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February 2025

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140 articles

February 28
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- Think you know rock music? Test yourself with The Classic Rock Quiz
- Great new prog you must hear from Cosmograf, O.R.k., Jenny Hval and more in this week's Tracks Of The Week
- Heavy metal, classic rock, prog and beautiful Mediterranean sunshine collide at Spain’s Rock Imperium - one of the most stunning and unique festivals in the world
- "If you can live through the dinosaur period, you become a legend": The albums by Nazareth you should listen to... and one to avoid
- “It seemed to me that America was ruled by the gun… if you don’t like the President, shoot him”: Flag-burning prog innovators The Nice found trouble on stage and off it
February 27
- "There are some things AI can’t replace, and that is drinking two-litre bottles of cider and ****ing yourself in a field." We're going to miss Ithaca dearly, and this interview with Djamila Azzouz shows why
- "People are baffled if I say I love Taylor Swift." Modern metalcore icon Chris Motionless on being a Swiftie, ice hockey and why Motionless In White are taking their time on a new album
- "I started crying. I was completely overwhelmed by how special it was that we were there": How a band of Dutch retro-rockers ended up recording at two legendary recording studios
- "There was a decadent, hedonistic atmosphere in Berlin. It was a great time for making music": Marillion look back on the making of the album that tore the band apart
- “ELO, Judas Priest, my dad’s piano playing – that’s prog!” Tennis hero Pat Cash discovered Saga in Steve Harris’ private pub, introduced Tony Iommi to Bigelf and got Robert Plant to take up his sport
February 26
- “Want to scare people these days? Forget about Satan and drugs. Bring on the evolutionary biologist”: Nightwish were accused of seeking to shock by working with Richard Dawkins. Instead they explored the poetry of science
- "You can only be what the public thinks you are for so long before it becomes boring": The story of how Metallica got themselves an orchestra – and the album that followed
- “It was awkward – Yes sort of told me never to come back”: Oliver Wakeman had to tour with the prog progenitors while knowing he’d been replaced. Surprisingly, he genuinely enjoyed the trip
- Every Pink Floyd album ranked from worst to best
February 25
- “The busker in my high street is terrible! He never gets any better. I had this idea: he doesn’t realise he’s dead and carries on”: Steven Wilson’s desperate desire to believe in ghosts inspired his last fully prog album
- "We killed every night. So I knew I had something": The epic saga of one of rock's great live acts, Bob Seger and the Silver Bullet Band
February 24
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- “Peter Gabriel started singing over my solos. I was pissed off – ‘You’re singing on my bit!’ But that half-minute is probably our peak”: How Genesis made Supper’s Ready, arguably their greatest song
February 23
- “With the success came all the trappings and we tried every one of them. The drugs, the travel, the women. Our lives were forever changed”: The chaotic story of Black Sabbath, the band who did more than anyone to invent heavy metal
- “Things had got pretty bad. I don’t know what demons Steven was fighting, but we definitely both had our ups and downs”: How Done With Mirrors put Aerosmith back on the long road to redemption
- “The one core thing about metal is that rebellious nature. You’re allowed to be yourself no matter what side of the spectrum you are”: How Halestorm went from teenage rockers to globe-conquering metal stars
- The 10 best Smashing Pumpkins B-sides and outtakes
- “Once you heard death metal, there was no turning back. Thrash was out of the window. It seemed silly, music for wimps”: The chaotic story of Nihilist, Unleashed, Entombed and the bloody birth of Swedish death metal
- “All anyone wanted to hear was awful new wave garbage like Elvis Costello and The Police. Rock groups like ours were strangled us to death”: The rise and fall of Starz, the 70s rockers who should been the next Kiss
February 22
- “We were just boozers and mounds of cocaine. Cocaine eventually is bad, but we were young kids. It didn’t hamper us”: The epic life and crazy times of Mick Fleetwood, the heartbeat of Fleetwood Mac
- “Religion never accepts the balance that exists in a human being. It’s just a one-way street. That’s always going to cause conflicts”: How Dimmu Borgir made an irreligious symphonic black metal classic with In Sorte Diaboli
- “It was carnage. We partied on the road, then I’d get home and start the party all over again. I thought, ‘If this carries on, I might die’”: The explosive story of The Darkness’ OTT hard rock masterpiece Permission To Land
- “We were heartbroken. The world had lost a big talent. But as a band we had lost much more”: The rollercoaster story of AC/DC’s Back In Black, the 50-million selling album that emerged from tragedy
- I’ve just discovered how many classic seventh records exist and it’s blown my mind
- “A fan said the teaser was 36 seconds long and already better than The Astonishing… another said they already knew they wouldn’t buy it. You’ve got to love that stuff”: When Dream Theater slimmed down for Distance Over Time
- “I always thought that Pink Floyd were a band for people who don’t like music or rock’n’roll”: Jack Bruce’s wild tales of Ginger Baker, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Leslie West and more
February 21
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- The 50 metal albums you need to hear in 2025
- Great new prog you must hear from Karmakanic, Earthside, Bjørn Riis and more in this week's Tracks Of The Week
- I used to work in concert ticketing. When did it become such an utter hellscape?
