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Video Drop 21 June 2026
Bark — Full Show at Cinema, Aalst

Bark — Full Show at Cinema, Aalst

Antwerp five-piece BARK doing a full set at Cinema in Aalst. Their own bio reads 'the bad way, but faster' and that is exactly right. Groove, sludge, thrash and hardcore tangled together. One of the Belgian underground bands that actually plays out.

Bark Groove Metal
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    Latest

    What is the forbidden riff? OPINION

    What is the forbidden riff?

    The forbidden riff is the opening of Led Zeppelin's 'Stairway to Heaven' — informally banned in guitar shops since the early 1990s because beginners learn it first, play it badly, and play it constantly. The term broadened to cover any overplayed guitar riff that shop staff dread hearing on a loop, including Enter Sandman, Smoke on the Water, Sweet Child O' Mine, and Wonderwall.

    22 Jun 2026

    Bark. The Antwerp band that has been keeping the bad way alive for ten years. DEEP DIVE

    Bark. The Antwerp band that has been keeping the bad way alive for ten years.

    Bark is a Belgian groove and sludge metal band from Antwerp, founded in 2015. Seven releases later they are signed to Suburban Music Group, fronted by Ron Bruynseels, with Martin Furia and Toon Huet on guitars. Their self-imposed bio is the most accurate one-line description of a metal band working today.

    22 Jun 2026

    Graspop Metal Meeting. The Belgian festival that turned Dessel into a four-day metal city. DEEP DIVE

    Graspop Metal Meeting. The Belgian festival that turned Dessel into a four-day metal city.

    Graspop Metal Meeting started in 1996 as a single-Sunday gig in the Belgian village of Dessel. Thirty years later it draws 95,000 visitors across four days, often sells out before the lineup is announced, and books a mid-card that headlines other festivals. The story of how Peter Van Geel and Bob Schoenmaekers built it.

    22 Jun 2026

    Sigh. The Tokyo band that Euronymous signed to Deathlike Silence. DEEP DIVE

    Sigh. The Tokyo band that Euronymous signed to Deathlike Silence.

    Sigh is a Japanese avant-garde black metal band founded in Tokyo in 1989. Their 1993 debut Scorn Defeat was released on Mayhem founder Euronymous' Deathlike Silence Records shortly after his murder, and remains one of the first records to bridge second-wave black metal into something the genre had never sounded like before.

    22 Jun 2026

    Wacken Open Air. The German festival that wrote the European metal festival playbook. DEEP DIVE

    Wacken Open Air. The German festival that wrote the European metal festival playbook.

    Wacken started in 1990 in a gravel pit with eight hundred people. By 2024 the festival was selling out 85,000 tickets in under five hours. The story of how two friends from a tiny Schleswig-Holstein village built the template every European metal festival now copies.

    22 Jun 2026

    Mayhem. The Marseille tape from 2000, and the years of carnage that made it possible. DEEP DIVE

    Mayhem. The Marseille tape from 2000, and the years of carnage that made it possible.

    A 26-year-old live recording of Mayhem in Marseille, France, captured on the 'Grand Declaration of War' tour. By 2000 the band had already lost a vocalist to suicide and a founder to murder. That this performance even exists is the story.

    21 Jun 2026

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    I wanted a site that sounds like the conversations I have after shows.

    Every English-language metal site sounds the same. Anonymous writers. Breaking news nobody asked for. I got tired of reading content that felt like it was written by an algorithm.

    This is the one you actually want to read. With your morning coffee or your evening beer. Wacken, Graspop, Hellfest, Roadburn. Here, those aren't footnotes. They're the main stage.

    One metalhead. No editorial board. No algorithm. No sponsor telling me what to write. Just honest words about music that still gives me goosebumps after thirty years.

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