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A Night to Remember Iron Maiden had already played two sold-out nights at La Défense Arena in July 2025. Those shows drew crowds of approximately 75,000 across both dates. However, the June 22 show was different. It was a lone date, specifically chosen for filming. “We chose a covered stadium to enjoy the best of the production and a fantastic audience, as Paris has always been for us,” the band shared on social media ahead of the show. To create a cleaner visual and reduce distractions, phones in the pit were placed in locked Yondr pouches. Fans kept their devices sealed in a restricted area. This policy encouraged a noticeably old-school behavior. Instead of thousands of illuminated screens lighting up whenever Eddie appeared, the crowd focused on the stage. It was the perfect environment for a set with serious intent. Evergrey Opens the Night Swedish progressive-metal act Evergrey took the stage at 7:25 PM. Their darker, atmospheric approach presented a familiar challenge. Here was an act whose sound is not easily reduced to accessible radio or festival-friendly shorthand, performing in a room built for the headliner. Nevertheless, Evergrey’s melodic weight and structural ambition set a serious tone for the evening. The Show Before the Dark Iron Maiden burst onto the stage at 8:50 PM to euphoric cheers. Animated screens swept from the streets of London to Paris, showcasing the iconic Eiffel Tower. The set opened, just like the July 2025 shows, with “Murders in the Rue Morgue.” This choice immediately signaled that this was not a greatest-hits exercise. It established purpose and chronological intent: a setlist anchored in the 1980–1992 Paul Di’Anno and early Bruce Dickinson catalog. “Wrathchild” and “Killers” followed before a giant Eddie, axe in hand, strode onto the stage. The audience erupted into delirium. The band continued with “Phantom of the Opera,” one of the set’s compositional peaks. Its Steve Harris-penned passages still had the power to captivate a room of 40,000. “The Number of the Beast,” bolstered by pyrotechnic effects, shifted into mass-participation territory. The spoken-word intro and chorus were answered by a crowd that had committed the responses from years of previous shows. The set then ventured into rarer territory. “Infinite Dreams,” not performed since 1988, arrived as a genuine surprise. “Powerslave,” with its Egyptian-themed backdrop, launched the set toward its larger centerpiece ambitions. Then, midway through “2 Minutes to Midnight,” the venue went dark. The Blackout Less than an hour into Iron Maiden’s set, a general power outage plunged La Défense Arena into total darkness mid-song. Whistles rose as fans stared in disbelief. After roughly ten minutes, the venue’s service lighting came on, but the stage remained in complete blackout—no sound, no lights, no video. A voice over the PA announced that a blackout was affecting the surrounding neighborhood, and the cause was unknown. Some attendees speculated it was connected to the ongoing heat wave and the demands placed on the city’s electrical grid. A portion of the crowd left the venue, uncertain whether the show would continue. Just a bad rending of a great album: sorry guys. Those who stayed had to wait approximately an hour before the concert resumed. When Bruce Dickinson returned to the stage, he faced the difficult task of telling the audience (in French) that the show would need to conclude by 11:30 PM due to the venue’s curfew. The crowd responded with lots of "boo's." Dickinson was visibly frustrated and made no secret of his preference for the Bercy venue—the older Paris hall Iron Maiden had used for many years before moving to La Défense Arena. The Resumption Iron Maiden pressed on with trademark determination. “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”—the 13-minute Powerslave epic—anchored the post-outage set. Its slow-building atmospheric passages gave way to a dual-guitar climax. Then came “Run to the Hills.” The crowd sang the chorus in full unison as Dickinson darted from one side of the stage to the other. Steve Harris pointed his bass at the crowd while Janick Gers tumbled through his characteristic footwork near the amps. “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” followed before “The Trooper” returned Eddie to the stage. This time, he wore the famous red tunic of the British Army. Dickinson raised the English flag, then the French flag, to a crowd that responded with undiminished enthusiasm despite everything. “Hallowed Be Thy Name” brought the main set to a close. Dickinson appeared in a cage, condemned, while the twin-guitar climax built to the song’s cathartic peak. The band closed with the title track, “Iron Maiden.” Steve Harris, Dave Murray, Adrian Smith, Janick Gers, Bruce Dickinson, and drummer Simon Dawson took their final bow. The three planned encore tracks—“Aces High,” “Fear of the Dark,” and “Wasted Years”—were not played. The curfew made them impossible. What Was Being Served: Eddie’s Dive Bar and Venue Concessions In the days surrounding the concert, Iron Maiden operated a themed pop-up called Eddie’s Dive Bar near La Défense Arena on June 20, 21, and 22. The bar served Trooper Progressive Lager Beer—the official Iron Maiden lager for the European part of the tour brewed by Crew Republic in Germany—alongside Darkest Red, a bottled red wine released under the Iron Maiden label. The menu also included pizza and small bites, and limited-edition merchandise was available on-site. Inside the arena itself, the standard venue concession stands offered a range of hot and cold food and drinks. Kombacher beer was served at the general stand, but there was something interesting in the back wall: a Trooper Progressive lager self-serve machine. A user only had to put a cup in the machine, and it filled it with Trooper beer once paid for. There were also servers with kegs on their backs walking the floor serving Trooper beer. Customers had the option to buy an assortment of Iron Maiden collector cups with the beer. No liquor was being served due to the excessive heat. VIP ticket holders had access to an elevated beverage selection throughout the evening, including wines, cocktails, and non-alcoholic options. During the one-hour power outage, a visible portion of the audience made use of the concession areas to rehydrate while waiting for the show to resume. This was one of the more surreal images of an already unusual night. Full Setlist — June 22, 2026 Doctor Doctor (UFO) — tape intro The Ides of March — tape intro Murders in the Rue Morgue Wrathchild Killers Phantom of the Opera The Number of the Beast Infinite Dreams Powerslave 2 Minutes to Midnight — interrupted by power outage Rime of the Ancient Mariner Run to the Hills Seventh Son of a Seventh Son The Trooper Hallowed Be Thy Name Iron Maiden Encores not played (curfew): Aces High / Fear of the Dark / Wasted Years The Legacy of Iron Maiden Iron Maiden's influence on heavy metal is undeniable. Their unique blend of storytelling, theatricality, and musical prowess has inspired countless bands. As fans, we revel in the experience they create. Each concert is not just a performance; it's a celebration of the music we love. The connection between the band and the audience is palpable, and it’s moments like these that remind us why we are drawn to this genre. In conclusion, the June 22 concert at La Défense Arena was a testament to Iron Maiden's enduring legacy. Despite the challenges of a power outage, the band delivered a memorable performance. The atmosphere was electric, and the audience's passion was unwavering. As we look forward to future shows, we know that Iron Maiden will continue to be at the forefront of heavy metal, pushing boundaries and creating unforgettable experiences.

Lithuania has produced no shortage of dark, extreme and unconventional heavy music, but few bands are quite like Phrenetix. Emerging from Vilnius more than a decade ago, the quartet has gradually built an identity around technical musicianship, old-school thrash energy and an increasingly adventurous approach to songwriting. Their story, however, begins somewhere much heavier than music... Before Phrenetix existed, vocalist and guitarist Lina Vaštakaitė played in a young band called State of Ruin. In 2011, two members of State of Ruin were killed in a car accident in England. After the tragedy, Vaštakaitė and drummer Jonas Gedvilas faced an awful choice: stop, or somehow continue. They continued. According to guitarist Paulius Navickas, who answered Fermented Metal's questions about the band's history, that decision became the foundation upon which Phrenetix was eventually built. Gediminas Tumėnas (drums), Lina Vaštakaitė (guitar/vocals), Daumantas Vizbaras (bass), and Paulius Navickas (guitar) “Afterwards, the remaining members Lina and Jonas had to decide — either it was time to give up, or pull through the grief and keep pushing,” Navickas explained. “They chose the latter, and here came Phrenetix.” “There was no one point that changed the band into what we are today,” he says. “It was a continuous process of keeping together through the good and bad times. We all grew up together as musicians and have a special bond created by love for music.” That may be the most useful way to understand Phrenetix: not as a band built around one lucky break, but as one accumulated through survival. From Fear to Something More Complicated The first major outside validation arrived when French label Infernö Records took notice of Phrenetix. Their debut full-length, Fear, was released through the label on November 11, 2015. The eight-track record established Phrenetix as a serious Lithuanian entry in the international thrash revival, mixing speed and aggression with melodic guitar work and traces of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. Contemporary Lithuanian metal publication Ferrum ranked Fear among the country's strongest heavy releases of 2015 and described the record as a genuine breakthrough for the band. Listen to it: Now! Navickas remembers the label's involvement as a particularly significant moment in the band's history. “If we would take some special moments, the first real one was being seen by Fabien from Inferno Records and releasing our first album with him,” he says. “That was a big morale boost right when we really needed it.” More milestones followed. Phrenetix supported Testament in 2016. Two years later, the band won Lithuania's Wacken Metal Battle, earning the right to represent the country at Wacken Open Air in Germany. Wacken's own announcement described Phrenetix as Lithuania's finalist and noted both their appearances at festivals such as Devilstone and Kilkim Žaibu and their previous show with Testament. Phrenetix were no longer simply a promising local thrash band. They had become one of Lithuania's representatives abroad. Yet rather than making the obvious follow-up to Fear, Phrenetix complicated things. Their second album, Exuviae, arrived on October 7, 2021. Its nine tracks stretched the band's writing into more elaborate and experimental territory. Songs including “Yellow Eyes,” “Blaze of Alienation” and “Hallucigenation” demonstrated just how far the group was willing to move beyond a straightforward old-school thrash template. Navickas describes Exuviae as both an achievement and something of an endurance test. “The second album Exuviae was a huge challenge,” - Paulius Navickas That experience appears to have changed the band's philosophy. After what Navickas calls the “intense experimenting and complicated songwriting” of the Exuviae period, Phrenetix have deliberately begun stripping the process back. “Now the band tends to take a simpler approach — not overthink, just get the song out as naturally as we can.” That does not necessarily mean simpler music. It means less forcing of it. Lina Vaštakaitė and the Phrenetix Sound One constant throughout Phrenetix's evolution has been Lina Vaštakaitė. Navickas identifies her as the band's principal songwriter: the person who generally arrives with the initial riffs and musical ideas before the rest of the group shapes them into finished Phrenetix songs. Lina at Kilkim Zaibu 2026 “Lina was always the main songwriter,” he says. “She is the one who brought ideas and riffs to the band and it is her authenticity and the chemistry between the other members that makes our music stand out the way it can.” Calling Phrenetix simply “thrash metal” is therefore accurate but incomplete. The starting point is obvious enough. Metallica were formative for both Vaštakaitė and Navickas. For Lina, it was footage of Metallica performing “For Whom the Bell Tolls” in 1984. For Paulius, it was the band's legendary 1989 Seattle performance. “I couldn't believe what I was seeing,” Navickas remembers. “I couldn't believe that it was actually a real thing that happens. I think I decided that I wanted to become a musician right there and then.” From there came Anthrax, Megadeth, Testament and a much wider collection of influences. Navickas points particularly to Megadeth and Marty Friedman in Phrenetix's intricate guitar work, while the band's rhythmic “polka beats” owe something to Anthrax and Slayer. But things quickly become less predictable. Paulius Navickas shreading at Kilkim Zaibu 2026 There are flashes of pop in “Yellow Eyes” and “Blaze of Alienation.” Navickas hears an unmistakable System of a Down influence in “Hallucigenation.” The first album carries considerable NWOBHM DNA. Elsewhere the band's listening ranges through Leprous, Ghost, Tool, Death, Rainbow and Mastodon. And then there is Chick Corea. “One part in ‘Yellow Eyes’ came from a jazz fusion pianist Chick Corea,” Navickas reveals. It is a small detail that explains a lot about Phrenetix. The group respects thrash's vocabulary without treating it as a set of restrictions. Kilkim Žaibu: Playing at Home That combination of tradition and experimentation made Phrenetix a natural fit for Lithuania's Kilkim Žaibu, a festival that has evolved into one of the Baltic region's important gatherings of metal, folk, history and pre-Christian cultural traditions. Phrenetix first played Kilkim Žaibu around 2014, while still relatively inexperienced. “We were still a very young band and not ‘quite there’ yet,” Navickas recalls. “But the fact Daividas and his crew saw the potential in us was very motivating...” The band has subsequently returned every few years. “...Kilkim Zaibu became the most important metal festival in Lithuania, perhaps even the Baltic states,” he says. Phrenetix at Kilkim Zaibu 2026 Their relationship with the festival continued in 2026, when Phrenetix took the Pikuolis Stage from 5:00 to 6:00 p.m. on Friday, June 26. The festival itself introduced the group as “one of Lithuania's finest thrash metal bands,” while its artist profile praised the band's combination of technical, fast thrash with progressive ideas and a highly energetic live presence. For Phrenetix, Kilkim Žaibu offers something more personal than another festival slot. Of being invited back, Navickas says, “...it is motivating and it's an honor. For us, every time we can meet friends, fans, organisers, other bands in such a positive atmosphere is just a great way to fill up on good energy. It is a rewarding experience. And as a metal band - even better! Not only do you have a great crowd, but you are given a chance for a great sound, production and a good stage, which you cannot enjoy everyday. So it is always a celebration." I managed to catch up with Lina for a few moments after Phrenetix’s set. I found her charming, approachable, and funny—a far cry from the persona who belts out a scratchy growl on the albums. We were interrupted a few times by fans heaping praise on her and asking for autographs. While we were talking about the band’s upcoming new music, I pointed out a fan Lina hadn’t noticed standing behind her: a girl of about five or six. She immediately turned and gave the little girl her undivided attention. Lina connects with her fans. What really convinced me that Lina was my kind of people came moments later. After signing an autograph for another fan, she added a little drawing of a face with a “kiss.” After the fan left, she immediately realized the kiss might actually look more like an “asshole.” A brief moment of embarrassment crossed her face, before she burst out in laughter, I couldn’t help but doing the same.... Phrenetix gained a new fan in 2026, yours truly. One of the unexpected highlights of Phrenetix’s Kilkim Žaibu 2026 set came when Marijus Berenis joined the band onstage as a special guest. A veteran of Lithuania’s heavy-music scene, Berenis is best known to metal fans for his early work with Regredior and Ghostorm, before later becoming widely recognized through ŽAS and Lithuanian radio and television. His appearance with Phrenetix is a bridge between generations of Lithuanian metal, connecting one of the country’s earlier extreme-metal figures with a band that has carried that underground spirit into the present. Lins and Marijus Berenis at Kilkim Zaibu 2026 Up Next for Phrenetix? The most important chapter may now be the unfinished one. In September 2025, Phrenetix released the single “Rise,” the band's first major recorded statement following Exuviae. The recording features Vaštakaitė, Vizbaras, Navickas and Martynas, and provides a useful preview of the production direction Phrenetix intends to carry into its next release. According to Navickas, the group is now completing a new EP. 2025 "Rise" video with former drummer Martynas Stoškus “We are in the final stages of recording our new EP,” he says. “The mixing and mastering shouldn't take long after that, since our latest single Rise is already a template for the rest of the songs.” There is an interesting transitional quality to the project. The EP's material dates from the period when former drummer Martynas Stoškus was still in the band. Rather than representing the beginning of Phrenetix's next phase, finishing it effectively closes the previous one. “The point of finishing this EP is to move forward,” Navickas explains. “We are already writing new songs for our next release.” The philosophy governing those newer songs sounds distinctly different from the painstaking construction behind Exuviae. "The main difference is that the new songs are written more naturally - what comes out is what it is, in contrast with the previous albums, which were done in a complicated and very thought out way. We never try to make a specific kind of style, that is we don’t try to get heavier, or more melodic or whatever. We never say - the next album will be like this. It is always how it turns out, that is what it will be. But I think it will be a bit heavier and more punk-driven!" Daumantas Vizbaras summons thrash from his bass. That makes sense considering what the band has been listening to lately. Navickas says hardcore punk has begun creeping into their collective consciousness — not necessarily as a genre Phrenetix intends to adopt, but as an attitude. They want the energy. More. Shows. MORE. Phrenetix's ambitions are refreshingly uncomplicated. After surviving tragedy, personnel changes, self-doubt, depression, difficult recording periods and the familiar frustration of trying to push an independent metal band forward, their primary objective remains the thing that started all of it. Playing. Phrenetix have just successfully finished their summer European tour. “The stage is where we feel meaningful,” Navickas says. Support from friends, fans and the wider metal community has increasingly made Phrenetix feel less isolated in that pursuit. “More and more we feel as one and it makes it much easier to enjoy the process and keep going.” The immediate plan is to complete and release the EP, continue writing with Gediminas Tumėnas fully integrated into the creative process, and perform wherever possible. And five years from now? Navickas doesn't describe major-label deals, gigantic festivals or some carefully constructed version of success. “Where it is now, but better,” he says. “Still active, still with a strong relationship, but even more shows.” Then he puts it somewhat more emphatically: “More. Shows. MORE!” A very "fast, energetic, and wild" performance. For a group whose very existence began with the decision to keep playing when stopping would have been entirely understandable, it is difficult to imagine a more appropriate philosophy. Phrenetix have spent more than a decade twisting thrash metal into their own shape — first looking backward toward Metallica, Megadeth, Anthrax and the NWOBHM, then outward toward progressive metal, alternative music, jazz fusion and now hardcore punk. Yet beneath all those influences remains something considerably simpler. Four people still want to get on a stage, turn everything up and play. After everything Phrenetix has been through, perhaps that is the band's greatest victory. A new "mystery" song at Kilkim Zaibu. Will we hear it again? Time will tell...

