Independent developer Chaosmonger Studio has revealed a brand-new demo trailer for Voivod: The Nuclear Warrior, a narrative-driven, run-and-gun Metroidvania based on the music, artwork and dystopian science-fiction universe of legendary Canadian metal band Voivod. The game will participate in Steam Next Fest, October 19-26, where players will be able to experience a free playable demo featuring two… Continue Reading →
Taylor Momsen has spoken about her unfortunate and dangerous brushes with members of the animal kingdom during The Pretty Reckless‘ support tour with AC/DC.
Earlier this year, the 33-year-old singer spoke to Metal Hammer about being bitten by a bat while performing onstage with her band at the Estadio La Cartuja on May 29, 2024, joking that “It was a very cute bat, though.”
Now, in a new interview with YouTube personality Rick Beato, The Pretty Reckless vocalist has spoken about her even more alarming encounter with a venomous brown recluse spider in Mexico earlier this year.
Prior to her band’s performance at Estadio GNP Seguros in Mexico City on April 7, Momsen was bitten on her lower right leg.
“So it wouldn’t be an AC/DC tour if I didn’t get bit…” she later joked on Instagram. “This time a massive spider decided to take a chunk out of me and its venom did a number on my system so had to have the wonderful doctors in Mexico come and deliver quite the shot before the show last night… add it to the list! Spider woman? Batgirl? WTF.”
In another post, the singer displayed the marks on her leg, and wrote, “Poisonous spiders are NO BUENO 🕷️🕷️but the show must go on.”
As she reveals to Rick Beato though, there was nothing funny about the spider bite, as much as she bravely played it down at the time, and that she was initially misdiagnosed as simply having an allergic reaction.
“I ended up, the last night of the tour in Mexico City in the hospital, hooked up to IVs with the strongest antibiotics you can possibly get getting pumped through my system, with the hospital telling me I cannot leave and they had to admit me for 5 days, or I was going to lose my leg,” she told the podcast host. “To which I turned to the doctor and I said, Doc, I got a show in a few hours, so I need a plan B. And he goes, ‘You’re not gonna make that show.’ And I said, “Doc, how do I make this clear to you? I’m leaving this hospital, and I would really like to keep my leg, so I need a plan B. Don’t recommend that…. that spider was just actively trying to kill me.”
Watch Momsen’s full interview with Rick Beato below.
Dutch artist Charlotte Wessels and her band, which performs under the name The Obsession, will release their second studio album, Mute Swan Empire, on February 5, 2027, via Napalm Records. It is a character-driven concept album in which each of the 15 tracks embodies a specific human pattern of thought and behavior that emerges at… Continue Reading →
Following another exciting edition in 2026, the Frontiers Rock Festival is gearing up for three more days of unforgettable live music, bringing together fans of melodic rock and hard rock from around the world for a weekend dedicated entirely to their favorite music. Over the years, the festival has established itself as a must-attend event… Continue Reading →
Toxicity, System of a Down‘s second record, turned 25 years old last month. Time moves both too fast and hardly at all, apparently. To celebrate the anniversary of one of the 21st century’s most important metal albums, we asked our staff what it means to them. Seeing as how our staff crosses many demographic and geographic lines, a range of responses was expected. Yet, a common consensus emerged: Toxicity was prescriptive and prescient. Our team dove into it and how it affected them personally, 25 years ago and today.
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I was 15 when Toxicity came out, and seeing four Armenian-Americans playing metal and taking such an unapologetic political stance opened my eyes to what metal could be. System of a Down became one of the key torchbearers of politically conscious mainstream metal. Their take on nu metal was unlike anything I’d heard before. I was completely captivated. Serj Tankian’s extraordinary voice could switch from manic shouting to almost operatic singing in seconds, while Daron Malakian’s Armenian-influenced melodies gave their music a distinctive sound.
