Last week, excited by the turning of the clock from one year to the next (and finally rid of our January hangovers) we previewed a brand new song from Finland’s Hard Action.

Promising that we would keep up the pace with a steady onslaught of new bands keeping us on our toes for 2017, we now present you Hard Action’s fellow countrymen, IRON MAGAZINE.

Now it doesn’t take a genius to figure out why a band with a name like Iron Magazine might prick our ears. But beyond the slightly gushing adoration of a name not unlike our own, we would’ve been slathering over this regardless being that it features Mr Jussi Lehtisalo, the mastermind behind Ektro Records and also Aktor, a band that saw Jussi team up with master of modern metal Professor Chris Black to give us a wildly underrated, AOR-tinged, slightly bonkers, time-travelling heavy metal dream back in 2013.

Equally bonkers, nostalgic and oh so mighty, the brand new ‘Queen Of Hell’ EP is out March 17 via Ektro and features the one-and-only Danko and John Calabrese from Danko Jones along with Jussi and his Circle/Falcon bandmate, Tomi Leppänen.

This is sunglasses-at-night rock, leather jacket sleeves rolled up and lasers set … Read More

Following on from her interview with the one and only Lita Ford we unleashed our metal maiden on THE metal maiden DORO PESCH to talk about her new 2-disc DVD ‘Strong And Proud’, her fans, her soul, smoking a pack of cigarettes in an hour with Lemmy and never doing karaoke!

Doro Pesch is all she is! 30 years on she reigns ‘Strong And Proud’, weaving her metal magik throughout the lands. She rules with a very metal but kind heart! In fact, it actually felt more like we were talking through a dream catcher than a phone line. I felt captured by her warrior spirit, innate positivity and wisdom; only Doro is real!

So how in the hell does this Teutonic maiden manage to keep on doing it or ‘’rockin’ zie haus” as she calls it?!? Hot rockin’ vocals, hot rockin’ headbangin’, martial arts, her commitment as an animal activist and UBER ALLES, her fans sure as hell have something to do with! (I guess you’ll have to watch the movie to find out…)

So who RSVP’d for the extensive one year ‘Strong And Proud’ tour party and where else but Wacken would be more apt for Doro to start spreading her unholy love? … 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

‘Holy Diver’, ‘The Last In Line’ and ‘Sacred Heart’ are regulars on the Iron Fist HQ turntable and while Dio’s passing in 2010 means that as a band Dio will never reform, however LAST IN LINE are as close as we’ll get. Formed in 2011 to play the songs they wrote between 1982 and 1985, Vinny Appice, Jimmy Bain and Vivian Campbell – the original Dio band – got together after 25 years along with Lynch Mob frontman Andrew Freeman to simply play the “hits”. But in 2013 they were offered a record deal that changed the way they viewed their future. Heading for the studio, the making of ‘Heavy Crown’ was to be the project to spur bassist Jimmy Bain into battling his substance abuse demons. Writing while in rehab he won and had been sober for over a year. But fate was the deal another card, as the band prepared to release the album they’d been working on for three years Jimmy Bain passed away. Devastated by the news, and wanting to STAND UP AND SHOUT that Last In Line are a band that deserve to be celebrated, we caught up with guitarist VIVIAN CAMPBELL to ask him what lies ahead for this … Read More

Rock supergroup Last In Line have teased us with a brand new song ‘Martyr’

It’s taken from the band’s debut album ‘Heavy Crown’, which is due out in February via Frontiers Records.

Featuring Dio member Vivian Campbell on guitar, who is currently on tour with Def Leppard, the band also boasts Vinny Appice on drums and bassist Jimmy Bain, alongside vocalist Andrew Freeman.

The band said on their Facebook page: “Happy to share with you another new song. Crank it up loud.”