- "The lyrics were hastily written in the pub, hence the fact that it lacked a final verse": Recorded in secret, Sweet's Fox On The Run was given a second life by the Guardians Of The Galaxy
- "This is the first time in my career we’ve had to speak to the local police about civil unrest": Mark Tremonti on the political climate, being a guitar hero and Frank Sinatra
- “It’s a slam-dunk lost classic”: How Rush and Pink Floyd led James Dean Bradfield to Man – a band he’d previously dismissed
February 20
- "It’s timeless. It was always in its own world; it didn’t fit into any category.” Tangerine Dream and the story of Phaedra
- "It’s gory and romantic and brutal and I think that’s what keeps people coming back again and again." Why metal is obsessed with vampires
- Goth is the coolest it’s been in decades – and these 9 rising metal bands prove it
- "Wrapping blues tradition in boundary-breaking innovation": Every Led Zeppelin album ranked from worst to best
- “People talk, a couple of hundred quid changes hands – and you’re in the charts. That got us going”: The Yes Album was very nearly Yes’ final release. But fate intervened three times
- "Our band’s chemistry was really coming together. This whole new world opened up to us and we were off drugs. And then Jeremy died": The anarchic early years of one of rock's most enigmatic groups, The Mars Volta
February 19
- "He was such an interesting man. A funny combination of intensity and craziness." King Crimson's Jamie Muir remembered...
- “I hate that I had to write the previous album. It became dangerous to play the music and stab myself in the heart”: Swallow The Sun had to escape from Juha Raivio’s personal hell. The solution was new album Shining
- "When I met him he was this hippie dude, living up in the hills taking magic mushrooms." The making of Bon Scott: AC/DC frontman, sun-worshipper and night-crawler
- "I’d go into a record shop and I’d want Blodwyn Pig and Wishbone Ash and Traffic and Soft Machine – but which one do you choose?": Punk pioneer Captain Sensible loved plenty of prog – but had to hide it
- “As I was leaving the stage, I put my arm around Niall and said, ‘I think we got away with it’”: And So I Watch You From Afar were brave enough to debut their album Megafauna in full at a festival
February 18
- "It’s not like anything else. I liked it for that. We'd always take a different path": The story behind The Kinks' brilliantly subversive classic Lola
- The Rock’n’roll Activist: Nine albums by Tom Morello you should listen to... and one you should ignore
- "Something that was a big event for me had become an instrument of ridicule": The Kinks' Dave Davies on the double-edged sword of solo success
- "There's never been a blueprint for the dictatorship of the proletariat": That time Aerosmith appeared on Saturday Night Live with Tom Hanks and discussed the decline of communism in Eastern Europe
February 17
- “I’d get up in the morning, practise scales at my piano, go off dancing, and then in the evening I’d come back and play the piano all night.” The story of Kate Bush's debut album The Kick Inside
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- “The facts don’t matter. Whoever has the better story wins!” When Pink Floyd, Arthur Brown, Rush and others got in trouble with the law, the results were remarkably prog
February 16
- “She grew up in Russia and bootlegged banned Deep Purple and Scorpions albums. It’s one of the reason I married her”: Kansas’ Joe Deninzon left the USSR and built a musical world out of a surprising coincidence
- “We jumped offstage and took our masks off and started swinging at people at the end of one song”: The wild story of Slipknot vs Mushroomhead, the masked band feud that lit up nu metal
- “I had some criticisms of Dark Side Of The Moon. One or two of the vehicles carrying the ideas were not as strong as the ideas that they carried”: How David Gilmour attempted to lay the ghost of Pink Floyd to rest
- “Go down in a ball of flames, you deserve it!”: safe to say that Thom Yorke is not a huge Muse fan
February 15
- “Axl only wanted to play industrial and Pearl Jam-sounding crap”: the story of Slash’s Snakepit and how it marked the beginning of the end for Guns N’ Roses mark one
