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Japanese metal pioneers Sigh are back today ‘Unputenpu’, the first single to be taken from their upcoming new studio album 'Goh-Ka', alongside a stunning new music video created by Costin Chioreanu. Speaking about the new track, frontman and Sigh mastermind Mirai Kawashima said - “Honestly, I have no idea at all how the song sounds to other people. Shuffle is the world-widely used rhythm and Japan is no exception. I've been using this rhythm in the songs like "Shikigami", "Ecstatic Transformation", and "Midnight Sun" but I guess I have completed my own Japanese style on "Unputenpu". The guitar lead by Mikael Åkerfeldt from Opeth definitely gives another boost to the song. Unputenpu expresses the idea that whether a person is blessed with good fortune or struck by misfortune is determined by God's will, the will of heaven, fate or something totally beyond our control and we cannot do anything to change it. Anyone could die today or lose somebody you love. Life can be cruel any time. The song is based on my personal experience but I don't want to talk about the details...” Goh-Ka is a new highlight of atmosphere, technical mastery, and meticulously arranged epics of metallic grandeur. Main-man Mirai Kawashima notes this as being as equally personal an album as ‘Shiki’, both musically and lyrically. From a musical perspective, if you were to place the main ingredients of Celtic Frost, Voivod, Black Sabbath, horror movies and Japan into a cauldron and stir it, you will get ‘Goh-ka’. Numerous additional spices such as psychedelic rock, prog rock and classical music are also evident over the album’s close to one-hour duration. The album title 'Goh-ka’has a triple meaning, being: 業火 infernal fire scorching sinners, 劫火 a huge fire that burns down the world at the end of time, and 業果 karma. The primary theme permeating the album is Kuso-zu; a series of Buddhist paintings or illustrations depicting the nine stages of a human body's decomposition after death, created to encourage meditation on the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death, and the detachment from physical beauty and worldly attachment. It openly shows the harsh reality that no matter how beautiful you are, you’ll be dead and rot sooner or later. And Kuso-shi is a poem based on these paintings. The artworks on the cover and in the booklet of 'Goh-ka’ are therefore Kuso-zu themselves. I got to sit down with Mirai Kawashima where we talked about how the bands tour of America went, the recording for the bands new album, 'Goh-Ka', and so much more! Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Sigh here: https://www.instagram.com/sighofficialjapan/?hl=en Track Played, 'Unputenpu', ©️ all rights reserved Sigh Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Since their live debut in early 2022, Burner have rapidly ascended in the UK underground scene. Their impressive performance history includes a full UK tour supporting Employed To Serve in Spring 2022, multiple headline tours across the UK and Ireland, and notable festival appearances at Bloodstock, ArcTanGent, 2000Trees, Mystic and Incineration. They also supported UK metal heavyweights Sylosis during their April 2024 UK & Ireland tour, along with slots supporting Deicide & Suffocation, underscoring the significant impact Burner has made within the heavy music community. The band's debut LP, 'It All Returns to Nothing', released in June 2023 via Church Road Records, receiving critical acclaim. The album was featured in Metal Hammer's "50 Best Albums of 2023" and "10 Best Death Metal Albums of 2023," and appeared on several other year-end lists, solidifying Burner's reputation for crafting crushing extreme music. On the 25th of September 2026 the band release, 'No One Is Coming To Save Us', their 11 track new album. I got to sit down with Harry (vocals) and Nathan (guitars) where they talked about playing with Earthone9 in Ireland, the recording process for their new album and going on tour with Worn Out and Beyond Extinction for their UK tour. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Burner here: https://www.instagram.com/burnermetal/?hl=en Track Played, Sunrise, Parabellum (feat. Matthew K. Heafy)', ©️ all rights reserved Burner Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Every Hell are a Brighton/Bristol-based five-piece blending crushing riffs, melodic urgency, and fearless experimentation into something entirely their own. Fronted by vocalist and saxophonist Will Gardner, with Toby Stewart (guitar/vocals), Andrew Gosden (bass/vocals), Mark Roberts (drums/production), and Jules Maas-Palmer (guitars and synth) the band’s sound draws from their shared history in acclaimed UK acts like Black Peaks, Broker, Memory of Elephants, and Skin Failure — but pushes even further into uncharted territory. Their debut EP Vertebrate (Oct 2024) was recorded live to tape, capturing the pure chemistry of a band playing with intent and instinct. The result is a raw, genre-defying storm — a collision of stoner metal, indie-punk, and art-rock, driven by distorted sax lines and emotionally charged vocals. I got to sit down with band members Will (Saxophone & Vocals) and Andrew (Bass & Vocals) where we talked about the recording of their EP, 'The Peoples Republic of Hell', how Will started playing the saxophone and what the music scene was like in Brighton. