Stand in the centre of York Minster and look up, and it quickly becomes clear why so many people find God. The vaulted, timber-arched roof, the graceful stone pillars raised by long-forgotten craftsmen, the sunlight streaming in through the ornate stained-glass windows – it’s a spectacle that will have all but the most dug-in atheist questioning their place in the universe.
A church of some sort has stood on this site since the 7th century, though the Minster itself – the second-largest gothic cathedral in Northern Europe – dates back to the 1200s. During that time, it’s witnessed all manner of events both godly and ungodly: fires, lightning strikes, murders and heaven knows what else. But there’s one thing this venerable building has never seen: a metal gig.
“This place is glorious,” says Mark Mynett, guitarist and co-founder of symphonic metal band Plague Of Angels. “Ghost have fake stained-glass windows behind them at their shows. We’ve got a 1,000-year-old cathedral with real stained-glass windows in 360˚.”
It’s the last Thursday in April, and Plague Of Angels are getting ready to play the first metal show ever to take place in the Minster. Tomorrow night they’ll play a sold-out show here in front of 1,400 people, some of them metal fans, some of them organ aficionados, some of them simply curious as to what on Earth this is all about. A stage has been constructed in the nave, the Minster’s hangar-like central space, and the band and their roadies are hurriedly setting up the gear in order to soundcheck.
“I don’t think I’ve ever done a soundcheck that has to stop at a certain time because people need to pray,” says Plague Of Angels’ drummer and co-founder Jeff Singer, watching the activity from the side of the stage.
There’s another factor that will make tomorrow’s gig unique. York Minster is home to one of the biggest pipe organs in the country. This beautiful beast of an instrument is made up of 5,400 individual pipes and dominates the nave, looming over the stage. Played by organist David Pipe, the organ will be integral to the show, adding an extra level of sonic grandeur to Plague Of Angels’ music. Not for nothing is the gig being billed as ‘Organic Metal: Two Worlds Collide’.
“It’s the king of instruments,” says Mark of the massive pipe organ. “It’s the size of a house. You don’t just hear this organ – you feel it. It’s heavy as fuck.”
Suddenly a harmonic thunderclap erupts from the back of the stage, drowning out our conversation. It’s the organ booming into deafening life. He’s not wrong. It’s heavy as fuck.
Plague Of Angels have form on the ecclesiastical front. They played their first gig in Huddersfield’s St Paul’s Hall, a former church, in May 2024, a show that also featured David Pipe. This, only their second show, is like that only bigger. Much, much bigger.
While Plague Of Angels are a new-ish band, neither Mark nor Jeff are new to music. They’ve played together on and off for 30 years, most notably in nu metal-era hopefuls Kill II This.
“The most awful thing happened in my early 30s,” says Mark, poker-faced. “I grew up, I got a mortgage and I got a job.”
It’s a couple of hours after soundcheck, and Mark and Jeff are sitting in the bar of the band’s hotel, a few minutes’ walk from the Minster. He’s joking about the ‘awfulness’ of his career path. He’s a Senior Lecturer in Music Technology And Production at the University of Huddersfield these days, with a PhD in engineering, producing and mixing the contemporary metal genre, which means he gets to put ‘Dr’ in front of his name. “There aren’t many Doctors Of Metal,” he says, not inaccurately.
Plague Of Angels emerged from UK Metal Merger, a Covid-era Band Aid-style collective of Northern metal musicians steered by Mark to raise money for crew members whose careers had been impacted by the pandemic. The original Plague Of Angels line-up featured Mark plus UK Metal Merger contributors Jeff, Cradle Of Filth guitarist Richard Shaw, and bassist Luke Appleton, who had spent nine years in Iced Earth for his sins. They were joined by COF singer Anabelle Iratni and third guitarist Oz Wright, though both Anabelle and Luke have since left, with their respective places taken by French vocalist Emilie Nox and, for this gig at least, ex-Kill II This bassist Caroline Campbell.
The name Plague Of Angels comes from a line from In Solitude, the 14-minute song UK Metal Merger released during Covid.
“The song was about positivity,” says Mark. “Particularly today, there’s a lot of people going through a lot of challenges, but people become their best selves by overcoming those challenges. Not by making excuses for their situation, but by finding that strength and having respect for themselves.”
If you’re going to become one of the country’s foremost organists, you could do worse than be called David Pipe. It’s a measure of how friendly he is that he doesn’t stove Metal Hammer’s head in when we mention that fact, given it’s probably the 400th time he’s heard it this week.
With his short hair and colourful jacket, he could be a tourist taking a look around the Minster and wondering what all the kerfuffle is in the middle of the nave, but he’s at the very top of the tree, organ-wise. Later tonight, he’ll play an opening set featuring interpretations of songs by Black Sabbath and Deep Purple, alongside Bach’s appropriately heavy Toccata And Fugue In D Minor (you’d know it if you heard it).
“I wasn’t really a heavy metal fan,” he says, as we sit in the front row while the band soundcheck. “Queen are my band. Though a friend of mine liked Metallica. James Hetfield, Kirk Hammett, Lars Ulrich… and there was a bass player…”
York Minster itself is a different matter. This is home from home for David. He was the Assistant Director of Music here for several years in the 2010s, and his passion for the subject in general and this instrument specifically is infectious. Pipe organs date back to Ancient Greece, he explains, and this one is more than 150 years old. They work by pushing air through metal or wooden pipes of different lengths and, well…
“That bit’s physics,” he says genially. “It’s all above my head.”
