Sam Law

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Articles

L.S. Dunes: “Making music together is an intimate relationship. We’re…

Jan 15, 2025 | kerrang.com | Sam Law |Jonathan Weiner

January 15, 2025Words:Sam LawPhotography:Jonathan WeinerL .S. Dunes’ abstract band name remains open to interpretation even within their five-strong gang. Back in 2022, explanations were offered on how these none-more-cultured musicians felt drawn to its rhythmic echo of the authors of great literary works: J.D. Salinger, W.B. Yeats, R.L. Stine… The imagery of shifting sands chimed with the realities of impermanence and change that weigh on men facing down middle-age.
Album review: Paleface Swiss - Cursed

Jan 7, 2025 | kerrang.com | Sam Law

Buy NowWinter 2024Navigation menu for Kerrang!Zurich deathcore upstarts Paleface Swiss blend unhinged brutality and nu-metal revivalism on uneven third album Cursed... January 7, 2025Words:Sam LawOstensibly, Paleface Swiss are on the cutting-edge of heavy music right now.
The Sound Of 2025: The new artists breaking the boundaries of…

Jan 6, 2025 | kerrang.com | Sam Law |Nick Ruskell

New years mean different things to different people. Fresh starts. Well-intentioned resolutions. The bittersweet pull of the road ahead tugging us away from the nostalgia that always comes with last year’s end. Careering into 2025 those feeling are stronger than ever, as we wonder where the hell the first quarter of the 21st century went. But they’re eclipsed by the promise of an alt. scene that's bolder, brighter and more pervasive than perhaps at any point in the history of Kerrang!.
Album review: NECKBREAKKER - Within The Viscera

Dec 6, 2024 | kerrang.com | Sam Law

Never judge a book by its cover. Fresh-faced and spry, Silkeborg youngsters NECKBREAKKER have the look of lithe hardcore kids, more likely to spinkick you in the pit than get mixed up in the beefy, grizzled, neck-expanding world of old-school death metal. The tasteful, monochrome, faintly pretentious artwork for this long-awaited first LP, too, feels far more understated than you’d expect from a genre that revels in revulsion.
Album review: Warpstormer - Warpstormer

Nov 27, 2024 | kerrang.com | Sam Law

Fast, fuzzy and utterly fanatical about all things sci-fi and Warhammer, you could sum up Warpstormer’s uncomplicated core appeal on the back of a postage stamp. Is it ‘stoner-punk’? ‘Speed-sludge’? ‘Thrash-doom’? Frankly, there’s no time to give a fuck as they pull up in their rumbling, hyperdriven spaceship and beckon you to jump aboard.
Album review: Coilguns - Odd Love

Nov 22, 2024 | kerrang.com | Sam Law

There’s fuck all ordinary about Coilguns. An offshoot of the 2008 – 2013 line-up of shapeshifting German prog collective The Ocean, the mission was originally to create fast, simple music to counterpoint that band’s legendarily expansive offerings. Their name is a reference to the ‘Gauss rifle’: a device capable of firing lethal projectiles using electromagnets rather than gunpowder.
Counterparts: “Metaphorically speaking, I’d like to go to heaven and…

Nov 7, 2024 | kerrang.com | Sam Law |Nick Karp

Brendan Murphy is heavy music’s pre-eminent cat dad. Sure, Darkthrone legend Fenriz managed to get himself elected to local office in his native Norway thanks largely to photos with his fur baby Peanut Butter, and Obituary drummer Donald Tardy actually runs his own cat rescue charity – known as Metal Meowlisha – down in Florida, but the Counterparts frontman has a special bond with his feline friends.
The big review: Damnation Festival 2024

Nov 5, 2024 | kerrang.com | Sam Law |James MacKinnon |Nick Ruskell |Em Coulter

November 5, 2024Words:Sam Law, James MacKinnon, Nick RuskellPhotos:Em Coulter, Mark Latham, Sabrina RamdoyalDamnation Festival isn’t just about the hardest, heaviest sounds from the world of extreme music. From the glassy, classical-inflected delicacy of A.A. Williams to Russian Circles’ more sweeping post-metal moments, there is always space for the subtler sounds of the alt. underground.
Album review: The Body - The Crying Out Of Things

Nov 5, 2024 | kerrang.com | Sam Law

Casuals need not apply. Nor anyone who feels themselves teetering in these uncertain times. Breathtakingly honest as these compositions are, the flipside is that they are cold, cruel and unabashedly hopeless. Moments of melody are sparse, and deployed primarily to accentuate the discord elsewhere. Even where softness does spill in on penultimate track The Building, it feels nightmarishly disorienting, full of skin-crawling ASMR.
Album review: Enforced - A Leap Into The Dark

Oct 29, 2024 | kerrang.com | Sam Law

Buy NowAutumn '24Navigation menu for Kerrang!Virginia’s rising thrash kings Enforced keep pedal to the metal excellent new EP A Leap Into The Dark... October 29, 2024Words:Sam LawEnforced are not a band to fuck around. Less so than normal, even, on this smash-and-grab six-track EP which arrives like a splash of gasoline to spike their fire after the frantic 18 months since last year's awesome third album War Remains.