THE CREATOR OF one of the most famous opening guitar riffs in popular music has died at the age of 77. Hilton Valentine was a co-founder of the Animals, whose revision of the blues standard The House Of The Rising Sun topped the charts on both sides

Compelling third album from the Seattle blues swingers. Bassist Duff McKagan and ex-Screaming Trees drummer Barrett Martin had too many day jobs to continue in the Papers, but there is no loss in quality on this album. That’s testament to the talent

Available from all good newsagents and supermarkets THE BIGGEST BANDS. THE HEAVIEST MUSIC. WORLD-EXCLUSIVE INTERVIEWS. PRINT EDITION AVAILABLE FROM HTTPS://TINYURL.COM/METALHAMMERMAG DIGITAL EDITIONS AVAILABLE ON IOS AND ANDROID WWW.METALHAMMER.COM /

Last year may have scuppered Skindred’s touring plans, but it didn’t demolish their frontman Benji Webbe’s spirit. While so many creatives and artists struggled during lockdown, not least from the financial and psychological aspects of not being able

For one band member to leave could be regarded as a misfortune. For two to go looks like carelessness. To lose three – on the same day – sounds more like a conspiracy. Either way, even Oscar Wilde would have struggled to script the mass walkout that

IT’S NOT OFTEN that TV talent shows find prog-metal stars of the future, but in a roundabout way that’s what happened with Helsinki-based Wheel. British frontman James Lascelles had been a student in Scarborough, drumming and singing in jazz-folk and

Kate Bush has long cornered the market in reclusive, media-averse mystique. But it wasn’t always that way. On April 3, 1979, early evening TV news program Nationwide dedicated a show to the 20-year-old singer. The event on which the 25-minute special

It’s all around you, as much as you desire, on the radio, TV, countless digital platforms and other means of delivery. It goes with you on your phone, iPod, laptop and tablet. You’re bombarded with it in shops, pubs, bars, restaurants, cafés and on c

In 1962, guitarist Dick Taylor formed Little Boy Blue And The Blues Boys with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. Upon bringing in Brian Jones the band changed their name to the Rolling Stones, and Taylor switched to bass. Five months later, he swapped t

It’s Metallica’s most famous song, and one of metal’s greatest anthems. And as the band’s drummer and co-founding member Lars Ulrich recalls, what he experienced in the creation of Enter Sandman was something akin to divine inspiration. “The planets

For British rock bands in the early 1970s, a sneering, patronising review in US magazine Rolling Stone was considered something of a badge of honour. In it, Led Zeppelin’s self-titled debut album was dismissed as “dull”, “redundant” and “prissy”. The

This New Orleans duo are part weirdo garage-rock ensemble, part performance-art spectacle, and their music is just as outthere. Essentially it’s like The Cramps if they were deranged, foul-mouthed kiddie show hosts, and although you can’t actually se

Four-CD/five-vinyl box, containing everything except the Class-A narcotics that fuelled it. The credits famously include: “We wish to thank the great COKE-Cola Company of Los Angeles” in barely coded reference to the heaps of cocaine consumed during

On paper the two guitarists are markedly different. Best-known mainly for two spells cranking out metal riffs with Iron Maiden, Londoner Adrian Smith has also played with ASaP (Adrian Smith And Project), Psycho Motel and, more recently, Primal Rock R

“THE BEST SONGS are the ones that take you on a ride,” asserts singer/guitarist Christopher Shayne. “I strive for those dynamics. I want those jams, I want the up-and-down. That’s what I always think when I’m writing.” Shayne is a hard southern rocke

In our experience there’s little that can’t be remedied – at least to some degree – by rock’n’roll. Not always the same rock’n’roll, of course. Different days, times and situations call for different shades of the stuff. With that in mind we aim to m

Dr. Siegel’s Fried Egg Shooting Machine, Vertigo, Japan, 1972. £450+ (with OBI). During its iconic ‘swirl’ label era, Vertigo had a series of domestic Japanese releases that, despite their exotic and collectable appeal, didn’t really offer much in te

THE VIRTUOSO BASS player who worked with Vanilla Fudge, Cactus and the supergroup Beck, Bogert & Appice, has died of cancer at the age of 76. The news was broken by drummer Carmine Appice, who played alongside Bogert in all three bands. Writing on Fa

Born in Brooklyn, New York and raised in the neighbouring borough of Queens, Eric Bloom became co-lead guitarist, frontman, keyboard player and songwriter with hard rockers Blue Öyster Cult in April 1969. Over the following half-century he has been a

Detroit, Michigan’s Motown, shaped both Vincent Furnier and Alice Cooper. Evangelist’s son Vince was born and raised in the city. Asthmatic from birth, he suffered with ill-health. Yet, while active in his father’s Christian Restorationist church, hi