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May 2026

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237 articles

May 31
- “It was a one-day marathon. We cut 13 tunes in 14 hours, all old blues songs, with Mick singing live”: In 1992, Mick Jagger made a blues album with an obscure LA bar band. It’s never been released
- “Dee’s blessing was important to me. I have such a reverence for him, he wrote all of these great songs”: Sebastian Bach was “like a kid on Christmas morning” when he was asked replace Dee Snider in Twisted Sister
- “There was competition because of Jeff Beck and Jimmy Page, but there was room for everyone. It felt like we were taking over”: The life and times of Ten Years After’s Alvin Lee, the fastest guitar In the west
- “Originally, Metallica had a dreadful tape as our intro. Then our manager came up with the idea of replacing it with The Ecstasy Of Gold”: How metal’s biggest band turned a song from a spaghetti western into the greatest intro music in history
- “I walked home in the rain thinking: ‘Oh my God, I’m gonna be a plumber for the rest of my life!’” Alex Lifeson can’t forget what happened after Rush opened for the New York Dolls
May 30
- “We’ve lasted longer than Lennon and McCartney as people who have written together. Probably the only way we’re ahead of them”: Sex, infidelity and boozing – how Squeeze’s Glenn Tilbrook and Chris Difford became new wave’s greatest songwriting team
- “Did we do drugs in the studio? Of course. What could be better than three or four bongs before you start recording?”: How doom kings Electric Wizard made the classic Dopethrone album
- "It’s about those times when you’ve got no feeling left or you just don’t care." The song that helped Linkin Park kiss goodbye to the nu metal era - and that got a new lease of life courtesy of one rap megastar
- “I watched Live Aid on the TV. I’d been told there would be a call, but it never came”: John Coghlan was the drummer in one of the greatest British rock bands of the 70s – but one explosive moment blew it all up
- “The record company should’ve offered counselling – we could've been the next Journey!”: The story of Giuffria, the melodic rock nearly-men who should have been the next kings of 80s AOR
- "That wall of snow hit my house with hurricane force. The blizzard of the century had arrived." How celebrated Canadian post-hardcore band Alexisonfire distilled the horror of a ruinous five-day storm on Crisis, the title track of their 2006 masterpiece
- “It was quite daunting to have someone I admired so much sitting a couple of feet away all week long”: Comic artist Mark Buckingham was Peter Gabriel’s stunt double for Sledgehammer
- “It would have been just as great without Duane on it. Maybe better”: Two genius guitarists battling it out and an unwanted coda – the tangled history of one of rock’s all-time great guitar anthems
May 29
- The 12 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- "He was one of the gang." Before he won three Oscars and was knighted by Queen Elizabeth II, one world-famous actor was a roadie for Echo & The Bunnymen
- Great new proggy sounds from Green Carnation, The Ocean, A Perfect Circle and more in Prog's brand new Tracks Of The Week
- “My mother was a witch’ was a great opening line. His mum probably took offence, but she’s probably forgiven him now”: The lost NWOBHM classic that Metallica turned into one of metal’s most famous songs
- "I remember us saying, ‘Well, if the band doesn’t make it, we’ll join the Marines.’" The story of the song that gave thrash metal its name
- “We played at a punk club in Germany and this guy was pointing a gun at me the whole time. That was uncomfortable!”: The pioneering European metal queen loved by Dio, Lemmy and Gene Simmons
- "I just sat there and looked at the words and almost leapt out of my seat." Robert Plant wrote the lyrics in a bad mood. Jimmy Page "winged" the solo. But Stairway To Heaven became a Led Zeppelin classic like no other
- "The music was always the star of this band, and not personnel." With no original members left, Foreigner are still proud to be Foreigner
- “The prog scene was so clean. The bands smelled of nice soap and didn’t think farts were funny. I thought, ‘I don’t like this at all’”: Devin Townsend on being a jerk, never fitting in, three minutes of sex and four of crying
- "We've been a rock band, we've been pop stars, and then we became dinosaurs. But if you can live through the dinosaur period you become a legend..." The epic story of Nazareth
- "Jim Morrison was standing on the balcony shouting: ‘You guys suck! I got more talent in my big toe than your entire group!'" How Poco invented a brand-new sound - only to have it stolen by the Eagles
May 28
- “He was a little worse for wear… He headed for the studio control room, but went into the tape cupboard with no inside handle on the door”: King Crimson, Porcupine Tree and Pineapple Thief’s Gavin Harrison proves he’s a pro
- "We went there to have a whale of a time – a sex holiday, really. But it got out of hand": Billy Idol on the Thailand vacation that ended with a visit from the army
- "Michael Jackson was huge. Whitney Houston was huge. Michael Bolton was huge. There was no place for us in that." Nirvana finished making Nevermind 35 years ago. Here's what Dave Grohl remembers from the 16-day session that changed rock forever
- “When we got to the chorus we knew it was good. It came round again just as the producer walked in. He said, ‘That’s the single!’”: A happy accident took folk-prog back into the charts in the punk era