Still standing, in an ever changing Hell's Kitchen... By Time McShane— Fermented Metal Magazine, May 2026 The door at 538 Ninth Avenue does not advertise. There is no neon to catch the eye, no bouncer at the rope to signal that something worth entering is happening behind it. Just a darkened storefront, a hand-lettered name, and, once you're inside, the immediate, full-body conviction that you have arrived somewhere that does not care what you think of it. This is Blue Ruin. It has been here since 2009, and Hell's Kitchen has changed almost entirely around it. For a metal-leaning drinker navigating Midtown Manhattan — a neighborhood not historically known for welcoming the kind of bar that plays Motörhead at conversation-ending volume — Blue Ruin is an anomaly that has somehow outlasted the boutique hotels, the glass towers, and the rotating cast of craft-cocktail rooms that have colonized the surrounding blocks. It is dark. The music is loud. The service is no-nonsense. In a city that has spent the better part of two decades exporting its character to the outer boroughs or simply erasing it, those three facts constitute a genuine achievement. The Address The bar sits between 39th and 40th Streets on Ninth Avenue, one block west of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, the gateway through which the bulk of New York's touring metal acts move on their way into and out of the city. The location is not incidental to what the bar is. Long before Blue Ruin opened its doors, 538 Ninth Avenue had a prior life as one of Manhattan's more interesting metal rooms. From 1999 until 2004, the address was home to Bellevue Bar, opened by Jimmy Duff and a partner to fill what Duff later described — in a 2015 Brooklyn Magazine profile — as an obvious void: young people in 1999 had precious few places in Manhattan to hear extreme music and heavy metal. Bellevue was the answer. After a falling-out with his business partner, Duff relocated across the river in December 2004, opening on North 3rd Street in Williamsburg under the name Duff's. He would eventually move to a larger Williamsburg space at 168 Marcy Avenue, where the bar's guest book would come to include Rob Zombie, members of Pantera and Iron Maiden, and Kerry King of Slayer. For a stretch after Bellevue closed, the Ninth Avenue storefront cycled through other operators — most recently a room called Why Not Bar — before, in April 2009, Blue Ruin opened in its place. The bar's founders were Kal Narvilas, who also owns the East Village's Kabin, and Michelle Gascoine, a Kabin bartender who oversaw the build. Gascoine's stated vision for the room was vivid and specific: Gangs of New York meets McSorley's meets Hogs & Heifers. The staff, several of whom came poached from Red Rock West on West 17th Street — the boots-on-the-bar roadhouse where dancers spit shots into patrons' mouths — arrived with sufficient pedigree to make that vision stick. Press at the time was explicit about what the bar was meant to be. An August 2009 piece in Midtown Lunch and an NBC New York "Five Things to Know" feature both framed Blue Ruin as a spiritual successor to the Bellevue scene that had been absent from the block for half a decade. That framing has proved durable. The Name "Blue Ruin" pulls from two sources simultaneously. According to NBC New York coverage from the bar's opening, the phrase references the electric blue hair worn by Kate Winslet's character in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It is also a nineteenth-century British slang term for cheap gin — the rough stuff, the kind that didn't just get you drunk but, as the saying implied, ruined you. One origin is cinematic and slightly romantic. The other is practical and punishing. Together they describe the bar well. The slogan — "we will ruin you" — is somewhere between a promise and a dare. It is printed without a wink. Blue Ruined... The Room The physical space earns its atmosphere through material specificity. The floorboards are reclaimed pine, roughly a century old, salvaged from the roof of the Pepsi-Cola bottling plant in Long Island City, Queens — a detail that could come across as precious in a different room but which here simply reads as salvage. Above, a stamped copper tin ceiling catches what little light the bar allows. An antique cash register anchors the back wall alongside a customized CD jukebox. In the rear, a pool table runs at $2 a game. Time Out New York and the NBC New York piece both characterize the room as a deliberate Old New York throwback — somewhere between a McSorley's of the mind and an unreconstructed gin parlor. The entire interior feels assembled for people who believe music peaked somewhere between 1970 and 1994, and who are comfortable in the dark. The bar is cash only. Drinks and Hours Blue Ruin's drink program is not a program so much as a fact. Rolling Rock cans at $4, Pabst pints in the same range, well shots around $6 before 7 p.m., beer-and-shot combinations in the $7 neighborhood — pricing that, by the calculus of Manhattan bars in 2026, is almost aggressively cheap. Happy hour runs two-for-one on everything from 5 to 8 p.m., with $2 Schlitz and $3 Miller High Life available for the budget-conscious after that. Well, well, well, well.. what do we have here? The bar does not serve food. There is nothing to eat. This is a clarifying choice. Blue Ruin exists for drinking, listening, and shooting pool, and the hours — noon until 4 a.m., seven days a week — reflect a specific hospitality philosophy: the bar is open when musicians, night workers, and the fully committed need it to be open, not when the brunch crowd or the bottle-service demographic peaks. Great dive bar: dark, loud, and wet. The Sound Blue Ruin does not bill itself as a metal bar. It does not need to. The jukebox runs a rotation that reviewers across Time Out, Yelp, and a 2024 Back of the Ferry dive-bar feature consistently describe as heavy: rock, punk, and metal, with the often-cited house rule that country music is not welcome. The volume is described by Time Out as "punishingly loud." One dollar buys two plays. Five dollars buys ten. There is no streaming service, no playlist curated for ambient mood management. The jukebox is the room's musical nervous system, and the room trusts it. Whether Blue Ruin hosts organized live events or documented metal nights, the public record is thin. Coverage notes occasional live bands, but no named recurring series, regular promoter, or published lineup history could be verified for this piece. The documented nightly experience is the jukebox. Anything beyond that remains unconfirmed. What the Regulars Say The cluster of impressions in public reviews — drawn from Yelp, Tripadvisor, Time Out, and the Back of the Ferry piece — is remarkably consistent across seventeen years and several thousand visitors. The bar is dark. Multiple reviewers describe needing a moment at the door to let their eyes adjust. The crowd runs to locals, off-duty industry workers, and the occasional Port Authority refugee — a population that does not require the bar to explain itself. One Yelp reviewer's characterization of the place as "regular people drinking regular stuff" has become something of an unofficial tagline, picked up in subsequent reviews as a shorthand for what Blue Ruin gets right. The pool table earns recurring mentions. So does the warmth of the staff, a detail that catches some reviewers off guard against the wall of guitar noise. International visitors — British and Norwegian regulars appear with some frequency — describe the bar as the thing they came to New York to find and feared no longer existed. The notable absence in the reviews is the language of nostalgia tourism. Blue Ruin is not described, in the aggregate, as a ghost or a relic. It is described as a going concern. That distinction matters. Battle jacket Zone Why It Stands New York City has lost a significant number of its dark, necessary, unglamorous music bars over the past two decades. The math is not subtle: rising rents, changing demographics, the relentless tourism economy that rewards surfaces over substance. Blue Ruin, still operating at the same address where it opened in April 2009, is the kind of survivor that requires some explanation. Part of the answer may be geographic. The Port Authority shadow, the industrial block, the neighborhood's long indifference to polish — all of it created a natural buffer against the worst of the gentrification pressure. Part of it is operational philosophy: a bar that opens at noon and closes at 4 a.m., charges four dollars for a can of beer, and doesn't serve food is not trying to attract anyone it doesn't already have. And part of it, arguably, is the address itself. 538 Ninth Avenue is, in a lineage that can be documented, the storefront from which Jimmy Duff first tried to give heavy music a permanent home in Manhattan. Blue Ruin is not Duff's. It would probably be wrong to call it a metal bar in the strict sense. But it is the original room — the Manhattan stem from which one of the East Coast's most-cited metal venues eventually grew — now run by different hands, still leaning hard on the same general frequency. On a Tuesday at midnight, three songs deep into a punk-to-doom run on the jukebox, with the copper ceiling catching nothing and the bar lit the way bars should be lit, that provenance is present and accounted for. Hell's Kitchen has transformed around Blue Ruin. The bar, to its credit, has not transformed with it. The ceiling is still copper. The jukebox still costs a dollar for two plays. The music is still, most of the time, heavy. That is a value system. And it is, for the moment, intact. Blue Ruin: 538 9th Ave (between W. 39th & W. 40th St.), Hell's Kitchen, New York City. Open daily, noon–4 a.m. Cash only.

