Former Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett once found a parallel with famous filmmaker Alfred Hitchcock that lined up well with his own work. “I sympathize with Hitchcock’s need to remake a classic film,” he said.
More than a decade later, it’s a philosophy that continues to develop and spread as he revisits moments and at times, full albums from his time with Genesis. In the past year, he’s been presenting a selection of material from the band’s classic 1974 album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway in the concerts that he performs with his solo band. Fans can get a preview of upcoming U.S. dates set for this fall, thanks to a new live album. The humorously titled The Lamb Stands Up Live at the Royal Albert Hall, recorded at the heritage venue in October of 2024, will be released July 11.
The current tour celebrates the 50th anniversary of The Lamb, mixing a selection of Hackett’s favorites from the album with other songs from the band’s catalog and his own solo work. The guitarist was joined for the performance by guests including Marillion’s Steve Rothery and former Genesis vocalist Ray Wilson.
“I think old material sounds sweeter with the passing of time. I think you forgive. its imperfections and try and change those things when you go to it again,” he explains on the UCR Podcast. “So things that might have been recorded in haste with aspects of timing and tuning, there’s no excuse for that these days. If you’re going to do a revisit, you might as well straighten out those things. When we were young players all piling in, there was one set of priorities. Now, of course, it’ll be well to polish these things. [Live], it’s not as if you’re doing a medley, I tend to do the full thing. If I’m going to do something, I’ll usually [play] the full tune and possibly extend with other things. The end of “Supper’s Ready,” I tend to go off on a guitar feature right at the end of it, just because I’m moved to do so. I haven’t got to worry about anyone going, ‘Hey, that’s my moment, you can’t do that. Well, I can, because I sweated blood to put this stuff together back in the early days.”
The Birth of ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’
It’s now one of their most beloved albums, with a deluxe box set due for release. But as you might imagine, The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway had a very complex path to completion. “The Lamb was fraught with complication. By then, many of us were married with families or about to become fathers. We were still trying to employ the philosophy of going away, isolating and coming up with stuff,” he remembers. “It’s a bit like you’re temporarily married to the team. But what was so difficult about The Lamb was the fact that we were recording — or trying to — in a in a former workhouse that was arguably haunted and was frankly dangerous and unsanitary.”
“We moved on once that timed out, because [Led] Zeppelin had recorded their famous drum sound from the stairwell at Headley Grange. [So] we moved on to Glaspant Manor in Wales, which was a house that was being built. We went from a place where the ceilings were giving way to a place where there were no ceilings. It was this idea of, are we growing up or are we just coming out against brick walls with this? It was the most difficult time imaginable.”
Listen to Steve Hackett on the ‘UCR Podcast’
Watch Steve Hackett Perform ‘The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway’
The Best Song From Every Genesis Album
As personnel came and went over the decades, Genesis shape-shifted through prog, folk and (more than once) pop.
When Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers first started making albums in the late ’70s, they were not the well-oiled machine they ultimately became.
“There was a lot of trial and error,” Petty later said of the band’s debut album for the book Conversations With Tom Petty. “I think it’s only 28 minutes long. [Laughs] It was just the first 10 things written. And we did it at lightning speed.”
Regardless of how quickly written an album is, a key factor in its overall appeal lies in its first track. (We are assuming, for the purposes of this article, that readers are listening to an album from start to finish as the artist intended it to be heard.) It is, in essence, the opening statement, the introduction, the prologue to what is to come. Hook a listener with the first song and you will hopefully bring them along for the whole journey.
Over the course of his career, Petty released 13 studio albums with the Heartbreakers and three solo LPs. Below, we’ve ranked all of their opening tracks.
In 2010, Petty finally put out the heavier blues album he’d been meaning to for years. “We couldn’t have made this in the ’70s,” he told Rolling Stone then about Mojo. “We didn’t have those kinds of chops in the ’70s. We grew into this.” The LP begins with “Jefferson Jericho Blues,” a lively opener but not the most-gripping of Petty’s career.
This writer personally prefers “Walls (No. 3)” to “Walls (Circus),” the opening track to 1996’s Songs and Music From “She’s the One.” It’s unique for featuring Lindsey Buckingham on backing vocals, but in reality, Petty didn’t care for the track, to put it mildly. “Never listened to it. I hated that record – the whole idea of it offended me,” he told Men’s Journal in 2015. “I only did it because I didn’t have anything else to do.”
You might think that starting an album with a song you co-wrote with Bob Dylan would be a foolproof idea. Unfortunately in the case of “Jammin’ Me” from 1987’s Let Me Up (I’ve Had Enough), the result is a bit more confusing than impressive. It’s a quirky track, but has that quintessential ’80s sound . If you know you know.
“When the Time Comes” from You’re Gonna Get It! has, like many early Petty songs, a Byrds-like quality to it and sets the tone for the rest of the album nicely. The stronger tracks come later on though…
You can interpret the title of “A One Story Town” a few different ways — “story” as in building height, or perhaps “story” as in the narrative the town runs on. In any case, this is an upbeat opening number, with a great drum fill intro by Stan Lynch that propels the rest of the song.
Opening an album with an inward-looking ballad is not something everyone can pull off, but Petty did with “Room at the Top.” “I still think that’s one of the better moments of the album,” Petty said in Conversations With Tom Petty. “It was a great example of the Heartbreakers at work. On my own I would have never arrived at that arrangement of the song. But they really took it somewhere I would have never got to myself.”
An album’s opening track is like the first shot in a movie. It sets the scene, creates the atmosphere and entices a listener to keep listening. “Rebels” is a good example of that, a song that pulls one into the world of the south Petty not only wrote about but came from himself.
9. “American Dream Plan B” From: Hypnotic Eye (2014)
“American Dream Plan B,” and therefore the entirety of 2014’s Hypnotic Eye, begins with what Mike Campbell once described as a “tough guitar sound.” The Heartbreakers, as Campbell saw it, always aimed to make albums that were meant to be heard in full, starting with the opening track. “The album format is what we grew up on. It’s what we aspired to when we were first discovering music – it’s what’s what we know,” he told MusicRadar in 2014. “We actually talked about this because nowadays, with iTunes and everything, there’s a lot of pressure to get this track and that track, whatever. We really made an effort to fight that as much as possible and present this as an entire piece.”
Something about the introductory descending riff in “The Last DJ” feels a bit like falling down the rabbit hole into the album of the same name. Welcome to the world of corporate greed, the kind that can both shoot a musician to the top and drag them right back down. As Rolling Stone described it: “At once nostalgic and forward-looking, The Last DJ is quintessential Petty, by turns strident and starry-eyed.”
As the opening track to the Heartbreakers’ debut album, “Rockin’ Around (With You)” could be considered the opening track to the band’s entire career. Lynch’s shuffle-y intro gives way to a BeatlesRevolver-esque melody in the first song and the rest of the album falls into place after it.
Not only does “The Waiting” work well as an opening track with its confident intro — can’t go wrong with a couple of Rickenbacker guitars — the first lines invite a listener in: “Oh baby don’t it feel like heaven right now? Don’t it feel like something from a dream?” Clearly, fans agreed since “The Waiting” was a Top 20 hit for the Heartbreakers.