- "A Russian girl came to my parents’ door with suitcases and said, ‘I have sold everything in my life. I’m going to marry your son and live with you now." How two unknown European bands changed the face of metal in the 90s - and broke up its boys club
- "I thought: 'Can I even play this stuff?' Y'know, a sixty-five-year-old Steve Vai taking on Robert Fripp at thirty-five." Steve Vai on the challenge of playing King Crimson with BEAT – and the one change he's made
- "Slayer sent me a fabulous box of T-shirts. They were so lovely." Tori Amos on her new concept album, the need for social commentary, women in music and covering Slayer
May 27
- “One album took three years and my heart wasn’t in it. I had to reinvent myself”: When Mike Oldfield released Crises, his old friends stopped ignoring him
- "People come away from our shows going, ‘I cried my eyes out." Meet the cult heroes healing from unspeakable tragedy with riffs
- Slam Dunk 2026 was evidence that hardcore might just be the most exciting music scene on Earth right now
- "It can be an exercise in self-love." How a member of indie stars Bloc Party teamed up with some of the UK's best hidden talents to make howling, noisy hardcore
- “I got a letter from Ozzy telling me my services weren’t needed and Axl had gotten rid of me”: How Zakk Wylde launched Black Label Society with the booze-fuelled chaos of Sonic Brew
- "Murders, repression, stolen money, stolen land: that is dictatorship." Meet the Belarusian band whose black metal almost got them imprisoned - and caught in a warzone
- "I said, 'I think we should write the best song in the world.' Jack Black said, ‘You can’t do that!'" How Dave Grohl, Ben Stiller, Bob Odenkirk and Maynard James Keenan helped Tenacious D bring the greatest tribute song ever to the world
- "She goes, 'I love your beard' and starts to clean it!" What happened when country icon Dolly Parton met Judas Priest frontman and heavy metal legend, Rob Halford
- "We can turn people who have never heard us before into fans." If demonic riffs wrapped around heavenly melodies give you a lift, take the Earth Tongue elevator
- “AI is good at copying stuff and it’s going to get better. But AI is creating with logic and I’m creating with chaos”: Leprous’ Einar Solberg wants to be the most cinematic artist in prog
- "I don't know how many thousands of times I've sung it, but I've never once thought 'Oh no, not tonight'." How Deep Purple created an all-time hard rock classic with a song that "didn't go anywhere"
- "We had been on the road pretty heavily, and we were burned." How a frazzled Bad Company made their "great lost album" Burnin' Sky
May 26
- "She said, 'Mick wants to speak to you.' It was Jagger asking if I was free to tour with the Stones." He produced the Sex Pistols, played with Bryan Ferry and Tom Waits, and turned down the Rolling Stones. But he remains one of rock's best-kept secrets
- "I finally had to ask the road crew to get him off the stage, he was messing it all up." Suzi Quatro's stories of Alice Cooper, Iggy Pop, Joan Jett, Phil Lynott, Peter Frampton, Chrissie Hynde and more
- "So much of this music goes on for so long that one begins to long for the discipline of the 45rpm record." The story behind the only night that British rock legends Led Zeppelin and The Who shared a stage
- The 30 greatest Nirvana songs ever, and the stories behind them
- "I remember thinking, Who in their right mind would want this to go out?" AC/DC's Angus Young on the song he wishes the world's greatest rock 'n' roll band had never released
- "I'm not sure why these nu metal bands say Faith No More influenced them. I don't want to be held responsible for the swill they're putting out." Mike Patton on his work ethic, stealing records and what happened when INXS asked him to be their singer
- "I'm a double agent for the Lord, working behind enemy lines." A tribute to Rick Derringer: August 5, 1947 – May 26, 2025
- "It was so crammed that when he died, he couldn’t hit the floor. He just slumped on me." From a traumatic epiphany on the London Tube to being metal's first British-Iranian figurehead, the incredible life story of Lowen's Nina Saeidi
- "Noel Gallagher would be in the room across from me." From underground darlings to collabs with Mastodon and Gojira: Urne are the best-kept secret in British metal
- "He was drunk out of his mind and he asked me to make out with him." Billy Corgan on how he became a fan of The Cure...and the first time he met Robert Smith
- “We opened for bands we really hated, like Styx. People were relating to us and not them. They got a little pissed”: the stellar rise and sudden fall of The Cars, the new wave band who soundtracked America
- “Slash came up to me and said, ‘Man, I got laid to your records so much.’ I said, ‘Dude, didn’t we go to high school together?’”: How Lenny Kravitz’s Let Love Rule and Mama Said turned him into a superstar
- “We partied every night! We would have a hotel room and just give the details out to friends and girls, ‘We’ll see you there!’” The story of the song that made Judas Priest icons in America
- “I’d worked with Ritchie Blackmore, David Coverdale and Michael Schenker. After them, Keith Emerson and Greg Lake were almost a dream”: Cozy Powell didn’t mind replacing Carl Palmer in ELP. Neither did Carl Palmer
