Metallica: Hardwired … to Self-Destruct review – their best riffs for decades

Metallica have just made their finest record in 25 years. Hardwired … to Self Destruct is by no means perfect: at 88 minutes it’s far too long and sags dreadfully during its second half, but when it’s good, it’s almost … Continue reading →

Tanya Tagaq: Retribution review – apocalyptic growls and lupine snuffles

Related: Tanya Tagaq: the polar punk who makes Björk sound tame Inuit throat-singer Tanya Tagaq won Aboriginal album of the year at Canada’s Juno awards last year, but she is unlikely to end up on the coffee tables of right-on … Continue reading →

Korn: The Serenity of Suffering review – darker, nastier and more commanding

The return of guitarist Brian “Head” Welch in 2013 clearly made a huge difference to Korn’s collective state of mind. What the Bakersfield veterans have needed more than anything in recent years, however, is an album that reignites the untamed … Continue reading →

Alter Bridge: The Last Hero review – exhausting bombast from arena-metal tryhards

The main problem with Alter Bridge’s sixth album becomes apparent about six tracks in. Cradle to the Grave brings a few moments of delicate restraint to the party, but up to that point every last second of The Last Hero is purposefully, … Continue reading →

Opeth: Sorceress review – metal masters click into higher gear

Opeth – who are sufficiently popular to headline shows at Wembley Arena, Radio City Music Hall and Sydney Opera House in the coming months – are audibly a band with the wind in their sails here. Sorceress is wonderfully exuberant, … Continue reading →

Russian Circles: Guidance review – towering vortices of foreboding noise

If you were looking for a fitting soundtrack to the disaster movie of your life, one that uplifts but also shakes you to your core, Chicago instrumental trio Russian Circles can provide. On their sixth album they have ditched the mathy … Continue reading →

Gojira: Magma review – hulking grandeur from modern metal greats

Twenty years after forming in their hometown of Bayonne in France, Gojira’s slow but steady rise shows no signs of fizzling out. Magma strikes another ferocious blow for originality and intelligence in heavy music, as its creators embrace a greater … Continue reading →

Rock on the Range: the 10 best moments from Rob Zombie to Deftones

Shinedown made a tribute to Prince, Disturbed returned after a four-year hiatus and Red Hot Chili Peppers gave a proper sendoff at the sold-out Ohio festival

Hatebreed: The Concrete Confessional review – vital, ferocious heavy music

Having walked a straight and narrow musical path for 22 years, Hatebreed might reasonably expect to find that their brutish metallic hardcore formula has succumbed to the law of diminishing returns. There must be, one assumes, only so many ways … Continue reading →

AC/DC review – Axl Rose brings menace as rock legends pull off a triumph

The Guns N’ Roses singer might have been confined to a ‘throne’, but he delivered a masterly first appearance fronting AC/DC

Metallica: Kill ‘Em All; Ride the Lightning review – metal giants’ early years revisited

The first two albums by the Californian thrash titans get a welcome deluxe boxset treatment

Deftones: Gore review – metal that seduces instead of assails

Long since distanced from their early nu-metal roots, Deftones are these days a far more intriguing proposition: a metal band more than happy to dip their toes into the ambient and experimental genres. Gore is the group’s first album since … Continue reading →

Babymetal review – J-pop teen metallers come of age

In their biggest UK venue to date, the sugarpop pint-sized idols prove they’re no gimmick but a metal phenomenon on a mission

Babymetal: Metal Resistance review – genre mashup breaks all the rules

The J-metal teenagers’ second album is a bewildering, but ultimately brilliant, concoction

Black Mountain: IV album review – surrender to the drone, if you can

You could probably guess roughly what Black Mountain sound like from the cover of their fourth album, which features, variously, a mysterious helmeted/masked figure, a little girl playing, a flaming plinth and Concorde. It’s time to set the controls for … Continue reading →