- “We ended up hating Rick Rubin. He didn’t get what made this band happen”: The rollercoaster story of Wolfsbane, the British metal band who should have been superstars
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- “Anybody down there on acid seeing this figure flying down with flames coming out of his head must have thought God was coming”: The crazy life of Arthur Brown, the wildman who set rock’n’roll on fire
- “Death happens to everyone and if it hasn’t happened yet it’s going to happen. So what better way to deal with it?”: How Mastodon found light in darkness with The Hunter
- “Paul McCartney was an unusually dour person and John Lennon was drunk and inanimate”: Todd Rundgren’s wild tales of The Beatles, New York Dolls, Grand Funk Railroad and more
February 14
- Ace new prog you must hear from Solstice, Vennart, John Lodge, Dim Gray and more in this week's Tracks Of The Week
- "A ninth album would have been about riffs - interestingly constructed riffs and hypnotic music": Jimmy Page looks back on the tests and turmoil of Led Zeppelin's final albums
February 13
- 40 years ago, The Breakfast Club annoyed me for many reasons – but mostly for the way it ruined Simple Minds
- Five truly brilliant and cruelly underrated British rock albums turning 25 this year which I can't believe no-one else is banging on about
- “I’ve always wanted to be in a metal band… Pantera and Dream Theater are great”: Carl Palmer on his desire for a life beyond classic prog, the final ELP show, and why he wishes they’d had a guitarist
- “I bought some fake diamond earrings for 28 dollars”: What Linkin Park spent their money on after Hybrid Theory sold 14 million copies will definitely surprise you
- "We all appeared on stage wearing robes and holding candles:" Joe Satriani on G3 pranking, handling Yngwie Malmsteen and the Halloween costume he'd rather forget
- “Things come more difficult to him than to anyone I’ve ever met…he doesn’t con himself into thinking he knows what he’s doing”: Peter Gabriel, in the words of his collaborators and admirers
- "I was debagged on a regular basis. And in Chicago I barely held on to my underpants": From Genesis to revelations with Peter Gabriel
February 12
- "It was the ‘giggle grass’, so everything struck me as hysterically funny for about three hours." Grand Magus frontman J.B. Christofferson on laughing fits, Beowulf and heavy metal's next generation
- "Do you know Led Zeppelin's Whole Lotta Love?": Over in Santa Monica, a Lithuanian guitarist and a Ukrainian violinist are busking their way to YouTube fame and fortune
- "His voice is extraordinary": Nine albums by Paul Rodgers you should listen to... and one you should ignore
- “Amid the turmoil over the increased use of synths, there’s a perfect balance of both sides of their character”: 12 great Rush songs of the 80s
- "He used to go around carrying a large case with a hammer in it. And if you weren’t getting paid, they’d break somebody’s knees": The heroes and villains of the Black Sabbath journey
February 11
- "My parents were academics and not thrilled about me joining a thrash metal band." Testament's Alex Skolnick talks thrash, Clash Of The Titans and what it was like joining Ozzy Osbourne's band
- “My new voice can seem quite startling – maybe even polarising. It caught me the same way. I struggled with it”: The humbling experience that’s made Mercury Rev into a different animal
- “I thought I’d have to sell my house. The manager suggested we got part-time jobs”: Marillion were facing oblivion. Then they made This Strange Engine and found a way forward
- "Ten years ago I was a scientist in a lab coat and had never sung in front of anybody in my life": From microbiologist to musician - the unlikely rise of Stephen Wilson Jr
February 10
- "We were up in places no one else was thinking about": Nine albums by the Allman Brothers Band you should listen to... and one you should ignore
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- “For some Journey fans, it’s their first time listening to prog rock. And they like it!” Ross Valory is pleasantly surprised at the success of his debut solo album