- "I kept telling myself that if I made it out of hospital I would sing for the rest of my life." After fronting Skid Row and battling cancer, Erik Grönwall is enjoying the freedom to do what he wants to do
- "We had a plan but, Jesus Christ, are you kidding?" How David Coverdale used glamour and bombast to turn Whitesnake into international superstars
May 25
- "We'd blown all the momentum that we had and all the credibility." The Police's journey to superstardom wasn't the smooth ride you might imagine
- Classic Rock's Tracks Of The Week: May 25, 2026
- "I’ve suffered from panic disorders my entire life. I thought I was just losing my mind." How Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong wrote a game-changing three-minute classic in a basement surrounded by pizza boxes
- "We now know that a criminal agency posing as the government controls the world." Misfits vocalist Glenn Danzig on true crime, Bruce Lee and pretending to be a vampire on Portlandia
- "He stopped and said 'This is where the opera section comes in!' Then we went out to eat dinner." How Freddie Mercury's "fevered brain" conjured up Queen's greatest song
- “It pissed Neil Peart off. He went back to his room and went, ‘F**k, f**k, f**k – I can’t say no to that guy!’” The one and only reason Rush’s R40 tour actually happened
May 24
- “I’d get thrown out then brought back in. I just couldn’t play in a conventional way”: Japan’s Richard Barbieri on coloured hair, lipstick, a fingerless glove and the unusual reason he joined the band
- "I wasn’t what you’d call an achiever in school. When I think back, I had a guitar in my hand most of the time." Aerosmith's Joe Perry on The Beatles, Jack White and the ridiculous amount of guitars in his collection
- "I swear to God I turned the radio off because I got sick of hearing us every 20 minutes!" The story of how Pyromania sold 100,000 copies a day and turned Def Leppard into superstars
May 23
- “We’d been messing about with it for so long that we said, ‘Let’s stop thinking and let go of it’”: Sigur Rós, a discredited medieval poem and the end of Heaven and Earth
- "The senseless, random act of violence against someone so full of life and innocence was mind-blowing, and I hated Los Angeles for a long time after that." How the murder of Henry Rollins' friend inspired two songs on Sonic Youth's 1992 album Dirty
- "A riot broke out. The barrier had collapsed and broke somebody’s leg...people were just tearing stuff apart!" From being hired, fired and hired again by one of metal's most influential bands to a life of sobriety, Exodus' Rob Dukes reveals all
- "I’d log onto a school computer, listen to Evanescence and write 60 poems by the time the album was over." Melding visceral grime with pulsating metal, Native James is one of the UK's most unique and exciting new artists
- "There’s no magic formula at work here – this is an album full of simple but glorious pop-rock songs." How alt. rock godhead Bob Mould finally struck gold with Sugar's Copper Blue
May 22
- The seven best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- "I was single, but having a very secret and naughty relationship with someone whose name can never be mentioned." Skin shares the stories behind 10 Skunk Anansie classics
- Cool new proggy sounds from Haken, Devin Townsend, Temic, Prince Of Failure and more in Prog's brand new Tracks Of The Week
- "The narrative has been where I’m just a soul that’s been beaten down by the world. It is actually quite the opposite." Cat souls, all-star collabs and sock-puppets: how Poppy became one of metal's biggest personalities
- "The house was absolutely demolished by the time we finished playing." The story behind the wildest gig Ozzy Osbourne guitarist Zakk Wylde ever played
- "Nobody understands how hard we had to work to get accepted. People were originally scared to play our record." How a grudge against the bands they inspired and an obscenely expensive bill pushed Korn to write one of their biggest anthems
- “I hope they get sued. It’s a shameless ripoff. They should be slapped on the wrist for that.” How Tool attracted mainstream attention – and the ire of one of rock’s greatest frontmen - with their classic song Sober
- "I was 21 years old. I don’t think it matters how old you are – there’s no way to be prepared for it." The story of the one simple but devastating question that led to Evanescence writing their biggest hit, Bring Me To Life
- “Everything’s changed. We’re going to be rich.” How a song about gang wars helped a Ph.D. student and a school janitor become the '90s most unlikely rock stars
- "All I want at the end of the day is for us to be Rush and to be amazing." Alex Lifeson and Geddy Lee are preparing to tour again - and the only goal is to be great
- “I had huge insecurities, knowing I’d be compared to Thom Yorke or Jonny Greenwood. I felt like, ‘Who am I?’” Ed O’Brien steps out from Radiohead’s shadow with Blue Morpho
- Yes: The early years - a surprisingly difficult quiz
May 21
- “We pulled out chainsaws and tore our guitars apart. I had a shotgun with blanks in it, and I was shooting it inside the Palladium”: Inside the chaotic birth of prog metal provocateurs Tool
- "A girl at school dumped me, maybe that trauma stayed with me!" The story behind Foreigner's classic AOR anthem Cold As Ice
- "What does death feel like? I didn't feel or see anything. Maybe I was just too high." An epic conversation with Slash in which the Guns N' Roses guitar legend proves he's so much more than just another "rock moron"