One thing he is keenly aware of is that the pipe organ could become an endangered instrument in the UK. According to the charity Pipe Up, four pipe organs end up in landfills every week in the UK, partly as a result of falling church attendances.
“It is a concern,” he says. “No one wants this instrument to die out, least of all me.”
He crossed paths with Mark Mynett via his own role teaching at the University of Huddersfield. The guitarist asked if David would record some organ for some of his students, and that led to David becoming involved in Organic Doom, a gig organised by Mark that took place at Huddersfield Town Hall in June 2023 featuring ‘monastic doom’ band Arð, accompanied by David on the town hall’s own pipe organ.
Plague Of Angels made their own debut the following May, this time at St Paul’s Hall, a former church in Huddersfield with its own impressive pipe organ, once more accompanied by David. Bizarrely, the gig even made BBC early evening programme The One Show.
“It was amazing,” says Jeff Singer of the latter show. “You had people who were into pipe organ music who had no idea about metal who absolutely loved it. You had metal fans who had never listened to pipe organ music before turning up to the next pipe organ recital. That was lovely. We live in a divided world, but that wasn’t about division, it’s about unity.”
That’s an unpopular stance these days.
“Maybe that’s what’s wrong,” he says, not incorrectly.
t was the team at York Minster who approached Plague Of Angels to perform here. The success of the St Paul’s Hall show, together with David Pipe’s longstanding connection to the Minster, meant it would be an intriguing prospect.
Still, not everyone is onboard with the idea. There has been outrage from some Christians who object to a metal band playing on such hallowed ground, especially when a) the band are called Plague Of Angels and b) they include a former member of Cradle Of Filth on guitar. The latter objection stems from the infamous ‘Vestal Masturbation’ t-shirt, featuring a masturbating nun.
“It’s a t-shirt from 30 years ago, from a completely different band,” says Mark exasperatedly.
He pulls up an email sent by a furious parishioner – albeit one from a completely different parish, 160 miles away in North Wales – that ends with the words “Repent now.” Several equally livid comments have been posted on the Minster’s social media page, the best of which fumes “Why not hold dogging parties on the high altar?”, which admittedly sounds like a huge missed opportunity.
“These people don’t know the content of this music – it’s not ‘blasphemous’,” says Mark.
“They wouldn’t bat an eyelid at Wagner, but he was a renowned anti-Semite who believed the church was linked to the downfall of European civilisation. But metal is ‘wrong’ in a cathedral? It’s so misguided.”
One person seemingly unruffled by the controversy is the Reverend Canon Tim Goode, a senior member of the Minster’s hierarchy. An accordion-playing prog fan with a pair of trendy, thick-rimmed round glasses that only add to his enthusiastic head boy demeanour, Tim is passionate about his faith, but he’s also aware of the need to bring people into the Minster who wouldn’t normally set foot in here.
“This is about community, about breaking down barriers,” he says. “It opens up a real opportunity for people who may not feel the Minster is for them. That’s massively important. This place is for everybody.”
Tim was part of the process of deciding to stage the show. He insists there was no concern on the part of the Minster.
“Heavy metal music deals with the same issues that cross my desk every day,” he says. “Issues around justice, around joy, around the gamut of what it is to be human – heavy metal expresses it all. There is no barrier, no separation.”
He’s aware of the opposition to the show.
“People can sometimes confuse the sacred with something that’s fragile,” he says. “The sacredness of this building can easily take it. It is not fragile. It doesn’t need protecting.”
It’s the night of the gig, and that controversy has failed to materialise. There are no protesters picketing the doors with placards reading ‘Down With This Sort Of Thing’, Father Ted style. Fire and brimstone does not rain down from on high on York Minster.
As night falls outside, the inside of the cathedral darkens. David Pipe begins his recital of old Sabbath and Deep Purple numbers, the Minster is lit by a simple but effective light show. Metal fans form the majority of the audience, but there are still plenty of people who look like they’re more likely to be found at the Sunday organ recital.
At 9pm, Plague Of Angels take the stage in dramatic fashion with the epic A Great Awakening, a song that will feature on their debut album, All Of The Above, set for release in early 2026. Their music fills the vast space, not least Emilie Nox’s impressively versatile voice, which can switch from an angelic swoop to guttural extreme metal roar in an instant (ironically, Richard Shaw, whose tenure in Cradle Of Filth caused at least part of the non-existent controversy, was unavailable to play tonight).
Throughout, David Pipe sits at the console in front of the speaker, the giant pipe organ he’s playing providing the perfect gothic backdrop. The fact that a 78 decibel limit has been imposed for fear of damaging the Minster’s stained-glass windows doesn’t seem to matter.
“The organ is the speaker,” Reverend Canon Tim Goode had said earlier. “The cathedral is the amplifier.”
It’s different from any gig Hammer has been to before. There’s a hushed reverence to the proceedings – not religious, but respectful of the space and what it has represented for centuries. It feels like a secular communion in a sacred space – two worlds colliding.
After the show, there’s a rush to take the gear down and get it packed away. Mark and Jeff both look elated. This show has been a success on many levels.
“The world is ever more partisan and divided,” Mark had said earlier. “You only solve those problems by people coming together. We’re not trying to pretend we’re solving the world’s problems, but we are bringing people together.”
Plague Of Angels play Bristol St Mary Redcliffe Church on September 13 and Huddersfield Town Hall on December 5. Their debut album, All Of The Above, is due out in 2026
You must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