Space Vacation, Tower Hill, Adamantis and Hands of Goro brought four different interpretations of old-school heavy metal to an unlikely Peninsula stronghold on Tuesday, August 18. That night ,in downtown Redwood City, the distance between the Bay Area, the Canadian Prairies and Boston suddenly became very small... On August 18, 2026, four bands—Space Vacation, Tower Hill, Adamantis and Hands of Goro—packed into The Hub RWC for a night that demonstrated just how healthy the underground traditional-metal world has become. Local veterans Space Vacation opened, Canadian traditional metallers Tower Hill followed, Boston power-metal band Adamantis took the third slot, and San Francisco trio Hands of Goro closed the evening. It was an unusually international bill for a relatively small room in Redwood City—and exactly the kind of night that illustrates why venues like The Hub matter. The Hub: Heavy Metal on the Peninsula For decades, heavy music has survived as much through adaptable neighborhood rooms as through dedicated rock clubs. The Hub provides precisely that kind of environment: a relatively intimate venue where touring underground bands can share a stage with Bay Area acts without the machinery—or distance—of a major San Francisco concert hall. The August 18 show made particularly good use of that intimacy. There was little separation between bands and audience, giving the evening the feeling of an underground metal gathering rather than a conventional concert production. Poseurs Only Presents: Building the Show Behind the Show The concert was promoted by Poseurs Only Presents, the booking operation associated with Elijah Post, drummer for Hayward thrash band Frolic. Post occupies an interesting position in the current Bay Area metal underground: he isn't simply a musician playing shows—he has also become part of the infrastructure that helps make those shows happen. Frolic itself is firmly rooted in the modern Bay Area thrash scene. Formed in Hayward in 2014, the band has built its reputation through the traditional underground route of local shows, touring and support slots with established names. Since Post joined on drums in 2020, Frolic has shared stages with bands including Death Angel, Possessed, Forbidden, Suicidal Tendencies, Biohazard, Warbringer and Goatwhore. That gives Post a perspective on booking that is different from that of an outside concert promoter. He understands the small-room metal show from behind the drum kit: the importance of compatible bills, workable venues, touring logistics and putting local bands in front of the right audience. Poseurs Only Presents appears to be an extension of that involvement in the scene. Public event listings identify Poseurs Only Presents as the organizer of metal shows at The Hub RWC, including another four-band underground bill scheduled there for September 5, 2026 featuring Vesseles, Post Heaven, Eaten By Insects and Darandaz. That establishes that the August concert was not simply an isolated use of The Hub; Poseurs Only has been actively bringing heavy music into the Redwood City venue. Elijah Post with the new Frolic album, Legacies of Cybernetica, released July 3, 2026 For The Hub, that relationship is significant. Redwood City sits between the much more visible metal centers of San Francisco/Oakland to the north and San Jose to the south. Regular underground bookings can give Peninsula fans a place to see touring metal without automatically making the trip into either of those larger scenes. [ Check out the new Frolic album, Legacies of Cybernetica ] Space Vacation: The Bay Area Veterans Launch the Night Opening the show was Space Vacation, a San Francisco heavy-metal band that has spent well over a decade celebrating the sounds that first made metal fun: soaring vocals, twin guitars, memorable choruses and riffs designed as much for raised fists as headbanging. Space Vacation got the party started The group's own history traces its beginnings to the late 2000s, positioning Space Vacation among the earlier American bands associated with the revival of traditional heavy metal that eventually became widely known as the New Wave of Traditional Heavy Metal, or NWOTHM. Their stated influences include Judas Priest, Motörhead, Van Halen, AC/DC and Guns N' Roses, but Space Vacation have never sounded like simple historical re-enactors. Melody is central to what they do. The current lineup listed by the band consists of Scott Shapiro on lead vocals and rhythm guitar, Kiyoshi Morgan on guitar, Stephen Goodwin on bass and Carter Kennedy on drums. That lineup carries an impressive Bay Area pedigree: Morgan previously played in Vicious Rumors, Goodwin plays in SF's satanic metal band From Hell , while Kennedy was a member of San Francisco doom/psychedelic heavy-rock band Orchid. Space Vacation's catalog now stretches across five full-length albums, from its self-titled debut through 2022's White Hot Reflection, released through Pure Steel Records. In 2026, Space Vacation participated in the Wacken Metal Battle California circuit and continuing regional performances. That experience made Space Vacation an ideal opener, being an obvious Bay Area crowd drawer. More importantly, putting a veteran local band first rather than treating the opening slot as disposable immediately established what the night was about: four bands sharing variations on essentially the same heavy-metal language. Space Vacation Setlist on Tuesday night: Live by the Sword Devil to Pay Reign in Hell Rolling Thunder Iceberg Keith’s Sister Tower Hill: Swords Raised From the Canadian Prairies Then came Tower Hill, bringing traditional heavy metal south from Edmonton, Alberta. Tower Hill began in 2020 as a project created by vocalist R.F. Traynor, eventually growing into a full band. Their influences leave little ambiguity about their intentions: Running Wild, Riot, Stormwitch, Helloween and Judas Priest are among the names the band openly cites. Their 2023 debut album, Deathstalker, taking its name from the 1983 sword-and-sorcery film, an appropriately low-budget fantasy world of warriors, magic and steel that fits remarkably well with the band's musical personality. It was released by Greece's No Remorse Records and was recorded and engineered by Jeremy Puffer and R.F. Traynor at B.T. Studios, with vocals recorded by Diego Fernandez at Oracle Studios. Fernandez also mixed the record, while Olof Wikstrand of Enforcer mastered it at Hvergelmer Studios. Its sword-and-sorcery imagery is not incidental: the band's visual identity, lyrics and music enthusiastically embrace the fantasy worlds that have been attached to heavy metal since the genre's formative decades. The album artwork was created by Andreas Marschall, whose extensive metal résumé includes work associated with Running Wild, Blind Guardian, HammerFall and Kreator. Tower Hill lays siege to Redwood City. The album lineup consists of Traynor on vocals, Chris Nunz and Jeremy Puffer on guitars, Cam Dakus on bass and Mitch Stykalo on drums . More importantly, just a day before the Redwood City show, the Canadians announced that their second Tower Hill album is was finished, due spring 2027 and to be release through Nameless Grave Records. Traynor revealed in April 2026 that the next record will incorporate considerably more Canadian subject matter. Planned songs include one dealing with the wendigo, another inspired by touring across Canada and another centered on Louis Riel, the Métis leader whose conflicts with Canada's federal government culminated in the North-West Resistance of 1885. And, because this remains Tower Hill, Traynor also promised a song about a guy with a magical sword. Tower Hill wielded true Metal in Redwood City on Tuesday the 18th At The Hub, punctuated by R.F. Traynor's Rob Halford worthy high pitched screams, Tower Hill represented perhaps the purest expression of traditional metal on the bill: leather-and-steel music built around riffs, melody and unapologetic enthusiasm for the genre's mythology. And an interesting aside, Adamantis founding drummer Evgeny Gromovoy pulled double duty at The Hub, stepping behind the kit for Tower Hill as well as performing with Adamantis. Tower Hill’s regular drummer, Mitchell Stykalo, did not perform with the Canadian band that evening. Tower Hill had this to say about Mitch's absence, "Mitch tore his achilles tendon a few weeks before the tour and was unable to join us because he is still recovering from surgery. Evgeny was able to learn our set in a few weeks and pulled double duty for all of our West Coast shows. He's a machine!" For Fermented Metal, however, one Tower Hill song is particularly difficult to overlook... During the closing song, Claw is the Law, R.F. Traynor downed and crushed what looked like a "White Claw' during the song, the crowd went nuts. “The Claw Is the Law” turns drinking with friends into an unabashed heavy-metal anthem. Its imagery revolves around cracking cans, hitting the city and drinking through the night—a reminder that Tower Hill's universe isn't confined to ancient battlefields and magical swords. Sometimes the adventure is simply going out with your friends, putting on metal and drinking too much beer. Tower Hill's presence at The Hub on Tuesday night also reinforced how international this supposedly “underground” scene has become. A Canadian band signed to a Greek label could travel through California and find an audience in a Redwood City bar that already understood exactly what it was doing. That is community operating at the underground level. Adamantis: Epic Power Metal From Boston Next, Adamantis, the second half of the Cascadian Conquest '26 tour stormed the stage. Formed in the Boston area in 2016, Adamantis emerged with the Thundermark EP in 2018 before releasing its first full-length, Far Flung Realm, in 2020. The band describes its music as anthemic melodic metal, while outside descriptions generally place it in the American power-metal tradition with a strong European power-metal influence. By the time Adamantis reached Redwood City, however, the band had another major record behind it. Reforged arrived on March 7, 2025, taking the band's fascination with fantasy, history and heroic storytelling even further. Its eight tracks include “Ride for Ruin,” “Steelclad,” “Reforged,” “The Sailor on the Seas of Fate,” “Time of Contempt,” “Gates of Miklagard” and “The Fall of Asterius.” Jeff Loomis, of progressive metal band Nevermore and Swedish metal band Arch Enemy, appears as a guest guitarist on “Ride for Ruin.” Adamantis is already looking beyond Reforged. The band has begun working on its third full-length album, with new guitarist Connor McCray contributing to the next chapter alongside Vance Simmons. While no title, release date or first single has yet been announced, the sessions will mark the first Adamantis album created with the band's newest guitar lineup. Speaking of band members: Adamantis’ current lineup as of August 2026 is: Jeff Stark — vocals (2020–present) Vance Simmons — guitar (2022–present) Connor McCray — guitar (2025–present) Alex Scofield — bass (2022–present) Evgeny Gromovoy — drums (2016–present; founding member) That subject matter makes Adamantis especially interesting within the broader traditional-metal revival. Their songs pull from Tolkien, Michael Moorcock, mythology and historical imagery, but their musical ambition moves beyond nostalgia. Longer compositions, melodic leads and power-metal grandeur give the material a cinematic scale. Even the band's name carries the weight of its music: Adamantis derives from the Greek adamas, meaning “unbreakable”—an appropriately durable banner for a band built around epic battles, ancient legends and heavy-metal perseverance. The band took the stage and ripped into “Ride for Ruin,” the Tolkien-inspired song about the Riders of Rohan. Jeff Stark’s vocals and stage presence immediately brought to mind a documentary I had recently watched, Scream for Me Sarajevo; he carried that same era of Dickinson energy and vocal intensity. Bassist Alex Scofield commanded a white, headless five-string bass alongside the twin-guitar attack of Vance Simmons and Connor McCray. Later, a shirtless Evgeny Gromovoy could be seen wielding a sword from behind the drums. Both R.F. Traynor and Elijah Post were up front, joining in the headbanging, and at one point a small “Viking Row” even broke out. The great thing about the entire performance was that the band carried themselves as if they were headlining Wacken itself. In the confines of The Hub, that kind of music inevitably becomes something different. Songs conceived around kingdoms, battles and distant mythical worlds suddenly have to fit inside a small brick-walled room in suburban Northern California. And that contrast is part of the charm. Adamantis and Tower Hill were traveling together on the Cascadian Conquest '26 tour, making Redwood City the Bay Area stop on a route that connected two bands separated by thousands of miles but united by a shared traditional-metal vocabulary. Hands of Goro: Bay Area Pedigree With a Classic Edge Closing the night was Hands of Goro, and stylistically they provided the perfect counterweight to everything that came before. San Francisco has never been particularly interested in playing heavy metal by the rules. Hands of Goro fits comfortably into that tradition. The Bay Area power trio combines old-school heavy metal, NWOBHM-inspired guitar work, punk energy, classic hard rock and a healthy amount of humor, wrapping the whole thing around an unlikely conceptual centerpiece: Goro, the four-armed Shokan warrior from the Mortal Kombat universe. Hands of Goro are a power trio featuring Tom Draper on guitar and backing vocals, Adrian Maestas on bass and lead vocals, and Avinash Mittur on drums. Their self-titled debut was released on March 1, 2024, carrying eight tracks including “Prince of Shokan,” “Demonizer,” “Uncanny,” “21st Century Plague,” “You Have No Face,” “Waste of Blood,” “End to End” and “Archduke of Fear.” The band's résumé extends deep into the Bay Area and international underground. Its members have connections to acts including Slough Feg, Nite, Spirit Adrift and Angel Witch, giving Hands of Goro a lineage that stretches across several different branches of traditional and underground metal. During the show, the band mentioned that new music was in the works—and that some of it would be played that very night. Live, Hands of Goro’s sound recalls the transitional period just before NWOBHM hit full stride in the early 1980s: raw, amp-driven distortion, gritty guitar tones, and the kind of direct heaviness associated with bands like UFO, Motörhead, and early Iron Maiden. There’s very little polish to it, and that’s part of the appeal. It’s loud, immediate, and unapologetically in-your-face heavy metal. Hands of Goro’s set at The Hub leaned heavily into material that appears to be part of the band’s next chapter. The nine-song set opened with an intro version of “When the Fire Hits Your Eye” before moving through “Shokan Bolt,” “Pain Giver,” “Don’t Let the Beast Out of His Cave,” and the three-part “The Peaks of Gozan.” The second half was especially notable, with the band marking “When the Fire Hits Your Eye,” “Vanquished to Earthrealm,” and the three-part “A Warrior’s Death” as live debuts. They closed with “Backbreaker,” giving the Redwood City crowd an unusually early preview of several songs that had not previously been performed live. The set reinforced what the band had mentioned from the stage that night: new Hands of Goro music was not just on the way—it was already being road-tested in front of an audience. But Hands of Goro aren't merely another retro-metal band. Their music carries the DNA of classic heavy metal while allowing punk, hard rock and a rougher Bay Area edge to bleed through. The band's own Bandcamp tags include traditional metal, heavy metal, hard rock and the rather less academic description “scumbag rock.” That combination made them an effective closer. After the melodic traditional metal of Space Vacation, Tower Hill's sword-raised attack and Adamantis' epic power metal, Hands of Goro brought the evening back to something rawer and more immediate. Their name itself comes with exactly the sort of irreverent heavy-metal mythology the music deserves: Goro, the four-armed warrior from Mortal Kombat. Even the band's album credits conclude with the declaration that “Goro will dominate over Earthrealm.” Subtle it isn't. Heavy metal rarely needs to be. Hectic Dave and SanFran666co: Finding the Show Before the Show One reason Fermented Metal ended up at The Hub on Tuesday night was SanFran666co.com, the Bay Area metal-show site run under the Hectic banner by Hectic Dave. Launched in February 2025, SanFran666co has quickly become a useful clearinghouse for underground heavy-metal shows around San Francisco and the East Bay. Its listings are deliberately curated rather than scraped from an automated concert feed—the site describes them as “Handpicked by Hectic”—and while its primary focus is San Francisco and the East Bay, bands can submit shows from across Northern California. That distinction matters. Anyone who follows underground metal knows that some of the most interesting shows are also the easiest to miss. Smaller promoters, touring bands and neighborhood venues do not always surface prominently on mainstream concert-discovery platforms. SanFran666co fills that gap by treating local metal activity as something worth documenting in its own right, whether the show is at the DNA Lounge, Eli's Mile High Club, Neck of the Woods—or a smaller Peninsula room like The Hub in Redwood City. The site currently includes The Hub among its Bay Area listings, reinforcing the