- “People think that Enjoy The Silence could be one of our songs. That was the whole point”: From modern goth anthems to a career-defining Depeche Mode cover, Lacuna Coil’s Cristina Scabbia breaks down her life in 11 tracks
- "It paved the way for the shape of punk to come." The 10 most essential emo albums released before the scene sold out and went mainstream
- “Without them, the face of metal would be very different and, probably, much worse”: Everything you need to know about every At The Gates album
- "If you saw these guys on the street, you wouldn't even know that they're cool." Every Helmet album ranked from worst to best
- "We were so down about what had happened to our career and our friends and our band." Gary Rossington on the triumph and tragedy of Lynyrd Skynyrd
- "When they marched through a crowd of Jethro Tull fans in America, led by two bagpipers, they were making memories that would last forever." Fighting fascism, riots and rock'n'roll: The onstage story of the Sensational Alex Harvey Band
- “People didn’t want to admit we had a sense of humour. But how could you take songs like Godzilla or Joan Crawford seriously?” How Blue Öyster Cult really feel about that SNL More Cowbell sketch
- Kissmas Day, millions of dollars and the road to the bargain bin: Why the four solo albums were the beginning of the end for Kiss
May 20
- “I played Doom before I was even into metal. A lot of my love of thrash comes from slaying beasts in Doom”: How Doom and its iconic soundtrack converted the next generation of metalheads
- "For me to be playing with the person who is responsible for me being here right now was about the most profound, full-circle moment of my entire life." How Dave Grohl's love letter to a LA recording studio beautifully captured the magic of music
- "Their fans live, breathe and die for them, and that is my dream." Why Lady Gaga loves Iron Maiden
- “We were so into extreme music that prog wasn’t enough. If Jethro Tull’s singer growled, maybe we’d have loved it!” How Katatonia finally embraced their progressive tendencies with The Fall Of Hearts
- "Anything can be black metal. It's so much broader than just corpsepaint and tremolo picking." Mysterious underground extreme metallers Qasu have no interest in playing by the genre's rules
- Warner E. Hodges' band includes members of the Georgia Satellites, Hanoi Rocks, Jason & the Scorchers, and the Bottle Rockets. You should go see them
- “It was nothing to do with me! It was the other guys!” Rush’s Alex Lifeson still denies involvement in 1969 firing of Geddy Lee
- "A week later I got a call from Led Zeppelin's tour manager. He threatened to break my legs." What happened when Led Zeppelin reformed for Jason Bonham's wedding
May 19
- “He’s trying to say, ‘They’re words. The more you use them, the more you disempower them’”: Why Marillion ex Fish opened a song with a string of racial slurs
- How Clint Eastwood inspired the final album from Eagles legend Glenn Frey
- "Bambi turned into Darth Vader in seconds." A brief but fabulously on-brand story about Sinéad O'Connor, an Irish newspaper journalist, and two pints of Guinness
- "Of course it was a drug song. We were stoned when we wrote it!" The story of the psychedelic masterpiece inspired by John Coltrane, Ravi Shankar and a trans-Atlantic aeroplane flight
- From Cream and Velvet Revolver to Them Crooked Vultures and Temple Of The Dog, these are the best supergroups in rock history
- "We’ve had a handful of women come up to us and say, 'Hey, I started this project because of you.'" Blackwater Holylight's mix of witchy shoegaze and fuzzy heavy metal is so good it's making everyone want to be in a band
- “People say they hate them, that they’re ruining metal, but it’s not a battle. They mean a lot to people, so why is that a bad thing?”: What happened when we met Sleep Token’s fans at the biggest show of the masked cult’s career
- "We never said it was a Utopia. Rock'n'roll is played on enemy ground." What happened when The Clash arrived in the USA
- “It was the end of me being a cult artist at the fringes of the mainstream”: Peter Gabriel, Sledgehammer and So, and why he had to be nailed inside a barn to finish the album
- "A raw and lethal mix of razor-saw metal and a punky punch." The story of Leather Angel, the "female Mötley Crüe" with the Nikki Sixx-designed logo
May 18
- "Jesus is moshing with a blue wizard and a giant dancing banana." Metal legends, rising stars and chaotic crowds - Sonic Temple 2026 finishes with a bang
- Classic Rock's Tracks Of The Week: May 18, 2026
- “It’s a masochistic way of recording. Working in the studio isn’t always fun”: Prog metallers Amorphis rehired a notoriously picky producer, knowing they just had to trust him. The result was Queen Of Time
- "Having people fire unfamiliar words at us was really frightening." How one bizarre but brilliant song about chocolate brought Babymetal to the world - and confused the hell out of the heavy metal scene
- "There’s this idea that metal is the Devil’s music and all that kind of nonsense." Meet the metal singer-turned vicar who wants Iron Maiden to play her church
- “I started my first band at 13. We tried Yes’ Roundabout… it was a valiant attempt!”: Long before David Bryan joined Bon Jovi, he was trying to play like Rick Wakeman
May 17
- German thrash metal, British metalcore and American nu metal: all the best bits from Sonic Temple 2026 day 3