Sometimes the cliche is true: it it isn’t broke, don’t fix it. One could say that about the musical partnership of Petty and Jeff Lynne, who co-produced several of Petty’s albums including 2006’s Highway Companion. Yes, this was a solo Petty album, but that didn’t stop him from having Campbell play on it anyway. “Saving Grace” is a little bit gritty, a little bit sexy and a great start to an album that showcases Petty as a seasoned songwriter.
If there was one thing Petty was exceptionally good at, it was writing theoretically simple songs that packed a whole lot of meaning and emotion into them. “Wildflowers” is a perfect example — the chords are easy, even for a beginner musician, and yet it creates a beautiful, sweet and hopeful opening to an album about vulnerability, solitude and maturity.
It bears repeating: sometimes the straightforward path is the most powerful one. “Learning to Fly” doesn’t have a bridge, just a few verses alternating with an easy-to-sing-to chorus, but one need only hear live versions of this song to know how much Petty’s audience loved it. Somehow, Petty never wore out the themes of open skies, new possibilities and resilience in the face of struggle.
Have you ever blasted “Free Fallin'” with all the windows down in the car rolling down the highway? If so, then you probably understand why this song is at the No. 2 spot on this list. Simple verses give way to an anthemic chorus that sets up the rest of 1989’s Full Moon Fever. A perfect road trip opener.
Not to be dramatic but the snare drum intro in “Refugee” is like a call to arms. It grabs one’s attention immediately and tees up the guitars for that iconic riff — plus Benmont Tench‘s crucial organ part — that builds into the chorus. The rest of Damn the Torpedoes falls in place behind it like rock ‘n’ roll dominos.
The Best Song From Every Tom Petty Album
There’s a common thread running through Tom Petty’s catalog, and it’s the Heartbreakers.
In 2008, Grace Potter was 25 years old and a rising rock ‘n’ roll star.
By then, she and her band the Nocturnals had released two albums, appeared on programs like The Tonight Show With Jay Leno and Good Morning America, plus opened for Gov’t Mule, the Dave Matthews Band and the Black Crowes.
It was then that Potter stepped into the studio to make what was slated to be a solo album with producer T Bone Burnett — who had recently produced Robert Plant and Alison Krauss‘ Grammy-winning Raising Sand – Jim Keltner on drums, Dennis Crouch on bass, Marc Ribot on guitar and Keefus Ciancia on keyboards.
The resulting album, Medicine, spoke to Potter’s talent as a singer, songwriter and studio presence, drawing as much from her rock ‘n’ roll influences as soul, R&B and other genres.
Back then, Potter’s label decided against releasing the album. They felt it strayed too far from the vision that was Grace Potter the rock star. Potter took the news in stride, found new ways to use the songs from Medicine with the Nocturnals so they didn’t fully languish on the shelf and moved forward.
Now, nearly 20 years later, the original Medicine will arrive on May 30 via Hollywood Records. UCR recently caught up with Potter to talk about what it means to finally release the album as it was intended and the confidence her producer T Bone Burnett helped provide.
Congratulations on Medicine finally coming out. It must feel really great after all these years. Oh my God, it’s so weird. Because I’m used to having, like, this emotional turmoil. Every record is, like, this big awakening, and all this inspiration goes into it, and then I care so much about it, and I’m really sort of, like, precious, and I don’t have to do that this time. It’s been really just fun to explore it. I mean, there’s definitely been some introspection, but not this really scary, like, “Oh my God, I wonder what the world’s gonna think.” I already know what they think of the songs, most of the songs are already out there. So it’s been kind of an effortless process, because I’m coming from a place of wisdom and reflection, as opposed to: “I hope the world likes me!”
It’s cool that even though this isn’t a “new” album, you’re not treating it like an archival release or something. No, and I think it’s because, for me, there’s also the narrative that goes along with it. The “Why?” I mean, there’s a wonderful question of “Why now?” And there’s also the question of, “Why didn’t it happen then? What happened here?” So there’s a little like, kind of true crime intrigue thing going on, and it’s good for me to go back to it all. I’ve had so many conversations with people, former bandmates, former team people that were working with me at the time, and then going back to Hollywood Records, where basically the staff is the same as they were when this all went down, and everybody has their memory of it. And it’s incredible how different everybody’s memory is of it. It was interesting for me to be able to look back at it and really hear what they thought happened, knowing how I felt at the time. Because everybody obviously had the best intentions, and just wanted to make sure that my career was blasting off at full force, but you know, the woulda, coulda, shoulda of it all, and just wondering, like, what would have happened if this record had come out then? You know, it’s a curiosity.
You could have felt really discouraged at the time that your plan was being changed by other people, but it sounds like you pretty much took the news in stride. I felt fiercely loyal to my band, honestly. I think there was a lot of, like, trying to figure out what was going wrong with my band, because at the time, I had actually tried to splinter off from the band, and this was going to be a solo record back in 2008. So, it didn’t go well [Laughs], me trying to emancipate myself. And there were tumultuous things going on internally with the band, and this sort of: “Is this a democracy?”
We has just watched that Eagles documentary where I think it’s Don Henley, who just says, like, “Bands can’t be a democracy at all. It just doesn’t work.” And I remember realizing that that wasn’t just true, but that also I was writing all the songs, you know, and that giving away so much of my creative impulse, and – I never got the feeling that anybody was riding on my coattails or anything like that at the time, I was more just like “You guys all get to go do solo records. Why don’t I? I’m not a meal ticket.” And it was the first time I was really feeling that side of it and realizing that I don’t think they thought I was a meal ticket, but they also didn’t like the idea of me going off and doing my own thing, because they knew that inevitably, I would end up going the way of Janis Joplin and Gwen Stefani and so many other artists who peel away from this really galvanized collective.
And I think my image of myself as a 25, 26-year-old person, I think that fierce loyalty was something that felt like it was something to be proud of, but internally, it didn’t feel good. It felt gross. It was genuine. It was definitely real for me. But I think there were pieces of me and parts of like…needing to validate people, sort of co-dependent stuff going on there.
That reminds me of a lot of what Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers recently wrote in his memoir. He wrote about this dynamic of having a leader versus band loyalty and the gray area in between. Yeah, because it’s a double standard. And when you’re the leader, you want everyone involved, and then suddenly you want to shut away and come up with the next idea. And then you want everyone involved, and they have to be totally game in. It’s difficult for everybody. It’s difficult from every angle, for people to navigate the world of a democracy when really, ultimately — you know, and we know Tom Petty was [a leader] — but also I basically modeled my whole career, including the syllabic pronunciation of “and the Nocturnals,” “and the Heartbreakers,” like it’s vividly illustrated in my career and in my songwriting. But he and I are different in that he knew where that boundary was, and I think that there was a lot more of a clear line there. I’m much more wavy gravy about things, and I was just so into like, the joy of it, of being together.
