Last week’s Sunday Spotify Slaylist got us thinking – horror films and heavy metal have a long and established history together, and while Judgment Night is definitely an interesting soundtrack to look at for its historical significance in pairing modern rap and rock together pre-nu metal, it definitely wasn’t a horror film. With this being the last Sunday before Halloween proper, we figured we needed to address this by looking at the soundtrack to something unashamedly Halloween-ish.

We’re going full schlock. We’re diving in to the soundtrack for the nadir/logical conclusion of the supernaturally-endowed slasher villain genre. We’re talking Freddy Vs Jason.

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In this week’s Cloudcast, our entire editorial team in on the mic as Hugh is joined by Raz to talk about some of the best (and in fact, also worst) albums getting released this week, as some outright classic tracks from some of the biggest bands playing shows across the UK over the next seven days.

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With (hopefully) a painful and debilitating hangover in tow, we forced David Keevill back out into the drinking pits of Hammerfest to report on Day 2 – the first full day of the festival. Little did we realise at the time that one of the band he would see would result in him getting “spermy pants”. Jeesh….

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It’s time for the first Thrash Hits festival splash page of 2012! This dubious honour once again falls to Hammerfest. All of our Hammerfest 2012 coverage from the weekend will be linked to on this here post, so make sure you bookmark it as it’s all you’re going to need. That means individual band coverage in the form of photos and setlists, as well as reviews of each day’s highlights. Every scandalous rumour and dirty bit of gossip that our man David Keevill overheard, and every outrgeous photo of Pontins-based debauchery that Gary Wolstenholme snapped, will be here.

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The longer Mark Hunter and his gaggle of hired hands continues, the more apt his band’s chosen name of Chimaira becomes. Currently featuring members from no less than three other bands, Chimaira more than lives up to their mythological namesake.

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This time next week, our intrepid representatives at Hammerfest IV – The Hammer of Thor, will be slowly trying to recover from a weekend where the level of attention paid to the many heavy metal bands playing is directly (and inversely) proportional to the levels of booze being imbibed by them. How do we know they’ll be getting smashed rather than getting their mosh on? Well, because even if you headline your event with Anthrax and Skindred, we know for a fact that whenever more than one Thrash Hits contributor ends up in the same room at Pontin’s in Prestatyn, someone ends up puking. That’s not us trying to sound like a bunch of lads-on-tour kerrrrayyyzzzyy drunks either – that’s the raw statistics of Hammerfest talking.

In any case, we figured we’d put together a Hammerfest-themed Spotify Slaylist to start getting them in the mood nice and early.

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Yeah, that’s right. Cleveland, Ohio metallers, Chimaira are back with a new album called The Age Of Hell. Sinister. This will be of great interest to their legion of hardcore fans. Especially the ones with a Chimaira logo tattooed on them.

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Chimaira
The Infection / #5
Nuclear Blast
ETA April 2009

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Back at the tail end of 2005, Roadrunner Records turned 25 years of age and decided that it might be a good idea to have a party.

That party involved a collective of Roadrunner artists from the past and present partying live, onstage at the Nokia Theater in Times Square in New York City on December 15, 2005. That’s some party.

Obviously, Roadrunner filmed this magnanimous event and now they’ve turned it into a DVD which can accurately be described as AWESOME.

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