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out EVERY HELL here: https://www.instagram.com/weareeveryhell/?hl=en Track Played, 'Ironclad', ©️ all rights reserved Every Hell Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Very few bands survive for four decades. Even fewer are those that continue to reach new creative heights, long after legendary status has been achieved. Voïvod were never like other bands: even as the thrash metal scene exploded in the early ‘80s, the Jonquière, Québec crew stood apart, both as unique visionaries and as proud subverters of the metallic norm. From early prog-thrash classics like Killing Technology and Dimension Hatröss through to the psychedelic explorations of The Outer Limits, Voïvod have been standard bearers for individuality and creative freedom for nearly 44 years. By 2014, bassist Dominic “Rocky” Laroche had replaced Thériault, and a new incarnation of this indestructible band crossed their compositional beams to forge yet more mind-bending, psychedelic post-thrash wizardry. Released in 2018, The Wake was almost universally hailed as the finest Voïvod album since the band’s late ‘80s heyday. One of the band’s most successful albums yet, The Wake scored chart entries in Germany (#26), Switzerland (#51), Belgium (Wallonia) (#94) and the USA (New Artist: #8/Overall: #148): confirmation that the band’s return to peak form had struck a chord with fans old and new. Not surprisingly, Voïvod hit the road to reaffirm their status as one of metal’s most unique and powerful live acts. Now in 2026 with the release of 'Symphonique', working with the Orchestre Symphonique de Québec to produce an amazing live album. I got to sit down with drummer Michel, 'Away', Langevin where we talked about working with the orchestra for the album, working with Jason Newstead and touring with Midnight and Cryptosis across the UK and Ireland. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Voivod here: https://www.instagram.com/voivodofficial/?hl=en Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

A band is only as strong as the bond between its members… An unbreakable brotherhood, shared personal history, and proven creative chemistry fortify the bond at the heart of OBEYER. Leveraging the strength of their union to maximum effect, the Northampton, UK quartet—Carl Brown [vocals], Jamie Steadman [guitar], David Bartlett [bass], and Lewis Niven [drums]—pummel with unmatched power, fusing bone-rattling metallic grooves with intricate, yet infectious musicality, subtle melody, piercing screams, and pure pit-ready intensity. This future-facing signature sound surges to life on their 2024 full-length debut, 'Chemical Well' [3DOT RECORDINGS], and more to come. “First and foremost, OBEYER is a collective of friends who like making music together,” says Carl. “We’ll always have our friendship. No matter what happens, nothing will stop us from hanging out and creating. We want to push this as far as we can.” The band cultivated their chemistry and friendship over two decades. The guys connected through the scene in the Midlands. Initially, they congregated under the name LAY SIEGE during 2010. Fan favorite releases followed, including Obolus EP [2012] and hopeisnowhere [2015]. They laid waste to stages and garnered acclaim from the likes of The Guardian and more. Even as the members started families and held down day jobs, they religiously adhered to a weekly jamming schedule, getting together every Sunday. “When we released our first album, there were no kids, but there are six kids between us today,” laughs Jamie. “There are mortgages and jobs too, but we never stopped talking and playing.” In early 2020, the musicians planned to make their second full-length LP. However, the pandemic derailed their designs. When the world opened up, the boys felt a shift as they wrote. They had traded six-string guitars for seven-string guitars, widened the palette, and expanded their vision. Simultaneously, they nodded to influences as diverse as Meshuggah, The Acacia Strain, The Mire and Deftones. They also opted to embrace a new moniker and become OBEYER. I got to sit down with Carl and Jamie before they played the 3Olympia in Dublin with Profiler and Periphery. We talked about the recording for their new EP, 'Pallor', how the tour with Peripherey and Profiler had been so far and pizza! With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Obeyer here: https://www.instagram.com/obeyerband/?hl=en Track Played, 'Nothing Exists Beyond Me', ©️ all rights reserved Obeyer Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Swedish Death Metal force, One Day In Pain have announced the release of their fourth studio album, Devouring The Gods, set for release via Awakening Records on June 19th, 2026. Forged from the cold, uncompromising foundations of classic Scandinavian Death