Listen to ‘Oasis’ From ‘Medicine’
Tell me a little about working with T Bone Burnett in the studio. What was that process like? I think there was this looking for an undeniable collaborator. And T Bone is literally the definition of that. We talked about Daniel Lanois and Rick Rubin. I was really poised for any collaboration I wanted at that time in the industry. They were pouring a huge amount of money into my ascent, and part of that meant meeting with lots of different people, and what I was really looking for was the opportunity to break free of the handlers a little bit and just get into the studio and get really creative and find my voice away from the kid gloves. And when you pair up with a producer like T Bone, you absolutely can’t have a bunch of random A&R people sitting in there making espresso and and throwing in, like, “What about more tambourine?” That doesn’t play, it just doesn’t play. And I was really ready for that. I was ecstatic for the chance to have this undeniable team. Like, here we go. The gusts of wind have turned into a gale storm, and we are going out to sea together, and we don’t need any life boats to come along with us. We’re just going to do this. That’s what I was looking for and that’s certainly what I found in T Bone.
Can we also talk about Jim Keltner? Talk about a legend of a session drummer. Jim is the grout between the tile in like, the most beautifully decorated Moroccan bathroom you’ve ever been in. … He really does take so much care — what I mean by take care is like, TCB, like, it’s done. It’s done. The idea is there. And whether he wanders in with that done in his head, or just sits down and it happens and just comes out of him, I’m not clear, because he doesn’t explain his thinking. He just does. He just exists. …
He’s holding it together like scaffolding and creating this very sacred space so quickly, very little thought going into — I would watch him kind of maybe just practice or figure out whether he was going to use brushes or sticks. He also had this really awesome thing he called the percussion tree next to him, where one of his feet, which would have been used for a kick drum or hi-hat, was also running this tree. … He had this unbelievable, like, cuckoo clock of shit over in the corner, and he could just, like, run his stick up and down it, and suddenly there’s noises coming out of it that you would never expect. I still don’t understand how he was playing fucking castanets, you know, and like, also the kick and snare and toms and symbols.
When you look back at that period of your life and career now, after several more years of success, is there any advice you’d offer 25-year-old Grace? I would have grabbed my 25-year-old self by the shoulders and looked her dead in the eye and said: If you don’t advocate for yourself — you don’t owe anybody anything, but you will owe yourself later if you don’t advocate for yourself, because everybody else here — you aren’t lucky to be in their presence, and they aren’t lucky to be in your presence. This is what is happening, and you should enjoy it. And if you’re not proud of it at the end of the day, don’t put it out. But if you are very clearly and devotedly excited and certain that this is where you as an artist want to go, not what your career arc and what your brand is sort of building to — which is really, I think, what ultimately, logistically was needing to happen based on the investments that people had made in me, time and lots and lots of money from the record company — there was a devotion to others that I had at that point that made it feel impossible. Like I absolutely did not have a choice. And so I think I would grab myself by the shoulders and just say, “You don’t owe anybody here anything.”
Since 2018, Portals has been London’s must-attend event for fans of all things “post-”. The best of post-rock, post-metal and (occasionally) post-punk have graced the two-day festival over the years, and the demand let it upgrade to the hallowed Earth venue in Hackney a couple of years ago. Sadly, 2025 marks Portals’ last edition in its current format, but attendees still get three stages (the main ‘hall’ stage, the second ‘theatre’ stage, and the bar) of excellence to enjoy. Here are the artists that defined the final instalment of this forward-thinking extravaganza:
Joliette (Hall, Saturday)
Portals brought out the big guns early this year. Joliette were only the second act to grace the main stage on Saturday, yet they went on to become possibly the heaviest band of the entire weekend. Hailing from Mexico City, they dished out a rabid post-hardcore onslaught, with each song being progressive and twisted but always charging forward at full fucking force. Recent singles Nimbus and Limítrofe didn’t offer any give whatsoever, laying down an exciting precedent for new album Pérdidas Variables, which gets unchained next month.
Cats And Cats And Cats (Theatre, Saturday)
Cats And Cats And Cats were so excited to celebrate the 20th anniversary of their debut album that they did it one year early. The self-described “math pop-loving fools” played Sweet Drunk Everyone in full to a crammed theatre stage and brought all the bells and whistles to do its expansive songs justice. A choir and string section turned the set into a must-watch, with finale Splutterheart feeling especially vibrant as four dancers twisted and spun to its post-rock deviations. The standing ovation at the end was richly, richly deserved.
Brontide (Hall, Saturday)
Brontide became an influential force in the post-rock world by cutting the crap, condensing their songs into an armada of bull-headed riffs. Their 2017 split was a profound loss to the scene, to the point that their comeback show at last year’s Arctangent saw the tent they played overflow. Recent single Mineral offered hope that the trio were here to stay this time, and their top-notch Portals set strengthened the optimism. Amidst their hour of pit-igniting energy, drummer William Bowerman declares that they will continue and release more music soon. Thank Christ.
Saturday’s final performers, Kalandra brought Scandinavian tradition to the modern era on the second stage. The Norwegians’ frontwoman Katrine Stenbekk sang with all the strength and grace of Nordic folk vocalists, while her bandmates framed her voice with more contemporary rock, prog and electronic textures. As well as a host of transcendent songs, the band brought an immersive light show and impressive stage props, making them feel like a bona fide main event. Their midnight stage time meant the theatre wasn’t at its fullest, but that fact quickly felt irrelevant.
And So I Watch You From Afar (Hall, Sunday)
And So I Watch You From Afar are post-rock’s ol’ reliable. From Arctangent to Pelagic Fest, seemingly every weekender dedicated to their genre books them and gives them a prominent spot, but it’s not without good reason. The Northern Irish collective’s songs are jaunty and bouncy escapes, and on Portals’ main stage they received arguably the strongest turnout of the entire festival. Set Guitars To Kill opened up a rare pit towards the end of the set, albeit with pushing and circling replaced by excited jumping. The light show was just top-shelf, as well.
Julie Christmas has played the UK a good few times since releasing comeback album Ridiculous And Full Of Blood last year, but catching the noise rock songstress still feels like a special occasion. Her Portals headliner was a surge of sound, yet her wiry voice still stood out amidst the maelstrom, powerfully contrasted by the roars of guitarist/co-vocalist Johannes Persson. A rendition of Cult Of Luna team-up The Wreck Of S.S. Needle, never before played by Christmas’ solo band, affirmed this as the weekend’s essential spectacle.
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Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.
Hellyeah formed in 2006 when members of two heavyweight metal outfits—Mudvayne and Nothingface—linked up in Dallas, Texas, to explore a groove-driven strain of modern metal. Mudvayne vocalist Chad Gray and guitarist Greg Tribbett connected with Nothingface guitarist Tom Maxwell and bassist Jerry Montano during Ozzfest’s touring downtime, trading riffs and ideas that felt too loose and southern-fried for their primary projects. The spark intensified when former Pantera and Damageplan drummer Vinnie Paul Abbott agreed to climb behind the kit after months of persuasion, giving the nascent super-group a rhythmic backbone rooted in Texas groove metal heritage.
From that first rehearsal the chemistry was obvious, and within months the band signed with Epic Records, quickly tracking a debut album at Paul’s home studio in Arlington. Issued in April 2007, Hellyeah cracked the Billboard 200’s Top 10 and introduced the band’s hallmark blend of Pantera-style swing, Mudvayne-leaning melody, and bar-room chant vocals. “You Wouldn’t Know” and “Alcohaulin’ Ass” received heavy active-rock rotation, opening a touring cycle that pulled the quintet across North America and into major European festivals.