 

Making it to three decades for any band is a rarity, but when you’ve had to overcome near-death experiences, small-town bullying and worse of all, the grunge boom, 30 years is most definitely something to celebrate. Louise Brown talks to the queen of survival about how there’s 30 more years in her yet

When did you first discover your passion for music? Doro: “I was three-years-old. The first real experience that totally got me hooked was Little Richard’s ‘Lucille’. That song was so high energy. When I listened to it I thought, ‘I want to do that, I want to sing’. Later I had some contact with some older boys. They had posters of Alice Cooper, Sweet, Slade, T-Rex. I was always singing along to their hard rock records and they thought it was very funny. I was screaming my heart out, I could really yell. They were shocked, they said, ‘Wow, how can a little girl make that noise?’. I was fascinated with all the guys with long hair, like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple and the glam rock. And then there was Suzi Quatro, the first girl I heard, I loved her. Metal didn’t exist and when I was 15 then … Read More

With albums from Atlantean Kodex, Argus and Age Of Taurus riding high in our albums of the year lists, and of course the final ever album from the true masters, Cathedral, it seems that traditional doom, steeped in the roots of heavy metal, is, once again, genre du jour, and now Esslingen’s Mountain Throne are joining the ranks with their debut album ‘Stormcoven’ on Cyclone Empire. Forming in 2009 guitarist A tells Iron Fist that he, “always wanted to have a band playing this ancient kind of metal” and had been writing songs in that vein for years. Drummer J joins A in the doom band Mirror Of Deception, while cracking singer F and bassist S are in the power metal band From Beyond, so the cachet is hot for this German four-piece. When asked what attracted them to the traditional doom genre, A says firmly, “It’s the choice of champions really, isn´t it? There is a sense of a tradition… knowing where things came from and how they developed. Real heavy metal and classic hard and heavy rock are incredibly soulful. In real metal you definitely have that spirit. For me, this magic is epitomised in the songs of … Read More

Blazing a burning path in the ‘80s, LEATHER LEONE fronted bands like Rude Girl, Malibu Barbi and the mighty CHASTAIN. But after a 12 year break, where she felt side-lined by the over-sexualised music industry, she’s back with a vengeance and SARAH KITTERINGHAM finds out that the reign of Leather is still going strong…

 

Chastain could have been, but sure as shit should not be, one of those bands consigned to the “who the hell is that?” bin. Lead by guitarist, songwriter and “guitar god” David T Chastain, they blasted through the ‘80s, combining classic heavy metal with the driving, melodic, anthem qualities of power metal. Fronted by the snarling Leather Leone – whose style is oddly comparable to Metal Church’s David Wayne – the band lost their footing in the early ‘90s. Tired of working her ass off and not seeing results, Leone departed. The band’s bassist and drummer followed suit. Although new members rounded out the lineup, the magic was gone and over the next two decades, Chastain releases were sadly sub-standard.

Then something changed, and Chastain has now returned in a classic guise: Leather is back from her self-imposed musical exile, bassist Mike Skimmerhorn has returned, and Mr David … Read More

We take the rough with the smooth here at Iron Fist – you cannot have one without the other. And with every celebration there is an element of tragedy, or for the optimists there is a cause for celebration in every moment of sadness. We started Issue 5 of Iron Fist in a celebratory mood – one of metal’s most important albums – ‘Holy Diver – was about to turn 30, but in talking to lead guitarist Vivian Campbell we learned how miserable the making of that landmark record made him, spilling the beans of the well-documented fall-out between him and Ronnie James Dio.

We also wanted to celebrate the life and music of one of metal’s most important guitarists, Jeff Hanneman – Reign In Peace!

But most of all we wanted to celebrate tenacity and perseverance, a thread running through interviews with Hungary’s underground cult thrashers, Tormentor and underrated NWOBHM heroes, Pagan Altar, Satan and Virtue. While Tormentor, Pagan Altar and Virtue were noticed long after they’d called it quits, Satan journeyed through the hard times through many guises before reforming under their original name and making one of the albums of their career.

In this issue we also speak to lifelong … Read More

You know life has taken a surreal turn for the better when you’re at an invite-only Iron Maiden party and Doro has just cadged a fag off you (“I don’t normally smoke,” she whispers conspiratorially). Doro is regaling us with tales about her travels. She’s an incredible raconteur, she holds court making us howl with stories about fans bringing her beetles to eat in South East Asia – and all I’m thinking is, wow, this is Doro. She was in Warlock, she was the first woman to front a band at Monsters At Rock. She’s a legend. That was years ago now, we’ve met many times since, but I’ll never shake the feeling of being a “fan”. The dictionary describes being a fan as “a person with an extreme and uncritical enthusiasm or zeal (as in religion or politics)”, but I think they’re missing the words “as in music”, because that extreme enthusiasm manifests itself in an uncontrollable manner when you press play on a new album or watch a musician in the live arena. A piece of music or concert can conjure up the time and place when you first saw or heard that particular artist and take you … Read More