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Latest Interviews
SLAVA UKRAINE METAL FUNDRAISER
SLAVA UKRAINE METAL FUNDRAISER
31 Oct 2026
This one isn't a band interview. Joe is a Glasgow promoter and SAOR's manager. Alina is a guitarist from Kharkiv who studied music in Edinburgh. In 2022 they put on what was meant to be a one-off metal gig for Ukraine. Almost five years and about ten events later, Slava Ukraine is still going, with Ukrainian merch and bakery stalls at festivals from Wanlockhead to Estonia, and 1914 booked for their first-ever Scottish show at Ivory Blacks on 4 December. We talked about how a SAOR show in Kharkiv started it all, meeting Dmytro of 1914 in Lviv, how they choose where the money goes, pro-russian hecklers at the Edinburgh demos, and Alina's trip home to Kharkiv and Dnipro under drones and guided bombs. Then a quick-fire round to settle Obolon versus Tennent's once and for all. And at the end, they announced who's supporting 1914 in Glasgow.
METAL MESSAGE GLOBAL
METAL MESSAGE GLOBAL
29 Oct 2026
Markus Eck founded Metal Message Global in 2001, and for 25 years he has promoted metal and hard rock bands from Kaufering in Bavaria, mostly self-released acts with no label behind them. Before that, he spent years as a prolific writer for the German print magazine Legacy. To mark the agency's 25th anniversary, Markus answered The MetalList's questions by email. He talks about the frustration with the music press that pushed him into PR, his Legacy workload, and how the CD boom, file-sharing, MySpace and Facebook reshaped the business. He also explains why he will never promote AI-generated music and names the bands he has watched grow from the start. He looks back on the hardest stretch of his career and shares his top 5 albums of 2026 so far.
TEMIC
TEMIC
16 Oct 2026
TEMIC bring together current and former members of HAKEN, SHATTERED FORTRESS, THE NEAL MORSE BAND and more, and their 2023 debut Terror Management Theory topped the charts in the Netherlands. Their second album, Ceiba, is out now on Season of Mist, and it's the first with bassist Miguel Pereira as a full member. Miguel joined The MetalList to talk about why "supergroup" fits the band but "supergroup project" doesn't, how five musicians in Norway, Tulsa and Mexico City write together, and the concept of loss behind Ceiba. He also explains his six-string bass, the laser sounds on "Casting Stone" and his famous bass face, and talks about the prog police, why the album runs 66 minutes, Cruise to the Edge, the visa trouble that kept TEMIC away from ProgPower USA, and the five bassists who shaped him.
STONED JESUS
STONED JESUS
02 Oct 2026
Kyiv's STONED JESUS have long been known far beyond Ukraine, and founder and frontman Igor Sydorenko openly admits that "good old stoner" reviews annoy him more than a bad one would. We talked about Songs to Moon — the band's gloomiest record and, in Igor's words, one of its most experimental — the second part of the Songs to… trilogy, out October 16 on Season of Mist. We covered why he revealed the whole trilogy plan up front, "Syzygy", the first instrumental in the band's history, and the hidden melodies that stitch the three albums together, how "Velvet" finally got its chorus, reviews that read like AI, and Igor's own past as a music critic. We also talked about the war and the "music is outside politics" messages, the donation jar at every show, the festival that dropped CELESTE, a tour invitation from CULT OF LUNA, friendship with IGNEA, the 15th anniversary of Seven Thunders Roar and IRON MAIDEN-style era tours.
DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT
DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT
18 Sept 2026
A year on from Innern, DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT have done two things they had never done before. In May they played the United States for the first time, at Maryland Deathfest in Baltimore, after more than a decade of trying. And this month they put out an instrumental edition of the album, not a muted version but a rebuilt mix with the vocals stripped away. The second of those exists because of one man, and he is not the one who usually does the talking. Alan Noruspur came in on bass for *Innern*, his first appearance on a DER WEG EINER FREIHEIT record and, as it turns out, the first recording he has ever played on. He learned the instrument specifically to take the job. We spoke to Nikita Kamprad and Alan the week the instrumental edition came out.
HOLISSSTIK
HOLISSSTIK
05 Sept 2026
The plan was to put some MP3s online and be done with it. Instead, Tor-Helge Skei ended up on Season of Mist with the first installment of a trilogy, roughly twenty collaborators scattered across several countries, and an album that opens with a French rap verse. The MANES and LETHE founder spoke to The MetalList about *Chapter I: This Endless Solitude* — how a Facebook post brought in musicians he had never met, why he sent everyone stripped-down sketches with no instructions whatsoever, how Polish vocals and Buddhist monk chanting ended up on the same song, why he deliberately finished most of chapters two and three before anyone could react to the first one, and why a project this scattered will almost certainly never be played on a stage.
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Latest Reviews
SAOR — Caledonia
SAOR
Caledonia (2026)
★★★★½ 9/10
VERSES OF SEVERANCE — Serpents of the North
VERSES OF SEVERANCE
Serpents of the North (2026) EP
★★★★ 8/10
ENSLAVED — Mið
ENSLAVED
Mið (2026)
★★★½ 7/10
STONED JESUS — Songs to Moon
STONED JESUS
Songs to Moon (2026)
★★★★ 8/10
RAM — Against
RAM
Against (2026)
★★★★ 8/10
TEMIC — Ceiba
TEMIC
Ceiba (2026)
★★★★½ 9/10
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Latest Live Reports
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