- "A lot of famous musicians love the power of being the most socially powerful person in the room and get off on it. That to me is utterly repulsive and vile." How Garbage broke taboos surrounding mental health with their 1998 hit single
- “They’d always played fast and loose with traditional song structures. This album pushed it even further”: Big Country wouldn’t have called Steeltown a prog record – but it is
- “My friends wanted to check out, get stoned, escape. I wanted to sift through my consciousness and see what was beyond”: Psychedelic substances led Rival Sons’ Jay Buchanan to the Mahavishnu Orchestra
- "I think that losing a parent as a child had an adverse effect. There was this melancholy, a sadness that never really went away." How a profound loss informed Alter Bridge frontman Myles Kennedy's solo album Year of the Tiger
May 16
- “I’d wake up, have no memory of it, then play it back – and funnily enough it worked”: The Pineapple Thief’s Bruce Soord drank to forget his new songs as he wrote them
- Big inflatable willies, nu metal and 80s pop covers - here's what went down on day two of Sonic Temple 2026
- "Substitute any Vietnam reference with any current war and the lyrics still stand up. I think the lyrics on Paranoid are timeless." How themes of war, madness and nuclear holocaust shaped Black Sabbath's second album
- "Everything changed when I saw them on TV – they were one fiery, bloody package being mainlined into my brain. It was the best thing I’d ever seen in my life." Anthrax's Scott Ian on KISS, AC/DC, Metallica and what's left on his bucket list
- "If people didn’t like us, they’d say it was because we sounded too much like Black Sabbath or Led Zeppelin." How Soundgarden went from superunknowns to grunge godfathers, a band who captured the sound and spirit of Seattle like no other
May 15
- Feral goblins, Satanic declarations and hometown heroes: inside day one at Sonic Temple Festival 2026
- No-frills thrash, heart-rending doom and demented black metal: the 10 best new metal songs you need to hear this week
- "It changes you when you lose someone that you love so much." How Amy Lee channelled a devastating personal loss into Evanescence's most emotional album
- “In my memory it is very clear, like watching a film. We gambled our entire career on this album." How Celtic Frost laid the blueprint for extreme metal, black metal and death metal with their debut Morbid Tales
- Top new proggy sounds from MONO, Shearwater, Earthside and more in Prog's brand new Tracks Of The Week
- Blockbuster lineup, a true celebration of music and art and one of the best atmospheres in North America? Here's why you can't miss Sonic Temple Art & Music Festival this year
- "I think people who were fans of grunge like Soundgarden would be floored by Swervedriver." Sugar and Hüsker Dü man Bob Mould picks the soundtrack of his life
- “You can actually listen to these albums back-to-back in reverse order”: Why Crown Lands’ fourth album Apocalypse is a prequel to second album Fearless
May 14
- "The key to the band's sound is that all the guys in the band are really into progressive rock..." Magic Pie beat a case of writer's block to make sixth album Maestro
- “They just do what they feel is right for them. They don’t take into account what people think”: How Metallica rewrote their script (and irritated countless metalheads) with Load and Reload
- “By luck or design, we found a different way to say something, and people listened”: How unlikely prog metal newcomers Karnivool made the last great nu metal debut
- “By day they worked on the official record. At night they taped an entirely different record, without the knowledge or approval of the label”: The story of Roxy Music’s Phil Manzanera, Quiet Sun and their sly posthumous album
- "To my shock, as I was singing Stairway to Heaven, Led Zeppelin walked into the club." The story behind the night that Led Zeppelin watched Heart play a Led Zeppelin set
- How much difference does upgrading your stylus make to the sound of your vinyl?
- "I learned this note-for-note because it really touched me emotionally; it was so vulnerable." The eight songs that fuelled Steve Stevens' teenage rock'n'roll dreams
- "The most surreal moment at that day was running into Ronnie Wood in the bathroom." Zakk Wylde's wild stories of Ozzy Osbourne, Lemmy, Dimebag Darrell, Dave Grohl, Elton John and more
- "I held these pieces of paper in the palms of my hands like I was holding a newborn child." The story of the platinum-selling, two-minute blast of Celtic punk inspired by historic musical documents
May 13
- "The whole truck just disappeared, all our gear, gone!" How a $40,000 robbery in New Orleans in 1970 forced Pink Floyd's David Gilmour to purchase what has become the highest-priced guitar in history
- “The cycle of album-tour-album-tour is dying. It’s long been dead at our end of the scale”: This prog band took a risk to escape broken music industry models. So far, it’s paying off
- "If Michael Hutchence says anything about me, I'll go back down there and kick his ass!" The "horrific" Guns N' Roses show with INXS that led a disgusted fan to break their copy of Appetite For Destruction into pieces and mail it to Slash
- “Music, art, death, time – they’re all part of the same thing. I can’t articulate it. I’m just some stoned goofball with a guitar”: How Gong became more Gong than ever with latest album Bright Spirit
- “We’ve played each other songs, but we still haven’t come eye-to-eye on how things should be done”: 15 years after their comeback, will there ever be a sixth System Of A Down album?