venue's growing place in the regional underground circuit. For this particular Fermented Metal outing, that function was very real: SanFran666co was how I first discovered that Space Vacation, Tower Hill, Adamantis and Hands of Goro were playing The Hub on August 18. What could easily have remained a low-profile Tuesday-night show became exactly the sort of event worth seeking out—a strong bill, an intimate room and several bands operating at different points within the traditional-metal underground. Hectic's involvement in the Bay Area scene also extends beyond concert listings. SanFran666co is tied to Hectic Records, which operates alongside Bleeding Priest Records and specializes in releasing Bay Area metal on vinyl. In 2026 the labels partnered with Bay Area thrash band Frolic for the release of its second album, Legacies of Cybernetica, further connecting the site to the musicians and independent infrastructure it covers. The SanFran666co site itself is published under Hectic Records and identifies the operation as being made in San Francisco. That combination—show calendar, scene reporting and record-label support—makes SanFran666co more than a simple events page. It functions as a kind of underground metal bulletin board for the Bay Area, helping bands, venues and fans find one another. And in this case, it worked exactly as intended. Without Hectic Dave and SanFran666co, Fermented Metal might never have walked through the doors of The Hub that Tuesday night. Four Bands, One Metal Community What made the August 18 show interesting wasn't simply that four good heavy-metal bands played Redwood City. It was where they came from and why they fit together. Space Vacation represented a veteran Bay Area interpretation of classic metal. Tower Hill arrived from the Canadian Prairies carrying the flag for a younger generation of unapologetic traditional heavy metal. Adamantis brought Boston-bred epic power metal and fantasy storytelling. Hands of Goro closed the circle with a more raw San Francisco sound created by musicians whose histories run deep throughout the underground. Different cities. Different generations. Different interpretations. The same basic language. That is one of the enduring strengths of heavy metal. Scenes can seem geographically isolated until a touring van pulls into town. Then Edmonton meets Boston, Boston meets San Francisco, and a Tuesday night at a small venue becomes part of a much larger network. And for Fermented Metal, there was another familiar element to the evening: the bar and the band were occupying the same social space. The Hub isn't an arena, and that is precisely the point. There was no enormous backstage compound separating musicians from the people watching them. It was a neighborhood drinking establishment temporarily transformed by amps, guitars, leather, patches and people who cared enough about underground heavy metal to show up on a Tuesday night (and maybe end of a the local "In-N-Out Burger" at the end of the night...). I stole this from the bands' Instragram. An awesome photo! Keep up the good fight! Those rooms are where scenes are maintained. Big festivals demonstrate how large metal has become. Small shows demonstrate why it survives. On August 18 in Redwood City, four bands from California, Alberta and Massachusetts offered a pretty convincing demonstration. Located at 2650 Broadway in downtown Redwood City

How does an American spend the Fourth of July in 2026, the 250th anniversary of the country's founding? Not with the usual hollow celebration via flag-waving, dog terrorizing explosions, and gluttonous consumption of food, but with the freedom to ignore it completely and go drink some damn good beer inside a decommissioned prison. That was the plan on Saturday, July 4th, one day after I'd spent a night working through The Zeppelin Bar and Left Hand Path downstairs, where I'd discovered a canned IPA called “Suburban Rot.” The label said it was brewed by a co-op called Slowburn, just outside Copenhagen in the town of Albertslund. It was time to follow up on that lead... A collaboration with the Danish band "Thorium The short train ride out led to a quiet suburban neighborhood and a short walk to a brewery housed inside a recently shut-down prison. Given the situation, “Suburban Rot” could have made an oddly fitting name for the place itself — except what was actually happening here wasn’t rot, it was rejuvenation. Signs posted outside the walls laid out the redevelopment plan for the site, along with a bit of its past: Why can't more prisons be turned into breweries and event spaces? For more than 160 years, the area surrounding Vridsløselille State Prison has existed as a secluded enclave in the middle of the town, where only the prison’s inmates and employees went about their daily lives. The large area before you is equivalent to six football pitches — or 16 hectares — and offers unprecedented opportunities to create a new place which, in keeping with the spirit of Albertslund, will be green, safe, sustainable and vibrant. The redevelopment, called Vridsløse, is aiming for DGNB Gold certification, expects roughly 10,000 new residents once it’s finished, and plans to reclaim some six million bricks from the old walls rather than send them to a landfill. Three principles guide the whole project: the district has to open itself to the rest of Albertslund, it has to make room for community, and the existing buildings — with their unmistakable character — have to stay central to whatever comes next. Walking outside the prison walls to the front gate, the building itself didn’t look like it had changed much, save for a couple of signs pointing toward the brewery and an escape room. Inside, tables were scattered around the inner perimeter of the old prison walls, people were casually drinking beer and trying to stay cool on a hot summer day, and bicycles were parked near the entrance, as is customary in Denmark. The building is Vridsløselille Statsfængsel, a nineteenth-century Danish state prison in Albertslund that’s been repurposed as Porten Vridsløse — a cultural hub of raw brick walls, light wells, and, improbably, a sunny beer garden where inmates once had none. Slowburn moved in and opened its doors in August 2019. What makes Slowburn worth a feature beyond its address, though, is who owns it. This isn’t a brewery with an investor deck and a head brewer drawing a founder’s salary. It’s a worker-owned cooperative, currently run by a team of nine people who collectively own the business and govern it by general assembly on a “one head, one vote” basis — no shareholder gets a bigger say for putting in more money, and shares in the co-op can’t be sold off to outside investors. It’s a structure Slowburn describes as being built around “the seven cooperative principles,” the international standard for co-ops, applied here to fermentation tanks instead of a farm or a credit union. The stated goal is blunt about who the business is supposed to serve: “a sustainable and inclusive workplace that is more than just a brewery, and where profits and activities benefit the workers and our surrounding community.” A Drink in the Clink I walked into the taproom, sat down at the bar, and ordered a beer. My bartender was Aurora, a friendly Italian who’d come to Denmark for love and stayed to work at the co-op brewery. I told her what Fermented Metal was about, and she pointed me toward a recent release by the brewery: a canned beer brewed for the upcoming Kill-Town Death Fest, just another beer that points towards Slowburn's continuing relationship with heavy music. Aurora was one of two people working that day; the other, Jesper Jønsson, was downstairs in the basement printing shirts, who is known as being one of the spokespersons at the brewery. Strangely enough, while at the bar with my beer and talking to Aurora, a customer came in to order and recognized my "Brujos" hat . I was somewhat shocked to find he was familiar with the Portland brewery. Sometimes, metal and beer make the world feel like a lot smaller place. While I waited to talk to Jesper, Aurora showed me around. The taproom’s art rotates regularly — done at the moment by a local artist named Kim Heyst — part of the brewery’s ongoing mission to support the surrounding creative community. She also walked me back to where the beer is actually made: what used to be Vridsløselille’s prison laundry, a space once dedicated to the everyday machinery of incarceration, transformed into a working brewery. What’s in the Tanks? Slowburn’s catalog runs wide rather than narrow — more of a working laboratory than a one-trick flagship brewery. Its house style leans on “quality, consistency, and drinkability,” and the rotating lineup bears that out: crisp lagers (Vridsløse Pils, the premium pilsner Slow Down, the Czech-style dark lager Mørkeræd), a run of hop-forward IPAs (the New England-style Vox Populi, the West Coast double IPA King Sequoia, the session IPA Kintsugi, and Samka, brewed with pine, juniper, and walnut leaves), stouts (the coffee stout Metamorphosis), sours (the raspberry sour Keep On Dancing), and even a Best Bitter (Workhorse) and a Scottish wee heavy (Staggard) for drinkers who want nothing to do with hops at all. Across its history, the co-op has brewed something on the order of 130 distinct beers — a number that says this is a team more interested in constant iteration than chasing a store-branded favorite. If Slowburn has an actual flagship, local reputation says it’s the Albertslund Terror Pils, which has reportedly built something like cult status in the neighborhood — a nod to the local experimental electronic/noise duo Albertslund Terror Korps, or ATK. Jesper and Aurora: my company on July 4th. Thanks for the great conversation and sharing your stories. A Conversation with Jesper After returning to the bar and ordering a Vridsløse Classic, a Vienna-style lager (4.6%), Jesper Jønsson finally emerged from the print shop downstairs, sweaty and looking wiped out. He’s not just a screen printer, though — he does a whole lot more. He’s among the group of people helping define the day-to-day beer identity of Slowburn Brewing Co-op, which publicly identifies him as its “ølansvarlig” — literally, the person responsible for beer. That puts Jønsson close to the heart of what Slowburn does: maintaining the quality, selection, and presentation of the beer that reaches drinkers at the brewery and its events. He also shows up regularly as the brewery’s beer representative at outside events. Once he had a beer in hand, I found him easy to talk to, and we did, for the better part of an hour. We talked music and found common ground on punk bands like Fugazi, Rites of Spring, and Descendents, even though he admitted to some Iron Maiden on his playlist downstairs. The conversation drifted toward the art on Slowburn’s beer labels, which he pointed out doesn’t fall into the stereotypically “masculine” line of metal-adjacent art. Instead, it celebrates nature and animals with a lighter tone than beers like “Kill-Town” and “Suburban Rot” might suggest. Beer label styles at Slowburn Which brought us back to the merch on the walls — shirts, in particular. He pointed one out. Fermented Human Remains: When a Slowburn Joke Became Merch, and Then Beer There are brewery T-shirts, and then there are brewery T-shirts depicting decaying human bodies floating inside a fermentation vessel. Get one for yourself! Slowburn’s “Fermented Human Remains” design falls firmly into the second category. What began as an April Fools’ Day joke became one of Slowburn’s most memorable pieces of merchandise — and, fittingly for a brewery with strong ties to Copenhagen’s metal underground, looks more like extreme-metal artwork than conventional craft-beer branding. The illustration was created by Icelandic artist Skaðvaldur and shows decomposing bodies packed into what appears to be a brewery fermenter. Slowburn turned the artwork into a black long-sleeve shirt: the image printed in yellow and white across the front, a metal-styled Slowburn logo on the back and sleeves, and the words “fermented human remains” running down one arm. The joke got even better from there.... Poster hung in the taproom Slowburn later turned Fermented Human Remains into an actual beer — a Bone Char Smoked Lager. The brewery’s announcement emphasized the beer’s unusual use of bone char, a black, porous carbon material produced from animal bones, not, despite the name and artwork, from unfortunate former occupants of Vridsløselille. That progression — from grotesque brewery joke, to underground-style shirt, to a real beer whose ingredients make the name just plausible enough for some people to actually believe it, according to Jesper — is what makes Slowburn pretty damn cool, in my estimation. I left the shop with that exact shirt. The Fermented Human Remains beer Instagram post A Funeral Beer for Death Row Jesper also talked about Slowburn’s involvement in creating the “Gravøl” beer for the metal festival Dødsgangen, Danish for roughly “Death Row,” an outdoor festival staged inside the courtyard of the former Vridsløselille State Prison. Rather than treating the abandoned prison as simple scenery, Dødsgangen built its entire identity around the location. Festivalgoers entered the old prison yard, were invited to eat their “last meal,” drink prison-themed beer, and listen to some of Denmark’s heaviest bands within walls that had confined prisoners for generations. For Slowburn Brewing Co-op, which operates its brewery within the former prison complex, the festival was a natural partnership. Slowburn brewed Dødsgangen’s official festival beer, Gravøl — a particularly clever Danish name, since gravøl traditionally refers to beer or drinks served following a funeral: essentially a funeral ale, or wake beer. Dødsgangen ended after its 2025 edition, making its three-year run relatively brief, but over that stretch it gave a stage to acts including Konvent, Katla, Strychnos, Rotting Christ, Decapitated, Undergang, Temple of Scorn, and Henret, alongside international acts 1914 and Urne. For Slowburn, Gravøl and the festival became another example of what makes the brewery unusual: beer, heavy music, and the history of an old prison becoming intertwined rather than simply sharing an address. Back to the Beginning Who runs the show, and how? Coming from the States, I was intrigued by the idea of a “co-op,” and my conversations with Aurora and Jesper kept circling back to that topic. Founded in 2019 as Denmark’s first cooperative microbrewery, Slowburn was created as an alternative to the conventional craft-beer business model. Its founders wanted to make technically accomplished, highly drinkable beer while building a company in which the people doing the work also owned the business and determined its future — a brewery where fermentation, workplace democracy, and community development were treated as parts of the same project. 7 Prison Rules Three Daydreamers and a Second-Hand Brewery Slowburn was founded by three people the brewery affectionately calls its “daydreamers”: Amalie, Stefano, and Andrew. Each arrived at professional brewing by a different route. Amelie, Stefano, and Andrew Amalie came from the culinary and fermentation world. She’d helped establish one of Copenhagen’s early kombucha breweries and later worked as a beer bartender and in craft-beer importing and distribution. At Slowburn, her early responsibilities included sales, brewery work, and the considerable bureaucracy involved in launching a new drinks business. Stefano, a biotechnologist from Italy, had already worked as a brewer before relocating to Denmark. He became Slowburn’s original head brewer, overseeing recipe development, brewing, fermentation, packaging, and the frequent mechanical problem-solving required in a small brewery. Andrew moved to Denmark from the United States in 2010, when the Scandinavian craft-beer movement was still developing. Unable to find enough of the intensely hopped American-style IPAs he missed, he began homebrewing them in the kitchen of a shared student residence. His background in technology and engineering fed naturally into his interests in recipe development, barrel aging, and fermentation with mixed cultures of yeast and bacteria. The three pursued the idea without conventional outside investors, on what they’ve described as a shoestring budget. They signed the lease on their first brewery, in Avedøre, in late May 2019, moved in a few weeks later, and hauled a used brewing system into the building in June. The equipment was inexpensive for a reason. Tanks leaked, electrical problems appeared, and supplier errors slowed the installation. When the founders finally completed their first brew, in mid-July, the result was disastrous. They left the brewery at roughly 2:30 in the morning, exhausted and uncertain whether the second-hand system they’d poured their savings into could produce commercially viable beer. Instead of abandoning the project, they learned the peculiarities of the equipment. Gradually, they began hitting their temperature, acidity, and gravity targets with more consistency. Slowburn held its opening celebration at the Avedøre brewery in August 2019, only a few months after taking possession of the site. That difficult first summer gave the brewery its defining character. Slowburn wasn’t built as a polished, investor-backed brand. It was assembled through persistence, reused equipment, technical improvisation, and a considerable amount of unpaid labor. Outside the original location Why a Brewing Cooperative? The word “Co-op” in Slowburn’s name isn’t decorative branding. Slowburn was organized as a worker cooperative, meaning the brewery is owned and