- “She fell in love with Pink Floyd, The Beatles and David Bowie and combined them all in her neoclassical way”: Even though Kate Bush refused to produce Gavin Friday’s Virgin Prunes, he still loves her
February 9
- “When Paul pitched into We Are The Champions, it wasn’t anything like Freddie would have done yet it carried the spirit of the song”: How Queen + Paul Rodgers resurrected one of rock’s most iconic bands
- “I used to walk in a venue with a beer in each hand, with a hard-on and looking for a fight”: Overkill’s Bobby ‘Blitz’ Ellsworth is the thrash survivor that cancer and a stroke couldn’t kill
- “This is a band with no limits. If there’s a metal fan on the moon, we’ll be there”: How Iron Maiden’s epic Somewhere Back In Time tour took them where other metal bands dare not go
- “We feel that music should be used in order to make serious statements”: how The Smiths turned from a good band into a great one on Meat Is Murder
February 8
- "I said, “We’re a band, we want to make a record.” He said, “Oi dunno much about records… If you wanted a cowshed, I could probably ’elp yer!” Pendragon's Nick Barrett looks back on their 40-plus year career...
- “That TV celebrity that I became, I didn’t like it. My heart is in music. I hated every second of it”: How Ozzy Osbourne rediscovered himself with the Scream album
- “Almost overnight after the Sex Pistols, prog rock came to a halt”: 1977 was the supposedly the year punk killed prog. The truth is very different
- “There were death threats flying around. They were burning my effigy at punk bonfires”: The tumultuous story of Peaceville Records, the underground label that helped shape extreme metal
- "I found myself preoccupied by death." Meet Ante-Inferno, the British band bringing black metal to the seaside
- “I played bass in the guitar war between Hendrix and Johnny Winter. It was so loud!”: Stephen Stills’ wild stories of Neil Young, Jimi Hendrix, Jimmy Page and Public Enemy
- “She blends her beloved characteristics with those of King Crimson, Genesis and Porcupine Tree”: Tori Amos’ From The Choirgirl Hotel is prog in its truest sense
- Ten reasons why Tears For Fears made two of the most influential albums ever
- “In six months, we got through 300 bottles of vodka, 400 bottles of whiskey and cases of beer. It was insane”: The unbelievable story of Def Leppard’s 80s hard rock masterpiece Hysteria
February 7
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear this week
- Cool new proggy sounds you must hear from McStine & Minnemann, Gleb Kolyadin, Marko Hietala and more in this week's Tracks Of The Week
- "Behind those dark glasses and unsmiling visage, he presented an inscrutable presence." Soft Machine's Mike Ratledge remembered
February 6
- "They take your song and put it on the radio and it ends up becoming f***ing propaganda." How Scars On Broadway's They Say helped Daron Malakian move on from System Of A Down
- Black Sabbath albums ranked, from worst to best
- “If I were you, I’d get a haircut and disappear”: When author William Burroughs gave Daevid Allen permission to call his band The Soft Machine
- "I’d listen to that song and dream about my future": The Struts' Luke Spiller picks the soundtrack of his life
February 5
- I front a metal band and this is what it's like having hundreds of phones pointed at you every night on stage (spoiler: it's really weird)
- "People characterised both of our bands as being arrogant and cocky." How Bullet For My Valentine and Trivium helped revitalise metal in 2005
- "While I survived the 90s, not all of me did." Alice In Chains icon Jerry Cantrell on riffs, extreme metal and the best rock record to come from Seattle
- Nine albums you should listen to by the members of Guns N' Roses... and one you should ignore
- “You couldn’t put a bigger band in a smaller room”: The story of the greatest Metallica live album you’ve (probably) never listened to
- "The business has changed so much, and not for the better": Uriah Heep's Mick Box on why he's calling time on Uriah Heep as a touring act