Personnel volatility surfaced early: bassist Jerry Montano exited in 2007 and was replaced by Damageplan alumnus Bob Zilla. The lineup shift didn’t slow momentum. Hellyeah’s sophomore record, Stampede (2010), pushed deeper into blues-inflected riffs and debuted at No. 8 on the Billboard 200. Singles “Cowboy Way” and “Hell of a Time” kept the group lodged in American rock radio charts and confirmed that the project was no one-off side hustle—Hellyeah had become a touring institution with its own fan base, distinct from the members’ legacy bands.
The 2012 release Band of Brothers sharpened the group’s attitude, pairing heavier guitar tones with lyrics foregrounding loyalty and defiance. It marked the final appearance of Greg Tribbett and Bob Zilla, who left the band the following year. In their place came Christian Brady on guitar and Kyle Sanders—formerly of Bloodsimple—on bass. That new configuration delivered Blood for Blood in 2014, an album praised for returning to rawer, more Pantera-leaning aggression while still landing a Top 20 Billboard debut and spawning the radio single “Moth.”
Hellyeah’s fifth studio effort, Unden!able (2016), featured a cover of Phil Collins’s “I Don’t Care Anymore” that included archived guitar tracks from the late Dimebag Darrell Abbott, Vinnie Paul’s brother. The album’s lead single “Human” hit No. 11 on the Mainstream Rock chart and illustrated the band’s ability to fuse accessibility with metallic heft. Extensive touring followed, including slots on major U.S. festivals and European metal bills, reinforcing Hellyeah’s status as a relentless live act.
Tragedy struck in June 2018 when Vinnie Paul died suddenly from heart disease. Rather than dissolve, the band decided to honor his final recordings by completing their sixth studio album. Released in September 2019, Welcome Home featured Paul’s final drum tracks and showcased matured songwriting on singles “Welcome Home,” “Oh My God,” and “Love Falls,” the latter becoming their highest-charting Mainstream Rock track at No. 3. Stone Sour drummer Roy Mayorga stepped in for live dates, allowing Hellyeah to mount a memorial tour celebrating Paul’s legacy.
Across six studio albums—Hellyeah (2007), Stampede (2010), Band of Brothers (2012), Blood for Blood (2014), Unden!able (2016), and Welcome Home (2019)—the band has charted eleven Mainstream Rock singles inside the Top 20. While they have not collected major industry awards, Hellyeah earned a loyal following for unfiltered stage energy, southern-hued hooks, and the draw of Vinnie Paul’s post-Pantera drumming.
Outside the studio, members used Hellyeah’s platform for philanthropy and community outreach. Vinnie Paul hosted annual charity events in Dallas benefiting local food banks, Chad Gray has raised mental-health awareness through interviews and social media, and the group participated in benefit concerts supporting veterans’ organizations. Individually, members kept roots in their earlier bands—Gray fronted Mudvayne reunion shows, Tom Maxwell guested on metal tributes, and Sanders continued session work for underground acts.
The band’s future remains undefined following the pandemic hiatus and Paul’s absence, but their catalog stands as a testament to collaborative spirit across metal sub-genres. Hellyeah fused Pantera swing, Mudvayne technicality, and Nothingface groove into a distinct identity that resonated with fans seeking both heaviness and melody. Their records document a directional arc from barroom anthems to introspective tributes, anchored by musicianship that never strayed far from its Texan and Midwestern roots.
Hellyeah (2007)
Hellyeah’s self-titled debut album was released on April 10, 2007, through Epic Records. Recorded at Chasin’ Jason studio in Dimebag Darrell’s backyard in Arlington, Texas, the album was completed in approximately one month with Vinnie Paul producing. It featured the lineup of Chad Gray (vocals), Greg Tribbett (lead guitar), Tom Maxwell (rhythm guitar), Jerry Montano (bass, during recording), and Vinnie Paul (drums). Shortly after the album’s release, Montano was replaced by Bob “Zilla” Kakaha.
The album debuted impressively at #9 on the Billboard 200 chart, selling 45,000 copies in its first week and establishing Hellyeah as more than just a side project. Musically, the debut blended elements of groove metal with southern rock influences, creating a sound that differed from the members’ previous bands while showcasing their individual strengths. Singles from the album included “You Wouldn’t Know,” “Alcohaulin’ Ass,” and “Thank You,” with “You Wouldn’t Know” reaching #5 on Billboard’s Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks chart.
CD Track Listings:
1. HELLYEAH 2. You Wouldn’t Know 3. Matter of Time 4. Waging War 5. Alcohaulin’ Ass 6. GodDamn 7. In the Mood 8. Star 9. Rotten to the Core 10. Thank You 11. Nausea 12. One Thing
Stampede (2010)
“Stampede,” Hellyeah’s second studio album, was released on July 13, 2010, through Epic Records. Recorded at Vinnie Paul’s home studio in Texas, the album featured Chad Gray (vocals), Greg Tribbett (lead guitar), Tom Maxwell (rhythm guitar), Bob “Zilla” Kakaha (bass), and Vinnie Paul (drums). The band members lived in bungalows on Paul’s property during recording, creating an immersive, collaborative atmosphere.
The album debuted at #8 on the Billboard 200, selling 28,000 copies in its first week and becoming the band’s highest-charting album to date. Musically, “Stampede” continued to develop the sound established on their debut, maintaining their groove metal foundation while exploring additional southern rock and hard rock elements. Singles from the album included “Hell of a Time,” “Cowboy Way,” and “Better Man,” with the band undertaking extensive touring to support the release, including appearances at major festivals and a run on the Uproar Festival with Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, and Stone Sour.
CD Track Listings
1 Cowboy Way 2 Debt That All Men Pay 3 Hell Of A Time 4 Stampede 5 Better Man 6 It’s On! 7 Pole Rider 8 Cold As A Stone 9 Stand Or Walk Away 10 Alive And Well 11 Order The Sun
Band of Brothers (2012)
“Band of Brothers,” Hellyeah’s third studio album, was released on July 17, 2012, through Eleven Seven Music, marking the band’s departure from Epic Records. Produced by Jeremy Parker and recorded at VP’s Upstairs Studio (Vinnie Paul’s home studio) in Arlington, Texas, the album featured Chad Gray (vocals), Greg Tribbett (lead guitar), Tom Maxwell (rhythm guitar), Bob “Zilla” Kakaha (bass), and Vinnie Paul (drums).
The album represented a heavier, more aggressive direction for Hellyeah, with the band consciously returning to their metal roots after exploring more diverse sounds on their previous albums. As Vinnie Paul stated in interviews, they decided to “get back to our roots, and get back to what we’re the best at,” melding what they had done with Pantera, Mudvayne, Nothingface, and Damageplan. Singles included “War in Me” and the title track “Band of Brothers,” with the album reaching #19 on the Billboard 200. This would be the last Hellyeah album to feature Tribbett and Kakaha, who departed the band in 2014.
