This month, enigmatic progressive metallic legends Device grace the cowl of Steel Hammer as we delve into their mysterious world like by no means earlier than. Over thirty years into their profession, Maynard et al’s distinctive affect looms bigger than ever, so we spoke to 5 of essentially the most thrilling younger bands on the scene at present who’re carrying their spirit forwards in new and unpredictable methods.
Hawxx
Teenage revolt seemed very completely different for Hawxx vocalist and guitarist Anna Papadimitriou. “Some individuals be part of punk bands, shave their heads or take medication,” she says. “My factor was changing into a Christian. I’d inform my mum that I used to be going out clubbing, however really I might be going to all evening prayer conferences.” Raised in Athens, Greece as an atheist, in her late teenagers she joined a Nigerian non secular cult. “I sadly received concerned with the incorrect individuals,” Anna continues. “There was numerous abuse and corruption, so I used to be a part of the few those that determined to show that and shut it down. I ended up being the person who they stated, ‘You have been despatched by Devil to destroy us all.’”
Whereas Anna is reluctant to get into specifics, she alludes to them on hell-for-leather thrasher Chunk (Holiness In Fuck) from Hawxx’s 2023 album, Earth, Spit, Blood And Bones. It sees Anna screaming the lyrics: “You defend this fable/You are not residing in sin, you are the sin’s bitch.” It’s considered one of many experiences fuelling Hawxx’s unapologetic wrath. Their blistering progressive metallic, which blends rhythmic grooves and visceral laborious rock with hooks sharp sufficient to attract blood, is a turbulent backdrop to a ferocious assertion of intent that calls out the patriarchy injustice and inequality. The album’s lead single, Dying Makes Sisters Of Us All, rails in opposition to male violence. Written following the murders of Sarah Everard and Sabina Nessa in 2021, Anna says the band have been aiming to show ache into energy.
“I went to Sarah Everard’s vigil, and I additionally went to Sabina’s vigil. It is a testomony to the ladies which have been named and unnamed, and about rage, our collective rage. However it’s greater than that, it is also concerning the sisterhood between ladies and within the queer neighborhood. The grief and rage we share, generates this pressure that’s unstoppable.”
In 2022, the band performed their greatest exhibits up to now supporting Alter Bridge guitarist Mark Tremonti on his solo UK tour. After a present at London’s Shepherds Bush Empire, Anna acquired a textual content from Patsy Stevenson, the activist who had been detained by police at Sarah Everard’s Clapham Widespread vigil. “She stated, ‘I simply need to say thanks for speaking about us and our rights.’”
In the course of the band’s adrenaline-fuelled gigs, that sense of righteous anger bubbles over into one thing primal. “Girls and queer individuals would normally be bodily sidelined and sidelined when it comes to who the artist speaks to,” says Anna. “Should you come to a Hawxx present, I need these members of the viewers to really feel prioritized and centred.”
Impressed by bands and friends comparable to doom punks Witch Fever and post-hardcore quartet Petrol Women, who’re blazing their very own abrasive, outspoken path, Hawxx need to be a voice for change. “The most effective pit I’ve ever been in was at a Petrol Women present,” says Anna. “Me and all these different ladies have been simply going for it, and it was extra than simply cathartic, it was therapeutic. And that simply made me suppose, ‘God, that is what I need to be doing at our exhibits, to direct this depth someplace particular.”
Of Device’s affect on her band, Anna notes: “They’re the sensible Godfathers. They’ve completed regardless of the fuck they need endlessly, and it’s paid off. They have not subscribed to any of the issues the music trade tells you that it’s essential to do. They’re an instance to chop out the bullshit, and keep in mind what’s vital about making music.”
Ou
China has famously given the world many issues throughout its millennia-long historical past: paper, gunpowder, banknotes, an incredible large wall amongst them. However prog metallic? Not a lot. Ou are out to alter that. The Beijing four-piece put a novel spin on this most tried-and-tested of genres. Their upcoming second album, II: Frailty, combines knotty heaviness and glitchy electronics with an air of ethereal otherworldliness, the latter courtesy of singer Lynn Wu. It’s like Device jamming with Aphex Twin whereas Björk sings in Mandarin Chinese language excessive.
