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

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

In fair Sweden is where we set our scene. Two cities, both alike in dignity… you know the story. You’re either Stockholm or you’re Gothenburg, and this isn’t an article about football. Sweden may have taken the crown (no Johan Lindstrand related puns please!) when it came to Europe’s burgeoning death metal scene but the line was drawn depending on if you preferred the melodic thrash of Dark Tranquillity and At The Gates (in the red corner… Gothenburg) or the buzzsaw, Sunlight sound creeping out of the darkness in Stockholm thanks to bands like Entombed, Dismember and Treblinka.

But 45 miles north from the Swedish capital lies a previously untapped pool of death metal nihilism. In a university town of 140,000, Uppsala is the religious capital of Sweden so it’s unsurprising that it gave us early progenitors of Swedeath in Sarcasm and black metal bastards Unpure and later Watain. But the spotlight has turned away from the old guards of the major cities and is glaring on this unassuming hub of metal mania. Invidious, Graveless and Degial have put Uppsala on the death metal map and it’s showing the big boys of Stockholm and Gothenburg that the sounds of the suburbs … Read More