- “I used to think I’d keep screaming until a trickle of blood came out. But it hasn’t happened yet”: How post-metal maverick Julie Christmas returned with her first album in eight years
- "We never fit into any scene or genre, ever, so all our friends are weirdos." What happened when we took Skindred record shopping in Newport
May 12
- "70s metal was definitely the coolest. AC/DC had some fly records, Sabbath had some cool s**t." Ten Beastie Boys songs featuring samples of classic rock anthems
- “Most of the audience reaction was negative. It was messing with my focus. So we decided to do something different”: A change of approach allowed Sunn O)))’s prog influences to run wild
- I write about music tech for a living - here are my tips, tricks and products that'll help keep your record player clean and your vinyl collection in tip-top condition
- “We were in this pub and Paul Di’Anno pulled this young nurse. She invited us all to sleep on her floor”: How Iron Maiden made the scrappy four-track EP which launched their career
- "Some kids wanted to come up onstage, chaos ensues and the people in charge seemed to panic and cut the power." How a cult hardcore punk band shut down one of rock's most legendary festivals after bagging an unlikely major label deal
- "It's about a man driven mad by betrayal who murders the woman he loves." The misunderstood Tom Jones cover that became the Sensational Alex Harvey Band's biggest hit
- Fancy trying a European festival this year? Here's five reasons to hit Mad Cool 2026
- “There was a lot of smack and really scuzzy groupies around. It was ugly”: Traffic’s spiralling demise sent Steve Winwood driving his Rolls-Royce into the sunset
- "When we go up there on stage I'd almost liken it to a sexual experience." Ann and Nancy Wilson on love, sobriety, politics and the changing face of Heart
May 11
- "When we played in America with bands we influenced, their fans were like, ‘Who are you?'" They've inspired generations of huge bands, toured with Slipknot and helped put Swedish metal on the map. This is the story of In Flames
- Classic Rock's Tracks Of The Week: May 11, 2026
- "We were drunk on the bus and he was being annoying. We threw punches at each other." From singing in a pub getting him a job in one of Europe's biggest metal bands to MMA and cat fostering: five minutes with Amon Amarth's Johan Hegg
- "I had to kickstart my engine again." How David Bowie relaunched his career, and confused the world, with his deeply unloved hard rock band Tin Machine
- "When I went to rehab, they forced me to do the serenity prayer...I told them I’d say, ‘Ozzy grant me the serenity.'" Heartbreak, partying with Playboy bunnies and relapsing with Slayer: Every HIM (and VV) album in Ville Valo's own words
- The 13 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- “There’s a threat to the paying-the-rent part of music, for sure. The guys who write muzak are done. But I got into music to understand it more”: The only person to have won Grammys in 10 different categories isn’t afraid of AI
- "It's been an incredible journey to get to this place." Squeeze guitarist and singer Chris Difford on the band's great 'lost' album and the dicey nightclub that inspired it
- "I looked over in his direction and tears were rolling down his cheeks. I thought: My God! I've done it!" How a gospel choir and the Lord's Prayer saved one of rock's greatest power ballads
- “Most of them had never worked with a Black American singer before. He was really supportive. He’s one of two who introduced me to their mothers”: Keith Emerson remembered by PP Arnold
May 10
- “Zeppelin was primarily an in-person band… that’s what it was really about”: The greatest Led Zeppelin album no one ever talks about might just be a legendary bootleg
- “Originally, Metallica had a dreadful tape as our intro. Then our manager came up with the idea of replacing it with The Ecstasy Of Gold”: How metal’s biggest band turned a song from a Clint Eastwood movie into the greatest intro music in history
- “The last thing I wanted to do in the world was to have a fist fight with Pete Townshend. Unfortunately he hit me with his guitar”: The tangled story of one of rock’s mythical lost albums – and the two classics it eventually produced
- “We thought he was copping out joining AC/DC, cos they were a pretty simple rock band”: Before he joined one of the most iconic bands in music, this legendary Australian singer was in a forgotten country-rock outfit
- “He was great at self-promotion. He was also excellent at spreading confusion”: They played alongside Pink Floyd, the Rolling Stones, Blind Faith (and Keith Chegwin). Then this 60s prog outfit were gone
- “ZZ Top use sequencers and drum machines – do you consider them an industrial band? Of course not!”: The twisted birth and chaotic explosion of industrial music
May 9
- “Paul Kossoff had gotten addicted to these heavy sedatives. Some nights he wasn’t functioning”: This cult British singer grew up with Robert Plant, worked with The Doors, and nearly joined Free and Deep Purple – but today no one knows his name
- “For us, Motörhead was a confirmation of something we were looking for, an ever heavier form of hard rock. There was no other band that had that violence in their music”: How Lemmy and Motorhead influenced extreme metal
- “He wanted to put a synthesiser run on it. Diddle diddle diddle… like Rick Wakeman in Yes. You couldn’t have come up with a worse idea”: When Def Leppard teamed up with a million-selling producer to make their biggest album, it turned into a disaster