- “He wasn’t too pleased about that song. I can understand why… I wish we’d never done it”: By the time Barclay James Harvest upset The Moody Blues, they already had form
- "They would literally laugh in my face": From Haitian voodoo to slavery, sex and school shootings, Lower is the album Benjamin Booker's old label didn't want him to make
February 4
- “Pigeonhole this band at your own peril”: Why you should adore Katatonia – and where you should start with their enormous back-catalogue
- "I remember it like some people remember the Kennedy assassination. It made me want to be weird." How watching one episode of iconic US TV show Saturday Night Live in 1980 changed future Foo Fighters leader Dave Grohl's life forever
- 4 brilliant new metal bands you need to hear this month
- "Fear is not a good mindset for musicians. Rock 'n' roll was not born out of fear." From Igor Stravinsky to Public Enemy, here are 10 bold, brilliant albums to inspire and fire revolution
- "There was a rumour that I had a secret underground water park in my backyard": Papa Roach's Jacoby Shaddix on overnight success, the path to sobriety and the nu metal resurgence
- “I came into the studio on the last day and said, ‘I think you better hear this one.’ It was kind of a curse.” When Kansas cracked the charts with a song they didn’t want to record
- "Ted Nugent came down to the dressing room and said ‘Guys! You have to calm down!'": The turbulent story of the Scorpions
February 3
- The best new rock songs you need to hear right now
- "It was crazed, almost Charles Manson–like." Before he started Def Jam, and produced everyone from Slayer to Johnny Cash, Rick Rubin played guitar in a noise-rock band called Hose, and recorded one of the worst Led Zeppelin covers ever committed to vinyl
- “It was a really angry time; there was lots of litigation between me and the guys. So It was a much-needed release”: Once Fish escaped his Marillion train wreck, he scored a Top 5 album
- “It’s ludicrous a song like that would go on an album at the height of our fame, but it got the most notice because it was so bizarre”: The Police’s Andy Summers on success, psychedelia and working with difficult people
February 2
- "It was horrifying and beautiful at the same time." Belinda Carlisle on the punk rock album that changed her life
- “We had our share of arguments doing this record, a lot of them, but those arguments should escalate our art”: How Deftones rose above musical tension and a horrific tragedy with Gore
- “We were young and excitable and we wanted to do something different. We wanted to wrest Irish music away from its custodians”: The inspirational story of Horslips, Ireland’s original Celtic Rock band
- “Neil is the only one that would be a big fan of the band and then get rid of Eddie”: how Pearl Jam and Neil Young came together to make Mirror Ball
- “They explained about this movie called The Breakfast Club. They apparently had a song for us. We said: ‘No chance!’”: How Simple Minds went from punk to stadium rock, via an 80s Brat Pack classic
- “It had a 13-minute spoken-word black mass on the B-side”: The mysterious late 60s album that Opeth’s Mikael Akerfeldt says invented Satanic rock
February 1
- “That’s what he said: ‘I’ve killed Jim Morrison.’ He provided the gear”: Marianne Faithfull saw the best and worst of the late 60s and early 70s music scene
- “Some do yoga, take drugs or go to a football game and start a fight. Music is what we do”: Soen embedded modern truth and old-school songwriting in fourth album Lotus
- “I’ve always embraced my musical schizophrenia, and this is just another room in that mansion of personality”: How Them Crooked Vultures became modern rock’s greatest one-and-done supergroup
- “The joke has always been, ‘Zakk, are you from the South?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, South Jersey! Down near the shore, bro!’”: Why Zakk Wylde swapped Black Label Society and metal for southern rock on Book Of Shadows 2
- 10 huge hits given away from one artist to another
- “At first people thought, ‘Knucklehead Americans!’ and now they’re starting to figure it out”: How Five Finger Death Punch silenced the haters with The Wrong Side Of Heaven Volumes 1 and 2