Rise Against have achieved both commercial and critical success. The former is the result of a well-formed career but to be as widely appreciated by the music press, a band needs to have some substance to their style and with the word ‘punk’ so easily used as a stick to beat some in the genre, David Keevill explains why Rise Against are flying the flag the highest at the moment.

Over the last few weeks, pictures and videos of the devastating air attacks in Gaza have filled social media. Accompanying the outpouring of grief and sympathy for those unwitting civilians caught in the crossfire between Hamas and the Israeli military is (rightly) anger on behalf of those unable to defend themselves. As anybody with a first, second or third hand opinion wades in to shout ill-formed slurs at their chosen target, Twitter and Facebook – the 21st Century’s soapbox equivalents – have become a cacophony.

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After he returned from his weekend at the UK’s version of Warped Tour, Gavin Lloyd requested special dispensation to write a 1400-word missive on his experience at Ally Pally with a few thousand other grebos. If you’re an emo, feel free to call this longform journalism. If you’re not… go and read a real website.

As a teenager I spent many summers flicking through music magazines in awe of the Warped Tour. It was always a dream of mine to head over to the States and take in this travelling punk rock circus in person. Alas, I never actually got to go and I watched as the Warped Tour evolved into something of a mismatched monster. While they’d still invite the likes of The Bouncing Souls along out of what I guess is a sense of respect, things were different. The internet gave birth to ‘crunkcore’ bands being booked and isanyoneup.com getting stalls in the merch village. Still, it’s not all bad, Katy Perry played one year. With that in mind, I welcomed the fact that Warped now comes to the UK’s shores and headed along to Alexandra Palace to check it out, obviously disappointed Katy Perry wasn’t present.

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It’s that time of year again – it’s the return of the Thrash Hits Download Festival splash page for 2012! All of our Download coverage from across the entire 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 we overhear, and every outrageous photo of muddy debauchery that our photographers can get their lenses on.

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As the final band of the weekend over on the Second Stage, Rise Against had the honour of closing the Zippo Encore stage at Download Festival 2012. [Read more →]

Download Festival have announced a veritable swathe of additional acts that will be gracing their festival at Donington Park this Summer. There’s even a fair few heavyweights in this announcement, including Megadeth, Zakk Wylde’s Black Label Society, Slash, and Thrash Hits’ personal favourite purveyors of intellectual metal, Five Finger Death Punch.

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