Mad About Rock

  IRON MAIDEN’S highly anticipated EDDFEST weekend this summer has just got even bigger with the announcement that Blaze Bayley, who fronted the band from 1994 to 1999, will be headlining the Friday night Maidenville stage. He is the latest name to be revealed, as part of the all-encompassing celebration of IRON MAIDEN’s 50th Anniversary that will be taking place on the iconic Knebworth site. “I’m so excited to be invited to headline Friday night at EDDFEST, celebrating 50 years of Iron Maiden,” says Blaze. “I am so proud of my two albums with the band and I'm really looking forward to playing some of the songs that we recorded together. Can't wait to see you all at the hallowed grounds of Knebworth!” Fans can expect to hear Blaze Bayley and his band deliver a powerful set of songs from The X Factor and Virtual XI, the albums he released during his time as Iron Maiden’s lead singer. Blaze co-wrote some of the songs on those albums with band founder Steve Harris, and Friday ni...

  The annual ‘Night Before UPRISING’ returns to the Firebug on Friday 22nd May 2026. The night will be hosted by the DJs of TotalRock with guest DJ slots. For those who are unfamiliar, TotalRock — the station was launched in 2000 by Tommy Vance and a group of rock music visionaries, including Programme Director Tony Wilson and Managing Editor Malcolm Dome. TotalRock pioneered the concept of a dedicated rock radio station in the UK, building an enviable reputation for launching the careers of bands and DJs alike. So… who will be bringing the party to ‘The Night Before…’? Headlining the evening is none other than Corby’s finest, VIKING SKULL, originally formed in 2002 with Raging Speedhorn members Frank Regan, Darren Smith and Gordon Morrison. The alcohol-fuelled, rock and roll heavyweights like to party and will deliver a set which will span their 23-year career. Check out their single ‘Blackened Sunrise’, taken from their 2007 album ‘Chapter II’, directed by Bam Margera of Jack...

  Legendary Leeds-based metal festival GHOSTFEST have dropped their killer second wave of bands for the festival's 2025 edition, taking place on 21st June, 2025 at Leeds University Union. Joining the already killer line-up of bands such as Humanity's Last Breath, Signs Of The Swarm, Desolated & much more, we have: Returning death metal legends Ingested, who serve as the festival's third headliner. Iconic metalcore outfit Heart Of A Coward, also returning after serving as a staple band for the festival in previous editions. New-school beatdown/geezacore pioneers Pintglass, who will be bringing the GTHC spirit to GHOSTFEST for the very first time. Hardcore outfit Demoraliser, for a very special reunion set, performing Reform. Repent. Revenge. in full. And lastly, deathcore newcomers Veiled, who join the festival following the release of their debut album, SE/CT, in late 2024. The festival's 2025 edition and long-awaited return also serves as its 20th anniversary editi...

  Hammerdown Festival, based in Brighton, UK, was already boasting an impressive line-up, and today, they have announced four more bands! First up, the awesome NeonFly , who has spent the best part of the last decade playing on some of Europe's biggest festival stages to enormous crowds. Their huge alternative metal sound and unique stage presence will set the stage alight before Demon & Tygers Of Pan Tang close out the evening. Brighton's very own The Hellfire Club is Joining them on the main stage, who have been rocking the local clubs and building a name for themselves. Their soaring vocals and quality guitar solos are perfect for a festival setting. Cardiff's finest: Eulogy , who's recent singles have earned them radio play all over the world, and who's latest music video stunned us all. They start their set in style, and continue it all the way through. Finally, opening up proceedings on the main stage, another Brighton-based band, Chvpters . Some fantast...

  Norwich, England - Slay Promotions announce the full line up for the debut ‘SLAYFEST’ on the 24th and 25th May 2025 In association with Plug Studios, Mosaic Music and UK Thrasher, Slay Promotions have assembled two stacked days of Heavy metal talent from across the country at Voodoo Daddy’s Showrooms in Norwich Organiser James Morgan said: "I'm so pleased to be able to offer this excellent line-up to Norwich and proud to be a part of the vibrant metal scene that Norwich has to offer. I hope that SlayFest 2025 is the first of many to come and that people enjoy attending the event as much as I have enjoyed creating and promoting it. Thank you all so much for your support and just generally being awesome metal loving individuals." Saturday Line Up features Midlands Heavy Metal Stars ‘Fury’, Norwich Metallers ‘Uridium’, Essex Alt Metallers ‘Chemiqueen’, London thrash tinged metalheads ‘War Grave’ Birmingham heavy hitters ‘Kensei’ with the special guest slot being filled by ...

