Metallica, who are currently hosting their own residency there from October to March.

Read our full interview with Keenan in the new Hammer, which features late Metallica bassist Cliff Burton on the cover and celebrates his enduring legacy 40 years after his death. Order your copy now and get it delivered directly to your door.