This week’s Slaylist isn’t so much a single playlist, but a recommendation to check out a podcast – the one in question being Valient Himself’s awesome Rocknowledgy. In case you’re some kind of slowpoke who is behind the times, Valient Himself is the frontman of Valient Thorr,

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As you’ll no doubt have heard by now, on Friday 04 May 2012, Adam Yauch – aka MCA – from the Beastie Boys, died after losing his battle against cancer of the parotid salivary gland. He was just 47 years old. To mark this sad occasion, this week’s Sunday Spotify Slaylist is dedicated to his memory, by way of [...]

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The Middle East is a perpetual presence in world affairs - at the time of writing, the ceasefire between Syria’s government and rebel forces rests on a knife edge, Egypt’s first truly free presidential elections in decades is already mired in controversy, and the ongoing nuclear negotiations with Iran continue to prove inconclusive. It’s against this background of uprising and upheaval [...]

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With all the brouhaha regarding summer outdoor festivals, we somewhat neglected a springtime indoor one that’s taking place on our very doorstep – DesertFest. Today is the third and final day of the first London incarnation of the festival, where more than 50 stoner, doom, spacerock and sludge bands have been giving the foundations of [...]

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There’s not denying it – for UK rock fans, the cancellation of Sonisphere 2012 was the biggest news story this week. Unless something incredibly dramatic happens later this year, we’d put good money on it being one of – if not the - biggest news story of the entire year. It’s because it’s such a momentous [...]

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With Iron Maiden set to release their latest live album, En Vivo!, tomorrow, and with it being ten years to the day since the release of their Rock In Rio live album, we figured this week’s Slaylist was the perfect opportunity to showcase the very best of the best live recordings that Iron Maiden – [...]

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On 18 March 1977, The Clash released their first single – ‘White Riot’. While The Clash – or at least the initial line-up of Joe Strummer, Mick Jones, Paul Simonon and Topper Headon – had formed the previous Summer, it was the release that first introduced them to the world at large. That it was [...]

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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 [...]

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All this week, Tom Dare has been guiding you through how Black Metal has evolved over the course of the last two decades (check out parts one, two, three and four if you haven’t already). Now, as the week draws to a close, we’ve asked Tom to put together the songs that have made it [...]

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Today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Darkthrone’s seminal second album, A Blaze In The Northern Sky. As this pretty much makes today the closest thing to a birthday that black metal can claim to have (for the sake of clarity we’ll ignore the first wave, yeah?), we’re going to be marking the occasion [...]

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