Blog: Thrash Hits

That excellent play on words aside, THIS IS ÖUTRAGEÖUS. Motörhead's quite delicious Australian Shiraz will not be sold in Iceland because the band is synonymous with being a bit naughty. The fear is that the sale of Lemmy & co's fruity number could result in leading our North Atlantic friends into a life of angry, speed-fuelled debauchery. Cripes. The State Alcohol and Tobacco Company of Iceland (ÁTVR), which is government-owned and is also the only shop you can buy alcohol from (not including pubs and bars), has decreed that it will not [...]

Young Guns Bones Liver Forever 03 February 2012 by David Keevill Us writing types at Thrash Hits don't always agree on musical tastes, and Young Guns are one of those bands that polarize opinion in the TH camp. Whereas I thought the 2010 debut release, All Our Kings Are Dead, was a giant, catchy [...]

Erm...yeah, that's about it. It's also been confirmed by Andy Copping, the festival's promoter, via his Twitter account , so apparently it's legit. We've got nothing else to add about Shinedown . That's how exciting this news is. Please continue to carry on with whatever it is you were doing before we wasted 30 seconds of your time with this.

Lamb of God Resolution Roadrunner Records 23 January 2012 by Tom Dare Lamb of God appear to have truly made it in the A-League of the metal world. The way you can tell is by the number of people who have either fallen over themselves to froth all over latest album Resolution or taken to the Internet to moan about it. You have to be doing rather well to please/piss off this many people. So who's [...]

There are bands that go well with a drink, and then there are bands that turn even the lightest drinker into a nonstop, unapologetic booze machine. To have two bands of the latter kind on the same bill is kinda genius and also kinda dangerous. Our livers were quivering in fear when we set off for this one. Six things we learned when Thin Lizzy and Clutch played in London 1) Clutch seem stronger than [...]

Caliban I Am Nemesis Century Media 03 February 2012 by Dan Pelic What Caliban does nowadays is done....a lot. But, hell....they do it well. Caliban's first properly issued LP, Vent , released back in 2001, was an instant metalcore classic, not only for its raw and penetrating sound, but for the band's [...]

...they've just released a new video, this time for 'Parasitic Twins' , the atmospheric closing track to the magnificent Option Paralysis . You can check it out after the jump. It's an interesting choice of single, given that main vocal duties on the track is shared by Dillinger's second guitarist, Jeff Tuttle, rather than just being handled the band's regular frontman, Greg Puciato . Tuttle, of course, also happens to be the lead vocalist in Old Gods , his LOUD AS ALL HELL side-project who we [...]

We've said it before, and we'll say it again - as far as touring line-ups go, the combination of Mastodon, The Dillinger Escape Plan and Red Fang has set the bar for 2012. Given that Mastodon put out the Thrash Hits Album of 2011 , The Dillinger Escape Plan put out the Thrash Hits album of 2010 , and Red Fang are one of our favourite up'n'coming crushers, it's gonna take one heck of a tour to top this. When the tour arrived in Manchester, our man [...]

Napalm Death Utilitarian Century Media 27 February 2012 by Tom Dare It may at first glance appear odd to say it, but Napalm Death have never quite got the credit they deserve. "How so?" you say. "They're a legendary band hailed as the godfathers of their genre." And you're right – to the point it's become a vacuous cliché. There are stock phrases that get spouted about Napalm (usually prefaced with some jovial reference to them being from Birmingham) [...]

Another day, another YouTube channel demanding your attention , right? Well, no, in this case - Noisey , the Vice Magazine online-offshoot that's entirely music-orientated - launched their own YouTube channel this week , and it's already got a hell of a lot more going for it than a million other YouTube music channels where people endlessly interview rock stars about any old nonsense they thought up in the five minutes before they switched their camera on. Given Vice/Noisey's impressive production pedigree, it's no surprise [...]

