Features archive
September 2026
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44 articles
- September 8
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- "We were so loud. You could see blood coming out of people’s ears." The strange but true story of Attila, Billy Joel's pre-fame metal band, and "the worst album ever made"
- Did Phil Collins really just click with Genesis? “In their school they weren’t allowed a guitar. At mine, I’d bring my records in and the teacher would say, ‘Can you hear me over this music?!’”
- More than just a speed merchant: Why you should listen to Yngwie Malmsteen's Odyssey
- September 7
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- "Most bands are scared of ridicule - we embrace it." Every Muse album ranked from worst to best
- “People say, ‘Musicians are mad because they can’t gatekeep any more.’ I don’t want to gatekeep anything. The joy is the creative process, not likes and comments”: TesseracT and Chimp Spanner side project is a battle against AI and mental issues
- “The biggest challenge was not to come off like Tenacious D. It could easily be interpreted as some form of parody”: How Primus made an album about goblins and rainbows while trying not to mention goblins and rainbows
- Classic Rock's Tracks Of The Week: September 7, 2026
- September 6
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- “I wanted to retrieve my late grandma’s voice for my mum. Then I realised what she was really talking about”: How The Anchoress found a new way of dealing with trauma from a long-lost tape
- "You could buy them at any novelty store. Nobody tried to name him. He just became the Not Man." The story of the '80s toy which accidentally became Anthrax's iconic mascot
- "I’m the only guy who wears a mask but still has a face." From black metal pioneer to dungeon synth's resident goblin, this is what it's like to be Mortiis
- “Had we started a little earlier we might have survived. Yes and Genesis got through punk, but we hadn’t gotten to that point”: Gryphon, the unique band who forgot about themselves
- "Mal said, C’mon, let’s go and find the Loch Ness monster!" The night that AC/DC's Brian Johnson and Malcolm Young tried to lure mythical beast 'Nessie' out of hiding
- The story of Jimi Hendrix's unforgettable Voodoo Chile (Slight Return). "Don't forget that I had an artist who was an absolute genius, so it made life a lot simpler"
- How Mark Kozelek turned Bon Scott's AC/DC songs into haunted folk ballads. "Malcolm Young heard the record and liked it. Brian Johnson was supportive of it as well"
- September 5
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- "The producer didn’t like the song. He thought it was boring trite rock – like a Swedish ZZ Top or something." How The Hives re-released a two-year-old single and became overnight stars
- "We wanted to be Black Sabbath without the parts that suck." How Soundgarden's Louder Than Love ruined my love life, but opened my mind
- "We were looking to help Norway burn some more churches." Glass wounds, grief, and a broken back: The brutal creation of Slipknot's Iowa
- A metal fan’s guide to hard rock pioneers Deep Purple: “You needed something to stick out those days, and loud worked”
- Metal Hammer's tracks of the week: September 4 2026
- “I’ve never done hallucinogenic drugs, but now it feels like I have”: Metal Hammer writers name their best festival sets of the summer
- “He was always trying to leave. We took him to court a few years ago and it was actually quite nice to see him”: If you’re reading this, Roger Hodgson, your old friends from Supertramp would love to hear from you
- “Everybody knows who Michael Jackson is – and I feel like Ozzy is pretty close to that too”: The iconic metal album Jason ‘Jay And Silent Bob’ Mewes wishes he had made
- Meat Loaf's Bat Out Of Hell: The story behind rock's most crazed death ballad. "Dire Straits may be good, but it just doesn't do it for me. I was attracted to Hieronymus Bosch"
- September 4
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- “We were the band nobody wanted to book”: the twisted story of the first American black metal band
- “Mindblowing antithesis of the era’s knuckleheaded rap-rock”: When Candiria’s sound of New York City played Tool, Meshuggah and Devin Townsend at their own game
- Every Iron Maiden album ranked from worst to best: 50 years of the greatest heavy metal band on the planet
- Cool new prog you need to hear from Downes Braide Association, Clive Nolan, North Sea Echoes, The Ocean and more in Prog's brand new Tracks Of The Week
- “We said, ‘You can’t release it. This is his album, not ours. It will ruin our career.’ And that’s exactly what happened”: This 1969 experiment went horribly wrong – but it deserves to be reconsidered
- The Sheepdogs: On the road with a band who wield retro tastes like superpowers. "I wish we could play in '73. But that's not gonna happen, so we'll just keep rocking and finding our people"
- "Everyone is tired of these fake personas and people glorifying lifestyles that seem unobtainable." Headwreck have the cure for a world burned out on algorithms
- September 3
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- “My role in the black metal scene is probably exaggerated, because I was a visible frontman… In many ways I was just the nerd making music”: Ihsahn has never stopped progressing, and can’t understand why others did
- "The tempos are often breakneck and the dense arrangements tumble like bricks into hot cheese." Here are the 10 best songs from John 'Speedo' Reis' 10 bands including Rocket From The Crypt, Hot Snakes, Sultans and Drive Like Jehu
- "We were trying to poison the mainstream." How a 17-year-old schoolboy who played guitar "like the devil" saved one of Britain's best-loved bands, and stole David Bowie's heart
- “I thought it would never amount to much, and it certainly wouldn’t interfere with the band. How wrong I was!” Steve Howe’s pre-Yes band were derailed by a single their vocalist was never meant to sing
- September 2
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- 10 obscure but brilliant 70s bands who should have been huge
- “When you’re friends first and the music comes later, you know it’s non-competitive”: Steve Hackett and Steve Rothery aimed to prove two guitarists can share a studio without dissolving into a duel of overplaying egos. Did they do it?
- "His dad would come home from his night job and he had to sleep in the daytime. When he and his brother were too loud, his dad would give them military punishment." What exactly is Foo Fighters frontman Dave Grohl whispering on Everlong?
- "Shared generational trauma was the only thing that was ever going to come out of us." How djent, gospel and personal turmoil inspired the UK’s most exciting new post-hardcore band
- “We got dropped by our manager, our publisher and our label. The grand project suddenly didn’t seem quite right”: Steven Wilson and Tim Bowness once gave themselves an hour to write a No-Man song. Another time, they took 25 years
- The story of Roundabout by Yes and the record company interference that made it successful. "We were shocked at first, but now I think it was a gift"
- September 1
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- "When I came back, my desk was covered in flowers. That's who Bon Scott was." The story of a friendship with a golden-hearted charmer
- “I was keen to get a new audience. It took me until album number three before I found an identity”: The adventure of Peter Gabriel’s first four solo records
- The 10 heaviest metal breakdowns of all time
- “All the faders had been moved and knobs turned, despite the studio being locked and alarmed. Somebody – something – had moved everything”: Jethro Tull’s early 80s featured a haunted studio, nuclear evacuation cars on standby, and a tasteless stage trick