democratically governed by its working members rather than by passive shareholders or outside investors. Each member has an equal voice through the principle of one person, one vote. Major decisions run through the cooperative’s general assembly, rather than handing greater control to whoever has invested the most money. At its founding, Slowburn identified three central priorities: Producing beer of the highest quality it could achieve Supporting and developing the surrounding community Creating meaningful, long-term employment that benefits workers personally, professionally, and financially. The brewery has been careful not to present cooperative ownership as a rejection of financial reality — Slowburn still needs to operate as a healthy, profitable company. The difference is that profitability is treated as a means of sustaining the brewery, its employees, and its principles, not as the sole purpose of the business. The structure also provides an unusual form of protection against acquisition. Because Slowburn is owned by its workers and doesn’t have conventional ownership shares that can be sold to an outside party, the brewery argues that it can’t simply be purchased by a multinational drinks company. Independence is built into its legal and organizational framework. That makes Slowburn an intriguing counterpoint to a recurring pattern in craft beer, where independent breweries begin as expressions of individual creativity and end up dependent on investors, rapid expansion, or acquisition by large conglomerates. Slowburn’s founders set out to build an institution capable of surviving personnel changes without abandoning the principles it was built on. In other words, the objective wasn’t merely to create jobs for the three founders. It was to build a brewery that could eventually exist without them. From Avedøre to Vridsløselille Prison Slowburn’s most significant transformation came with its relocation from Avedøre to the former Vridsløselille Prison in Albertslund. After the prison’s closure, portions of the complex began evolving into Porten Vridsløse, the cultural and community development project I’d walked past on my way in. When Amalie saw the notice, she moved quickly to secure the space, and Slowburn eventually established its brewery within the former prison, opening the taproom alongside the production space in spring 2023. After eventually reaching burnout, Amalie and Stefano left, and Slowburn found new help in David Perry. Another Brewery Tie to Music: David Perry He’s one of the clearest links between Slowburn Brewing Co-op and Copenhagen’s heavy-music community: David Perry, a British-born musician, designer, and beer-industry veteran who’s become a central figure in the brewery’s development. Perry’s involvement in Danish craft beer predates Slowburn. He previously worked with Dry & Bitter Brewing Company, where his role crossed sales, events, design, and collaborations, and contemporary festival material from Metal Magic Festival and Nordic Noise shows him representing Dry & Bitter at metal-related events and discussing beers brewed specifically for those festivals. That combination of beer, visual design, and music carried naturally into Slowburn. Today, Perry isn’t simply an employee of the cooperative — Danish corporate records list David Perry as director of Slowburn Brewing Co-op, a role he assumed in August 2025, but a title he reluctantly took. ( Danish law requires every business to have a named "Director") His musical background helps explain why Slowburn’s relationship with "metal" feels unusually organic. Before moving to Denmark, Perry played bass and vocals with the Liverpool doom-metal band Conan, joining in late 2010 and appearing on the band’s 2011 split release with Slomatics. Conan founder Jon Davis later credited Perry with making an important contribution during his time in the group. After settling in Denmark, Perry became part of the Copenhagen extreme-metal underground through Dead Void, playing bass and contributing vocals; the band’s 2022 album Volatile Forms placed his bass beneath a particularly bleak mixture of death metal and doom, and he remained associated with the group until 2024. His current musical outlet is Ungraven, where he contributes keyboards and vocals. Metal Archives credits Perry with synthesizer, organ, piano, and vocals on the band’s 2025 release Hollows Made Homes in Their Sunken Cheeks, as well as recording and design work. Perry’s history makes Slowburn’s metal connections easier to understand. Collaborations with underground festivals, concerts at the brewery, and beers tied to heavy bands aren’t the result of someone in marketing deciding that metal fans drink craft beer — one of the people helping run Slowburn has spent years on both sides of that relationship, pouring beer at metal festivals while also playing bass on stages like them. That gives Slowburn something difficult to manufacture: authenticity. For Perry, brewing and heavy music were never separate worlds brought together for a promotional campaign. They’ve been overlapping parts of the same life for years, and at Slowburn, those worlds now meet inside the walls of a former Danish prison. David Perry ( left) and Jesper Jønsson (right). Photo: Andreas Hentze Madsen - TV 2 Lorry Last Call Which is why he wasn’t around the day I visited — he was off in Sweden, playing with his band. Jesper headed back to the hot basement to keep working, and I finished up with an Octopils, an Italian-style pilsner (5.1%). Another fantastic beer. Aurora had clocked off shift, and I was left to sit with my Fourth of July for a minute and take in the contrast of where I was: a facility once designed around confinement and institutional control, now housing a worker-owned company organized around participation and equal voting rights. A Fermented Human Remains shirt and an Octopils That reversal gives the location significance beyond visual novelty. Slowburn has effectively placed a democratic workplace inside a former symbol of state authority. It’s hard to imagine a more fitting home for a brewery founded on the belief that workers should have direct control over their working lives. And the taproom itself has changed Slowburn from a production brewery into a public gathering place — not just a destination for beer enthusiasts, but a meeting point for the local community and for traveling metalheads passing through Copenhagen. Picture stolen from Slowburn's website. Throw me into prison...especially if it has beer like this.... What started as a tip chased down from a bar tab — a can of Suburban Rot with an unfamiliar brewery name on the label — turned into one of the more unlikely 4th of Julys I’ve spent: an American celebrating independence, an ocean away from home, inside a building that used to strip people of theirs. Slowburn’s whole story runs on that same kind of inversion. A joke about fermented human remains became a shirt, then a beer, then a conversation starter that gets strangers at the bar asking questions. A prison laundry became a working brewhouse. Nine people who could each just as easily be collecting a paycheck somewhere else instead vote on how the place is run, one head at a time, and put a British doom-metal bassist in the director’s chair. None of it would matter much if the beer weren’t good — but 130-some recipes deep, from the cult-status Terror Pils to the Octopils I closed the night with, Slowburn makes the case that a cooperative can out-brew the competition, not just out-organize it. Metal has always had a soft spot for turning confinement into something worth celebrating, and Vridsløselille’s old walls, now full of tables, bicycles, and people in no hurry to leave, make as strong a case for that as any prison-turned-brewery I’ve come across (one, so far). I’ll take that kind of rejuvenation over fireworks any year. Slowburn Brewing Co-op: Porten Vridsløse, Vridsløselille, Albertslund, Denmark. slowburn.coop

Camden Town’s musical identity is larger than any single genre. Psychedelic rock, punk, ska, goth, Britpop and heavy metal have all found homes in its venues, pubs, rehearsal rooms and record shops. The Roundhouse hosted the Ramones’ first British appearance in July 1976, a performance widely regarded as an important catalyst for the emerging UK punk movement, while generations of bands have since used Camden’s smaller rooms as testing grounds and gathering places. Camden Locks Today, parts of Camden can feel increasingly shaped by tourism, branded merchandise and nostalgia. Yet its alternative culture has not disappeared. It survives most convincingly in places where the music is still treated as a living community rather than a decorative theme. The Black Heart, The Devonshire Arms—universally known as The Dev—and Werewolf Beer represent three distinct sides of that community: the working underground venue, the old-school alternative pub and the independent brewery taproom. Together with The Underworld, they form a compact Camden circuit where visitors can move from locally brewed beer to a metal pub, an upstairs gig room and, finally, a full-volume Sunday-night show. The Black Heart: Beer, Booze and Bands Hidden just off Camden High Street on Greenland Place, The Black Heart is both a pub and a small independent live venue. Its own motto—“Beer, Booze and Bands in No Particular Order”—captures its lack of pretension, but undersells the role it plays in London’s heavy-music ecosystem. The interior is all-black paint, fairy lights, sticker-plastered bathrooms, and band artwork crammed onto every wall — a look that reads more like a well-loved squat than a curated "dive bar" aesthetic. Downstairs is a proper stage with a standing capacity of around 150, and there genuinely isn't a London rock band of any stripe — punk, hardcore, doom, black metal, thrash, noise, or acoustic solo acts — that hasn't played it at least once. The pub's survival hasn't been guaranteed. During the COVID-19 pandemic it faced permanent closure, and it took a community crowdfunding campaign — over £150,000 raised from more than 4,000 supporters in March 2021 — to keep the doors open. That near-death experience turned The Black Heart into something of a cause célèbre for London's alternative scene, and it's now spoken of with the kind of protectiveness usually reserved for listed buildings. The Black Heart’s importance lies partly in its scale. Camden has internationally known halls, but a healthy music scene also needs rooms where developing bands can build an audience, touring groups can play without filling an academy and fans can stand close enough to see every strained expression and battered piece of equipment. The venue upstairs is reached by two flights of stairs and remains an intimate space rather than a polished concert hall. Its drinks program is equally central to its identity. The pub emphasizes independent beer alongside the music, while its food and market events extend the venue’s alternative outlook beyond nightly gigs. A 2026 summer market, for example, brought together independent sellers, tattoo flash, tarot, DJs, vegan food and an extensive indie-beer selection across the building. That combination suggests why The Black Heart feels more like a clubhouse than a themed attraction: music is the foundation, but art, food, beer and small independent businesses all participate in the same culture. For visitors planning a Camden metal crawl, The Black Heart is also exceptionally convenient. It sits within a few minutes’ walk of The World’s End and the basement entrance to The Underworld, making it an obvious meeting point before a show. The Dev: Camden’s Community Room A short walk north, at the corner of Hawley Crescent and Kentish Town Road, stands the black-painted Devonshire Arms. Most regulars simply call it The Dev. The exterior view The building’s mock-Tudor exterior and dark interior have long made it one of Camden’s most recognizable alternative pubs. Although it was once described primarily as a goth pub, its musical identity now stretches across goth, punk, metal, industrial, indie and hard rock. CAMRA records that the pub briefly operated under the Hobgoblin name around 2008 before returning to the Devonshire Arms name around 2013, although the old signage remained and the Dev nickname endured. Unlike The Black Heart, The Dev is not defined principally by a separate concert room. Its strength is the pub itself: loud music, band stickers, dark décor and a customer base that treats alternative dress and musical obsession as ordinary rather than exceptional. That makes it an important kind of cultural space. A city can have plenty of rock concerts while still lacking somewhere fans can gather when no particular band is playing. The Dev provides that gathering place. It is also one of the clearest surviving links to an older version of Camden nightlife, before every music-associated building needed a celebrity story or heritage plaque. Its appeal comes from continuity. It remains a place where goths, punks, metalheads and rock fans can occupy the same room without the night needing to be marketed as a special alternative event. The result is less curated than many modern “rock bars.” The music, décor and crowd are not accessories added to a conventional pub; they are the reason many people enter in the first place. The ceiling is a treasure trove of nostaligia Werewolf Beer: An American Brewery in London Founded in 2020 by Rich White, a brewer who moved to London from Syracuse, New York, Werewolf Beer runs its taproom out of Arch 87 on Randolph Street, a short walk from the High Street's pub crawl. White set out to make the space feel "as much like a US gas station or a haunted house" as possible, and the taproom delivers on that brief: it's decorated with the salvaged remains of a 1950s ghost train ride from Rainbow Amusement Park in Hunstanton, Norfolk, plus a jukebox and a healthy dose of werewolf and horror memorabilia. Punters can sit in the old ghost-train cars while working through the beer list. The brewing itself skews toward classic American craft styles — clear, bitter, balanced — rather than the murkier, pastry-adjacent trends that dominate a lot of newer London breweries. It's open Thursday and Friday 4–9pm, Saturday 12–9pm, and Sunday 2–9pm, making it a solid pre- or post-gig stop for anyone working their way toward the Underworld or back up to Camden Town station. Does somebody not like beer? Metalworks Keeps the Party Going at The Underworld That living Camden tradition was especially visible on Sunday, July 12, 2026, when Metalworks staged an entire evening of Iron Maiden music at The Underworld beneath The World’s End pub. The timing was deliberate. Iron Maiden had played their major Eddfest concert at Knebworth the previous day, and Metalworks presented its Camden show as a way to keep the celebration going for fans still in London. Admission was free, doors opened at 8 p.m., live music was scheduled from 8:45 p.m. and the evening ran until approximately 11 p.m. A nice treat the night after "Eddfest" Metalworks is more than a conventional tribute act. The collective has played rock and metal covers in Camden for more than twenty years, using a rotating cast of experienced musicians and special guests. Metalworks are a free-entry rock and metal covers outfit who've been a fixture of the Camden circuit for more than twenty years, built around rotating line-ups of world-class session players and guests rather than a fixed roster. The Underground: a very intimate showcase The night ran in two sets. Set one featured Tasos Lazaris (One Machine, Rock Icons Show, Iron Beast) on vocals, George "Gt" Stergiou and Adam Breyer (both of Hi-On Maiden and Paul Di'Anno's band) on guitars and backing vocals, Gus Macricostas (Biff Byford/Saxon) on bass, and James Wise on drums. Set two brought vocalist Steff Voxx to the stage alongside special guests for a run of surprises leading into curfew. The most significant detail was the connection between Stergiou, Breyer and former Iron Maiden singer Paul Di’Anno. Both guitarists had performed in Di’Anno’s live band, giving their interpretations of Maiden’s earliest material a direct connection to the singer who originally recorded it. The surviving research does not establish equivalent Di’Anno-band connections for Lazaris, Macricostas or Wise. That distinction gave the show greater weight than a routine night of familiar songs. The first two Iron Maiden albums remain inseparable from Di’Anno’s rougher, punk-influenced delivery, and Camden is an especially appropriate place to revisit that era. Early Maiden emerged from the late-1970s London club circuit at a time when punk’s speed and aggression were reshaping the city’s musical environment. A Maiden celebration performed by musicians who had later backed Di’Anno created a small but meaningful bridge between that history and Camden’s present-day metal community. The Thread That Connects Them What ties The Black Heart, The Dev, Werewolf Brewing, and the Underworld together isn't just proximity — it's stubbornness. Each has weathered the thing that kills most independent music culture in a city like London: rising rent, changing ownership, a pandemic, or simple neglect. Each is still standing because a specific, loyal community decided it should be. That's arguably the real story of metal and punk in Camden in 2026 — not nostalgia for what the neighborhood used to be, but a scene that fought, in some cases literally crowdfunded, to keep what it has. Camden’s counterculture has unquestionably changed, and parts of it have been commercialized almost beyond recognition. But in these bars, breweries and small venues, it remains noisy, communal and stubbornly alive.