CD Track Listings
1. War in Me 2. Band of Brothers 3. Rage/Burn 4. Drink Drank Drunk 5. Bigger God 6. Between You and Nowhere 7. Call It Like I See It 8. Why Does It Always 9. WM Free 10. Dig Myself a Hole 11. What It Takes to Be Me
Blood for Blood (2014)
“Blood for Blood,” Hellyeah’s fourth studio album, was released on June 10, 2014, through Eleven Seven Music. Produced by Kevin Churko at The Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas, the album marked a significant lineup change, with Christian Brady replacing Greg Tribbett on lead guitar and Kyle Sanders replacing Bob “Zilla” Kakaha on bass, joining continuing members Chad Gray (vocals), Tom Maxwell (rhythm guitar), and Vinnie Paul (drums).
This album represented a critical and commercial breakthrough for Hellyeah, debuting at #1 on Billboard’s Hard Rock Albums chart and receiving strong reviews for its focused aggression and musical cohesion. The personnel changes coincided with a stylistic shift toward a heavier, more intense sound that many critics and fans considered a creative resurgence. Singles included “Sangre por Sangre (Blood for Blood),” “Cross to Bier (Cradle of Bones),” “Moth,” and “Hush,” with the latter addressing domestic violence and being used to promote the “No More” campaign against domestic abuse.
CD Track Listings:
1. Sangre Por Sangre [Blood for Blood] 2. Demons in the Dirt 3. Soul Killer 4. Moth 5. Cross to Bier (Cradle of Bones) 6. DMF 7. Gift 8. Hush 9. Say When 10. Black December
Unden!able (2016)
“Unden!able,” Hellyeah’s fifth studio album, was released on June 3, 2016, through Eleven Seven Music. Produced by Kevin Churko and recorded at The Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas, the album featured Chad Gray (vocals), Christian Brady (lead guitar), Tom Maxwell (rhythm guitar), Kyle Sanders (bass), and Vinnie Paul (drums).
Building on the heavier direction established with “Blood for Blood,” “Unden!able” further refined Hellyeah’s aggressive sound while incorporating what guitarist Tom Maxwell described as “a lot of stuff they never tried before,” calling it “moody, dark and crushing.” A notable inclusion was a cover of Phil Collins’ “I Don’t Care Anymore,” which featured archived guitar work from Dimebag Darrell recorded before his death, creating a poignant connection to Vinnie Paul’s late brother. Singles from the album included “Human,” “I Don’t Care Anymore,” and “Love Falls.” The band supported the release with extensive touring, including participation in the 2015 Rockstar Energy Mayhem Festival alongside Slayer and King Diamond.
Track Listings:
1. ! 2. X 3. Scratch a Lie 4. Be Unden!Able 5. Human 6. Leap of Faith 7. Blood Plague 8. I Don’t Care Anymore 9. Live or Die 10. Love Falls 11. 10-34 12. Startariot 13. Grave 14. Demons in the Dirt (Live in Australia 2015) – Bonus 15. Moth (Live in Australia 2015) – Bonus 16. Cross to Bier (Live in Australia 2015) – Bonus 17. Hush (Live in Australia 2015) – Bonus
Welcome Home (2019)
“Welcome Home,” Hellyeah’s sixth and final studio album, was released on September 27, 2019, through Eleven Seven Music. Recorded at The Hideout Recording Studio in Las Vegas with producer Kevin Churko, the album holds special significance as it features Vinnie Paul’s final recordings before his death in June 2018. The lineup included Chad Gray (vocals), Christian Brady (lead guitar), Tom Maxwell (rhythm guitar), Kyle Sanders (bass), and Vinnie Paul (drums).
The album was partially complete when Paul died, with the drummer having finished his parts but the band still needing to complete additional recording and production work. After a period of grieving, the remaining members decided to finish the album as a tribute to Paul’s legacy. The emotional weight of this situation influenced both the completion process and the album’s reception, with songs like the title track taking on new meaning in the context of Paul’s passing. Singles included “333,” “Welcome Home,” and “Black Flag Army.” For the subsequent tour, Stone Sour drummer Roy Mayorga joined the band, with their first performance being a special concert celebrating Paul’s life and legacy on May 11, 2019. Following the “Welcome Home” tour cycle, Hellyeah went on hiatus in 2021.
CD Track Listings
1. 333 2. Oh My God 3. Welcome Home 4. I’m the One 5. Black Flag Army 6. At Wicks End 7. Perfect 8. Bury You 9. Boy 10. Skyy and Water 11. Irreplaceable
(Image credit: WDBJ7 | Astrida Valigorsky/Getty Images for Metallica)
An American family’s plans to take their daughter to a Metallica show may have inadvertently saved their lives.
David and Kristin McKee say that they went to bed earlier than usual in their Goodview, Virginia home on May 6, as the next day they were going to drive their 14-year-old to a concert by metal’s biggest band at Lane Stadium in Blacksburg.
The early bedtime differed from the McKees’ usual evening plans of staying up late and watching TV in their living room. The change of schedule pulled them from the path of an out-of-control pickup truck, which crashed through the front of their home at about 2am the following day.
The couple say they’d be dead had they kept their usual routine that night.
Kristin remembers in a conversation with local TV news station WDBJ7: “[I asked David,] ‘Do you wanna sit up?’ And he was like, ‘Nah, I think I just wanna go on to bed.’ I said, ‘I’ll go on to bed too.’ Then, just a few hours later, we heard a loud explosion, glass shattered. It was just madness from that point on.”
She adds: “We were so fortunate that, that night, my daughter could have walked down that hallway and found us in the rubble. I thank God every day, and Metallica, for saving us.”
The McKees’ daughter, Madeleine, had discovered Metallica’s music through her father and the inclusion of the song Master Of Puppets in the fourth season of hit Netflix TV showStranger Things. “That was mostly when it started a lot more for me,” she tells WDBJ7.
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The McKee home is currently undergoing repairs and the family hope to move back in within six months.
Coincidentally, Metallica announced a new documentary called Metallica Saved My Life last month. Directed by Jonas Åkerlund (Lords Of Chaos), the film will celebrate the band’s worldwide fanbase and focus on their personal stories. All four of the members will appear, as will superstar actor Jason Momoa.
Metallica’s North America tour is still underway and will hit Northwest Stadium in Landover, Maryland on May 28. The band recently announced a leg of European shows for summer 2026. See details below.
May 09: Athens Olympic Stadium, Greece* May 13: Bucharest Arena Națională, Romania May 19: Chorzów Stadion Śląski, Poland May 22: Frankfurt Deutsche Bank Park, Germany* May 24: Frankfurt Deutsche Bank Park, Germany+ May 27: Zurich Stadion Letzigrund, Switzerland* May 30: Berlin Olympiastadion, Germany* Jun 03: Bologna Stadio Renato Dall’Ara, Italy* Jun 11: Budapest Puskas Arena, Hungary+ Jun 13: Budapest Puskas Arena, Hungary* Jun 19: Dublin Aviva Stadium, Ireland+ Jun 21: Dublin Aviva Stadium, Ireland* Jun 25: Glasgow Hampden Park, UK* Jun 28: Cardiff Principality Stadium, UK* Jul 03: London Stadium, UK* Jul 05: London Stadium, UK+
* Gojira and Knocked Loose support + Pantera and Avatar support
Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.
Simon House, former keyboardist and violinist for Hawkwind and member of David Bowie’s live band, has died, aged 76. The news was broken by his daughter Holly on Sunday (25 May).
