Lace, chocolate, canals and beer-brewing-monks; Bruges has never been known as a hive of heavy metal activity, yet some 35 years ago a band came crashing through its medieval walls. Rubbing shoulders with Motörhead, Maiden and Manowar along the way, the quintet lived what some might consider to be the ultimate early ’80s hard rock fantasy, yet real success proved elusive and just five short years later, the group disbanded and added themselves to the endless list of metal’s might-have-beens. Now, three decades since their departure, all of ACIDs recorded output is being reissued again, proving that interest in the band is arguably stronger than ever. TOBY WRIGHT was fortunate enough to talk with singer KATE DE LOMBAERT and drummer GEERT ‘ANVILL’ RICQUIER about the pleasures and pitfalls of being in the wrong place at the right time.

“I think it was something magic,” says Kate thoughtfully, as we begin to discuss what gave Acid such cult status. “I don’t know what it was,” she continues, hesitating a little. “When we played together it was like a wall of sound. It was very, very special.” Geert, seemingly jovial at this evening’s trip down memory lane, is quick to confirm the vocalist’s … Read More

With new album ‘Darkness Drips Forth’ out now on Relapse, we sent Kat Gillham to interview Hooded Menace mainman Lasse Pyykkö, also of Claws and Phlegethon. With Hooded Menace clearly his main band these days we asked the Finnish master of doom about letting other people in on his long-running death/doom project and when we can expect his twisted dark vision to hits the road again Your new album ‘Darkness Drips Forth’ was recently released on Relapse Records, please tell us a bit about it? “Well, I’d say ‘Darkness Drips Forth’ is our slowest and heaviest, but also the most melodic work to date. There’s stuff I can’t imagine being put on a record during the early days of the band. I wouldn’t have been ready for it. The new album goes from extreme to extreme, basically. Just don’t expect blastbeats, that’s not our thing, really. We don’t need extreme tempo shifts to be extreme. We play with smaller nuances than that, and as a songwriter, I find this more restrained approach a lot more interesting and challenging. Of course there’s also some stuff to bang our heads to, but compared to the previous albums, this one’s a crawler. And when it’s slow, the … Read More

Dutch band Gold unleashed a new video (which you can view below) with “timing” of great joy as we enjoy the true spirit of the festive season – BUY! BUY! BUY!

They said: “‘And I Know Now’ is a key song on [new album] ‘No Image’. Like no other song it unites post-black metal, doom, hardcore punk, despair, humanity and reflection. Such a powerful song deserves a video with a powerful message. The message is to buy our album. Buy it again. Buy more copies of it. Buy it when it’s cheap. Buy it when you think it’s cheap. Buy it when you’re told it’s cheap. Why not buy it? Buy it like other people do. Buy it first. Buy it online. Buy it offline. Buy it now. Buy it and show with it. Buy away that void with it. Buy it and shelve it. Why wouldn’t you buy it? It is fun to have it. It is cool to have it. It is necessary to have it. To have it is better than to not have it. Our album is your album. Buy it and not miss it. Buy it.”

After departing The Devil’s Blood in 2011 (which you can read about in an interview Louise did … Read More

With their recent self-titled album hitting the shops earlier this year, the British rock legends Def Leppard are enjoying an “indian summer” according to guitarist, Phil Collen.

The band who formed in 1977, right at the beginning of the burgeoning post-punk/new wave of British heavy metal movement, are currently on tour around the UK and headline Wembley Arena in London with Whitesnake and Black Star Riders this Friday.

Iron Fist spoke to Hackney-born guitarist Phil, who joined the band in 1982, about their “unnecessary” new album, sounding like Michael Jackson and how music needs a much needed boot in the backside if it’s going to produce future arena-filling headline acts.

Before ‘Def Leppard’, the album, was released singer Joe Elliot said that “It doesn’t sound like any one specific era of Def Leppard. It’s got everything. You’ll listen and go ‘Oh that sounds like Led Zeppelin or Queen’, and he’s right, this is a massively diverse album and sounds like you had so much fun making it. What expectations did you have going in to do this new record?

“You don’t really have to make albums anymore, not in this day and age. They don’t really serve a purpose. A … Read More

Finnish death metal godfathers Amorphis have recently given us the opportunity of seeing them perform material recorded right back in 1994, looking back to their second album ‘Tales Of A Thousand Lakes’ on its 20th Anniversary. Lead guitarist and founding member Esa Holopainen has been there all along and one has to wonder if they have everything down to an easily workable formula now that they have finalised their 12th studio album ‘Under The Red Cloud’? How do the road dogs even find the time to record, perhaps they write the material on the back of the tour bus between shows? Esa makes it quite clear that this is simply not an option. “I think it’s an impossible idea. It’s such an uninspiring environment when you are on the tour bus. I don’t know how any musician can do that. Usually what happens is, when we have done enough touring, we start little by little to write new music. In the week we are at home and can concentrate on writing. That’s the way of the business though; you have to be on tour if you want to make a living out of it.”

