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

Rocka Rollas, Blazon Stone, Cloven Altar, Breitenhold… all bands under the guise of the mysterious Cederick Forsberg. So, how does this one Swedish guy manage to write and record so many (might we add, incredible, classic heavy metal sounding) albums and release them within weeks of each other? “Some people might be puzzled over this, but for me it really just comes down to a few simple things,” he laughs. “I don’t have a job!” Ced has a deep passion for creating music and the new Rocka Rollas album, ‘Pagan Ritual’, which is one of our favourites at Iron Fist HQ, continues on a more power/speed metal pace, based on the legacy of old Helloween and Blind Guardian. “Most of the songs were actually intended for that specific sound in mind. What I can guarantee is that we will never turn into an orchestral mastodon’t like Rhapsody or post-‘Nightfall…’ Blind Guardian, but I will push the boundaries within the rules of that sound. The guitars are the main voice for us, not lutes or harps!” Ced laughs again and continues; “I’m certainly not against trying to add new layers on top, but the foundation must be guitars.”

Avoiding the “preset … Read More

Wolverhampton’s Funeral Throne – a snarling, blood-covered wolfpack of blackened death misfits – have finally had their long-coming sophomore full-length vomited forth by Blut & Eisen Productions, but we spoke about the album as far back as Iron Fist #2. Here is that article, in full, re-printed online to celebrate the long, ugly, painful birth of this UKBM gospel

All the email said was: “THIS is heavy metal blackened by death from the UK. Black metal doesn’t need ‘saving’. It needs resurrecting.” And attached two simple, unmastered MP3s that, despite their lo-fi quality ignited something deep inside. At once notes of Watain and Marduk, second wave buzzing, and, yes, an ambitious yearning to “resurrect” the flame weaved its way around a dank, decrepit atmosphere. Something Winterfylleth said in Iron Fist #1 about black metal in the UK failing in its early promise to create some of the world’s most innovative and sinister music awakened the rage in the sender enough for them to send me such an email. And in return his music made me want to dig deeper. The anguished scream at the end of the song ‘Through Transforming Fire’ was enough to entice me to open the portal into the world of … Read More

The torture never stops over here at Iron Fist and Issue #16 is finally ready to be unleashed like the unruly wild child it is. With the ballcrushing tormentor himself, Blackie Lawless on the cover we are on our knees (okay, enough W.A.S.P puns now) with pride to have the veteran rock journalist, Martin Popoff on our team. He talked to Mr Lawless about new album ‘Golgotha’, his faith and how a career breeding horses was not to be.

Elsewhere, Louise Brown met the ultimate polymath and heavy metal hero Bruce Dickinson to talk about being utterly unstoppable and Guy Strachan talked to Big Boss from Root about the making of black metal blueprint ‘Zjevení’, while Toby Wright tracked down two founding members of Belgian heavy metal maniacs, Acid.

Black Trip told Kevin Stewart-Panko that they should be played on the radio (we agree), My Dying Bride confirmed they’re still as miserable as ever (we wouldn’t have it any other way) and we caught up with Dead Lord, Satan’s Satyrs, Black Breath, Christian Mistress and many more bands old and new in this issue – from Flight and Honeymoon Disease right through to Saxon and Denner/Shermann.

It’s sad that Iron Fist … 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

With the Germany heavy metal titans coming to London tonight for an incredible show at The Kentish Town Forum with the mighty NWOBHM survivors Hell, we dug up this snippet of an interview from Iron Fist #8 where we celebrated 30 years of being ‘Balls To The Wall’

There’s a moment near the end of the post-apocalyptic video for Accept’s breakthrough hit ‘Balls To The Wall’, right at the moment the song’s climactic bridge kicks in, when suddenly a massive gust of wind whips the hair of the band and rain starts pelting the camera lens. For a song already so thunderous, it’s a perfect moment, so much so that one could be led to believe it was choreographed, but as it happens, it was all just a stroke of luck. Frigid, frigid luck. “It was miserably cold,” says guitarist Wolf Hoffmann, speaking on the phone from his home in Nashville, chuckling about the lengths the German band would go to make an impression on the public. “It was in the fall, might have been November, that time of year when it’s wicked cold. Of course we had to wear all the cool outfits on the stage, the leather pants. And we … Read More

From the primitive scars carved out of early material Secrets Of The Moon have flourished and blossomed, never stagnating and always exploring new ground. One thing that was probably never expected though was the German troupe going conceptually in search of the sun. After all their last opus ‘Seven Bells’ was full of obsidian blackness owing not a small amount to the comparable nightmarish visions of Lars Van Trier’s ‘Antichrist’. Rest assured though, there is no case of lazy sunbathing going on here. Founding member sG illuminates us on the origins of the album and explains it comes from a very dark place indeed. “When we finished the ‘Seven Bells’ album/touring cycle our former bass player and close relative [LSK] committed suicide, our long-time drummer Thelemnar left the band and my mother died of cancer only one month before my daughter was born. I experienced the mysteries of farewell, death, life and birth to an extent I haven’t ever done before. That’s why the album was such a relief to write because I was unable to speak for a long period of time. It showed me how much I needed to make music to survive. The actual title ‘SUN’ is taken … Read More