Blogs

Groove metal and funk metal didn’t suddenly appear in the late ’80s and early ’90s. The groove had been hiding inside heavy rock from almost the very beginning. Our journey starts with Jimi Hendrix, where blues, psychedelia, soul and funk collided with the...

There is something about a white Stratocaster. Elegant, simple and almost innocent-looking, the Olympic White Fender Strat became one of rock guitar’s great visual icons. But follow its history from the late 1960s through the 1980s and something else emerges. The...

Before we neatly divided everything into hard rock, heavy metal, doom, stoner rock and a dozen other sub-genres, there was simply Heavy Rock. For a few glorious years in the early 1970s, that was the banner under which some of the loudest, darkest and most adventurous...

There was a moment — roughly spanning the late 1980s into the mid-1990s — when a certain kind of heavy music reached full cinematic bloom. Not thrash. Not hair metal. Not grunge. Something more sophisticated lived in the spaces between. Polished, atmospheric,...

By the summer of 1986, Donington had already cemented itself as Britain’s sacred metal meadow. But compared to 1985, the ’86 bill was unquestionably stronger, broader, and more internationally formidable. The result? Over 70,000 metal pilgrims descending on Castle...

In 1978, Edward Van Halen didn’t just play a great guitar solo—he detonated the entire rulebook. Eruption rewired what rock guitar could be: two-handed tapping, fluid legato, impossible speed, and a sense that the instrument had suddenly leapt a decade into the...

It all started with a handful of metalheads who wanted to hear – and make – the most repulsive, ungodly racket possible: Death Metal. In the late ’80s, thrash metal had already stretched rock to its breaking point. Bands like Slayer, Possessed, and Kreator were upping...

When we celebrate Monsters of Rock 1985, we not only pay tribute to the incredible bands who took the stage at Donington that year, but also to the legends who—according to John Tucker’s Monsters of Rock: The Official Illustrated History 1980–1996—were considered,...

What was your first legendary venue gig? For every fan, there’s that one place — the sticky-floored, sweat-drenched hall where music hit harder, louder, and somehow felt like it was meant for you. These weren’t just buildings. They were temples of noise, shrines to...

When Ink and Attitude Ruled the Scene Before blogs, before YouTube, before algorithms served you soundbites, there was the printed page — loud, glossy, opinionated, and essential. Rock magazines didn’t just report on music. They curated culture. They made heroes,...