If you’re looking for a name that’s synonymous with heavy metal in its purest, boldest and most untrammelled form, you could do a lot worse than Jag Panzer. Having taken their name from a mis-spelling of a German World War II tank, this titanic troupe’s landmark 1984 album ‘Ample Destruction’ LP stands proud to this day as a deathless pinnacle of heroic sturm-und-drang, bombastic glory and razor-sharp attack, and whilst the Colorado Springs-birthed bezerkers’ history has been filled with more than its fair share of ups and downs in the 30 plus years since, their admirable strike-rate clearly makes them far from one-album-wonders. This is a band who’ve quietly carried one of the greatest singers in the whole genre, Harry Conklin, in their ranks – how many of us wanted to see him replace Bruce Dickinson following his departure from Maiden in 1993? Not to mention Shrapnel shred-legend Joey Tafolla and Megadeth axeman, Chris Broderick. What’s more, despite some recent bad news, there is thankfully no breakup on the horizon. Mark Briody, Jag Panzer’s guitarist and founding member was kind enough to tell us more about both their history and their current plans, while we also caught up with the … Read More

On repeat on the Iron Fist HQ stereo, the new album from Finland’s Jess & The Ancient Ones (‘Second Psychedelic Coming: The Aquarius Tapes’, Svart Records) is out today. You can read about it in the newest issue of Iron Fist, but back in February 2013, just before they were about to tread the boards at the hallowed Roadburn Festival, we asked Olivier ‘Zoltar’ Badin to grill them alongside their comrades, Seremonia. 

Since The Devil’s Blood arrived on the scene in 2006 there has been a steady flow of priestess-fronted occult rock bands following their path. Jess & The Ancient Ones and Seremonia, both from Finland and both with female singers, have been tarred with this association, despite sounding very different from each other. How do you feel about that? And have you had the chance to meet and play together? Thomas Corpse, Jess & The Ancients Ones: “No, not yet. I do have a feeling that we will meet though. I don’t believe that either one wants to belong to any scene. We just want to storm our own way, and forge our own true identity. It’s not our fault that people tend to drop everything in the same box.” Ville Pirenen, … Read More

Certainly no space cadets, Vektor‘s 2011 album ‘Outer Isolation’ was one of the most exciting metal releases of 2011, but things were set to go hyperdrive for the band in 2013. Jeff Wagner interviewed them for our second issue back in 2012 and met a band determined to go boldly where no band has gone before. We decided to unearth this interview from the now sold-out #2 in time for their London show on Sunday at The Underworld in Camden.

Not a fan of any of this retro-thrash stuff. How did cloning become acceptable in a style born as an outcast spinoff of traditional heavy metal? Thrash metal, in its prime, was a defiant gene splice of individuality. All the worthy bands of the 1980s put their own unique stamp on the form. Yeah, there were clones even back then, but in 2012 we get nothing but clones. Where is the modern band with lyrical depth and multi-dimensional music on the level of a Holy Terror? Where are the outliers like Blind Illusion and Realm? Where are the visionaries? To my ears, there’s but one modern band pushing the form forward, and that’s Vektor. Vektor is bad ass. Drawing from the glory days of … Read More

Earlier this year the group known as Uncle Acid & The Deadbeats released their fourth full-length ‘The Night Creeper’ on Rise Above. Forming in 2010 as the project of Uncle Acid himself, musical mastermind Kevin Starrs, the band put out their debut ‘Volume 1’ on CD-r and limited it to just 20 copies. A year later a split with Danava and another album, ‘Blood Lust’, this time limited to 100 copies saw their name uttered in underground heavy metal circles. Everyone wanted to know who they were and how they managed to so perfectly capture the occult rock vibe everyone was trying so hard to copy in the wake of Ghost’s universal success. It made sense that the band would sign up to Ghost’s label, Rise Above, for third album ‘Mind Control’ and that partnership saw the group tour the world, even at one point with and at the request of their musicals heroes, Black Sabbath. That a band from Cambridgeshire can go from hand-copying albums in their front room, making just 100 for friends, to being asked personally to open for rock Gods is testament to Uncle Acid’s unique appeal and their own path to greatness. As the band … Read More

Speedtrap are a five-piece speed metal band from Lappeenranta, Finland that formed in 2007. To date they have released a demo, an EP, a split EP with fellow Finns Death With A Dagger and a full-length, ‘Powerdose’ (2013 – Svart Records), which garnered positive reviews from numerous critics and found its way onto several year-end lists. This fall they are set to release, their second full-length under the Svart banner, ‘Straight Shooter’. According to guitarist Ville Valavuo, “We started in Lappeenranta, yes, but originally I was the only band member from there. The other members were from small towns surrounding it, and nowadays none of us live there anymore. Currently three of us live in Helsinki and the other two in Joensuu, cities which are quite far apart actually.” It was this collective isolation that provided early influence and inspiration while their love of all things heavy metal, especially the NWOBHM, provided the rest. “I would say our physical environment had a bigger influence when we started in 2007. There weren’t any bands like us in Lappeenranta, or even Eastern Finland for that matter, and actually the reason for starting a band like this was that no one else was doing it at … Read More