- "I always go back to the early 1970s because those sounds are timeless, even though they’re from before I was born." Why Lars Fredrik Frøislie plays it defiantly old school on second solo album Gamle Mester
- “I saw Frank Zappa sit in with Pink Floyd. He was terrible”: Michael Gira of post rock icons Swans loved the father of invention – but hated him a bit too
- “Ronnie was not interested in improvisation. Every bit of it was planned out. Every guitar solo was played exactly the same. I have never met a band that did that”: The accidental classic that lifted one band to immortality – and defined a whole genre
- “We tried to go across the Berlin Wall many times, but they said we looked too funny." How Voivod embraced East German culture, Killing Joke and Bauhaus to help soundtrack their prescient album Killing Technology
May 8
- “I was always sober so I couldn’t understand: 'Why are you throwing away your life?'" Addiction, fights and intervention from the 'Metal Godfather': How Five Finger Death Punch came back from the brink
- Cool new proggy sounds you need to hear from Muse, If These Trees Could Talk, Raphael Weinroth-Browne and more in Prog's brand new Tracks Of The Week
- "It's not my goddamn art project!" The story behind the birth of the extremely weird but misunderstood side project from Faith No More genius Mike Patton that influenced Korn, Avenged Sevenfold and more
- "It feels a bit like coming home – back to where I originally came from. It almost feels like everything led to this." Anika Nilles interview: stepping into the glare of the Rush spotlight and her life growing up with music
- “You couldn’t replace David Byrne, and I wouldn’t have wanted to. It came out of anxiety”: When Talking Heads asked Adrian Belew to replace their vocalist, he knew the answer
May 7
- "If someone’s gonna set themselves on fire, it might as well be me." Dementia, pyro and shouting wizards: backstage with one of metal's most shocking success stories, Lorna Shore
- "One of my best friends died. I told our vocalist if he could write lyrics to tell that story, it'd mean the world to me.” Meet the metal band who aren't interested in gimmicks - only overcoming tragedy
- "Sometimes the occasional fool would break out a knife." From defining a genre to wild generator parties and the 90s metal reunion everyone's waiting for, Kyuss legend John Garcia looks back on his life
- "I asked, Where are the harnesses? The answer was, Between the butt plugs and the ball stretchers." How Judas Priest's Rob Halford and an 'eye-opening" visit to a Hollywood sex shop inspired Derek Smalls' iconic stage wear in This Is Spinal Tap
- "Lemmy said: 'I’ve got some friends in Texas. Do you need any weapons?'" After years of trauma, Corrosion Of Conformity are on the comeback trail - for the second time
- “The most glorious example of infuriatingly pretentious or highly intriguing nonsense”: In the 80s, many artists used newfangled samplers to make jolly tunes. The Art Of Noise went solid prog rock
- "We recorded a river that flows nearby. Some of those sounds are played backwards." Six decades on from the hit that made him a legend, Arthur Brown's world continues to be crazy
- “We never thought, ‘Let’s piss people off!’ Now I can see it’s going to piss people off!”: Steven Wilson and Mikael Åkerfleldt went crazy and outrageous with Storm Corrosion. But Åkerfleldt still doesn’t know what the album’s about, and won’t ask
- My favourite Thin Lizzy song, by James Hetfield, Tony Iommi, Jon Bon Jovi, Suzi Quatro, Joe Elliott, Francis Rossi, Mick Box, Johnny Van Zant and more
May 6
- "I had to run out of the control room, and I found myself standing in the kitchen, sobbing away. James came into the kitchen in the same condition: he was sobbing too." The Metallica song that made both James Hetfield and Kirk Hammett cry
- "I worked at the World Trade Center...I left at 2am on September 11." From working as an opera singer, DJ and Playboy model to finding her true calling in heavy metal, the incredible story of Huntress singer Jill Janus
- "One version is about a car, the other is about a feminine hygiene product. Guess which the kids liked to shout more?" The story of the failed Springsteen song that topped the American charts after being banned in the Bible Belt
- “They each rented castles within sight and proceeded to wage magic war upon one another”: A real-life prog version of The Two Towers is just one strange story in the history of Magma
- "The music world would be a dried-up, tumbleweed-riddled desert if it weren't for Debbie Harry." The importance of Blondie's defiant leader of the pack
May 5
- "I had that thing of, 'I don’t wanna play that song because every time I sing it, I start crying.'" From falling in love with Nirvana to channelling Iron Maiden and embracing activism, some life lessons from Within Temptation's Sharon den Adel
- "There were nights when everything felt like it might collapse." Inside Thailand's passionate but criminally ignored metal scene, from alley bars to open air festivals
- "I'd been conscious of hardly ever being able to capture the heart, soul and spirit of the band." How David Coverdale led a fans' choir to create the connoisseur's favourite Whitesnake album
- “He cannot do that – it’s a criminal act! This is destroying classical music!”: Orchestral players were horrified by Keith Emerson’s work. But times have changed, says acclaimed conductor