Born in Nottingham on 29 August 1948, House was a classically trained violinist who married effortless technique with boundary-pushing sonic exploration, and is also one of the great unsung keyboardists of the progressive ‘70s.
Moving to London in the ‘60s, he quickly embedded himself in the countercultural scene of Notting Hill and Ladbroke Grove. The first band of note he joined was High Tide, a post-psychedelic/proto-prog outfit formed by ex-Misunderstood guitarist Tony Hill. House was playing bass when he first drifted into the band’s circle, but Hill encouraged him to switch to violin instead. Electrified and pushed through a variety of effects, House’s playing was imbued with a wailing power, and became a defining part of High Tide’s sound.
High Tide were a Clearwater band and regularly played shows around west London, one of which, at the All Saints Church Hall on 29 August 1969 (House’s 21st birthday), was famously gatecrashed by the band that would go on to become Hawkwind. House recorded two albums with High Tide, Sea Shanties and High Tide, before the band broke up. He then became a member of the Third Ear Band, and played on the soundtrack album the group recorded for Roman Polanski’s film of Macbeth. While violin was still his main instrument, House had also started playing keyboards as well, including the VCS3 synth.
When Hawkwind’s synth player Del Dettmar announced his intention to leave the band at the end of 1973, House was recruited to take his place. With Dettmar not officially leaving until June 1974, House spent his first few months in the background, making occasional contributions on stage and tagging along as part of the band’s entourage during their ‘1999 Party’ tour of America.
But by the time that Hawkwind went into Olympic studios in May 1974 to record Hall Of The Mountain Grill, House was a fully-fledged member and immediately made his presence felt. Whereas Hawkwind had previously been renowned for their crunching, deep space riffarama, House brought a new sophistication to their sound, from the faux-classical drama of Wind Of Change to the elegant pocket symphony of the album’s title track, House’s first writing credit with the band.
But it was on 1975’s Warrior On The Edge Of Time that House really came into his own, his sweeping Mellotron, coiling synths and Banshee violin bringing the fantastical concept behind the album to life, creating the aural equivalent of reading one of Michael Moorcock’s Eternal Champion novels. It also featured another House-penned instrumental, Spiral Galaxy 28948, his birthday slightly mixed up.
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As Hawkwind’s sound changed again following the return of frontman Robert Calvert and the joining of Paul Rudolph, House adapted with ease to the mellower vibe of Astounding Sounds, Amazing Music, his woozy clavinet and vaporous synth work bringing a distinctly Floydian atmosphere to tracks such as City Of Lagoons and his own Chronoglide Skyway.
Quark, Strangeness And Charm from 1977 was a steelier, more futuristic sounding album, with House once again bringing a new palette of electronic colours to bear. This was particularly in evidence on his instrumental The Forge Of Vulcan, with the first appearance of a sequencer loop on a Hawkwind album. Elsewhere, his organ and violin breakdown in Damnation Alley is just sublime and his swirling arabesques create the perfect backing for Hassan I Sahba.
At the start of 1978, House dropped a bombshell in the Hawkwind camp when he announced he was leaving to join David Bowie’s live band. House had known Bowie since his High Tide days, and after some deliberation, accepted his invitation to become the violinist on Bowie’s Isolar II world tour, beginning in the US in March 1978. Dressed all in white, House was a stand-out yet implacable presence on stage, enhancing Bowie’s more autre material such as Warszawa. He also contributed to Bowie’s subsequent Lodger album, including the hit single Boys Keep Swinging.
House worked as a session musician throughout the 1980s, featuring on albums including Japan’s Tin Drum and Thomas Dolby’s The Golden Age Of Wireless, before rejoining Hawkwind in 1989 and appearing on the Space Bandits and Palace Springs albums. House left the band again in 1991, but would return for two further stints, 2000-2002 (appearing on the Yule Ritual and Canterbury Fayre live albums) and 2005-2007 (appearing on Take Me To Your Leader).
Joe is a regular contributor to Prog. He also writes for Electronic Sound, The Quietus, and Shindig!, specialising in leftfield psych/prog/rock, retro futurism, and the underground sounds of the 1970s. His work has also appeared in The Guardian, MOJO, and Rock & Folk. Joe is the author of the acclaimed Hawkwind biographyDays Of The Underground (2020). He’s on Twitter and Facebook, and his website is https://www.daysoftheunderground.com/.
Released in 1994, Korn’s self-titled debut album almost single-handedly sparked the genre that would come to be known as nu metal to life. In 2015, as the band belatedly brought the 20th anniversary tour to the UK, they sat down with Metal Hammer to break down the album that reshaped the face of metal, track by track.
There’s a certain irony in the fact that rock critics were busy writing obituaries for Kurt Cobain as Korn arrived at Indigo Ranch studios to record their debut album. For in time, the music the Bakersfield, California, quintet recorded at the picturesque Malibu studio would kill off grunge just as emphatically as Nirvana’s arrival in the mainstream signalled the death knell for 80s hair metal.
Introduced by Jonathan Davis’s electrifying call to arms, “Are you ready?”, Korn’s self-titled debut album is the sound of a musical revolution – a brutal, thrillingly invigorating re-imagining of metal for a new millennium, which has lost nothing of its power and impact two decades on. Forensically dissected, the source materials for its hybrid sound are easily discerned, with Korn owing a debt of thanks to Pantera, Rage Against The Machine, Faith No More and the woozy, noir atmospherics of West Coast hip-hop. But in collaboration with maverick producer Ross Robinson, Korn created a distinctive, innovative and unique new vocabulary for metal which would singularly redefine the musical landscape.
On its release in October 1994, Metal Hammer commented that “throughout the 12 tracks, there is a constant deep, dark groove with a hypnotic sense of melody”.
As the band prepared to return to the UK in July 2015 for two special shows at which they will perform their eponymous debut collection in full, Hammer spoke to founding members Jonathan Davis (vocals) and Munky (guitar), about their memories of recording this metallic milestone.
“It was a bunch of kids from Bakersfield living out their rock’n’roll dreams,” says Jonathan. “I remember it as a really cool experience.”
“If we’d known just how important the album would become, maybe we’d have tried to stay sober for some of it!” Munky adds with a laugh.
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Blind
The birth of a legend, and one of the all-time classic album openers
Munky: “The riff came from Jonathan’s old band, SexArt. Head and I saw them play at some little club and I remember thinking the riff was pretty cool – it was in a different key, but still really heavy. It felt like new territory; like something I’d never heard before. I think it might have been Ross Robinson who suggested doing a version of it, so we rearranged it, and I remember the demo version of it being super heavy. We were like, ‘Wow, this has to be on the album.’”
Jonathan: “When my first band broke up, I asked my friend Ryan [Shuck], who went on to join Orgy, if I could keep the song. The way we did it was completely different to the original version anyway. What was I going for lyrically? I have no fucking idea, brother! This was just a stream-of-consciousness thing; it was all over the place. I think it’s about being blind to your reality; blocking the shit out that you don’t want to see or hear. Every single fucking time we start this up and see how the crowd reacts, it’s incredible. Metalheads love this song.”