“Prison Song” resonated with me on a deeply personal level. In the years following the album’s release, I experienced multiple incarcerations for drug offences, so I understood firsthand the injustices the band was criticizing. Its condemnation of the war on drugs and a system that prioritizes punishment over treatment spoke directly to my own experiences.
“Deer Dance” also held personal significance. Its criticism of police violence against protesters spoke to my experiences, having been heavily involved in protests throughout my youth. I appreciated hearing a band address the treatment of people exercising their right to protest.
Released a week before September 11, Toxicity took on new significance in the political climate that followed. Twenty-five years later, I still hear the same anger and conviction that captivated me as a teenager. Its criticism of American institutions remains relevant.
–Lily O’Delia
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Early 2000s nu-metal was a competition to bark the harshest, set records for saying “fuck” the most, and a Jackass-style attempt to warp the world with purposeless mayhem. Toxicity raised that same middle finger to society but taught you why to keep it up. System of a Down examined national and global issues from the perspective of a Bush-governed America en route to collapse. They were unconcerned with the pop music that frustrated most nu metal acts. Every song on Toxicity is instructional: whether those be the straightforward imprisonment statistics after Reagan’s war on drugs on “Prison Song” or soulless technology’s threat to humanity on “Science.” In opposition to nu-metal’s basic lens of “mainstream = bad”, Toxicity examines the harm of nuclear families, pharmaceuticals, and our everyday destruction of the planet. Its pro-immigration views on “X” and the communal themes on “Aerials” state that the mainstream is only bad if we accept all we’re fed, not if we band together. Those impacts come with dense metallic notes like the enforced tones on “Deer Dance”’s intro, Tankian’s screams on the chorus of “Psycho,” and the speed of the iconic “Chop Suey” verses. There was still room, sonically, to teach about the world. Middle Eastern-inspired melodies allowed meditative pockets where both Tankian and Malakian sing operatically. In a space where nu metal bands punish you for listening outside of the genre, Toxicity and their final Armenian folk closer, “Der Voghormia,” used metal to expand listeners’ worldviews and ideologies.
–Aidan Sibley
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Thinking back to my earliest days as a music fan with tastes that were markedly different from those of my older brother, System of a Down was the breaking point. This was also at a time when I missed the plot on full albums and was more interested in singles, and boy, could SOAD churn those out, with some direct Armenian flair that feels more potent on each re-listen. SOAD was already on my radar, then Toxicity released and I, like plenty of teens at the time, gobbled it up. It became a staple, however piecemeal my listening was to my four-year experience in secondary education.
It is worth noting that, 25 years ago, I was a freshman at a high school within viewing distance of the 9/11 atrocities, which gave different personal meaning to a track like “Jet Pilot.” SOAD’s views on the even-worse-now prison-industrial complex on “Prison Song” are among the most poignant on the entire album, and that’s just the opener. “Toxicity” and its focus on mental health issues–particularly ADHD–in a world less understanding than now feels like an important outlet for those feeling out of step. Toxicity is a singular force to this day within heavy music and in the American consciousness.
–Tom Campagna
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25 years after Toxicity’s release and 23 years after my friend giddily hit “play” on his boombox in what would become one of the most important musical moments of my life, snippets from the album still play in my head, unprompted, on a regular basis, though not always for the best reasons. Toxicity was already unforgettable on its own merits—Serj’s manic carnival barks, Daron’s churning riffs and unhinged yodels, Shavo and John’s punishingly unpredictable grooves—but how can one ignore Toxicity’s continued, almost painful relevance a quarter century later? Serj opines about mandatory minimum sentences as the band bludgeons away with a massive yet dead simple two-chord chug, as if to emphasize that there are still two million Americans incarcerated in the US prison system. Lines about rubber bullet kisses and automatic weapons brandished at children sting even more now than they did in 2001, especially when juxtaposed with the sardonic jig that plays in the background. To a kid who had yet to achieve any sort of political awareness, this all sounded insane, but today, the grim irony with which the band delivers each absurd lyric, every thunderous drop-C power chord and theatrical drum fill only serves to underscore the persistence of these unending horrors: the ghosts of America’s past, present, and future.
