Asking Alexandria/Black Veil Brides review – pop-metal pomp as silly as Spinal Tap

It’s hysterical pleasure all round as York’s Asking Alexandria flounce like a metal Ballet Rambert and Ohio’s Black Veil Brides add violins and top hats to their anthems

Lacuna Coil review – goat-women gatecrash gonzo goth carnival

The Valkyrie-like Cristina Scabbia and lava-gargling Andrea Ferro led the Italian group’s wild 20th birthday gig – and let it get a little over-egged

Black Veil Brides: Vale review – outsider-teen goth metallers go pop

Once inexplicably dubbed “the most controversial band in the universe”, the LA goth metal types have committed yet another outrage by bolstering their bombastic, operatic glam metal with boyband-type big choruses. Thus, Black Sabbath and Thin Lizzy riffs now nestle … Continue reading →

Asking Alexandria: Asking Alexandria review – member-swapping metallers embrace pop

Metal bands sometimes seem to behave like Premier League clubs, swapping members at will, condemning each other then being the best of friends. So think of Asking Alexandria as like Chelsea, and singer Danny Worsnop as their José Mourinho – … Continue reading →

Five Finger Death Punch review – ridiculous yet relatable angst-metal

They might dress like Mad Max extras and have light-up guitars, but the Las Vegas band’s unvarnished honesty makes them powerfully affecting

HIM review – fond and florid farewell for Finnish metal monsters

The multimillion-selling Byronic goths are on their final tour, blending torrid emotion with last-day-of-school mischief

Mastodon review – monsters of rock, masters of melody

A triumphant blend of brutal nosebleed thrash, furious prog-style epics and multi-part harmonies exhilarates the hardcore faithful

Nothing More review – muscular melodies and bare-chested bravado

Following three Grammy nominations last week, flamboyant frontman Jonny Hawkins struts across the post-screamo landscape amid a storm of ferocious riffs

Marilyn Manson review – escapist vaudeville for an age of real-life horror

The sardonic dark lord of industrial pop may no longer terrify polite society – but his melodic songcraft, delivered from a gothic wheelchair, remains potent

Sect: No Cure for Death review – angry music for angry times

Formed by veterans of bands such as Cursed, Racetraitor and Catharsis, Sect are something of a supergroup in hardcore circles, and their second album delivers accordingly. Guitars rage and howl like packs of hungry wolves. Blast beats explode like military … Continue reading →

Converge: The Dusk in Us review – glorious adventures in extreme noise

Jane Doe, the 2001 album from Boston quartet Converge, is one of the landmark works in the recent history of heavy music, a ferocious, highly technical and wildly inventive blend of punk, hardcore, math and metal that influenced almost every … Continue reading →

Alter Bridge review – a stunning, symphonic metal band reborn

Royal Albert Hall, LondonThe bombastic arena-rockers’ overblown songs are pushed to new limits of sonic excess in a thrilling collaboration with the Parallax Orchestra

Korn review – nu-metal survivors shake the walls with their nightmares

Bombastic, brutish riffs and snarling frontman Jonathan Davis combine to deliver authentic thrills of the skull-cracking kind

Bloodstock festival review – metal’s big friendly giants head for Valhalla

Amon Amarth wheel out the Viking paraphernalia, Municipal Waste break crowdsurfing records and Megadeth unleash epic power in an excellent tour of the metal scene

Dead Cross: Dead Cross review – energetic rock supergroup ups the ante

As anyone familiar with the thin alt-rock gruel served up by Mastodon/At the Drive-In/Queens of the Stone Age team-up Gone is Gone will attest, the rock supergroup is often something that seems a better idea in theory than in practice. … Continue reading →