We’ve got to admit something. We slept on Power Trip. We didn’t cover them with their debut album ‘Manifest Decimation’ back in 2013. We thought they were a hardcore band. They are a hardcore band, in ethics, culture and history, but they’re a hardcore band that plays furious thrash a la Sacrilege, Nuclear Assault and early Megadeth. We can feel Dan Lilker tutting at us from afar.

Frontman Riley Gale says he doesn’t mind. He understands. “You look at classic albums like ‘Behind The Realms Of Madness’ by Sacrilege or ‘Best Wishes’ or ‘Age Of Quarrel’ by Cro-Mags, that’s the apex of what I like about aggressive music and the band feels that way too, but we’re very much trying to be ourselves,” he says trying to make us feel good about ourselves, but still making us still feel like idiots for sleeping on such a vital new voice in thrash metal. “Any band wants to have their own identity but our band is almost based on not having an identity so to speak. It’s an interesting place for us to be in ‘cos as we’ve got bigger, people have asked, ‘Well, what are you about? What’s your image?’ and well … Read More

Snotty, brash, Entombed and Darkthrone worshipping metalpunks OKKULTOKRATI are about to lay waste to the UK next week with a short tour of London, Sheffield and Birmingham. With a new video for ‘Magic People’ from their blistering new album ‘Raspberry Dawn’ just released we caught up with the band to find out what songs will be on the van’s clapped out cassette player as they drive between the homes of Sabbath and Priest. Out now on Southern Lord, their label’s boss Greg Anderson described them best: “Fucked up in all the right places! Super original and I can say that I’ve definitely never heard anything like this! Visions of Bauhaus and Darkthrone listening to Joy Division albums by torchlight in the dark forests of Oslo.” Actually that’s something we can imagine Fenriz doing… enjoy the sounds of darkness

SIDE A

The Spits – ‘Tomorrow’s Children’ “This is our favourite band.”

Emperor – ‘Cosmic Keys to My Creations And Times’ “Imagine being 17 and writing songs like this…”

New Order – ‘Dreams Never End’ “We covered this song on all of our tours in 2014. I like to think we took something from that song, and New Order in general, with us into the new album.”

Alan Vega – ‘Ghost Rider’ “Obvious pick, … Read More

“When you look at death from death’s perspective, you realise the pettiness of humanity. death cares not for your grievances or troubles, it comes to take you when you least expect. It is the power that supersedes our human creations: religion, politics, philosophy,” offers Todd Burdette, he of Tragedy/His Hero Is Gone fame and now one half of Nighfell, the band he formed two years ago with Tim Call (Aldebaran, The Howling Wind). The power of death casts a grim shadow over Nightfell’s stunning debut for Southern Lord, ‘The Living Ever Mourn’. “Envisioned and executed in a period of grief, delirium, and loss of life,” according to Burdette the creation of ‘The Living Ever Mourn’ was a cathartic experience, telling us “Catharsis is the primary force, death is close behind. We lament the lost, but we still breathe.” This defiant statement defines their debut album in its entirety, as even though death is laid bare in all its stark reality, there is hope and strength to be taken from ‘The Living Ever Mourn’. In terms of sound, it is an open-ended album, one which spans doom, death and black metal – but not exclusively so, as there’s plenty of punk aggression, … Read More