Metal and sharpened with a heavier, more technically ambitious edge, Devouring The Gods marks a significant step forward for the Stockholm-based band. The first single from the album, ‘Let It Bleed’, will be released on June 1st. Since emerging in 2020 as a studio project founded by drummer and songwriter Nicke Olsson, One Day In Pain have steadily evolved into a fully realised recording and touring outfit, earning attention for their relentless work ethic and dedication to releasing new material with almost machine-like consistency. What began with the independently driven debut Imperial Fires has now developed into a band operating with greater confidence, identity and purpose than ever before. Speaking about the new album, the band explain: “Musically on this album Nicke wanted to make a heavier and more massive album than before, with more technical elements. Drums and bass were recorded live at Studio Fluff in Västerås where we recorded everything in about five hours. Nicke and Andreas have played together for many years so they are very tight together. Nicke wanted the songs to be more open and that there would be more focus on the bass playing on this album. You will notice that. When we were going to do the guitar overdubs, it took a while. The album was finished and we had a hard time deciding who would mix it, but in the end we chose Jimmy Lundberg from Studio Catacombs in Stockholm. Jimmy plays guitar in Nicke’s other band Leprosy. We were very pleased with the result of this album, both song-wise and sound-wise. It feels like we have stepped up a little more and found what is the purpose of ODIP. Heavy, massive, bone-breaking music with a bit of Doom Death Metal spirit.” I got to sit down with Nicke where we talked about how the band started, the recording process for their new album, 'Devouring The Gods', and Death. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out One Day In Pain here: https://www.instagram.com/onedayinpain/ Track Played, 'Let It Bleed', ©️ all rights reserved One Day In Pain Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Driven by a relentless hunger for creating new and mind-blowing sounds, Shane Embury is the metal underground’s premiere prolific polymath. With a career stretching back to the mid-’80s, he is best known as bassist with UK grindcore legends Napalm Death: a band he joined way back in 1987. But over the last three decades, Shane has demonstrated an unwavering enthusiasm for exploring every possible musical avenue and pushing boundaries for the sheer, unadulterated joy of it. With multiple ongoing projects and many more planned for the future, he continues to live out the creative dreams that began in early childhood. "I was always into movies from a very early age, and I used to record the theme tunes off the television," he recalls. "My mates thought I was insane. They’d be chuffed with the Bee Gees and I’d be like, ‘Yeah, but listen to the theme from The Saint!’ They really thought I was a nutcase. But it all just evolved from there. I’ve always been chuffed with rock and metal, but I knew there was something more." As the longest standing member of Napalm Death, Shane has been relentlessly involved in the building of that band’s glorious legacy. Widely revered by fans of metal, punk, noise and many other genres, the band have been a remorseless touring machine, while also releasing a startling number of acclaimed albums along the way. As the band’s most prolific songwriter, Shane has been instrumental in sustaining Napalm Death’s unassailable reputation as one of heavy music’s most inventive and exciting bands. Meanwhile, Shane has forged his own artistic path via countless left-field and extreme projects, including the alt-metal experiments of the recently-resurrected Blood From The Soul, blistering deathgrind with Lock Up, warped hardcore punk with Venomous Concept, and bombastic classic metal with Absolute Power, amongst many others. An instinctive co-creator, Shane has made music with a vast array of cult heroes and maverick talents, ranging from jazz renegade John Zorn and Melvins’ Buzz Osborne to Megadeth’s Dirk Verbeuren and Faith No More’s Billy Gould. As Shane explains, working with other people has been a constant source of inspiration. I got to sit down with Shane where we talked about the recording for his solo album, 'Bridge To Resolution', video games and the bands visits to Ireland over the years. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Shane here: https://www.instagram.com/shanenapalm/?hl=en Track Played, 'Prayer Spasm', ©️ all rights reserved Shane Embury Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Hammok is the trio of vocalist/guitarist Tobias Osland, drummer Ferdinand Aasheim, and bassist Ole Benjamin Thomassen. 