In the rolling hills of Marche, a region in central Italy more often associated with quiet countryside and centuries-old winemaking tradition, something unusual is happening. Daniele Santori — lifelong metalhead, vocalist, and now winemaker — has built a winery that refuses to play by the rules. The wines are named after hell, and the Greek afterlife. The labels are drawn by a comic artist. And the philosophy is as uncompromising as old school black metal. Welcome to Heavy Metal Winery A Family Rooted in the Land To understand Heavy Metal Winery, you first have to understand where Daniele Santori comes from — and that story begins not with metal, but with soil. The Santori family's relationship with wine stretches back to the 1960s, when their viticultural history began with the Tenuta di Lugnano in Teverina, an estate in Umbria that produced table wines and regional bottlings. That earlier chapter eventually gave way to something new: a return to the vine, this time in the Macerata hills of Marche, where Daniele helped steer the family back toward vineyard work — first under the Cantina Santori name, then under the identity that endures today as Collemara. Collemara is a family winery based at Villa San Filippo di Monte San Giusto, and its name carries both geographic and personal meaning. "Colle" refers to a hill; "mara" honors Mara Santori, the founder described as the estate's emotional center. Set on a 50-hectare hill with roughly 12 hectares of vineyards, Collemara operates on a small scale, prioritizing estate-grown grapes and careful production over volume. Its portfolio is built around Marche identity: Ribona (also known as Maceratino), a native white grape tied to the Colli Maceratesi area; Piceno red; Merlot; and Erebo, a structured Marche Rosso / Colli Maceratesi Riserva-style bottling made from Montepulciano, Cabernet, Sangiovese, and Merlot. Collemara and Heavy Metal Winery are two sides of the same family story — one rooted in regional tradition and native grapes, the other channeling Daniele's life in metal into something entirely its own. Together, they show the full range of a man whose identity spans vineyard rows and concert stages. The Vocalist Who Became a Winemaker Before Daniele Santori was pressing Cabernet Sauvignon in Corridonia, he was screaming into a microphone in Ancona. In 1999, Santori co-founded The Dogma, a symphonic gothic and power metal band from Ancona, Marche. The lineup included guitarist Cosimo Binetti, keyboardist Stefano Smeriglio, bassist Steve Vawamas, and drummer Giuseppe Chirico. Their sound sat at a crossroads rarely traveled on the Italian metal map: heavier than most European power metal, darker than the fantasy-and-dragons crowd, and more theatrical than standard heavy metal fare. Gothic atmosphere, melancholy hooks, symphonic keyboards, and Santori's commanding dramatic vocals gave the band a sound that leaned closer to gothic noir than anything with a sword in the artwork. The Dogma's first release, the 2002 demo Symphonies of Love and Hate, announced that sensibility clearly. Four years later came their real breakthrough: the debut full-length Black Roses, released in 2006 through Drakkar Records. The album introduced the band to a wider European audience with tracks like "Black Roses," "Wicked Angels," "Queen of the Damned," "Devil's Bride," and "Maryann" — songs built on mood, heavy riffing, and Santori's vocal presence rather than pure technical velocity. They followed with A Good Day to Die in 2007, sharpening the formula with tracks including "In the Name of Rock," "She Falls on the Grave," "Autumn Tears," and "Back from Hell." The quick turnaround suggested a band with momentum, and The Dogma's most visible period saw them touring Europe on a circuit of melodic and theatrical metal — including a run alongside Finnish monster-rock act Lordi, a natural pairing of two bands where metal, theatricality, and dark visual identity converged. Their third album, Black Widow, arrived in 2010 through Drakkar Entertainment. It pushed harder into rock-driven hooks and a sleazier edge alongside the gothic-power foundation, with songs like "Black Widow," "Dirty Dark Diane," "Sister Pain," "All Alone," and "Lost Forevermore." The band's lineup evolved over the years — later members included Giacomo Astorri on bass and Marco Bianchella on drums — though Santori remained the consistent voice at the center. Daniele Santori’s latest musical outlet, We Are Legion, continues the dark theatrical thread that runs from his years fronting The Dogma into his wine-and-metal work with Heavy Metal Winery. In this project, Santori takes on the moniker DANNAR, presenting himself less as a conventional frontman and more as a character inside a horror-tinged heavy metal universe. The band’s own social presence describes DANNAR as a collector of heavy-metal vinyl, a horror-movie obsessive, and a wine drinker — details that neatly connect Santori’s three creative worlds: metal, cinema ( big horror fan), and Marche wine culture. The Dogma and We are Legion matter to the Heavy Metal Winery story for reasons beyond biography. Santori did not arrive at winemaking from a casual fascination with branding. He arrived as a vocalist, lyricist, and performer already embedded in the metal world — someone for whom the drama, darkness, and commitment that defined The Dogma were not poses but a genuine way of moving through life. The same instincts that shaped the band later resurfaced in bottles, labels, and grape varieties. A Winery Born from Frustration — and Passion Santori makes no secret of the economics that make winemaking a difficult business. Unlike craft beer, which can be produced multiple times in a single year, wine is made only once annually — one shot per harvest to get it right. Yet when a glass of wine sits next to a glass of beer at a bar, the price is often comparable. For a producer who has poured a year of labor into each bottle, that equation stings. Santori gives it his all; whether it be making wine, metal, or just a photo for Fermented Metal That frustration, rather than diminishing his commitment, seems to have sharpened it. If wine was going to demand sacrifice, it was at least going to say something. As Santori puts it: "I wanted to do something that screams Heavy Metal." The winery, formally registered as Azienda Agricola Santori Mara, is based at C.da Ripalta 6, 62014 Corridonia, in the province of Macerata (MC), Marche. The same clay-rich argillaceous soils and Mediterranean climate that underpin some of Italy's most celebrated wines now carry an entirely different aesthetic — one shaped by 44 Iron Maiden concerts, decades of thrash and black metal, and years spent fronting a gothic power metal band on European stages. Santori started listening to metal in 1993, drawn to the classic 80s sound that laid the genre's foundation — Dio, Iron Maiden, Manowar, Judas Priest, Satyricon, Warlord. His devotion has never wavered: as recently as June 17, 2026, he was at Stadio San Siro (Stadio Giuseppe Meazza) in Milan for his 44th Iron Maiden show. The year before, he caught Maiden in both Croatia and Italy, and made the trip to Belgium's Graspop Metal Meeting, where King Diamond and Judas Priest also performed. The Label: A Metalhead in Ink Every Heavy Metal Winery bottle features the same striking image: a bald, scowling figure rendered in bold lines, wearing a silver badge stamped with the letters M and W. The artwork was created by a female friend of Santori's — a comics artist and illustrator — who translated his vision into something that looks simultaneously like a concert T-shirt and a wine label. It is the kind of design that grabs you from across a room. The branding is deliberate and coherent. This is not a novelty product slapping skulls on bottles for shock value. The connection between the music and the wine runs deeper than aesthetics — each wine in the lineup is conceptually paired with a specific corner of the metal universe. The Wines Cabernhell (Red) The name says everything: Cabernet meets Hell. This is Santori's red, a blend of Cabernet Sauvignon and Sangiovese grown on argillaceous plots and trained using the Guyot method. The wine is deep purple-red in the glass, with red fruit on the nose and sweet, balanced tannins on the palate — the kind of structured Mediterranean red that can anchor a meal. Vinification involves a 15-day maceration at 26°C, followed by nine months of maturation in stainless steel and six months of bottle fining, bringing it to 13% ABV. Best served at 18°C, it pairs with aperitifs, roasts, meat dishes, and pasta with tomato-based sauces. The music that inspired it sits squarely in the fire zone: classic metal, death metal, the high-energy aggression of Testament, Overkill, Iron Maiden, Metal Church. Flames are the word Santori uses. This is a wine for turning up the volume. A summer festival wine Hellysium (White) The name is a portmanteau of "hell" and "Elysium" — the ancient Greek paradise of the afterlife. Hellysium is a 100% Pecorino white wine, a grape variety native to central Italy that has seen a surge of international recognition in recent years. Straw-colored to golden in the glass, it is fresh and strong on the palate, harmonious, fruity, and fragrant — a wine built for outdoor drinking. Vinification is temperature-controlled at 26°C, with seven months in stainless steel and three months of bottle fining, landing at 13.5% ABV. Serve it at 10°C alongside fish, pasta with white sauces, or crepes. Musically, Hellysium maps to Classic Metal and Progressive Metal — the more melodic, expansive end of the genre. Santori describes it as easy-going on the palate and perfect for summer festivals. It is the wine you bring to an outdoor stage. Hypnos: The latest addition Hypnos The lineup also includes Hypnos — named for the Greek god of sleep and described as hypnotic, dry and sweet. Santori envisions it as the record-listening wine: something you open on the couch with friends, letting the evening unspool. Its musical pairing is second-wave black metal and exploratory prog — Satyricon and Rush's landmark album 2112 are both touchstones Santori names. Hypnos is for the long listen. Two Brands, One Story It would be easy to look at Heavy Metal Winery and Collemara as separate projects living separate lives — one for the metal crowd, one for the wine traditionalists. But that would miss the point. Both brands emerge from the same Santori family, the same Macerata hills, and the same deep commitment to place. Collemara tends the family's roots, working native grapes like Ribona and building wines that speak to Marche's inland agricultural identity. Heavy Metal Winery pulls a different audience toward that same territory — through imagery and naming that speak the language of metal, not terroir notes. Tasty: We left with a case of wine. Daniele Santori has spent his adult life moving between these two worlds: performing as a vocalist in The Dogma, tending vines in Corridonia, watching Iron Maiden from the front row. Heavy Metal Winery is where those threads finally converge. The vineyards are Italian and the farming is traditional, but the sensibility is entirely his own — shaped by three decades of living inside metal culture, not just consuming it. Daniele Santori has spent his adult life moving between these two worlds: performing as a vocalist in The Dogma, tending vines in Marche, head banging to Iron Maiden in stadiums across Europe. Heavy Metal Winery is where those threads finally converge. The vineyards are Italian and the farming is traditional, but the sensibility is entirely his own — shaped by three decades of living inside metal culture, not just consuming it. Heavy Metal Winery is a reminder that metal culture often travels in unexpected ways. Sometimes it moves from rehearsal rooms to European tours. Sometimes it moves from albums to vineyards. In the case of Daniele Santori, it did both — and the bottles to prove it are sitting somewhere in the Macerata hills, waiting to be opened. Heavy metal Winery : Via Bore Chienti 62015 Villa San Filippo - Monte San Giusto (MC) Italy Mobile : +39 327 2366724

On Tuesday, July 7, 2026, those who had signed up and made the trek to London’s legendary Cart & Horses were presented with a combination that, on paper, sounds almost deliberately contradictory: yoga, heavy metal and beer. In this context, it made considerable sense. The Beer Yoga event at the Cart & Horses was presented by Metalyoga.cl, a Chilean project founded by certified yoga instructor Carolina, who has spent the past several years taking yoga out of the traditional studio environment and putting it into places where metal fans already feel at home. The July 7 session was advertised for 6 p.m. at 1 Maryland Point in Stratford, with the wonderfully appropriate slogan, “Sin om, solo brindis” — roughly, “No om, just cheers.” And there could hardly have been a more fitting place to try it. From the Mosh Pit to the Yoga Mat The Cart & Horses occupies sacred ground in Iron Maiden history. The East London pub became one of the fledgling band’s earliest regular venues during the 1970s, and today openly celebrates itself as “The Birthplace of Iron Maiden.” Its walls are packed with photographs, records and Maiden memorabilia, while the pub continues to function as both a neighborhood watering hole and grassroots live-music venue. That made the decision to hold a MetalYoga session there more than a novelty. Metalyoga.cl was founded in Chile in 2020. Carolina describes herself as a certified instructor who had practiced yoga for years before developing her own metal-focused approach. Rather than treating heavy music and yoga as opposing ideas, she built classes around the physical and communal possibilities of both. Her project has since appeared at festivals and events in South America and Europe, including multiple editions of Spain’s Resurrection Fest. Only days before arriving in London, Metalyoga had led sessions at Resucamp during Resurrection Fest 2026, with scheduled noon classes on July 2 and July 4. Three days later, the yoga mat landed in Stratford. So What Exactly Is Beer Yoga? Despite the name, beer yoga isn't simply an excuse to drink while attempting increasingly questionable balancing poses. Different organizers approach the concept differently, but beer yoga generally combines an accessible yoga session with the social ritual of having a beer. Some classes incorporate occasional sips into the movement; others simply finish the practice with a beer. London was already experimenting with the idea almost a decade ago—in 2017, Time Out reported on beer-yoga classes where participants completed yoga before enjoying a cold beer afterward. Metalyoga's version sits within a broader philosophy. Carolina's regular classes typically combine yoga movements with metal rather than conventional meditative music, turning something that may appear intimidating or overly spiritual to outsiders into a much more familiar environment for metal fans. Her stated ambition has been to build community around the practice and make yoga approachable to people who might never consider walking into a conventional yoga studio. Adding beer simply pushed that idea another step toward pub culture. The important distinction is that the beer is part of the social experience rather than the athletic challenge. Nobody needs to prove enlightenment by holding a pint above their head while attempting a one-legged pose. MetalYoga Comes Home to Maiden Country What gave the July 7 event additional weight was its timing. It took place just days before EDDFEST at Knebworth House on July 10–11, the enormous celebration surrounding Iron Maiden's 50th anniversary year. Knebworth ultimately brought together more than simply a Maiden concert: its Maidenville area included music, exhibitions and activities built around the history and community that has grown around the band. The Cart & Horses itself had been leaning heavily into that anniversary atmosphere. On June 9 it staged its “50 (Not) Wasted Years” celebration, marking 50 years since Iron Maiden's first show there in 1976 with an Iron Maiden Pub Quiz, karaoke, a Live After Death screening and fundraising for Heavy Metal Truants. The pub explicitly promoted that event as a way of preparing for Maiden's forthcoming Knebworth celebration. Beer Yoga therefore arrived at an interesting moment. Maiden fans were beginning to converge on England for EDDFEST. The Cart & Horses was once again functioning as a pilgrimage site. And into a room associated with sweaty club gigs, pints of Trooper and the beginnings of one of the biggest metal bands in history came a collection of yoga mats. It was absurd enough to be completely appropriate. Heavy Metal as Community Rather Than Costume The most interesting aspect of MetalYoga isn't really the juxtaposition of distorted guitars and downward-facing dog. It is the philosophy underneath it. Metal culture has traditionally created community in places that don't look particularly therapeutic: clubs, rehearsal rooms, festival fields, record stores and pubs. Yet the social effect can be remarkably similar to the things wellness culture constantly talks about—belonging, shared experience and temporary escape from everyday life. Carolina has repeatedly emphasized that side of Metalyoga. Her project has taken part in events ranging from conventional metal festivals to Metal por la Infancia in Bogotá, where yoga and metal were combined as an activity for children and families. Bogotá's municipal cultural coverage described the concept as using music as a vehicle for creativity, connection and physical and mental wellbeing. At the Cart & Horses, the same concept simply appeared in its most naturally metal habitat. And perhaps that is why Beer Yoga works better than the name initially suggests. A pub has always been about more than drinking. At its best, it is a communal room. The Cart & Horses is an unusually powerful example because people now travel from around the world to stand in the same building where an unknown Iron Maiden once played to East London crowds. Yoga asks people to occupy a space together, concentrate on movement and temporarily remove themselves from everything happening outside it. Metal gigs do something remarkably similar—only louder. Add a beer afterward and the distance between the two begins to look considerably smaller. No Om, Just Cheers There is also something pleasingly unpretentious about hosting yoga at the Cart & Horses. This wasn't yoga being imposed upon heavy-metal culture in an effort to make metal respectable. Metalyoga works because it travels in the opposite direction: it adapts yoga to the culture of the people taking part. Metal stays metal. The pub stays a pub. The beer stays cold ( well, for as long as the session lasts..). The only significant difference is that, for an hour, the crowd stretches instead of headbangs. For a venue whose history began with a young band testing itself in front of an East London audience half a century ago, that willingness to try something strange actually feels perfectly appropriate. On July 7, 2026, the birthplace of Iron Maiden briefly traded the live music act for the yoga mat, and some beer. And appropriately enough, nobody needed to say om. They could simply raise a beer. Yoga in the basement of the Cart and Horses on a hot summer day, with a beer... of course!

