“I lost my job in Sweden and I decided to just go and try to find myself.” Blues Pills singer Elin Larsson was 21 when she made that decision. She packed a bag, left her hometown and followed the trail to Laurel Canyon, a journey taken by many in the ’60s, heading West to where music was at the heart of LA’s counter-culture. But this wasn’t 1967, this was 2011. When Joni Mitchell sung the words “I am on a lonely road, and I am travelling. Looking for the key to set me free” she had no idea how decades later voiceless girls with songs in their hearts would head down the same road, with the same yearning to be heard.

“I had this picture of California,” Elin says, sitting in a London pub, in awe of the opportunities given to her since that fateful trip. “I liked all the awesome bands that once were there; like Janis Joplin. The ’60s there were so cool. I thought I always wanted to go there. I always wanted to see California.”

Once in LA it wouldn’t take long for Elin to meet drummer Cory Berry and bassist Zack Anderson, although the shy Swede won’t admit … Read More

So, here we are, issue 7, a whole year survived, and in a certain respect we’re back where we begun. Erik Danielsson of Watain is back on the cover, marking the completion of a circle that begun when he and I first discussed the idea of Iron Fist back in June 2012. When Erik moved back to his hometown of Uppsala earlier this year our awesome photographer Ester Segarra and I were invited to hang out and meet the bands of the Uppsala Metal Of Death circle, including Degial, Reveal and the incredible In Solitude, who just served up an album of the year contender in ‘Sister’. We got a chance to talk to Erik and Pelle and Gottfrid Ahman about creating both the new Watain and In Solitude albums at the same time and how it helped cast in stone two vital slabs of contemporary heavy metal.

Motörhead, the band that gave us our name, are also back within our pages, this time thanks to Paul Schwarz’s fantastic interview with Phil Campbell about their new album ‘Aftershock’. Hell, even Kim pulled off an amazing coup in interviewing Mystifier, something she told me she wanted to do when I asked her … Read More