–Alex Chan
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As far as every music review is an exercise in controlled subjectivity, I admit the task of reflecting on Toxicity is a particularly challenging and delightful one. I first listened to this album at 11, a Brazilian kid just beginning to understand this brutal world. At the time, music spread slowly to developing countries. Most households had no internet access. Thus, that September’s world-warping sociopolitical turmoil was already ubiquitous when we first heard the songs. For us public school metalheads who didn’t know enough English or sociopolitics to understand its timely, prescient rage, Toxicity seemed even more ubiquitous. And, of higher immediate consequence.
Even 25 years later, the potency and creativity on display are mystifying. Both the carefully produced singles and the rawer songs are still compelling and fresh. The unstoppable flow of the first tracks leading to ‘Chop Suey!’ and the deeply spiritual ending track are a lesson in album-craft. At its core, Toxicity fuses traditional Armenian music with a confrontational, punk-meets-prog approach to alternative/nu metal, displaying expressive evolution since SOAD’s debut. Being a compatriot of Sepultura, Angra, and Nação Zumbi, I understand the almost sacred value of infusing your culture into a universal context.
Older and more fluent, I think some of the edgy humor and eventual sexism of Toxicity somewhat date it. But an album so frontal and clever in its rejection of the capitalist “west” sounding this good will always be a gift, now that we’re aware this world still tries to own disorder.
Much like the broader fandom of high fantasy and Sci-Fi cinema, their symphonic power metal contingent tends to be highly amenable to their favorite stories getting a proper sequel treatment. Granted, emphasis should be placed on the continuation being a faithful one and simultaneously expanding upon the core concept of the original while throwing in the occasional twist or subversive element to keep things interesting.
Insofar as U.K.- born 3rd-wave power metal showmen Gloryhammer are concerned, the theme of good vs. evil in an otherworldly context comes with a comedic level of exaggeration and campiness, but this has proven a highly effective approach that has provided a novel spin upon the stylistic template pioneered by the likes of Rhapsody Of Fire and Stratovarius. Led by the compositional vision and quirky storytelling of Alestorm mastermind Chris Bowes, their studio output has been an exercise in qualitative consistency, yet majority sentiment tends to favor their 2015 sophomore outing Space 1992: Rise Of The Chaos Wizards as the best of the bunch and thus the most worthy of a second installment.
At first glance, Space 1993: Wrath Of Kor-Virliath follows the exact same structural scheme as its 2015 predecessor, matching bombastic symphonic glosses and cartoonish effects-steeped voice-overs above a bustling foundation of up tempo metallic majesty. However, a closer inspection reveals an album struck by a slightly darker and heavier tone, almost as if the madcap lyrical storytelling has met with a more grounded sound.
Much of this is owed to acclaimed producer Jacob Hansen (Volbeat, Amaranthe, Primal Fear) taking over the engineering chair following a highly consistent 4 album run with Lasse Lammert and balancing out the orchestral flourishes with a denser and more unified guitar and drum presence. One would also be remiss to discount the degree in which vocalist Sozos Michael has gelled with the band since replacing Thomas Winkler, presenting a smoother yet no less charismatic voice for Gloryhammer’s principle character under the new name of Angus McFife II that’s a little closer to the prototypical power metal front man embodied in figures like Michael Kiske and Timo Kotipelto.
Things begin with the usual pomp and circumstance of a Hollywood score-inspired instrumental overture, though “Ultra Portam Astralem” manages to stand apart from previous entries in sheer power, sounding somewhere between a drum-heavy homage to Hans Zimmer and an intergalactic fanfare out of the James Horner playbook. But when the rubber hits the road, Gloryhammer matches grand orchestral flourishes out of the Nightwish playbook with a meaty, aggressive and riff driven assault starting with the driving opening foray “Ultimate Sacrifice”.