Malmö doesn't hand you an obvious itinerary. But walk the stretch of Södra Förstadsgatan that runs between Triangeln and the Möllevången district — Malmö's old working-class neighborhood turned multicultural, artsy, slightly feral heart of the city — and you get one anyway, whether you planned it or not. It's a street that has, purely by coincidence of real estate, become home to three of the city's most defiantly niche destinations: a museum built around foods designed to make you gag, a bookstore built for people who never stopped reading about other worlds, and a bar built around a music scene that's spent fifty years doing much the same thing to polite society. Visit them in order, and you've got a genuinely great, slightly deranged afternoon in Malmö — and it's a straight line, house number to house number, the whole way. First Stop: The Disgusting Food Museum At Södra Förstadsgatan 2 — right where the street meets Drottninggatan, about ten minutes on foot from Malmö Triangeln station — sits the Disgusting Food Museum. It's exactly what it sounds like, and it's more thoughtful than the name lets on. The museum is the creation of Dr. Samuel West, a psychologist who got interested in the cultural politics of food after researching alternative proteins and sustainable eating. Rather than write a paper about it, he built a museum: roughly 80 foods from around the world that someone, somewhere, considers a delicacy and someone else considers unthinkable. Surströmming — Sweden's own fermented herring, cracked open to a smell that has genuinely triggered building evacuations — sits alongside casu martzu (a Sardinian cheese eaten with the maggots still active), roasted guinea pig from Peru, and dozens of others. The point isn't shock for its own sake; it's a running argument about how arbitrary disgust actually is, dressed up as a very smelly museum. It opened as a temporary exhibition in Malmö's Slagthuset in late 2018, got written up by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, and The New Yorker, among others, and did well enough to come back permanently at its current Södra Förstadsgatan address in the summer of 2021. Regular hours run 11:00–18:00 daily; during summer (mid-July to mid-August) it opens an hour earlier, at 10:00. Adult admission is 230 kr, with reduced rates for students, seniors, and children. Most visits, tasting challenge included, run about an hour to ninety minutes — which leaves the rest of the afternoon free. The Walk, Part One From the museum, it's a straight walk down Södra Förstadsgatan itself — the street that's currently being redeveloped from a plain transport corridor into a proper green commercial spine connecting central Malmö to Möllevången, with new bike paths, gathering spaces, and street life along the way. It's a route that's existed since the Middle Ages as the city's southern approach, and it still functions that way: you're walking from the tidier, more polished Triangeln area into the denser, scrappier energy of Möllevången, one of Malmö's most ethnically and culturally mixed neighborhoods, dense with restaurants, cafés, and independent shops. It's changed a bit... You won't get far before the second stop turns up. Second Stop: Science Fiction Bokhandeln At Södra Förstadsgatan 26 — a handful of doors down from the museum, still well before Möllevången proper — sits Science Fiction Bokhandeln, Malmö's outpost of Sweden's genre-fiction bookstore chain. It's the kind of shop that rewards browsing: shelves of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and manga alongside comics, tabletop RPGs, board games, and the usual orbit of genre merch — t-shirts, mugs, collectibles. The chain's roots go back to 1978, when the first physical SF-bokhandeln opened on Kungsholmen in Stockholm, run out of a clubroom by the Skandinavisk förening för science fiction (the Scandinavian Science Fiction Association). It bounced between locations and a mail-order-only stretch through the early '80s before settling into its own storefront in Vasastan in 1985, and eventually incorporated as the standalone company it is today. It has since grown into a small chain with stores in Stockholm, Gothenburg, Malmö, and Linköping. The Malmö location opened in 2007 at the Davidshallsgatan–Storgatan intersection and moved to its current Södra Förstadsgatan address in 2016 — and as of a March 2026 announcement, it's set to move again in autumn 2026, into a larger space in the same building, at the corner with Södra Långgatan. It is a Fermented Metal friendly bookstore It's a good midpoint stop for exactly the reason it's easy to overlook: after a museum built around the idea that “disgusting” is mostly a matter of who's judging, a shop built for people who've spent their lives being told their taste in books, films, and games was a little off makes a quiet kind of sense next door. The Walk, Part Two From the bookstore, it's the same street, the same direction, further into Möllevången territory. A few more blocks down, at Södra Förstadsgatan 38, that walk ends at Arsenik. Third Stop: Arsenik Bistro Where the Disgusting Food Museum trades in edible taboo, Arsenik trades in the other kind of alternative culture. Housed in a converted 1912 cinema — the original golden screen frame is still mounted inside — Arsenik started in February 2019 as an independent clothing store and salon built around punk and metal fashion: designer pieces the owners actually liked, official band merch, and a vinyl room run in partnership with local record shops Rundgång and Not Enough Records. The bistro describes itself as a meeting place for people passionate about punk, metal, and hard rock, serving rustic vegetarian and vegan food alongside carefully chosen beverages. Arsenik says it tries to source those drinks and ingredients as locally as possible. Its own official Arsenik Lager, a 4.8% ABV pale lager brewed by Brewkowski, a Malmö microbrewery whose tagline — “Pilsner, Punk & Poetry” — provides the most obvious connection between the venue's alternative identity and drinking culture. That community element is what distinguishes Arsenik from the countless "rock bars" found in European tourist districts. The music isn't simply decoration—it reflects the people the venue was created to serve. Arsenik also explicitly describes itself as a safe and inclusive meeting place, reinforcing the sense that the business functions as a gathering point for Malmö's alternative community rather than simply a themed restaurant. Step up to the bar As of July 2026, the bistro is open Tuesday through Thursday from noon to 9 p.m. and Friday and Saturday from noon to 11 p.m., while Sunday and Monday are closed. Why the Order Matters Do it in this sequence, and there's a nice symmetry to it. The Disgusting Food Museum spends an hour making the case that “disgusting” is a matter of where you're standing ( ... or lying down, if the food killed you...)— that surströmming horrifies foreigners the way foie gras horrifies someone else, and none of it is objectively correct. Science Fiction Bokhandeln, in its quieter way, makes a version of the same argument about taste in fiction and fandom — nearly fifty years running on the premise that genre stuff is worth taking seriously, not a phase to grow out of. And Arsenik has spent its own history making the same case about music and style: that what reads as menacing or off-putting from outside a scene is, from inside it, just home. Walk from one to the next to the last, and you've had, without really trying, a small afternoon-length lesson in how much of “acceptable” is just consensus — and a genuinely good beer waiting at the end of it. Just the right kind of crepiness to enjoy a beer. Conclusion: Embracing the Unconventional In Malmö, the journey through Södra Förstadsgatan offers a unique blend of experiences. Each stop is a celebration of what makes us different, what challenges societal norms, and what brings us together. Whether you're savoring the bizarre at the Disgusting Food Museum, exploring new worlds at Science Fiction Bokhandeln, or enjoying a drink at Arsenik Bistro, you’re part of a larger narrative about taste, culture, and community. So, lace up your shoes, grab a friend, and dive into this unconventional adventure. You might just discover something that resonates with your own tastes and passions, proving that the world of heavy music and craft beverages is as diverse and exciting as the city itself.

For an Iron Maiden fan arriving in Paris from Florence on a brutally hot afternoon during the Run For Your Lives World Tour, the experience didn't begin when the lights went down inside Paris La Défense Arena. It was already underway just outside the venue, where Eddie had taken over the neighborhood. The plan: head to the hotel, get checked in, and then it was on to business, there was a bar to find: Eddie's Dive Bar, Iron Maiden's pop-up watering hole, set up for three days at Oxygen La Défense ahead of the band's June 22 stop at Paris La Défense Arena on the Run For Your Lives World Tour. I was looking to rejoin the "Maiden Family". Apart from my day at Lagunitas Brewery for the Trooper West Coast IPA release, it was something I had not been part of since Stavanger, Norway, a year earlier — Viking Stadion, June 7, 2025 — and I was looking forward to that community connection again. On my walk to Eddie's Dive bar On my 15 minute walk over, I realized I was in a Paris I hadn't seen before. La Défense is all glass towers and steel, a business district that looks more like Frankfurt or Canary Wharf than anything you'd picture when someone says "Paris." Just outside the bar, a BMX street team was grinding rails and popping stairs in the plaza — the kind of teenage-flashback moment that was as nostalgic as the summer I spent listening to Piece of Mind on my boombox. I stood and watched longer than I meant to before finally heading over to the bar. Food was being served outside near the entrance, with the merch booth settled a little further down the way. The item everyone wanted was the Paris event shirt, which sold out and restocked at odd intervals all weekend. I got mine on the afternoon of the second day, just before the show. But walking through the door, the first thing that hit me wasn't the wall-to-wall Maiden imagery — it was the air conditioning. My hotel room had none, and Paris was in the middle of an unusually brutal stretch of weather that summer. It was around 37°C (100°F) the day I arrived, and that turned out to be the mild part: a few days after Eddie's Dive Bar closed its doors, Paris broke its all-time June heat record at 40.9°C (105.6°F). So the AC blast was, in its own way, as welcome as anything Maiden-branded in the building. I am missing "Fear of the Dark". Someday... First order of business was a beer - The Trooper Progressive Lager, the Crew Republic collaboration beer that's been following this tour around Europe (though notably absent from Eddfest). Ordering it came with the kind of detail that always surprises me as an American fan: a collector cup, something that is truly missing at the US shows. The bar had a solid rotation of cups left over from last year's Run For Your Lives dates alongside newer designs for this leg. But more about the Maiden beer and wine... A German Trooper with Bruce Dickinson’s Fingerprints The beer was available to buy for takeaway, or by draft for enjoying the bar Trooper Progressive Lager came out of Iron Maiden’s collaboration with Munich craft brewery CREW Republic, founded by Mario Hanel and Timm Schnigula. According to CREW Republic, Bruce Dickinson became interested in the brewery after its Drunken Sailor IPA was named World’s Best IPA at the 2020 World Beer Awards. Dickinson subsequently challenged the brewery to develop a distinctive German lager for the Trooper family. The resulting Trooper Progressive Lager, introduced through the partnership in 2023, is a 5% ABV lager brewed in accordance with Germany’s Reinheitsgebot. Rather than aiming for an anonymous mass-market lager profile, CREW Republic built the beer around pronounced bitterness, hop aroma and light citrus character. The beer went on to win a German gold medal at the 2024 World Beer Awards. That combination makes Progressive Lager particularly well suited to Eddie’s Dive Bar. It is recognizably a Trooper product, but it also reflects the beer culture of continental Europe instead of simply exporting the original Robinsons-brewed English ale everywhere Maiden travels. For 2026, CREW Republic confirmed Progressive Lager would be available at Eddie's Dive Bars in Hanover, Amsterdam, Milan, Paris and Lisbon. Hard to beat a cold German beer on a hot day From “Darkest Hour” to Darkest Red The wine side of Maiden’s drinks portfolio took a very different route. Darkest Red emerged from a collaboration between Iron Maiden, Ehrmanns Wine and Portugal’s historic Van Zeller winemaking family. Launched in 2024, its name was inspired by “Darkest Hour,” from Maiden’s 2021 album Senjutsu. The original release was itself a 2021 Douro DOC wine, providing a neat link between the song and its vinous counterpart. This is not simply generic wine wrapped in Eddie artwork. The wine comes from Portugal’s Douro Valley and is built from traditional Portuguese varieties including Touriga Franca, Tinta Roriz, Tinto Cão and Touriga Nacional. The Van Zeller family has generations of history in the Douro, and Darkest Red spends time in old Port barrels, adding richness to its blackberry, dark-cherry, plum and spice character. For the Run For Your Lives era, the wine also received refreshed 2026 Eddie artwork, further tying it visually to Maiden’s current touring cycle. The Rum of the Ancient Mariner , had not made it to the tour, as yet... Beer in hand, I did a lap. The bar had unique art covering the walls, an Iron Maiden pinball machine (doesn't every dive bar need a pinball machine?), a large photo-op poster of Eddie, and a back terrace with a sightline toward the Arc de Triomphe, roughly four kilometers off in the haze. Glaçon: Iron Maiden Street Art I wandered back into the main room and took a close look at the art on the wall. It was at this art wall that I ran into the artist himself, a street artist who goes by Glaçon — Bryan, in conversation. His real name is Bryan Diegues, a Portuguese-French artist who took the tag "Glaçon" (French for "ice cube") as a nod to the rapper Ice Cube. His first Maiden show was Bercy in 2011: "I had just turned 15 a week prior, and my parents had worked their fingers to the bone to make my dream come true… seeing Iron Maiden at Bercy. I used to dream about it every night." He'd also designed the event shirt for Bruce Dickinson's 2024 solo show at the Olympia, which made him an obvious pick for the Dive Bar's art program. Bryan mentioned that Eddie has a history of getting censored in French public spaces — Iron Maiden's promotional artwork was famously pulled from RATP metro advertising over concerns the horror imagery would spook children or general commuters, an issue that dates back at least to The Book of Souls campaign in 2015. He said that history was part of why this particular piece of his had been pulled from its original spot and repurposed for the Dive Bar instead. A Little Night Music The bar wasn't short on live music either. Sunday the 21st doubled as a Fête de la Musique stop, with The Iron Troopers taking the stage — a French Iron Maiden tribute act that's been at it since 2015, Arno Walden covering Bruce Dickinson's vocal parts, Fred on bass standing in for Steve Harris, and a rhythm section built to replicate the real thing note for note. They're not a one-off novelty booking, either; they'd already been trusted with a multi-night Eddie's Dive Bar slot the previous year, in 2025. The following evening, over at the arena itself, Iron Maiden's actual support slot went to Evergrey, the Swedish progressive metal outfit fronted by Tom S. Englund — currently touring behind their new album Architects of a New Weave, and no strangers to Maiden's back catalog themselves (their frontman has been known to slip "Wasted Years" into acoustic sets). A Strange Piece The strangest, most memorable piece of merchandise in the room wasn't merchandise in the traditional sense at all. Feegy, an officially licensed collectibles maker, was showing off its "Bring Eddie Home" piece: a hand-painted resin bust of Eddie, axe and all, sealed inside a compact LED display case with a touch sensor for the lighting. It's built to sit on a shelf or mount on a wall, and the lighting does most of the work — it reads less like a figurine and more like a tiny stage set. Feegy built the piece around the 2026 Run For Your Lives tour, sold it for €199 with a dedicated Dive Bar promotion running through its site, and backed it with a certificate of authenticity. Iron Maiden fans have been collecting Eddie in every format imaginable for over forty years — shirts, LPs, beer bottles, pinball backglass. What made Feegy's piece land differently in that room was the setting. Eddie's Dive Bar is already a physical extension of the Maiden universe: the art, the memorabilia, the branded lager, fans who'd flown in from all over for a three-day pop-up. Surrounded by all of that, the illuminated bust didn't feel like something on a merch table. It felt like a fixture of the room. I didn't buy one — not compact enough to justify the baggage allowance on my next low-cost flight — but I understood exactly why someone would. Why do we do it? That’s the thing about Eddie’s Dive Bar that’s hard to explain to anyone who hasn’t stood in one: it isn’t really about the merchandise, or even the beer. It’s about the community that has grown around this band for more than four decades—and the strange collection of moments that happen when that community comes together. It’s a BMX crew doing tricks outside while Maiden fans stream through La Défense. It’s drinking a Trooper from a collector cup, meeting an artist who tells you about being fifteen years old and seeing Maiden at Bercy, examining an illuminated Eddie that somebody somehow has to get home in their luggage, and sharing a room with strangers from a dozen countries who all made their way to Paris for essentially the same reason you did. That’s what Eddie’s Dive Bar gets right. It takes all the things orbiting Iron Maiden—the music, Eddie, the beer, the artwork, the collecting, the stories and, most importantly, the fans—and gives them a place to come together. The concert may be the destination, but for a few hours at Oxygen La Défense, the journey there became an event of its own. And, for one weekend in Paris, Eddie didn’t just rule the stage. He had his own bar.