Scat vocals, hip-hop beats, dissonant seven-string guitars… the sound of the future. Jonathan recorded the vocals at his father’s Fat Tracks studio while high on crystal meth
Jonathan: “When we moved to Huntington Beach, we rehearsed in Anaheim, at a place called Underground Chicken Sound. The owner then started managing us. We were all doing lots of speed at the time, but when he was tweaking he’d get cramp or something, and his tongue would ball up in his mouth. We’d be like, ‘Uh-oh, he’s getting ball tongue…’
Munky: “His tongue would freeze up and he couldn’t talk. He’d be going, [unintelligible gurgling noise] ‘Guuurrggghhh, gahhh!’ Odd then, but funny now! This has got a great ‘hit you over the head’ riff: it was one of the first songs where Head [guitars] and I developed call-and-answer guitar parts and it worked out cool.”
Jonathan: “When we got signed and went on to get real management, Ball Tongue took it hard, and I felt bad because he was like a brother to me, but we had to cut our links. This was a kind of salute to those early crazy days.”
Need To
‘I hate you (Why are you taken?)’ sings an anguished JD on this biting tale of unrequited love
Munky: “I remember Fieldy [bass] and David [Silveria, original drummer] working on this groove in the rehearsal room, and it was really cool and funky, and Head and I wanted to put some dissonant, diminished chords around it. There’s always something really exciting about building songs from the ground up, and this one came together brilliantly.”
Jonathan: “Do you remember the band Human Waste Project? Well, this song is about their singer, Aimee Echo. We were really good friends back in the day, and we never hooked up, and never did anything, but the vibe was there. I don’t think I ever told her this, but I guess she’s going to find out now…”
Clown
Jonathan Davis attacks smalltown intolerance and prejudice. The video for the song revisited his memories of being bullied in high school
Munky: “Head and I wrote the main riff for this in our neighbour’s apartment in Huntington Beach when we were pretty high: we had been up all night doing crystal meth. I’m not sure that drugs opened our minds creatively, but they made us push our abilities to our limits, and pushed our boundaries in terms of making the sounds we heard it in our heads a reality.”
Jonathan: “I remember the show that inspired the lyrics. We were playing this club in San Diego, and this fucking old skinhead punk kept screaming, ‘You’re not from HB [Huntington Beach], you’re from Bakersfield!’ I was like, ‘I don’t give a fuck where we’re from, bro.’ Eventually he took a swing at me, and Ball Tongue jumped up and knocked him the fuck out; laid him out right there. They dragged him out of the club, and halfway through the set I could see him out back, jamming to the music. That tells you what kind of fucking clown he was.”
Korn’s Jonathan Davis (Image credit: Anacleto Rapping/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
Divine
A filthy, rolling riff accompanies one of Jonathan Davis’s creepiest lyrics; a revenge fantasy borne from obsession
Munky: “This was one of the first songs we wrote at Underground Chicken Sound. I remember [future Metallica bassist] Robert Trujillo coming to the studio because we were considering having him produce our first record, and he said, ‘Let’s work on one song to see how we work together’, so we picked this one. We didn’t form a relationship with Robert to the point where he got to produce the album, but we liked the ideas that he had, and the song structure we created that day is the one that’s on the album.”
Jonathan: “The song is about sadism and stalking. It’s a really dark song about basically torturing this poor girl psychologically. I’ve been known to do that… I was definitely letting some demons out on this album.”
Faget
The album’s first truly jaw-dropping moment, as Jonathan Davis lets rip at the homophobic bullies who made his adolescence so miserable
Munky: “When people first heard this, they were like, ‘Holy shit!’ It’s kinda like Rage Against The Machine on steroids. Sometimes people need to be told to fuck off.”
Jonathan: “Growing up, I was a new romantic. My favourite band was Duran Duran, so I’d wear make-up and long shirts, and in Bakersfield – an oil and farming town – there were a lot of macho jocks who took offence to that. I got my ass kicked and got called a ‘faggot’ all the time. I wasn’t gay, but it got to the point where I thought that maybe I was gay, and just didn’t know it. It really fucked with my head, and I had to get that shit off my chest. Still to this day, it feels so good to be able to scream it out. Bullying is not some rite of passage that people should accept, it’s bullshit, and I hope this song has helped people. Every time I sing this I relive that shit. It’s my therapy, I guess.”
Shoots And Ladders
Bagpipes, nursery rhymes, atonal riffs… no other band on the planet sounded like this in 1994
Munky: “Jonathan is an amazing bagpipes player, and the first time we heard him play we were like, ‘Holy shit, we have to put this on the record!’ We knew AC/DC did it, so we tried to figure out the tuning and mould the riff around it. This song, for me, fed into the idea of the album cover: it’s this playful nursery rhyme, but you know there’s something dark and mysterious behind it, and you can kinda sense the monster emerging in the middle of it…”
Jonathan: “I guess I was in a twisted state of mind when I wrote this, thinking about hidden evils and the corrupted innocence of childhood, and the dark meanings behind some of the nursery rhymes we all grow up with. I mean, Ring A Ring O’ Roses is about the Black Plague, which is kinda fucked up. Now I get to see big, buff, macho men sing nursery rhymes at rock shows, which is kinda fucked up, too!”
Korn – Shoots and Ladders (Official HD Video) – YouTube
One of the album’s heaviest tracks sonically, with an appropriately downbeat, dead-inside JD lyric
Munky: “This is one of the more metal songs on the album; the riff kinda reminds me of Pantera meets Alice In Chains. I remember thinking it was cool that it started with this simple figure played on one string through a clean channel, and then the riff comes in and hits you over the head. It’s a great song, but not one of my favourites on the album.”
Jonathan: “This is just a song about being bored with life, about being down in the dumps and thinking life sucks. This whole record is super dark, and comes from a dark place. Making it was fun, but it stirred up some dark shit, and going back to songs like this for the 20th anniversary shows is a real reminder of those times.”
Fake
One of the album’s less celebrated tracks, partially inspired by the bullying Jonathan used to suffer at the hands of Fieldy
Jonathan: “That’s about fake people… in part about some of the shit I had from Fieldy back in the day. There are still plenty of fake people out there, particularly in this business, but now I don’t really give a fuck – I stay well away from them, and they’re not in my life. But when you’re a kid, 23 years old, it’s harder to deal with, and harder to understand why people do what they do.”
Munky: “I remember we wrote this song in San Diego, on a boat. We had a gig in San Diego and my dad had a small houseboat in a slip near there, so he said we could stay on it, so, of course, we partied all night. But we came up with most of the riffs that night. It’s one of my favourite songs, because it has so many parts but they all make sense when played properly.”
Lies
More soul-baring self-flagellation from Jonathan, on one of the album’s more low-key moments
Munky: “I always loved how Fieldy and David would think left whenever they heard stuff that Head and I were writing, and when we were working on this they said, ‘Let’s do something that when you turn up your car stereo, the fucking licence plate is going to rattle.’ They wanted almost like a hip-hop beat, and I loved what they came up with. We didn’t always know what we were doing on this record, and I think that’s the beauty of it.”
Jonathan: “This is as much about me lying to myself about my problems as hearing lies from others. Looking back, I wasted so much time and energy not dealing with problems, but when you’re young you don’t always have the confidence to address shit in your life.”