  BLOODSTOCK is thrilled to announce that special guests on the Ronnie James Dio stage on Sunday will be…. wait for it…. none other than highly revered, four-headed metal behemoth MASTODON . The group are just off the road in the USA with festival alumni pals LAMB OF GOD, dropping the collab track ‘ Floods Of Triton ’ to celebrate their co-headline Ashes Of Leviathan tour. You can check out a ‘making of’ interview here . Perhaps you caught MASTODON headlining BLOODSTOCK all the way back in 2016? Investigate the treasure trove of live tracks from that set on BLOODSTOCK’s YouTube at your leisure, including ‘ High Road .’ If you’re extra crushed now you didn’t manage to snap up a weekend ticket before they sold out, read on for good news… Additional weekend tickets Festival HQ saw a lot of social media posts after weekend tickets for next summer’s event sold out, with fans disappointed they missed out on tickets. While a limited number of day tickets will be made available in due cou...

  Off the back of BLOODSTOCK’s first announcement of 19 bands for 2025, tickets have been flying out the door in record numbers. Adult standard weekend tickets are now sold out! A limited number of day tickets will be available in due course, once more bands have been announced. Missed out on the type of ticket you wanted? Sign up to Tixel , BLOODSTOCK’s official resale partner and avoid social media ticket scams! For those of you who have already snapped up your tickets, here’s 13 more bands to whet your appetite for next summer’s metal extravaganza! The Ronnie James Dio stage on Friday is pleased to welcome classic thrashers FLOTSAM & JETSAM . Joining them will be hotly-tipped deathcore upstarts PALEFACE SWISS . Industrial metal icons MINISTRY jet in as RJD stage special guests on Saturday night, in their first ever BLOODSTOCK appearance. Also added to the RJD line-up that day are LA legends FEAR FACTORY (playing their seminal 1995 album ‘Demanufacture’ in full!), fast-risi...

  Rising brutal death metal and goregrind festival Offal Fest is returning for its third year for three days of all things brutal, death, gore and slam metal. Taking place at Rebellion in Manchester, UK on 25-27 July 2025, the event will see the addition of Sunday, making it a three day festival with a pre-show held at the same venue on the Friday. Headlining the Saturday will be New York brutal death metal legends Skinless, who will exclusively perform their 1998 debut “Progression Towards Evil” in its entirety. Also hailing from New York, slam and brutal death metal pioneers Internal Bleeding will headline the Sunday. The band is often cited as one of the first bands to play slam death metal; an offshoot of death metal known for its focus on slow, chromatic breakdown riffs, known as slams. The rest of the line-up announced so far includes: 55Gore with an international debut, Cerebral Effusion, Imperious Mortality, Basement Torture Killings, Thy Flesh Consumed, Expectorating Sputu...

  Following on from this years incredible, sun baked, sold out (and probably best so far) 10th Anniversary event, the much loved and mighty award winning ARCTANGENT Festival can today announce the first set of bands (including a main stage headliner) for next year. Taking place on the 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th of August 2025, tickets for the event are on sale now, and available from - HERE The first 2025 main stage headliner comes in the shape of the phenomenal Australian progressive metal band Karnivool, who will be making their ARCTANGENT Festival debut in 2025, as well as perform there as a 2025 UK exclusive show. A stunning band whose last studio album 'Asymmetry' was released back in 2013, and is considered and revered (quite rightly) as a modern masterpiece. With new music confirmed and on the way as well, this headline set is an absolute nailed on, not to be missed spectacle. Also announced today are Washington legends Melvins (UK festival exclusive), one of the finest e...

  Fortress Festival has revealed the final line-up and poster for the 2025 edition of the biggest black metal event in the UK. Closing the line-up are four additional bands: Fen, Autumn Nostalgie, Crimson Throne and Nemorous. UK atmospheric black metallers Fen will perform a UK exclusive full album performance of their 2009 debut album “The Malediction Fields”. “‘The Malediction Fields’ era was an incredible time for us”, said the band. “We were feeling our way through the genesis of the band, defining our sound and very much doing things on our own terms. It was an exciting period of discovery, experimenting with ideas, textures and ambience as we observed the post-black metal sound and ‘blackgaze’ scenes emerge around us.” Fen added: “What better place to celebrate our history and perform that album in full than at Fortress Festival? An event almost tailor-made for the atmospheric, reflective-yet-furious ambiences we were looking to create. To do so with Agalloch as headliners – ...

  Norwegian black metallers 1349 and Danish one-man project Afsky have been revealed as the next band confirmations for the 2025 edition of Fortress Festival. 1349 will headline the main stage on Saturday, 31 May 2025, following the release of their eighth studio album "The Wolf And The King” on 4 October 2024 via Season Of Mist. The band was formed in 1997 by Ravn, who recruited bassist Seidemann and now-former guitarist Tjalve to help him pursue the vision of recapturing the original spirit of black metal. The longstanding lineup of Ravn, Seidemann, guitarist Archaon and drummer Frost (also of Satyricon) has been in place since 2001 and will bring their trademark crushing black metal to Fortress Festival. Afsky will bring his melancholic and depressive Danish black metal to the Scarborough shore with the live band on the Fortress Festival main stage. The band was set up in 2015 by Ole Pedersen Luk and has three albums under his belt, with the latest “Om hundrede år” released in ...

