It’s no surprise that we love CAUCHEMAR here at Iron Fist. The Montreal metal machine are fronted by the one and only Annick Giroux, author of our World Downfall column. But nepotism be damned, even if Annick wasn’t part of the family we’d still be a sucker of their Sabbath meets Mercyful Fate meets Sortilege meets Blue Oyster Cult vibes. With a new album ‘Chappelle Ardente’ out now we look back to Iron Fist #6 (Summer 2013) when Dave Sherwood had a dangerous meeting with the band around the release of their Nuclear War Now! Productions debut ‘Tenebrario’

We know you as our world correspondent, but not for your own music – tell us about Cauchemar Annick: “Cauchemar started as a doom metal project between myself and the guitarist, François [Patry]. At first, I wanted to play bass, but we couldn’t find a vocalist so I decided to sing instead. We were aiming to play ‘trad’ doom but our heavy metal influences took over and it ended up being some sort of bastard mix of heavy/doom. We recorded and released our mini-album ‘La Vierge Noire’ in 2010, and did our first three gigs in Canada afterwards. In January, 2011, myself and the guitarist … Read More

While we tend to bathe in our own homeland’s glory, let’s not forget that the United States had a great history of heavy metal too. During the 1980s, legends were forged in every state, city, neighbourhood, and OMEN is one of the best bands of that era with three landmark albums (‘Battle Cry’ from 1984, ‘Warning Of Danger’ 1985 and ‘The Curse’ 1986).

Formed when Kenny Powell left Savage Grace in 1984, the band were featured that year on Metal Massacre IV and catapulted themselves into the heavy metal pantheon. The band have sporadically attempted to recapture that initial spark, playing live as much as they can in front of rabid fans who worship their early heavy metal, proto power metal mastery, but now in 2016 they’re back again with a new album ‘Hammer Damage’.

Getting a not so favourable review from our own website, Kenny got in touch to put the record straight and get a re-appraisal. We sent Andreas Andreou to beg our pardon…

Omen founder, guitarist and main songwriter, Kenny Powell, has a lot to tell us about the controversial new album Andreas, thank you for giving me a chance to maybe clear the air on the making of ‘Hammer … Read More

Following on from her interview with the one and only Lita Ford we unleashed our metal maiden on THE metal maiden DORO PESCH to talk about her new 2-disc DVD ‘Strong And Proud’, her fans, her soul, smoking a pack of cigarettes in an hour with Lemmy and never doing karaoke!

Doro Pesch is all she is! 30 years on she reigns ‘Strong And Proud’, weaving her metal magik throughout the lands. She rules with a very metal but kind heart! In fact, it actually felt more like we were talking through a dream catcher than a phone line. I felt captured by her warrior spirit, innate positivity and wisdom; only Doro is real!

So how in the hell does this Teutonic maiden manage to keep on doing it or ‘’rockin’ zie haus” as she calls it?!? Hot rockin’ vocals, hot rockin’ headbangin’, martial arts, her commitment as an animal activist and UBER ALLES, her fans sure as hell have something to do with! (I guess you’ll have to watch the movie to find out…)

So who RSVP’d for the extensive one year ‘Strong And Proud’ tour party and where else but Wacken would be more apt for Doro to start spreading her unholy love? … Read More

From being one of the most hated early thrash bands to one of the most cult, Italy’s BULLDOZER forged their own path throughout the ‘80s, burning the rule books along the way. From being signed to Roadrunner, almost collaborating with King Diamond and inspiring The Prodigy. GUY STRACHAN relives those days of wrath with frontman AC WILD

Before the release of ‘Reign In Blood’, thrash metal was generally treated as a bad joke by much of the mainstream media. Bathory, Voivod, Hellhammer, Sodom and even Slayer themselves received at least one vicious slaughtering from at least one major metal magazine during their tentative years, but there was one band who, perhaps more than any other, was on the receiving end of continual, indescribably harsh criticism (such as Kerrang!’s “the worst band ever”) that commenced with their debut 7″ and taking until the band’s fourth LP before they finally received some grudging respect outside of their fan base. That band was Italy’s Bulldozer who, after calling it quits as the ‘80s ended, surprisingly picked up the baton again in 2009 with the release of ‘Unexpected Fate’. “We had several requests from fans but Andy [Panigada, guitars] and I were conscious that we could … Read More

Doom rock legends The Obsessed (Maryland, USA), led by the infamous Scott “Wino” Weinrich (Saint Vitus, Spirit Caravan, Place of Skulls, The Hidden Hand and W.I.N.O.), formed in 1976. The band have split up and reformed numerous times, first splitting in 1986 when Wino joined Saint Vitus, but reformed four years later and released two very influential albums via the Hellhound Records label and Colombia that are regarded as classics – namely ‘Lunar Womb’ and ‘The Church Within’. After releasing three albums (including the self-titled that was originally recorded in 1985), The Obsessed broke up for a second time in 1995.

