So, here we are, issue 7, a whole year survived, and in a certain respect we’re back where we begun. Erik Danielsson of Watain is back on the cover, marking the completion of a circle that begun when he and I first discussed the idea of Iron Fist back in June 2012. When Erik moved back to his hometown of Uppsala earlier this year our awesome photographer Ester Segarra and I were invited to hang out and meet the bands of the Uppsala Metal Of Death circle, including Degial, Reveal and the incredible In Solitude, who just served up an album of the year contender in ‘Sister’. We got a chance to talk to Erik and Pelle and Gottfrid Ahman about creating both the new Watain and In Solitude albums at the same time and how it helped cast in stone two vital slabs of contemporary heavy metal.

Motörhead, the band that gave us our name, are also back within our pages, this time thanks to Paul Schwarz’s fantastic interview with Phil Campbell about their new album ‘Aftershock’. Hell, even Kim pulled off an amazing coup in interviewing Mystifier, something she told me she wanted to do when I asked her … Read More

Even if yours truly’s once reliable mind was largely intoxicated and thus not fully functioning, I was still taken by surprise when, back in 2010 while visiting Stockholm, Nifelheim’s Tyrant revealed that he, David Blömqvist and Fred Estby (from the then recently deceased Dismember) had just formed a “classic sounding hard rock band à la Rainbow” and were already penning some tunes while looking for a singer. Three years later, with sadly Tyrant now out of the picture due to lack of time, but now with an actual name (Dagger, suggested by former Entombed mainman Nicke Andersson, who also designed their logo) and a first EP (‘Mainline Riders’), that unlikely prospect has become reality. And yes, it couldn’t further from the HM-2 empowered brute force of Swedish ancient dödsmetal, as if after two decades of playing ‘Skin Her Alive’ at full speed those boys had needed a break.

“Yeah, it was something like that,” confirms drummer and ringleader Estby. “After Dismember went on hiatus before breaking up for good, I did the Necronaut album with me playing most of the instruments and friends like Tompa from At The Gates or Dread from Tormented doing the vocals, but I think it was … Read More