Helmet In The Bush
Twisted industrial darkness, inspired by drug-fuelled anxiety
Munky: “This was written towards the end of the studio session, on a little drum machine. It was mainly Jonathan, Head and Ross. I remember being gone from the studio for one day, and when I came back they said, ‘Listen to this!’ and they had this fucking killer track. I was blown away, and I was just like, ‘Let me put my shit on it, too!’”
Jonathan: “This is about good old meth amphetamine – about doing so much speed that your dick is so small that it just looks like a helmet in the bush! I remember people fucking freaking out about us doing electronic shit on that song, but I think it’s stood the test of time. After we did this record I did crystal meth for about three more weeks and then I quit, and never did it again: I thought to myself, ‘I have a drug problem, and if I don’t stop it’s going to kill me.’”
Korn – Helmet In The Bush Live in London (Track 16 of 17) | Moshcam – YouTube
The album’s most harrowing, raw and disturbing song, closing the album with the sound of Jonathan Davis sobbing uncontrollably in Indigo Ranch’s vocal recording booth
Jonathan: “That song is fucked up. It’s about abuse, obviously. Not from my parents, but from a babysitter, and unfortunately the scars still remained. That song needed to be done.”
Munky: “We knew what this song was about, and we wanted to create a spooky, heavy foundation for Jonathan so that he could open those doors. When we were tracking the song, Jonathan really took the memory and relived it, and I remember Ross telling us to just keep playing when he broke down, so we were totally improvising for the last couple of minutes. I remember worrying that the tape would run out, and it did, literally 30 seconds after the end of the song. It’s a scary song.”
Jonathan: “In the studio I was properly freaking out and bawling, and I had no idea Ross Robinson was getting it all on tape until I came back a couple of days later and he said, ‘Listen to this…’ I couldn’t even listen to it. I listened to it to learn the words for this tour, and even now it’s still raw. It caused a lot of pain in my life, but it’s worth it if it gave other people some strength and helped them to deal with the same sort of shit. I think the family we have, helping and caring about one another, is magical, and that’s why I still do what I do. The money and the big house is cool, but the real pay-off now is making people happy. I know that sounds cheesy and not very rock’n’roll, but I don’t give a fuck. I’m old now and I can say what I feel.”
Originally published in Metal Hammer 272,
A music writer since 1993, formerly Editor of Kerrang! and Planet Rock magazine (RIP), Paul Brannigan is a Contributing Editor to Louder. Having previously written books on Lemmy, Dave Grohl (the Sunday Times best-seller This Is A Call) and Metallica (Birth School Metallica Death, co-authored with Ian Winwood), his Eddie Van Halen biography (Eruption in the UK, Unchained in the US) emerged in 2021. He has written for Rolling Stone, Mojo and Q, hung out with Fugazi at Dischord House, flown on Ozzy Osbourne’s private jet, played Angus Young’s Gibson SG, and interviewed everyone from Aerosmith and Beastie Boys to Young Gods and ZZ Top. Born in the North of Ireland, Brannigan lives in North London and supports The Arsenal.
Fans of the university’s (American) football team – the Hokies – are known for their enthusiastic response to Enter Sandman, which is played at the stadium whenever the team takes the field.
The thrash metal icons also released footage of their performance of Lux Æterna from the same show. Both videos can be viewed below.
Metallica are currently on a 21-date North American tour which runs through to June, with support at various stops coming from Pantera, Limp Bizkit, Suicidal Tendencies and Ice Nine Kills.
The dates are a continuation of Metallica’s M72 world tour, which started in 2023 after the release of the their latest album, 72 Seasons.
The tour continues the “No Repeat Weekends” model, where multiple stops will include two shows at the same venue, with no song getting played twice across the two nights.
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Metallica: Enter Sandman (Blacksburg, VA – May 7, 2025) – YouTube
Metallica 2025 remaining North American tour dates
May 25: Philadelphia Lincoln Financial Field, PA May 28: Landover Northwest Stadium, MD May 31: Charlotte Bank Of America Stadium, NC Jun 3: Atlanta Mercedes-Benz Stadium, GA Jun 6: Tampa Raymond James Stadium, FL Jun 8: Tampa Raymond James Stadium, FL Jun 14: Houston NRG Stadium, TX Jun 20: Santa Clara Levi’s Stadium, CA Jun 22: Santa Clara Levi’s Stadium, CA Jun 27: Denver Empower Field at Mile High, CO Jun 29: Denver Empower Field at Mile High, CO
Stef wrote close to 5,000 stories during his time as assistant online news editor and later as online news editor between 2014-2016. An accomplished reporter and journalist, Stef has written extensively for a number of UK newspapers and also played bass with UK rock favourites Logan. His favourite bands are Pixies and Clap Your Hands Say Yeah. Stef left the world of rock’n’roll news behind when he moved to his beloved Canada in 2016, but he started on his next 5000 stories in 2022.
Horror-obsessed metalcore bunch Ice Nine Kills have ‘apologised’ following accusations of using imagery generated by artificial intelligence.
On Saturday (May 24), the Boston band took to social media to share a picture of Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees, from the Nightmare On Elm Street and Friday The 13th franchises respectively, grilling meat. The post was made to promote a Memorial Day weekend merchandise sale.
Many fans responded negatively to the upload, saying the image was AI-generated. Several publications reported on the backlash, with US website Metal Injectionlisting several factors that pointed to the potential use of AI.
On Sunday (May 25), Ice Nine Kills responded to the controversy, issuing a sardonic statement that came with another seemingly AI-generated image.
The band wrote on X (formerly Twitter): “We are vigorously investigating the disturbing claims that a recent promotional image was sloppily birthed by AI. We solemnly pledge to get to the bottom of this horrific headline-making crime against Redditors. For now, enjoy our new promo photo, taken just moments ago.”
The attached image featured a depiction of the band’s lineup with exaggerated muscles and wearing suits and sunglasses.
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They wrote: “Fuck AI. Support actual artists.”
The use of AI-generated ‘art’ has been a hot-button topic ever since the technology proliferated a couple of years ago. In an essay for Music Week in 2023, Deviate Digital CEO Sammy Andrews called AI a threat to creative jobs, as well as something that could make copyright infringement easier and lead to a loss of identity and diversity in music. However, she also praised the potential use of the technology as a music-discovery tool.
In 2024, the major record labels Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group and Warner Music Group launched a lawsuit against AI music generation companies Suno and Udio. The labels allege that the use of their artists’ music to train AI algorithms constitutes copyright infringement, while the defendants argue that it falls under “fair use”.
Ice Nine Kills are currently touring North America and will play across Europe in November and December. Frontman Spencer Charnas told Metal Hammer last year that the band were demoing their next studio album, which hopefully won’t be AI-generated.
Slashin’ prices 🔪 in our store for a limited time. Gather select evidence up to 50% off while you can.🩸 https://t.co/7BD09ROW6t pic.twitter.com/xMlQ3bGH3jMay 24, 2025
Louder’s resident Gojira obsessive was still at uni when he joined the team in 2017. Since then, Matt’s become a regular in Metal Hammer and Prog, at his happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. He’s got bylines in The Guardian, The Telegraph, The Independent, NME and many others, too. When he’s not writing, you’ll probably find him skydiving, scuba diving or coasteering.
