For the country that gave heavy metal to the world we don’t do so well in the way of big festivals. Gone are the hairspray and cocaine-fuelled glory days of the ’80s when the titans of the genre would descend on Castle Donington for the Monsters of Rock festival and full-scale tours spanning the length and breadth of the island seemed ten a penny. We don’t fare badly but nowadays Donington is more synonymous with the Download Festival than being home to the real heavyweights (bar Sabbath and Maiden naturally), and you’ll be lucky if a UK tour is comprised of more than four or five dates.

Metal is built firmly on its underground scene – this has been the case since time immemorial – and as always it falls to this underground to remind the true of what metal really means. Lucky for us here in the UK then that the fans are taking the power back, and though unable to parade a collection of bands on the scale of Monsters Of Rock, the likes of Brofest in Newcastle and Live Evil Festival in London are standing defiant in the wake of mediocrity and plastic music by showcasing raw talent … Read More

Ultimate rattlehead Dave Mustaine has been spending too much time starting a Holy War instead of writing songs likes it. Proving lately that there’s not much in the skull beneath the skin, Jim Martin reads him his last rites.

At the age of 14, Dave Mustaine was a strange kind of hero to me. Somewhere between and beyond the Medusa-like tangle of blonde locks and tassled leather of his image, the badass dystopia of Megadeth’s name, the eldritch shrieks and grunts of his voice and the speedfreak shred of their music lay an anti-establishment figure; an ornery freak with an axe to grind. Mustaine was an outsider and an underdog-ousted from the world’s most exciting metal band and possessed of such a malicious fury in plotting his revenge that the febrile clangour of his music was hammered into a scary overdrive. Moreover, as a listen to the sarcastic croak of ‘Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying’s title track would seemingly testify, he seemed unwilling to play by anyone’s rules, forging his own narky path and god help all that crossed him on the way.

It was obvious right from the outset that Dave had something of a predisposition to act like a prannet in … Read More