'When Does This Place Become Our Scene' is driven by their idiosyncratic blend of pop production and the vivacious energy of hardcore. Throughout, experimental textures fully blossom, placing them on the vanguard of forward-thinking punk. It ranges from tongue-in-cheek ragers to tracks that blend caustic tones with their love for emo and indie. “Blast Off (Blast Off) Blast Off” is an album standout, and was the first skeleton key that Tobias Osland wrote by accident. It seemed to arrive out of nowhere, and within a few hours he had a complete demo, driven by a new approach to his guitar-playing — a lacerating lead part that sounds like computers sputtering to life. A strange, alien sound, you could be forgiven for mistaking it for a synth instead of a guitar. I got to sit down with members Ole Benjamin (bass) and Tobias (Guitars and Vocals) where we talked about the recording process for the bands new album, 'When Does This Place Become Our Scene', the filming for the bands music video, 'The Scene', and what the music scene is like in Norway. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Hammok here: https://www.instagram.com/hammokband/?hl=en Track Played, 'Blast Off', ©️ all rights reserved Hammok Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

NASHVILLE, TN — He screamed his way into metal history. Then cancer tried to silence him for good. Now, for the first time, Chuck Billy—the iconic frontman of Bay Area thrash legends Testament—tells the whole truth in his unflinching memoir, Holding My Breath: The Two Testaments of Chuck Billy, publishing November 10, 2026, from Permuted Press. This is not your typical rock memoir. Structured as two interlocking testaments, the book traces the full arc of a life lived at maximum volume—and then something louder than any riff: the fight to stay alive. The Old Testament plunges readers into the explosive birth of Bay Area thrash metal, the formation of Testament, the rivalries, the brotherhood, and the reckless, glorious chaos of becoming one of the genre's most powerful voices. The New Testament is something rarer and more raw—a frontman at 38, blindsided by a devastating cancer diagnosis, drawing on his Native American and Mexican-American heritage, spiritual healers, visions, and the fierce love of a metal community. At the center of that community: the legendary Thrash of the Titans benefit concert—one of the most galvanizing moments in heavy metal history—which rallied old rivals into brothers and helped ignite a genre revival while keeping Chuck Billy in the fight. Co-written with Dave Erickson, Holding My Breath delivers the unfiltered insider story of thrash metal's rise alongside a deeply human account of mortality, miraculous recovery, cultural identity, and chosen family. It is, equally, a gift to lifelong Testament fans and to anyone who has ever faced the unthinkable—and refused to let go. I got to sit down with Chuck Billy where we talked about the memoir, the recording for Testaments new album, 'Para Bellum', and so much more! With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Chuck Billy here: https://www.instagram.com/growthnoise/ Track Played, 'Remember Me As Fire', ©️ all rights reserved Growth. Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

More than the sum of their parts and born again through perseverance, grit and cosmic horror, Kent’s INFECTED DEAD marks their arrival into 2026 as a newly fine-tuned and reincarnated beast. Having regrouped with a new line-up in 2024, the five-piece technical death metal band boasts alumni from the likes of Pupil Slicer, Dawnwalker and Overthrow. Gelling as a unit on stages throughout their home country of the UK, which includes previous touring alongside Bloodshot Dawn and Reprisal, as well as sharing a stage with the likes of Ingested, Vader, Immolation and Pestilence. INFECTED DEAD’s second era is set to be cemented in stone with their forthcoming 'Invicta' EP. Conceived conceptually as far back as 2020, the past 12 months saw the band enter the studio to record their most devastating and widely ambitious material to date. 'Invicta' sees production handled by V.Santura (Triptykon, Dark Fortress and Obscura), and comprises of four tracks, with thematic focus on eldritch abominations and anticosmicism with the connecting thread of Lovecraftian horror. Where complacency breeds horror in the 21st century’s very real and deeply felt dystopian tendencies, be it ecologically, collectively, or personally, INFECTED DEAD has grown from their hiatus into a wisened collective that brings forth astutely parabolic storytelling without giving way to apathy. Tying together Invicta’s themes, the band also brought in acclaimed artist Artem Grigoryev (Profound Lore) for the cover. In the face of cosmic horror and insanity, the UK quintet’s return is a proclamation of being unconquerable in and of itself. I got to sit down with band members Alex and Luke where we talked about how the band started, the recording for their EP and WWE! With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Infected Dead here: https://www.instagram.com/infecteddeaduk/ Track Played, 'In Spaces Beyond', ©️ all rights reserved Infected Dead. Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Growth wear their pain on their sleeve when it comes to their creative output. A lot of these strong emotions stem from vocalists LF's career in social work which often has him faced with the darker side of humanity, the kind of stuff that your average person can be blissfully ignorant to. His career, coupled with his own personal life hurdles, has set the scene for what listeners will find on 'Under the Under'. It's stark and at times bleak, but within it shines a glimmer of hope. There's light at the end of the tunnel, but one must crawl through barbed wire to reach it. Over half a decade on from the release of their debut album, 'The Smothering Arms of Mercy', Melbourne progressive-death outfit Growth have re-emerged with 'Remember Me As Fire', the first new music from the long-awaited second chapter of their planned trilogy aimed at going beyond expressing emotion, illustrating pathways of recovery while acknowledging the most dread-filled aspects of it.That second chapter, titled 'Under The Under' is planned for release on March 27 via Wild Thing Records. The gap between releases has been deliberate….and necessary. Where 'The Smothering Arms of Mercy' was written from within collapse, sickness and isolation, 'Under the Under' exists in the far more uncomfortable space that follows: what happens when survival is no longer the question and you’re forced to confront who you are once the wreckage settles. In the bands own words, healing, is not gentle. It is an ugly process. Chaotic, disorienting and often more confronting than the pain that preceded it.. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Growth here: https://www.instagram.com/growthnoise/ Track Played, 'Remember Me As Fire', ©️ all rights reserved Growth. Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Loud, angry, nihilistic; Gout is the doom-inducing metal project from members of Glasgow bands Lucia & the Best Boys and The Ninth Wave. A far cry from these projects, however, Gout distils the intensity of hardcore with the low, driven crush of sludge forebears. In 2025, following the release of its debut EP ‘Born Rotting’ and a buzz-generating debut show at Glasgow’s Core Festival, the band was chosen as one of The Skinny magazine’s ones to watch and played a sold out debut headline show as well as a host of other shows across the country throughout the year, supporting acts such as Portrayal of Guilt and Inter Arma. Gout’s newest EP, ‘Actual Bastard’, released on 17 April, is a brutal evolution of the band’s sound. Across 5 songs recorded and mixed by the band themselves in Glasgow, the EP is - like the band's eponym - largely unrelenting. Lyrically, vocalist Ally Scott reflects on some of the most uncomfortable aspects of self, evoking visceral imagery of hopelessness and dread, at times with cutting humour and self deprecation. The band add, "Musically, we wanted to have a song which was completely unrelenting from start to finish. We wanted to include a bit of a knuckledragging riff which is where the first riff comes in. We love playing this live and so approached the recording in the same way - not thinking too hard about anything and just laying it all out there." All tracks were recorded live in a small room in Glasgow, with minimal overdubs. This approach preserved the volatility of the performances, allowing mistakes, noise, and momentum to remain part of the sound rather than be edited out. We really wanted to convey the physicality of the band’s live performances and were confident in these new songs, so we didn’t feel the need to dress them up at all. There was an intention to having the sound be really quite exposed, letting the songs drag, surge, and fracture naturally. Although the songs are pretty brutal in places, we’re always mindful of integrating melody to the overall mixture. Many of Ally’s words deal with quite tough issues, sometimes personal and sometimes observational. Though delivered with a lot of intensity and aggression, the words are often very emotive or charged with humour. For example, the first single ‘I Am a Beacon of Health and Wellbeing’ is a case study in fragile masculinity: burying your insecurities under a veil of unwarranted self help advice, preaching about being the best version of yourself when really you were up till 10am snorting drugs with total weirdos and now there is literal blood coming out of your arsehole. In this regard, see the lyric ‘I am a vision of health and wellbeing, from the shit in my blood to the blood in my shit’. Ally’s lyrics are, at other times, more introspective and personal, dealing with mental health on a day-to-day basis: for example, ‘I’m an inmate, and this skin is a prison.’" I got to sit down with vocalist Ally Scott where we talked about how the band started, the recording for the bands EP, 'Actual Bastard', and what the music scene is like in Glasgow. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out GOUT here: https://www.instagram.com/__gout/ Track Played, 'I Am a Beacon of Health and Wellbeing', ©️ all rights reserved GOUT. Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Hell Is Here, Hell Is Home is the fourth full-length from Melbourne, FL deathcore outfit Bodysnatcher. It follows 2024’s brutal Will Putney-produced EP, Vile Conduct and serves up another powerful barrage of uncompromising deathcore across 10 incredible tracks that see the four-piece—Kyle Medina (vocals), Kyle Carter (guitar), Kyle Shope (bass) and Chris Whited (drums)—turn the catharsis up as loud and as visceral as it will go. Of course, that’s nothing new for the band. If you’ve heard Vile Conduct, or any of the three albums that preceded it—2017’s Death of Me, 2020’s The Heavy Void or 2022’s Bleed-Abide—you’ll know this is a band who have always pitted themselves against personal tragedy, who have fought on individual levels against the dark depths of a despair (often inspired by their own experiences of death). Hell Is Here, Hell Is Home is no less harrowing. “The band has always had roots lyrically in themes of betrayal, overcoming hardship, and moving on from things that happen in life and how to cope with them,” explains Medina. “Ever since the inception of Bodysnatcher, that was the theme. I do think, though, as the band has matured and we as people have grown, so have the ways to dig into the themes more. With more life experience, there are more things to draw from.” Yet while this is still a viciously personal record, Hell Is Here, Hell Is Home is also a dark reflection of the world at large, and its current dystopia. It doesn’t just dwell on what’s happening, though. It lashes out at the way things are with a terrible, violent rage. I got to sit down with vocalist Kyle Medina where we talked about the recording process for, 'Hell Is Here, Hell Is Home', how the European tour of the same name was going and what the music scene in Melbourne, Florida was like. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Bodysnatcher here: https://www.instagram.com/bodysnatcherfl/ Track played: 'Blade Between the Teeth', ©️ all rights reserved Bodysnatcher. Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Indian metal veterans Demonic Resurrection who are celebrating 25 years have just announced the release of a new EP on 6th February 2026. The new EP is titled 'Apocalyptic Dawn' and comes packaged with phenomenal artwork by Gaurav Basu aka Acid Toad. The EP features 3 songs recorded by the new lineup featuring Demonstealer, Aditya Swaminathan, Nikhil Rajkumar and Swarnava Sengupta. The band also recruited the talents of Anabelle Iratni (Veille/ex-Cradle of Filth) for the keyboards on the EP. While the EP has been mixed and mastered by Keshav Dhar. (Skyharbor) Demonstealer says "Not many bands make it to 25 years. Even few bands make it to 25 years being from India 🇮🇳. To celebrate this monumental milestone we are proud to announce our brand new EP ‘Apocalyptic Dawn’ which celebrates the legacy of the band but also kick stars the next chapter in our journey." I got to sit down with Demonstealer where we talked about the metal scene in India, playing Bloodstock and the recording process for the bands new EP, 'Apocalyptic Dawn', and so much more. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Demonic Resurrection here: https://www.instagram.com/demonicresurrection/ Track played: 'Apocalyptic Dawn', ©️ all rights reserved Demonic Resurrection. Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/

Heaven Shall Burn, the metalcore band founded in Thuringia, Germany in 1996, has evolved into one of the most influential forces in the international metal scene. Comprising Marcus Bischdff (vocals), Maik Weichert (guitar), Alexander Dietz (guitar), Eric Bischoff (bass), and Christian Bass (drums), they have gained global recognition for their aggressive sound and politically charged lyrics. Their 2008 album "Iconoclast (Part 1: The Final Resistance)" solidified their reputation as an innovative force in the metalcore genre. This success continued with subsequent records such as "VETO" (2013) and "Wancerer" (2016), both of which propelled them to the top positions of international charts. Their latest release, "Of Truth And Sacrifice" (2020), not only reached number one in their home country Germany but also led to headlining performances at major metal festivals worldwide, including Wacken Open Air and Summer Breeze Open Air. This connection to the broader metal community emphasized their enduring relevance in the scene. The band not only sets musical standards but also actively engages in social and political causes, with a focus on human and animal rights. Through their passionate dedication to music and unwavering commitment, Heaven Shall Burn remains a driving force and undoubtedly stands as one of the most influential metal bands of their generation. I got to sit down with guitarist Maik Weichert just after the band arrived at the venue where we talked about the books he has been reading, the recording process for the bands new album, 'Heimat', and so much more. With great stories, chats and banter this is not one to be missed. Avalible on all streaming platforms. Check out Heaven Shall Burn here: https://www.instagram.com/heavenshallburnofficial/ Track played: 'Empowerment', ©️ all rights reserved Heaven Shall Burn. Edited by Richie Duhig of The Metal Cell Podcast. Like, subscribe and always support the scene. Horns up and stay safe 🤘🤘 The Smashing Skull Sessions: https://www.instagram.com/thesmashingskullsessions/