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

Once upon a time, there were two brothers with a unique musical aura and vision. Archon Vorskaath created Zemial in 1989 and Eskarth The Dark One created Agatus in 1992. They were both swapping ideas and each one helped the other capture their creativity. Starting in Greece, then moving to Australia, back to Greece again, now The Dark is based in the United Kingdom with a brand new album under the title ‘The Eternalist’. Coming out on the mighty Hells Headbangers Records it is already the subject of high-praise amongst those in the know.

This third Agatus installment shows confidence in the marrying of the creator’s two loves; traditional heavy metal and orthodox black metal. From the debut black metal bite (‘Dawn Of Martyrdom’, 1996) to the NWOBHM-tinged progression of the second album (‘The Weaving Fates’, 2002) and now transcending beyond both paths, Agatus in 2016 exercises freedom in expression. We grabbed the opportunity to ask him how and why he chose now to return…

It’s almost 14 years since your last album, with an intermission of two EPs in between. What have you been doing all these years? The Dark: As you may know I have been involved in various projects/bands and … Read More

“We had been discussing a name change for a couple of months prior to playing the Noctis festival,” muses Lester Skelter, drummer and vocalist for Western Canadian traditional metallers Spell. A continuation of the NWOBHM metal lineage begun by the young trio’s previous act Stryker, Spell is the sum of this basic equation: Stryker + ‘70s prog + ‘60s psychedelic imagery. Confused yet? So were we…

“When it turned out that Striker from Edmonton (they were featured in Iron Fist Issue 9) got booked on the same show… that was kind of the final thing that made us go ahead with the name change,” says Skelter. Indeed, the act played the final Noctis 666 in September of 2013, and was somewhat humorously double billed by a cheeky promoter.

“Although really, underneath that, the name change had been a long time coming as well, because the initial name reflected more of the ‘80s heavy metal style that we started playing. We’ve taken on a lot of new influences and gone in a new direction and become better and more capable players, and so we thought the new aesthetic and direction we were going in needed a new name.”

Far from embarrassed by their initial … Read More