“There’s numerous actually attention-grabbing conventional Chinese language devices and Chinese language music,” says drummer Anthony Vanacore, Ou’s lone American, of the band’s magnetic sound. “I haven’t borrowed any of that stuff as such, but it surely’s had some affect on me subconsciously. And Lynn’s voice clearly brings a unique component to it.”
Anthony grew up in New Jersey, falling in love with the tradition of his soon-to-be-adopted homeland when he was residing in an space with a big Chinese language neighborhood. The chance to tour China with an orchestra on the very finish of 2009 finally led to him shifting to town of Guangzhou and, later, Beijing. It was within the Chinese language capital that he met Ou guitarist Jing Zhang and bassist Chris Cui (the band’s title is pronounced ‘O’, just like the letter). Lynn joined later, after they requested her so as to add vocals to the instrumental music they’d written. “Lynn comes from extra of a pop background, she hadn’t actually heard a lot metallic,” says Anthony of the vocalist, who sings in her native Mandarin Chinese language. “However the best way she approached it simply match like a glove.”
Ou’s debut album, one, was launched in 2022. It attracted the eye of Devin Townsend, who co-produced the follow-up (“Seeing how he labored was inspirational”). The lyrics on II: Frailty could also be impenetrable to non-Chinese language audio system, however the drummer guarantees English-language translations can be posted on the band’s Instagram and YouTube channel. “It’s concerning the frailty of the human situation and every thing that comes with that,” he says. “It’s fairly common.”
In addition to planning their very first reside exhibits, Ou even have a 10-episode animated on-line collection within the works, based mostly on a cyborg character that shares the band’s title. The collection will tie in with the themes of the album, albeit loosely. “I’m an enormous David Lynch fan,” says Anthony, referencing the cult filmmaker. “His method is: ‘Why can we must be spoon-fed a plot?’ I really like leaving issues open to interpretation. Folks ask me, ‘What is that this band about?’ And my response is, ‘I’m undecided.’ I like that it’s a thriller to me.”
“I keep in mind when Aenima got here out, it simply blew my thoughts,” provides Anthony of his love of all issues Device. “It was this uncommon occasion of a band breaking into the industrial world with out compromising who they have been. There aren’t too many bands who’ve completed that.”
Wheel
Life can generally take a wierd flip. Wheel frontman/guitarist James Lascelles’s musical tastes have been endlessly warped when he heard Device’s Aenima whereas working in a studio. But regardless of this early love of heavy music, he would find yourself in a Finnish acoustic pop-rock band named Flute Of Disgrace, alongside a former winner of TV contest Finnish Idol. “I did not take pleasure in how managed every thing felt when it comes to the manufacturing of the artwork itself,” the British-born James says now. “I needed to create issues. In Wheel, in contrast, we have got an nearly terrifying quantity of inventive management.”
It’s working for them. The Anglo-Finnish trio have established themselves as one of the crucial engrossing new prog metallic bands round. Their third album Charismatic Leaders brings a heavier metallic basis to Wheel’s off-kilter time signatures, elaborate constructions and psychedelic edges.
Lyrically, Charismatic Leaders is a not-quite-concept album that offers with real-world points in an usually indirect approach. James says that whereas he has been experimenting with extra summary topics, the tune Empire, about Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, is among the many most political he’s written to date. “The entire level of artwork is to carry up a mirror. Generally I am going to have an opinion to go together with it, however generally it is holding a mirror with no fucking concept or solutions, simply because it must be completed.”
Of Device’s affect, James provides: “What they do higher than anybody is construction and association. The constructing blocks are quite simple however they’re put collectively in extraordinarily attention-grabbing methods. They’re the very best on the earth at it.”
Mountain Caller
The most effective instrumental acts are adept at utilizing their music to tease out feelings and conjure completely different atmospheres. London three-piece Mountain Caller go a number of steps additional, with an entire accompanying narrative greatest described as an epic feminist sci-fi allegory. The lately launched Chronicle II: Hypergenesis picks up the place debut album Chronicle I: The Truthseeker left off, with an unnamed protagonist in search of the that means behind her extraordinary powers. Cue sky libraries, mysterious tomes, a council of owls and a big dose of self-actualisation.