Wino reappeared on the scene a few years later with Shine who later became Spirit Caravan and released a demo as well as a couple of albums and EPs, touring Europe and the UK twice in 1999 and 2000. The band called it quits soon after and Wino pursued other projects for quite a while before reforming Spirit Caravan and rejoining Saint Vitus for another stint, which included a new album, 2012’s ‘Lillie F-65. their first since the 1995 album ‘Die Healing’. Some heavy touring culminated in Wino being arrested for drugs possession at the Norwegian border on the way … Read More

Following on from yesterday’s Top Five TEMPLES FESTIVAL Metal of Death tip top Topcat list by M of Funeral Throne, we asked another Iron Fister on the bill, Birthday girl Kat ‘Shevil’ Gillham, throatscorcher of crusty devil worshippers WINDS OF GENOCIDE to run down the top five bands on the line-up that she’ll be upfront and centre for…

SHEER TERROR Because their ‘Just Can’t Hate Enough’ album is one of my fave HC albums of all time and probably my favourite NYHC album. A lot of metal bands would love that totally fierce Celtic Frost style guitar tone!!

GRAVE I’ve loved this band since the early ’90s when I was a teenager starting to discover death metal and starting to delve deep into the abyss that is the underground death metal scene. But I’ve never seen them live in person, so Temples will be my first time.

VICTIMS I haven’t seen these guys live since 2009 but they are such an energetic live band, and their new album ‘Sirens’ is totally awesome so looking forward to checking out some new material in a live environment through a huge PA!

MELVINS I’ve been a huge fan of their older stuff since my younger brother turned me … Read More

TEMPLES FESTIVAL returns to Bristol in June and alongside Desertfest, Live Evil and Damnation proves that grassroots, DIY fests keep the wellspring of British underground heavy metal alive and kicking. Settling somewhere between doom pilgrimage Roadburn Festival and extreme grind holiday destination, Maryland Deathfest, Temples is the go to fest in the West (of England!!). Headlined by gore veterans Carcass and black metal cult Mayhem, alongside Melvins, the festival also boasts Iron Fist regulars The Gentlemans Pistols, Iron Reagan, Revenge, Mare and your dad’s favourites, Groundhogs.

Over the next few days we will be running through our tips for the festival. The whole line-up is unmissable and to start with we probed black metal upstarts Funeral Throne bassist and vocalist M (also known as Iron Fist scribe, Jack Welch) to give us his top five tips of bands you need to see…

DEGIAL Uppsala, Sweden: famously home to Watain and a whole host of demons residing in its blood-blackened soil. Uppsala is also home to snot-nosed upstarts Degial who have drawn from this wellspring of Chaos and spewed its black bile into their true Metal of Death. Their first efforts were very akin to Morbid Angel (no bad thing) but last year heralded their second … Read More

Legendary German thrashers Exumer (who formed in 1985) have returned to the scene with their fourth album ‘The Raging Tides’ (their second since reforming in 2008). It’s a fierce slab of energetic Teutonic thrash metal that showcases a band clearly firing on all cylinders, sounding rejuvenated with new blood in the ranks and burning bright with musical fire. Original vocalist Mem Von Stein gave Kat Gillham an insight into the new album and the recent events in the Exumer camp…

Your new record ‘The Raging Tides’ has just been released, are you satisfied with how it turned out? Mem: It’s definitely a step up from our last album ‘Fire And Damnation’ in terms of how it’s a lot more direct, I think. We tightened the edges in many ways and I think it just pops a lot more. It just has a bigger punch than ‘Fire And Damnation’, we did like the sound of that album but I think this is a step forward in regards to bringing the mix upfront and really making sure that the guitars and drums are really punching you in the face so to speak, so yeah we were really happy with how it turned out overall. … Read More

Stating that their influences are simply Pentagram and Johnny Winter, Brutus are from Oslo, Norway, but feature three Swedes amongst their ranks. Back in Iron Fist #16, as part of our special report on modern bands with that oh-so-vintage sound, guitarist Johan Forsberg told us how he and Krille Hellqvist talked about starting a band in that vein and found Kim Molander, Knut-Ole Mathisen and Jokke Stenby in 2006 to make it a reality.

“We started to jam and drink some beers every Saturday for a while,” he explains. “Good times and the songs kept coming. We released two full-length albums and right now we’re mixing the third.” That was then, and this is now as that third album ‘Wandering Blind’ is ready and being streamed right here at Iron Fist.

Talking of their influences beyond Messrs Leibling and Winter, Johan tells us that “bands like Jerusalem, Bang and of course, Sabbath was in the early stage of Brutus, but we’ve got our own style of more bluesy heavy rock now. We all listen to Grand Funk, Deep Purple that I think coloured our songs too. A lot of blues bands too, I listen maybe more to the Peter Green Fleetwood Mac, Bluesbreakers, … Read More

Marduk, Immolation and Origin @ The Fleece, Bristol

Weekday gigs are often strange affairs and especially so in Bristol where the local metal scene will invariably turn out in droves for bands such as Alestorm but often overlook the more extreme end of the spectrum, ironically leaving some gigs as barren as the graveyards and mortuaries that provide a wealth of lyrical inspiration. Luckily for Marduk however, this Wednesday night sees a crowd who are more than willing to have the midweek blues literally beaten out of them, Scandinavian style.

First up is Origin, with their brand of technical death metal that seems to this scribe to be an odd choice of opener for a legendary Swedish black metal band but regardless their ultra-tight, hyper-fast metal elicits a lot of movement from the crowd.

It’s been four years since New York death metal powerhouse Immolation graced UK shores and it’s like déjà vu as that too was in support of Marduk. It might be all genial banter with the crowd between tracks but when it comes to it this band can dish out an arse-kicking. As with every performance of theirs, the group are as tight as the nun’s … Read More