ArcTanGent festival – metal at its spine-tingling best
The likes of Cult of Luna, Amenra and Tesseract grace the return of a prized weekend of heavy and progressive talent
Supersonic festival 2022 review – joy and fury from an inspiring music community
From Grove’s queer swagger to Circle’s ecological visions and Divide and Dissolve’s call for decolonisation, this thrilling underground fest has radical utopianism at its heart
Nova Twins: Supernova review – explosive wit and anger from UK’s finest rock duo
The genre-splicing pair’s sharp, concise songwriting makes for a mindblowing blast of distorted noise-pop – and destroys the narrative about who gets to make rock music
Download festival review – monster metal weekend roars back to full volume
At capacity again after two years of Covid, jubilant crowds greet showstopping turns from full-glam Kiss to musically flashy Iron Maiden and the fury of Bleed from Within
Meshuggah review – mechanical Swedish metallers in need of human frailty
Effectively summoning moods of burning heat and freezing cold, the djent pioneers’ machine-like precision can be tiring
Alice Cooper review – guillotine-wielding rocker is no longer a cut above
The shock-rock superstar delivers a fine spectacle, but his varied back catalogue gets homogenised on this arena tour
Cave In: Heavy Pendulum review – an unapologetically fierce beast
With gargantuan riffs and amps turned up to 11, pure metal is tempered with the grace and complexity that have become the band’s trademark
Tool review – master musicianship and mesmerising prog-metal
For their first non-festival gig in the UK in nearly 15 years, the LA quartet’s opuses generate a frenzy – and drummer Danny Carey shows he is one of the greats
Rammstein: Zeit review – ridiculous, but no risk of boredom
The Gothic, operatic metallers deliver hook after hook on an album so streamlined and efficient you can almost hear the pyro cues
Ghost review – rock’n’roll pyro pantomime is hellishly good fun
Tobias Forge’s band of ghouls just reached No 2 in the UK charts, and their symphonic metal – complete with bat wings, confetti and flamethrowers – has universal appeal
Converge & Chelsea Wolfe: Bloodmoon: I review – an explosive combination
The band’s long-awaited collaboration with dark rocker Wolfe is slower and more melodic than their usual albums, yet even heavier
Bring Me the Horizon review – clearly the UK’s greatest rock band right now
With Cybermen cheerleaders, hazmat suits and gigantic mosh pits, there’s a gloriously daft energy to the pop-metallers’ emotional, earth-shaking return
Employed to Serve: Conquering review – thrilling, gut-churning metal
The brilliant Woking band get heavier than ever, causing motion sickness with their animalistic, groove-laden songs
Iron Maiden: Senjutsu review – an ambitious, eccentric masterpiece
Maiden’s creative renaissance continues in style with this playfully bombastic metal epic
Deafheaven: Infinite Granite review – rock at its most majestically beautiful
Fifth album by San Francisco band finds intense and yes, ethereal, shoegaze taking over from black metal