  Having announced nineteen bands - including the headliners - for 2025’s heavy metal extravaganza during this year’s event - BLOODSTOCK is delighted that fans are as thrilled with the line-up as festival HQ. The unprecedented demand has seen all adult early bird tickets sell out within 36 hours of going on sale, for the first time. All adult VIP tickets and campervan tickets then went on sale at 9am this Wednesday and promptly sold out just minutes later as well. Due to demand, the very popular ticket instalment plan has been brought forward and will now go on sale on Friday 30th August at 09:00 BST, for a limited number of standard weekend tickets. This allows fans to pay for their ticket in 6 instalments. Fans will have up to 29th October to sign up, unless the allocation sells out before 29th October. A first payment of £33.18 (+ fees) will be taken immediately upon sign up, with further payments debiting as follows: 25/11/24 - £33.18 03/01/25 - £33.16 03/02/25 - £33.16 03/03/2...

  The festival tickets for ROCKHARZ 2025 in Ballenstedt are sold out! This is what the organizers announce after just one week of advance sales. The 2024 festival ended last week. Not only were all 25,000 tickets sold within this record time. It is also the first time that this has been achieved completely within the so-called early booking phase – which normally lasts 14 days. Last year, it took just under 6 weeks, until the organizers were able to announce that there were no more tickets available. It is also worth mentioning that, according to the organizers, 90% of the tickets were sold to regular festival customers. The organizers had granted this particular group of people exclusive one-week access to their online store. The organizers from VERUGA GmbH are overjoyed: “This is unbelievable! That our guests have given us such a vote of confidence is a great honor!" The ROCKHARZ Festival in Ballenstedt celebrated its 30th anniversary last year. With almost 60 bands regularly pl...

  Fortress Festival has revealed a further four exclusive performances set to take place during the 2025 edition. Akhlys, Grift, Selbst and Perennial Isolation join Agalloch, Ulcerate, Forteresse, RUÏM, The Great Old Ones, Spirit Possession, Perchta and Belore, for what is promising to be another extraordinary weekend for black metal fans. Akhlys, who have just released their fourth album “House of the Black Geminus” to critical acclaim, will perform a 2025 UK exclusive set at Fortress Festival. Following the release of “Despondency Chord Progressions” earlier this year, the South American project Selbst will bring its music to a UK stage for the very first time with a UK debut and exclusive set. Celebrating the 10th anniversary of its debut album “Syner”, Grift will perform the album in full with a UK exclusive set. Perennial Isolation will perform its iconic 2021 album “Portraits” in full in what will be a UK debut and exclusive performance from the Barcelona-based atmospheric bl...

  Scarborough, UK; 2.06.24: Agalloch are the first band to be announced for the 2025 edition of Fortress Festival. Taking place on the weekend of 31 May - 1 June 2025 at Scarborough Spa, Fortress Festival will be Agalloch’s first in the UK since the band’s reformation, the first in the UK since 2015 and the only European show for 2025. The first early bird tickets are on sale now and can be purchased via https://www.fortressfestival.co.uk/tickets Following a seven-year hiatus, Agalloch announced their return to live shows in 2023. Since their 1999 debut album, the band’s discography has defined what it means to combine influences from a variety of musical genres into one brooding, colossal, and cinematic sound that provides the soundtrack to existential themes concerning life, nature, loss, and death. One of the first to combine elements from black metal, neo-folk, progressive rock, post-rock, and ambient music, Agalloch have influenced countless of bands in black metal and beyond....

  In a new partnership, BLOODSTOCK is excited to announce the line-up for its 2024 EMP Stage (formerly the Jagermeister Stage)! Friday’s bill will include tech/death squad LOST BRETHREN , thrash/death trio LETHAL EVIL , occult rockers CROWLEY , heavy blues rockers KING KRAKEN , and goth metal outfit MAB . Saturday’s line up features grindcore/hardcore outfit PUBLIC EXECUTION , metalcore beasts PARTING WITH ORIGIN , doom-fused heavyists FLAMEBEARER , high octane fusionists RUPCHA FARMS and alt metal band LURCHER . Coming up on Sunday will be ‘fantasy space metal riff machine’ WARPSTORMER , celtic punk troupe THE CALLOWGATE MURDERS , fuzz-soaked riffmeisters of the Toad King GOBLIN SMOKER , the 3-man noise machine YERSIN and heavy blues rockers LOYDS TRIP . Regarding the new collaboration, EMP tell us, “We are absolutely thrilled to announce our partnership with BLOODSTOCK 2024! As proud sponsors of the 4th stage, EMP is ready to rock alongside the best in metal. Stay tuned for ex...