Stating that their influences are simply Pentagram and Johnny Winter, Brutus are from Oslo, Norway, but feature three Swedes amongst their ranks. Back in Iron Fist #16, as part of our special report on modern bands with that oh-so-vintage sound, guitarist Johan Forsberg told us how he and Krille Hellqvist talked about starting a band in that vein and found Kim Molander, Knut-Ole Mathisen and Jokke Stenby in 2006 to make it a reality.

“We started to jam and drink some beers every Saturday for a while,” he explains. “Good times and the songs kept coming. We released two full-length albums and right now we’re mixing the third.” That was then, and this is now as that third album ‘Wandering Blind’ is ready and being streamed right here at Iron Fist.

Talking of their influences beyond Messrs Leibling and Winter, Johan tells us that “bands like Jerusalem, Bang and of course, Sabbath was in the early stage of Brutus, but we’ve got our own style of more bluesy heavy rock now. We all listen to Grand Funk, Deep Purple that I think coloured our songs too. A lot of blues bands too, I listen maybe more to the Peter Green Fleetwood Mac, Bluesbreakers, … Read More

Marduk, Immolation and Origin @ The Fleece, Bristol

Weekday gigs are often strange affairs and especially so in Bristol where the local metal scene will invariably turn out in droves for bands such as Alestorm but often overlook the more extreme end of the spectrum, ironically leaving some gigs as barren as the graveyards and mortuaries that provide a wealth of lyrical inspiration. Luckily for Marduk however, this Wednesday night sees a crowd who are more than willing to have the midweek blues literally beaten out of them, Scandinavian style.

First up is Origin, with their brand of technical death metal that seems to this scribe to be an odd choice of opener for a legendary Swedish black metal band but regardless their ultra-tight, hyper-fast metal elicits a lot of movement from the crowd.

It’s been four years since New York death metal powerhouse Immolation graced UK shores and it’s like déjà vu as that too was in support of Marduk. It might be all genial banter with the crowd between tracks but when it comes to it this band can dish out an arse-kicking. As with every performance of theirs, the group are as tight as the nun’s … Read More

Although having only formalised a line-up and commenced rehearsing in January 2013, Sheol have already made waves; their ‘Live Demo MMXIII’ and mini-album ‘Sepulchral Ruins Below The Temple’ proffering some particularly vicious and cavernous blasts of prime, unholy death metal or, as founding member A.B.S describes it, “sepulchral death metal rising from the primordial Abyss.”

With a healthy and growing reputation, wholehearted support from both Iron Bonhead and Invictus as well as a delivery aesthetic that follows in the footsteps of the Father Befouled and Encoffination school of deathliness, great things are expected of the British band. With such a gaping, hellish and bleak sound adding to the audial decimation of their forceful songwriting, Sheol sound keen to maintain their individuality. Kat ‘Shevil’ Gillham discovered more about these tyrants…

Hails A.B.S.! Please give Iron Fist a quick background history on the band. “She’ol was formed around 2012 by me and our former drummer, A.H.S. (Vorage). We both have a longer experience in black metal but She’ol began initially out of ideas which did not fit elsewhere, closer to death metal inspired by Incantation, Sadistic Intent, early Darkthrone, Autopsy and Absu – but so too was there a significant difference in vision. … Read More

SINDROME… the lost thrash band of Illinois… who despite featuring members of Terminal Death, Death Strike, Master and Devastation hit brick wall after brick wall in their quest for thrash metal mania. Now unlocked from the crypt these underdogs of the first wave thrash movement have a second chance…

It seems hard to believe in this day and age of bands and labels apparently releasing every last recording known to mankind, where even the most rudimentary efforts get pressed up onto limited, multiple-versioned formats, that there was a time when putting out a proper record often (but not always) meant paying your dues in the form of demo recordings, gigging and building up a fan base. The metal world has thrown up a long list of groups whose demo and live recordings have gone on to be held up in high esteem, but also served as the only documents of that band’s existence.

One such band, revered from the release of their debut demo in 1987 to this very day, to the point that Century Media has pulled together a compilation of the band’s two demo recordings is Sindrome. Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, the band members already had a pedigree prior to … Read More

To many, doom is the molasses-thick primordial sludge found at the lower reaches of the guitar’s tonal range. For others, it’s the molasses-thick primordial sludge found around rim of their favourite bong. For Alastair Riddell of heavy metal doom band, Brule, “doom is the ‘Tempter’ by Trouble; anything else is just an added bonus”; an austere definition perhaps, but one that chimes with the existential obscurity that underpins the genre.

Reminiscent of Pentagram with Kyuss and, indeed, Trouble, London’s Brule will more than satisfy orthodox doom tastes but it is their broad creative palate, taking in psychedelic rock and meat-n-potatoes ’70s rock, that sets them apart from the Wizard-Bong-Witch cliches of much that passes for contemporary doom.