Much of the menacing character that gives this anthem and similarly compact crushers like “Warriors Of Auchtermuchty” and “Hammer Of Fate” their rugged, almost German-like quality compared to past entries in this outfit’s catalog is a greater emphasis on Paul Templing’s guitar work, which lands several impressive technical benchmarks but mostly just hits harder, ditto BenTurk’s drum work that occasionally flirts with thrash territory and definitely channels a strong Thomas Stauch influence.
The theme of sticking with what works but doing it leaner and meaner is a continual theme throughout the entire album, all the while losing nothing in the earworm department. The mid-paced rocker fit for terrestrial radio, “On A Quest For Aberdeen” has a sing-along romp written all over it and matches catchy hooks with flashy keyboard work; meanwhile, the synth-infused “Demonic Devotion” takes a few nods from the retro-80s stylings of Battle Beast and Metalite and goes head on into overt pop metal territory with charming results.
The high octane fury normally associated with the Rhapsody Of Fire school of symphonic power makes a couple riveting splashes with “Die With A Sword In My Hand” and “Starfighters Of Leuchars”, dogged closely by the more down tempo yet lofty blend of Wagnerian largess and riff happy power metal “Pax Galactica”. But for the go large or go home crowd that crave the insanely long epic compositions channeling the benchmarks of Rhapsody Of Fire’s “Gargoyles: Angels Of Darkness” and Luc Turilli’s “Prophet Of The Last Eclipse”, this album closes on a gargantuan 12 minutes plus metallic slough with a comically long title that will be referred to simply as “Final Assault On Battlemoon X-22” for purposes of brevity, arguably one of the most ambitious undertakings in power metal since the 2010s.
In the end, Gloryhammer is a band that knows its own audience and understands the wisdom of a gradual and controlled evolution, and at every point that is what Space 1993: Wrath Of Kor-Virliath delivers. Those whom have been living under a rock since 2013 and are brand new to the zany brand of storytelling that comes with this quintet might find it a little jarring compared to the more stoic and sincere character the subgenre exhibited during its early 2000s heyday, but the majority that are already familiar with Bowes brand of showmanship via this band or Alestorm will invite yet another episode of 80s B-cinema Sci-Fi high-jinks with open arms.
There are zero attempts at reinventing the style to be found here, nor any noteworthy left turns into unfamiliar territory apart from a slightly more forbidding atmosphere in this Scottish space opera’s midst, but the seriousness of the musicianship behind the madness is far from in doubt when the riffs hit the road.
Release Date: October 16,2026 Record Label: Napalm Records Genre: Power Metal
Musicians:
Sozos Michael / Vocals
Paul Templing / Guitars
James Cartwright / Bass
Ben Turk / Drums
Guest Musicians:
Michael Barber / Guitars (Track 3)
Arnaud Ménard / Vocals (Track 11)
Christopher Bowes / Narration (Track 2, 8,and 11)
Zak Glynn / Narration (Track 6 and 11)
Alex McVittie / Saxophone (Track 9)
Space 1993: Wrath Of Kor-Virliath Tracklist:
Ultra Portam Astralem
Ultimate Sacrifice
On a Quest for Aberdeen
Die with a Sword in My Hand
Silver Talon
Starfighters of Leuchars
Warriors of Auchtermuchty
Pax Galactica
Demonic Devotion
Hammer of Fate
The Celestial Warhost of the Dundonian Empire Marches to Space Against the Dark Sorcerer (Final Assault on Battlemoon X-22)
Texas-based Fervence are still a relatively young band. Formed in 2019, they released their debut album just a year later. Now, with Constructs, the five-piece deliver their third full-length, showcasing a band that has matured and developed a broader musical vocabulary. Lyrically, the album draws on personal experiences and relationships, exploring the emotions that shape our… Continue Reading →