“It faucets into the expertise of anybody who’s marginalised or misunderstood or completely different. I believe the character of the story is about discovering your individual distinctive energy: discovering magnificence in one thing the world has condemned you for,” explains drummer Max Maxwell. The story performs out by way of tune titles, musical actions and, with the brand new album, a certain quantity of contextualisation, however the band are comfortable for individuals to achieve their very own conclusions. “We’re very eager to not prohibit the listener in how they interpret and react to the story. If somebody is picturing one thing of their head, then that is what it’s,” says Max.
Musically, the band obtain an expansive imaginative and prescient regardless of their beginning palette containing solely three devices and minimal vocals. There are driving metallic riffs aplenty however these are accompanied by lush post-metal swirls and atmospheric soundscapes that mix to color vivid scenes within the thoughts’s eye.
“As a result of now we have solely three musical voices to make use of, we do need to suppose a little bit bit in a different way in add a little bit of variation. El [Reeve, bass] notably goes out of her technique to not do exactly what a bassist historically does,” Max says, including that he and guitarist Claire Simson have beforehand informed their bandmate – the one non-Device fan of the three – that her taking part in reminds them in some methods of Justin Chancellor’s.
“Certainly one of my favorite issues about Device is that every one 4 musical voices, have a extremely distinct high quality to them,” the drummer continues. “It looks like an actual band, like a gathering of equal quarters that come collectively to type this factor that’s greater than the sum of its elements. I’d prefer to suppose that with us it’s the same factor. We every take priority at completely different levels. It is a assembly of various particular person voices that makes one thing new once they bounce off one another.
“I really like the crescendos they construct, it takes you into one other world,” he provides. On the finish of The Affected person, in Vicarious and 10,000 Days…there are such a lot of factors the place they construct as much as this enormous launch. Folks consider them as very cerebral however they’re visceral and primal as nicely.”
Each Hell
The tip of Brighton post-metallers Black Peaks was understandably painful for Will Gardner. “It harm for a very long time afterwards,” says the singer and guitarist of the demise of his former band in 2021. “And lockdown down utterly drove me insane.”
With each of these occasions receding the rear view mirror, Will is pouring his vitality into Each Hell. Black Peaks are a part of the brand new band’s DNA – inevitable, given the presence of each Will and unique Peaks bassist Andrew Gosden (the line-up is accomplished by keyboard participant/guitarist Evelyn Could and drummer Mark Roberts). “Having Andrew is an enormous a part of what we’re doing,” he says. “That heavy bass is on the core of every thing.”
However Each Hell take Will’s previous outfit as a leaping off level to discover completely different musical avenues – “a continuation and an evolution,” as he places it. The 2 tracks they’ve launched to date, Freaking Out and The Watcher, strip again the proggy complexity in favour of a rawer and extra direct method. “We’re impressed by numerous Converge, Device, Mastodon, but in addition [garage rockers] Dying From Above 1979 and even Twenty One Pilots,” he says. “It’s utilizing melody and pop chord sequences, however taking part in them in a heavy trend.”
The plan for the fast future is to drop two extra tracks and package deal all of them collectively as an EP forward of Each Hell’s look at Arctangent in August “They’re extra proggy,” says Will of the brand new songs. “A lot nearer to that Peaks sound. However it’s early days. We’ve solely been out on the earth for 5 or 6 months now, we’re nonetheless exploring.”
So Will’s one other lifelong Device diehard, proper? Er, not fairly. “I hated Device for fucking years, till 10,000 Days got here out,” he admits. “The primary two tracks, Vicarious and Jambi, they simply modified my life. I turned obsessive about Maynard’s voice and simply the perfection they have been aiming for.”
Learn Steel Hammer’s unique interview with Device of their newest situation, out now. Hawxx’s Earth, Spit, Blood and Bones is out now. Ou’s II: Frailty is out April 26 through Inside Out. Wheel’s Charismatic Leaders is out Could 3 through Inside Ou t. Mountain Caller’s Chronicle II: Hypergenesis is out now through Church Street. Each Hell play 2,000 Timber and Arctangent this summer season