“The main influences are the Maiden, Rainbow, Grand Funk, Trouble, Scorpions, WASP, Vitus, Pentagram, Bang, Rush, Saxon, Witchfinder General, Purple and Gillan’s solo albums, Accept and Manowar,” Riddell lists. “However there is also stuff like the obvious ’60s bands – The Who, Kinks, Stones, MC5 and even the Beatles, but also a lot of the proto-metal and early heavy prog bands as well. The genre name is not really all that important; the quality is what matters, whether it’s Budgie or Bathory, Acid or Aphrodites … Read More

Apologies to the guy in Black Viper who our editor attacked outside The Little Devil in Tilburg during Roadburn Festival. She overheard him telling some guys in the smoking area that he was in this “new band called Black Viper” and she just sort of grabbed him and scratched him, which is kind of her way of saying ‘Your band is fucking great’. They are. Marek Steven is less violent so we sent him to find out more about them.

Storming With Vengeance demo is great. Can you introduce us to Black Viper? Cato: The band actually started around 2012 as a one-man project because I made some riffs which didn’t fit into [his other band] Deathhammer, but I thought they were good enough to make something out of. I then made some demo tracks without vocals but didn’t release them. I also started to record an EP in 2013 but that also didn’t get finished. Then I moved to Oslo in 2013 right where Arild and Christoffer live. I hooked up with them and Black Viper finally became a full band. Then we rehearsed without vocals for a while – as we couldn`t find anyone who could sing – and we … Read More

…MORBID SAINT are back and Century Media have dusted off their arsenal of thrash classics for all you vinyl fiends. With debut album ‘SPECTRUM OF DEATH’ on wax again and a deluxe CD reissue that includes unreleased demos and the remastered version of lost album ‘DESTRUCTION SYSTEM’, GUY STRACHAN tracked down guitarist JAY VISSER to find out how it feels to be Morbid again…

“It truly is incredible that after all these years this band is where it is. We never played or wrote these songs with the intent that 25 plus years later we’d still be playing them, talking about them, or performing them live all over the world. We were just a bunch of kids hanging out that sucked at playing our instruments, without any direction or too much thought about what we were doing other than we were having a lot of fun doing it.”

Despite their stated lack of knowledge about what they were doing, Morbid Saint would go on to become one of the thrash underground’s best-kept secrets for many years after their initial tenure. Formed in the small town of Sheboyhan, Wisconsin in November 1984, the quartet of guitarists Jay Visser and Jim Fergades, drummer Lee … Read More

Italian masters of occult horror doom metal Abysmal Grief, who formed in 1996, have reissued their latest album ‘Strange Rites Of Evil’ on cassette via Horror Records and after seeing them at Roadburn Festival where they stole the crown “band of the weekend” (according to our editor, Louise) we needed to interrogate them about the album and their future plans. Known for their dark, occult imagery and lyrics, Kat Gillham caught up with guitarist Regen Graves to get his take on the band’s themes and the state of modern doom. 

Your excellent new album ‘Strange Rites Of Evil’ was unleashed upon mankind recently, please tell the readers what they can expect from it in your words.  The new album was released on digipack CD by Terror From Hell Records on November 2, while the LP was unleashed by Horror Records on Christmas eve and just now on cassette. Yes, we’re satisfied with the whole work, and I can say this is exactly what Abysmal Grief look like today: a punch in the face of positiveness and life.

Please tell us a bit about the lyrical concepts on this album, what initially made you so interested in such dark and esoteric subjects? This album is quite different … Read More

Okay, back up a bit. Let me explain how this interview came to be. This is the first in a new series of conversations between LA heavy maiden, Joanna Marie Beaumont. Jo is a full-on heavy metal queen but never would I thought to have asked her to write for Iron Fist, until one drunken taxi ride from our hotel to Brofest back in 2014. There we are, in the back of this cab and she’s chatting away to the driver. But the end of the ride she knows his whole fucking life story, the names of his kids, how he ended up pushing pedal for a living and I just had a lightbulb moment. Fast-forward a few months, a move to LA and we finally convinced Jo to hit the phone and chat to stiletto queen, edge-dancing, dressed to kill, lady-killer LITA FORD 

Long Beach Jailbait to Hollywood Heartbreaker, nothing’s gonna stop Lita, not even a flat on her Dodge Ram. Leather on Lace, she continues to hold her title as the ultimate Hard Rock Queen and OH yes, she’s still Out for Blood with her New(old) album ‘Time Capsule’.

Awarded ‘Certified Legend’ in 2014 by Guitar Player Magazine, Lita plays … Read More

It’s been a difficult time for heavy metal of late. We knew he was sick but Ian Fraser Kilmister, with that indomitable spirit, wouldn’t let us, his fans, down. Recording albums and playing live right up until the end, it’s as if we knew the day would come but neither he, nor us, would accept that crushing fate.

For weeks there seemed like an outpouring of collective grief. Even when the godlike Bowie and then the rock of which so much of heavy metal is built, Jimmy Bain, passed away it all got caught up in this exhausting wave of despair.

Doing a new issue of Iron Fist felt meaningless; we were named after a Motörhead song and now Motörhead was no more. While every other magazine poured over the details of Lemmy’s life, we wanted to mourn the band as well as the man and through our haze turned to the only person we could think of, Jase Of Spades from the blog 366 Days Of Motörhead to help us both with our office playlists and tribute. In this issue he reminds us of the many albums, live recordings and rare tracks that the ‘Head have left as their … Read More