It's February. If you're a normal person you would've had a very austere January, contemplating the various sins you committed over the Christmas period. We just drank the pain away, obviously, but that's not the point. Basically, you should've recovered from the toils of Christmas present purchases and bar tabs the size of three credit cards enough to have some cash left over to give to CHARITY. Luckily, Cult Cinema, Front magazine and even TH Editor, Raz are all making it easy for you to do so. ‎ Cult Cinema are teaming up [...]

Well, he is if the new Killswitch Engage website is anything to go by. That's where we got that above picture from , after all. It also comes as a surprise to absolutely no-one, given the ever-decreasing levels of denial coming from Mr Leach in recent days. Still, it'll be interesting to see what direction Killswitch Engage now take with their new...err....old....err current vocalist.

We like stuff that's a bit different here at Thrash Hits. That's why we do silly things like talking to Devin Townsend about hot sauce and Neil Fallon about beer . So when we got emailed a link to an interview with Lamb Of God's Mark Morton about liking NASCAR, we thought we'd share the video with you. Reasonable. If only Morton liked American Football, we could make a wholly contemporaneous reference to the Super Bowl. He likes NASCAR though. This is a video interview.

A couple of Friday nights ago we demolished every character-staining suspicion that we were having a "Sober January" in the Unicorn in Camden. There were also a couple of bands playing - Carpathia and Bleeding Oath - so we wrote about them. Six things we learned while trying to get our noggins round this noodling prog metal extravaganza 1. Bleeding Oath are young. Like... really, REALLY young. Like... statutory rape young. Which makes them very [...]

Look, we're a bit tired, we've foolishly agreed to cook Sunday lunch today, and we still have to trudge down the shops to buy a big slab of meat to cook for it. With much of the UK currently under 2 inches of snow, can you blame us for going with an obvious topic this Sunday? That's why we've gone for the bleedingly obvious choice of a Winter-themed Sunday Slaylist. And yes, it's got Immortal on it. WE TOLD YOU WE WERE BEING OBVIOUS. [...]

If there's one thing Hugh Platt it's shit-stirring. This whole Black Sabbath/Bill Ward situation has seen him dig out a very large spoon. By now you've no doubt have heard that Bill Ward is - at the time of writing at least - no longer going to be taking part in either the recording of the new Black Sabbath album or the corresponding world tour. This situation all kicked off on Thursday, when Bill Ward published a statement , detailing why he might be forced [...]

It's Friday night, and you've got to ask yourself one question - why wouldn't you want to watch a video of Job For A Cowboy and Cephalic Carnage's bass player, Nick Schendzielos , pretending to be in a jungle and knocking out some solo funk jams on his bass? You're at home on a Friday night. What else you gonna do? Watch Nick Schendzielos from Cephalic Carnage/Job For A Cowboy behave...strangely: No, we're not [...]

Crocus Our Memories Dress Me In A Dead Lust Holy Roar 13 February 2012 by Tom Doyle British bands are often accused of apeing their American counterparts - a trend which is most patently seen in the rock mainstream, and where the UK and US markets are intrinsically wed by the lifelines of big package tours and [...]

Bloodstock Open Air have confirmed another pair of names for their 2012 bill - this time around it's Iced Earth and Sepultura . For both bands, this will be their only UK shows in 2012. We guess that's kind of alright, isn't it? We don't have that much to say about the booking of these two - we'd be lying if we pretended we felt anything too far above tepid at the prospect of seeing a completely Cavalera-less Sepultura (their last album, [...]

Those of you following us on Twitter will have heard us mention earlier this week that we'd " just heard a festival headliner "rumour" so mental it has blown my mind. GOBSMACKED " ...well, it seems The Daily Star have gone and blown all our secrets out of the water - today they confirmed that this year's Sonisphere Festival headliners in the UK will be Faith no More and Queen....fronted by Adam Lambert . Yes, you read that correctly. We should point out that at the [...]