Jon Wiederhorn

18 Years Ago: Ozzy Osbourne’s House Nearly Burned Down in Fire-Related Mishap

No one can deny that Ozzy Osbourne has repeatedly played with fire throughout his career with Black Sabbath and as a solo artist. But fanning the flames of controversy played no role in the fire that spread through his seven-acre Buckinghamshire…

Meet the woman who let Metallica rehearse in her basement

On May 20, 1983, Jon and Marsha Zazula received a letter of complaint from a local council jobsworth. The Zazulas, owners of Megaforce Records, had been allowing noisy, obnoxious rock’n’roll bands to stay, and rehearse, at their domestic abode – and…

Michael Amott: “I like Depeche Mode, but I don’t want Arch Enemy to sound anything like them. I love Jimmy Page, but I don’t want to play like him. I’m happy being me”

With his long black hair covering his eyes and much of his face, Arch Enemy founder Michael Amott sports a wide grin that belies the savagery of the band’s melodic death metal as he saws into his white blood-spattered Dean Tyrant Bloodstorm signature…

Chris Daughtry and Lzzy Hale Talk Success of Their ‘Separate Ways’ Cover & Being Reminded by ‘Stranger Things’ About ‘How Incredible That Song Is’

When Daughtry frontman Chris Daughtry watched the final episode of the fourth season of Stranger Things, he knew what song his band was going to cover next. During a tension-filled scene, he heard the haunting Bryce Miller/Alloy Tracks remix of…

(Not) Shouting Into The Void: Instrumental Doom 101

With their droning, heavy-lidded aesthetic, stoner/doom bands rely on slow-to-mid-paced, minor-key guitar-driven passages to keep their rhythms lumbering like prehistoric, THC-consuming beasts. While their music surges with fuzzed-out riffs and…

Ruby the Hatchet’s Johnny Scarps: “If a solo doesn’t evoke some sort of emotion within me, I toss it in the trash and start again”

Along with Lucifer, Witch Mountain and Royal Thunder, Ruby the Hatchet surfaced in the early 2010s with a psychedelic breed of melodic stoner/doom metal that caused heavy-lidded eyes to open and heads to bob. A little over a decade later, the…

Raising Hell: Backstage Tales from the Lives of Metal Legends

From the author of Louder Than Hell comes an oral history of the badass heavy metal lifestyle - featuring metalhead musicians from Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot to Disturbed, Megadeth, Throwdown, and more. In his…

Tribunal, “The Weight Of Remembrance”

​ ​ On their debut full-length The Weight of Remembrance Vancouver duo Tribunal waste no time acknowledging their heroes: Black Sabbath. Like the metal pioneer’s eponymous first offering, the album begins with a tolling bell and pouring rain,…

The Best Drowning Pool Songs: 15 Powerful Tracks

Photo: Cade Cleavelin, courtesy of T-Boy/UMe Not many metal bands can remain popular after losing the singer that made them famous… Not many metal bands are Drowning Pool. The Dallas quartet not only bounced back after vocalist Dave Williams suddenly…

Best Def Leppard Songs: 20 Career-Defining Tunes

If you’ve only listened to one or two songs from Def Leppard’s decades-long recording career, you probably don’t know just how versatile England’s most popular hard rock bands has been. Since they emerged from Sheffield in 1977, Def Leppard have…

Raising Hell: Backstage Tales from the Lives of Metal Legends

From the author of Louder Than Hell comes an oral history of the badass heavy metal lifestyle - featuring metalhead musicians from Black Sabbath and Judas Priest to Twisted Sister and Quiet Riot to Disturbed, Megadeth, Throwdown, and more. In his…

How to tell Jim Root and Mick Thomson’s Slipknot guitar parts apart

(Image credit: Venla Shalin/Redferns) On album and onstage, Slipknot guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson work together as a team. Both play rhythm and lead tracks, and both feed off the energy and excitement of the other’s musicianship. They also…

How to tell Jim Root and Mick Thomson’s Slipknot guitar parts apart

On album and onstage, Slipknot guitarists Jim Root and Mick Thomson work together as a team. Both play rhythm and lead tracks, and both feed off the energy and excitement of the other’s musicianship. They also equally enjoy a dizzying variety of…

Lamb of God’s Mark Morton and Willie Adler on making “combative and confrontational” new album, Omens

(Image credit: Travis Shinn) From their Nascent days in the early aughts to the present day, Lamb of God have been a consistently breathtaking live band. In addition to featuring one of the most volatile, energetic frontmen, Randy Blythe, the quintet…

Jim Root and Mick Thomson on the depression, wild gear experiments and chaos theory behind Slipknot’s devastating new album

(Image credit: Anthony Scanga / Future) For many bands who wrote albums during the pandemic lockdown, having extra time to compose and experiment was a bittersweet bonus. It allowed them to try new techniques, then revisit and fine-tune songs months…

Meshuggah’s Mårten Hagström: “Fredrik is the mad guitar genius. So for him to come back was natural and made me want to go on with it, too”

(Image credit: Miikka Skaffari/FilmMagic) When the coronavirus pandemic shut down the music industry in 2020, Swedish technical, experimental death metal band Meshuggah only had two tours left for their 2016 album The Violent Sleep of Reason. They…

Dave Mustaine breaks down every track on Megadeth's The Sick, The Dying… and the Dead!

(Image credit: SUZANNE CORDEIRO/AFP via Getty Images) Megadeth’s 16th original studio album starts with the sound of swooping wind and mournful cries of “bring out your dead.” A suitably ominous mid-paced arpeggio sweeps from left to right before the…

Megadeth's Dave Mustaine and Kiko Loureiro go deep on the tragedy and triumph that fueled The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!

(Image credit: Cameron Nunez) Less than 20 minutes into a lengthy conversation with Dave Mustaine, Megadeth’s mercurial frontman has revealed multiple sides of his complex personality. His greeting is warm and sincere, and it isn’t long before he’s…

Raising Hell: Backstage Tales From the Lives of Metal Legends

________🤘🏻_____________ ⪨MIND ⪨♫⪩ PRIME⪩ _____.REVIEW:_______________________________________________ ♦ | ☠ Raising Hell: Backstage Tales from the Lives of Metal Legends by: Jon Wiederhorn ⦁ Foreword by: Gary Holt (Exodus & Slayer) ♫► You're…

Richie Faulkner: “Getting the guitar back in my hands was what I needed to do to get back on track – to give me the strength to keep going”

(Image credit: Mario Skraban / Getty) For Judas Priest guitarist Richie Faulkner, September 26, 2021, started out like any other gig day. The band was scheduled to play support to Metallica on the fourth and final night of the Louder Than Life…