The notorious Cleveland-based Midnight recently unleashed another punked-up metal massacre with the ‘Shox Of Violence’ EP via Hells Headbangers. It features four new songs and acts as a stop gap between the last album ‘No Mercy For Mayhem’ (released in 2014) and the upcoming new full-length. There is a compilation with the same title, which has also recently just come out, featuring the new EP plus a veritable feast of bonus cover songs, demo tracks and live recordings, including a couple of Venom covers, a host of covers by punk bands such as The Spits and Pagans, as well as Girlschool, Quiet Riot amongst others, all of which have been given the dirty, unholy and rotten Midnight treatment. We caught up with mainman/guitarist/vocalist/songwriter Athenar to find out more about the EP, compilation and the current activities of the band.

You have a new EP and compilation ‘Shox Of Violence’, can you elaborate on what this new release contains and what the readers can expect in comparison to the last full-length? Athenar: It’s a four song EP of tunes to blast out of your stereo! Please don’t expect much, keep your expectations in life low; it’s much easier that way. I don’t wanna … Read More

Twin innovators who forged metal in their own wayward images with nary a thought for either compromise or common sense, BUDGIE and DIAMOND HEAD were enormous influences on the early days of Metallica, with Dave Mustaine even claiming that it was his love of the former that sealed the deal when it came to his gig with the Four Horsemen. Yet, as Diamond Head’s Brian Tatler confirms, they both might have been forgotten had it been for the aforementioned San Fran saviours. Never fear; interviews with both Tatler – who takes us back to the making of the debut ‘Lightning To The Nations’ – and Budgie frontman Burke Shelley in our second anniversary issue mark the perfect reminder of a maverick spirit that embodies why we started Iron Fist in the first place.

Acrimoniously ejected from Metallica in 1983, it didn’t take long for guitarist Dave Mustaine to saddle up and form MEGADETH with a glint of revenge in his eye. By May 1985 he had delivered the ultimate comeback in the form of ‘Killing Is My Business… And Business Is Good’, with more spite, more speed and more “state of the art heavy metal”than the majority of that era’s rivetheads could believe. With the album reissued this month, Jim Martin talks to Dave Mustaine, Dave Ellefson and man-on-the-scene Brian … Read More