Snotty, brash, Entombed and Darkthrone worshipping metalpunks OKKULTOKRATI are about to lay waste to the UK next week with a short tour of London, Sheffield and Birmingham. With a new video for ‘Magic People’ from their blistering new album ‘Raspberry Dawn’ just released we caught up with the band to find out what songs will be on the van’s clapped out cassette player as they drive between the homes of Sabbath and Priest. Out now on Southern Lord, their label’s boss Greg Anderson described them best: “Fucked up in all the right places! Super original and I can say that I’ve definitely never heard anything like this! Visions of Bauhaus and Darkthrone listening to Joy Division albums by torchlight in the dark forests of Oslo.” Actually that’s something we can imagine Fenriz doing… enjoy the sounds of darkness

SIDE A

The Spits – ‘Tomorrow’s Children’ “This is our favourite band.”

Emperor – ‘Cosmic Keys to My Creations And Times’ “Imagine being 17 and writing songs like this…”

New Order – ‘Dreams Never End’ “We covered this song on all of our tours in 2014. I like to think we took something from that song, and New Order in general, with us into the new album.”

Alan Vega – ‘Ghost Rider’ “Obvious pick, … Read More

When we came up with the idea of doing a Mix Tape idea for the Iron Fist website there were three people we knew we needed to ask. Jason Decay and Ian Chains from Cauldron were a given, at least one of them were bound to put Bleak House on there, and the other was Ryan Waste. Now the latter has a brand new album out for his snotty speed metal punks BAT, we knew the time was right to hit him up. Ryan has spent the summer driving a taxi (seriously, read the latest Livin’ Fast column in Iron Fist #17) and on the tarmac in Europe with his thrash comrades Municipal Waste so we know his ear is gonna be trained to the right songs for the right road so we asked him to gather together some of the songs that inspired BAT’s latest album, ‘Wings Of Chains‘. It was through MW that we first met Ryan and got to know just how vast, and how perfect for the party, his music taste is. Buckle up and hit play!

SIDE A:

SLANDER ‘Lonely Nights’ Let’s set the mood here. I feed off the sound of desperation in music, so what better way to … Read More

Last week, Black Country heavy metal minstrels Dark Forest unveiled their fourth album ‘Beyond The Veil’ (Cruz Del Sur). Whipping up stirring paeans to nature, the seasons and the mighty, gallant genre of power metal, these Brits deservedly took their place among the great and the good who are putting the traditional metal values at the heart of their song-craft.

Falling in love with each and every song on the album, we cornered main song-writer, lyricist, guitarist and all-round English eccentric to find out what was on the Walkman on those long meanders through the woods to inspire such an collection of heavy metal anthems. Here is the tape he made for us, if you need us we’ll be in the forest…

Side A

Isen Torr – ‘Mighty & Superior’ This is heavy, thundering metal at its best from the genius that is Rich Walker (Solstice). Full of energy and power!

Blind Guardian – ‘The Soulforged’ I always loved the way Blind Guardian infuse elements of medieval and folk melodies into their music, great example here.

Forefather – ‘Miri It Is’ A brilliant take on a Middle English poem written in 1225.

Iron Maiden – ‘Dance Of Death’ Maiden always has to be in there! I chose ‘Dance Of Death’ … Read More

We don’t want to make such a bold statement just past the halfway point, but Jesus H Cobbett, the latest Hammers Of Misfortune album, ‘Dead Revolution’ (via Metal Blade) will be hard to top in the end of year polls. If last album ’17th Street’ was HOM gone even more prog, ‘Dead Revolution’ is the band’s violent kneejerk reaction. It’s thrashy, it’s angry, it’s deadly – and that could be largely down to the fact that the band have been, in no particular order, involved in the Occupy movement which rightly has them mighty pissed-off, involved in a gnarly motorbike crash, losing sleep with the addition of a baby Cobbett, putting out crusty black metal under the guise of Vhöl, being kept busy with incredible death metal side-project Vastum, playing doom with The Worship Of Silence and joining Death Angel.

However all parties have regrouped for album number #6 (well, #7 if you count ‘Fields’ and ‘Church Of Broken Glass’ as two albums) and it’s amazing. Imagine Slough Feg gone even more bonkers; if Pink Floyd had a heavy metal cousin, it would be Hammers Of Misfortune. Mindblown by the layers on ‘Dead Revolution’ we just wanted to find out what the ingredients were … Read More