- “I used Steven Wilson’s Mellotron in exchange for me guesting at his London Palladium show!”: Prog pioneers Soft Machine spared no effort on their new album, then took a risk by calling it Thirteen
- "There's been times where I've gone: 'Oh my god, how am I gonna get through this?'" Jeff Scott Soto might be labelled a journeyman, but what an adventure it's been
May 4
- "We thought Venom were excellent. But then they came to New York and we found out that they weren't joking." Why the Beastie Boys were disappointed to discover that British metal legends Venom weren't a comedy band
- "We didn’t have television in Israel and when I first saw the news, I thought there was a guy inside the box." Condoms, coffins and capitalism: a far-reaching interview with Gene Simmons of Kiss
- Classic Rock's Tracks Of The Week: May 4, 2026
- "Freddie said, Darling, leave it to me. I believe in this." The story behind Another One Bites The Dust, Queen's best-selling single ever
- "We have a lot to prove because of Butterfly. We have to prove we’re aggressive punk kids." How a Red Hot Chili Peppers instrumental turned Crazy Town into a one-hit wonder and earned Anthony Kiedis a fortune for doing absolutely nothing
- "I got $100 to do the job, and it was a full day with Michael Bolton." From Saturday Night Live and King Diamond to Eurovision and pagan rituals, Myrkur has tales to tell
- "Ninety-nine per cent of bands would have broken up after what we've been through." After weathering personal loss, recovery and a changing line-up, A Thousand Horses have finally delivered the "full-throttle" album they were born to make
May 3
- “There was talk of Duran Duran being involved, but we wanted something with a heavier edge. Queen had that”: The soundtrack to one of the greatest cult fantasy films of the 80s could have been very different
- “Under the applause he leaned in and said clearly: ‘Don’t you dare!’” Rick Wakeman’s label boss claimed to love Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, but he’d actually tried to have it shelved. When it became a hit, Rick’s award came with a warning
- "It’s strange to grow up feeling like 230lbs of mucus and then see all these girls taking their clothes off and throwing them at you." Why one of 90s metal's most unlikely sex symbols wrote a 60s pop bop Austin Powers would be proud of
- “Possibly our lowest point artistically. It sounds like we didn’t have any idea between us. But we became much more prolific after it”: The hated experimental albums that set Pink Floyd on the road to The Dark Side Of The Moon
- “It became very ugly. When our manager punched Rick Allen, we were dumped from the tour.” Fistfights with Def Leppard and bust-ups with AC/DC: the incredible story of Switzerland’s first great heavy metal band
- “It’s the realisation that Radiohead is only part of the story”: Philip Selway put his solo ambitions on hold for 20 years. Does he regret it?
- “We knew we could never do what Led Zeppelin were doing, but what if you’re not the greatest musician and still wanna do it?”": Billy Idol comes clean about religion, nearly losing a leg, and taking it to the edge and living to tell the tale
May 2
- “When people used to come over to my house, they would expect to see people hanging off meat hooks cos they been listening to my music”: Rap and metal icon Ice T’s home is nothing like you’d expect. We know – we went there
- “We were listening to Velvet Revolver. It was the first time in a long time that Slash had been doing that. We wanted to incorporate that vibe”: The OTT metal anthem that transformed Avenged Sevenfold from metalcore upstarts into rock’n’roll stars
- "GN'R's version was a bit of a copycat thing – they didn't try to make it their own. Axl wanted to sound like Dan": The 70s rock classic that was censored by the label, inspired Guns N' Roses and almost got banned in Chile
- “Tony was always saying, ‘We’ve gotta sound like Foreigner’, or ‘We’ve gotta sound like Queen’”: Chaos, walk-outs and an album Ozzy Osbourne called “disgusting” – the sad end of Black Sabbath’s original line-up
May 1
- The 10 best new metal songs you need to hear right now
- "It looked like somebody had been sliced to bits with a chainsaw." Beavis And Butt-Head, Pantera and TiKTok - how sludge metal legends Crowbar have suddenly become bigger than ever
- “Sounds of the universe crying”: This pop icon’s label wanted a pop solo album. He gave them a prog record instead. Which is why they suppressed it for three years
- "Everyone always looked at me like I was an alien. When I moved to the UK, it felt like freedom." The French misfit who found a home in the British metal scene - and has become one of its most exciting young vocalists
- "Other than a forty-eight-piece string orchestra, everything else was the band or synths." The story of the global hit inspired by Lego and Simon & Garfunkel that soundtracked a Martian invasion
- "I can't physically breathe if I can’t play music." With a musical education from his grandfather, former busker Ty Freeman is now playing with his childhood heroes
- "You're never too old to learn a bit about technique." Colin Blunstone on The Zombies, keeping it in the family, and looking after what Suzannah Hoffs calls his "just plain sexy" voice
- Nudity on stage, handing out drugs at shows, police searches, stabbings and a fatal crash: The roots of Hawkwind, the “barbarians with electronics” accused of stealing Paul McCartney’s bass