It was my first time in Copenhagen, my first time in Denmark, period. A place I'd always dreamed of visiting. I'd heard great things about the town and its history, and as a Metallica fan whose favorite record is Master of Puppets, it meant something extra that the album was recorded here. So on this trip, finding whatever metal culture the city had to offer became a personal mission. Night one, close to my hotel, was a bar called "Luke's Rock and Whiskey Bar". A Thursday night, and it showed: one regular parked at the bar, two more chatting up the bartender about local nothing, a couple making out in a corner booth. I had the house whiskey and left. No story here, not tonight. The next day I knew where I needed to go. I'd assumed it was two separate venues until Google Maps steered me to a single address. The Zeppelin Bar. I'd done a little homework before leaving the hotel room, enough to walk in with a few decent questions for the staff and whoever was drinking there. The Zeppelin Bar's door handle Zeppelin Rock Bar: the upstairs Zeppelin opened in 2014 in Copenhagen's Vesterbro district, a short walk from Central Station, and built its reputation on a simple premise: good beer, no pretension, and a soundtrack that never apologizes for itself. The bar's own touchstones read like a classic rock and hard rock radio dial: Judas Priest, AC/DC, Iron Maiden, Thin Lizzy, Led Zeppelin, Black Sabbath, Metallica, Deep Purple, Ghost, Rammstein, and Danish hard rock institution D-A-D, among others. It's a room built for people who want to talk, drink, or actually meet each other, not shout over a DJ trying to get everyone dancing instead of interacting. Zeppelin also books intimate concerts from touring and local acts, and it operates a "safer space" policy with zero tolerance for discrimination or harassment, a detail worth flagging for anyone unfamiliar with the venue before they walk in. Left Hand Path: the bar underneath the bar Left Hand Path opened in 2022, built specifically as a home for Copenhagen's extreme metal community. By the venue's own account, it was almost strange that a Scandinavian capital with an audience this substantial had gone so long without a bar explicitly dedicated to extreme metal. The soundtrack down there runs death metal, black metal, doom, thrash, and old-school heavy metal, filled out by guest DJ nights, record-release parties, and beer tastings. The name is a deliberate nod to Entombed's landmark 1990 debut, Left Hand Path, one of Swedish death metal's foundational records. But the venue frames the phrase as more than a tracklist reference: not primarily occult, but the decision to follow an unconventional road and stand apart from ordinary expectations. The name is a deliberate nod to Entombed's landmark 1990 debut, Left Hand Path, one of Swedish death metal's foundational records. But the venue frames the phrase as more than a tracklist reference: not primarily occult, but the decision to follow an unconventional road and stand apart from ordinary expectations. The ceiling of The Left Hand Path The bar is the project of Michael H. Andersen, a music industry veteran who put out his first metal fanzine, Emanzipation, back in 1992. Left Hand Path opened in the same year he marked 30 years in the scene, and the space plays like a distillation of three decades of collecting: rare demo tapes, 7-inch EPs, posters, and flyers pulled straight from Andersen's own archive line the walls. Designer Morten Varano, known for reworking Copenhagen venues like Rust and Hotel Cecil, handled the buildout. The logo belongs to Christophe Szpajdel, the Belgian artist behind the iconic lettering for Emperor, Arcturus, and Borknagar, so even the signage carries weight. Checking the events calendar before my trip, I'd found something better than I could have planned for: on Friday, July 3rd, 2026, the day I'd be in town, Left Hand Path was celebrating one of metal's landmark anniversaries with a night dedicated to Slayer's Reign in Blood. Alas, there was no cake...just Thrash Metal Released in 1986, the album remains one of thrash metal's defining statements: 29 minutes, ten tracks, no filler, opening with "Angel of Death" and closing with "Raining Blood," a runtime so relentless it's been called the fastest 29 minutes in metal history. Its fingerprints are all over the death metal, grindcore, and thrash that followed, and its 40th anniversary was marked across the metal world this year, including Slayer's own anniversary shows in the US. Not the Metallica connection I'd been hoping to stumble into on this trip but damn, close enough! Time for a beer I arrived a little before 8:00, when the event was set to kick off, climbed the stairs from the street, and took stock. Bar to the left. Farther left, a stairway down (yes, I made the "stairway to hell" joke to myself, and no, I'm not sorry): the actual Left Hand Path. A small staircase led up beyond that, a smallish room with a table or two sat in front of me leading toward the bathroom, and a larger room with windows opened to the right. And the ceiling: a mural of Mercyful Fate's Don't Break the Oath cover, a fitting tribute to Copenhagen's own metal royalty, the King Diamond-fronted band that helped invent the genre's theatrical, occult wing back in the early '80s. Sweet. I want this in my kitchen I got to the bar and mulled the taps. For a Fermented Metal story, you start with a band collaboration beer. Curious as ever, I ordered a can of Thorium's "Suburban Rot," a New England death metal IPA. Reading the can, I learned it was brewed at a place called Slow Burn, which meant a fresh round of questions for the bartender: where's this Slow Burn brewery, and who's Thorium? By the time I had my answers, I had a new brewery to visit the next day and a Danish death metal band to queue up for the train ride there. Neither of them turned up when I'd used AI to search "metal plus brewery" before the trip, which is its own small lesson: nothing replaces showing up and talking to actual humans. That's what a bar like this is for. Beer in hand, it was time to take the Left Hand Path downstairs, literally. Entombed in Black The room at the bottom was small: about five seating areas, all black paint, dark, very cool. It had the feel of a basement a friend and I might have put together as teenagers in the Midwest back in the '80s. Entombed, appropriately enough, felt like the right word for it. Once I'd settled in, I struck up a conversation with DJ Anna and the table of friends sitting across from me, about the night and the bar in general. Over the course of 2026 she'd DJed several specialty nights at Left Hand Path, including a Chuck Schuldiner memorial night, honoring the Death frontman widely credited as the godfather of death metal, a Polish Metal Night that turned out to be one of the bar's bigger hits, and Zeppelin's Metal Bingo event upstairs. We covered the usual ground: old bands, new bands, what everyone was drinking. I handed out some Fermented Metal guitar picks. Good people, good conversation. Once Reign in Blood had run its course, I headed back upstairs for another beer and a proper look around Zeppelin. Back upstairs Different vibe entirely up there; The Doors was on the speakers, as The Zeppelin bar was doing a "Doors/Jim Morrison Memorial Night". I found another collaboration beer at the bar, Cameron's Motörhead "Dancing with the Devil" stout, and logged it on Untappd: thick, dark, almost syrupy, light carbonation. Curious about the small staircase I'd clocked on the way in, I went up. The room at the top was tiny and lit red, walls covered mostly in Judas Priest posters and photos. Half teenage metal treehouse, half private band green room. Whoever designed this place understood that people occasionally want somewhere quieter to hole up, and the music was piped in at exactly the right volume to still feel part of the night without drowning out conversation. After the Motörhead beer was finished, I decide to have one more beer before the cold, dark walk back to the hotel. Appropriately, I ordered Trooper's "Fear of the Dark," not sure I'd ever see it again once I was back in California. I spent a few minutes looking over the photos of past patrons on the walls, the cassette tape collection, the flyers, the band lanyards, made the obligatory bathroom check for the requisite sticker-and-graffiti collage (present and accounted for, as it should be), and headed for the door. One more thing On the way out I nearly lost my Brujos hat, not to the wind that had been chasing me across northern Europe all week, but to a drunk older woman who plucked it off my head, laughed, and asked, "Can I have your hat?" I considered it for a second: she might genuinely appreciate a hat from a metal brewery out of Portland, Oregon. Then I looked into her very drunk eyes and took it back. "No, this old chrome dome needs to stay warm tonight." If she wanted something this specific, she'd have to travel halfway across the world to get it herself. Same as I did, for a night at the Zeppelin bar and Left Hand Path I won't forget A sign at the train station reminded me of my "friend" at the bar.

Hidden beneath the streets of Gdańsk's historic center, Labeerynt combines Polish craft beer, shadowy cellar-bar atmosphere and a rock-and-metal sensibility that feels refreshingly unpolished. There are bars designed to be seen from across the street, and there are bars that make visitors work a little harder. Labeerynt belongs firmly to the second category. That was the situation my partner in crime Paul, and myself, found ourselves in late at night on our first day in Gdansk.... Located at Szeroka 97 in central Gdańsk, the pub is reached by descending a flight of steps into a basement space whose concealed entrance is part of its appeal. From the pavement, Labeerynt can appear almost secretive. Below ground, however, it opens into a warm, dimly lit collection of rooms, corners and alcoves — a perfect nightcap destination for new arrivals to Gdansk. Posted hours vary depending on where you look, so don't be surprised if the door is open earlier in the afternoon than you'd expect; in practice it stays open well past midnight most nights, later on weekends. The name is a bilingual joke that tells visitors almost everything they need to know. "Labeerynt" folds the English word beer into labirynt, the Polish word for labyrinth. It is playful branding, but it also describes the experience: a subterranean drinking den where discovering the next room — or the next unfamiliar Polish beer — feels like part of the evening. Labeerynt's ownership and precise founding story are not clearly documented in publicly accessible sources (we are still trying to reach the owners for comment), so any claim about its founders or opening date should be treated cautiously. What can be verified is that the pub has operated for many years and had already established a strong reputation among Gdańsk beer travelers by the mid-to-late 2010s. Its endurance is significant in a bar market where craft-beer venues frequently open, rebrand or disappear as quickly as the fashions on their tap boards. That endurance shows up in the numbers, too: the pub carries a 4.5-out-of-5 rating across more than 240 Tripadvisor reviews and currently ranks among the top 75 restaurants and bars in a city of well over 800 dining and drinking spots — a hard thing to sustain for years running on a rotating tap list alone. A pub first, a craft-beer showcase second Labeerynt calls itself a craft-beer pub, but its strongest quality may be that it still feels like a pub. The interior is characterized by low lighting, exposed brick, beer and music decoration, tucked-away seating and a slightly improvised underground aesthetic. Rather than adopting the bright, minimalist look associated with many modern taprooms, Labeerynt leans into the comforting darkness of a cellar bar. British beer writers Boak and Bailey described it as the most convincingly "pubby" place they encountered during a 2024 visit to Gdańsk, noting its red-tinted lighting, private corners and traditional bar service. (Boak and Bailey) That observation points to an important distinction. Labeerynt is not a brewery taproom built around a single producer. Nor is it primarily a restaurant using craft beer as an accessory. It is a multi-tap bar: an independent showcase where the selection changes and the bartender acts as a guide through beers produced elsewhere. The pub advertises 15 beers on tap, supplemented by a larger assortment of domestic and imported bottles. Its official online description emphasizes craft beer, music and drinks rather than a substantial food menu, making Labeerynt better approached as a drinking destination than as a dinner stop. (Instagram) That tracks with the broader review record: recurring feedback praises the beer selection, pricing and staff knowledge, with the occasional gripe about a stuffy, poorly ventilated basement or an inconsistently clean restroom — the kind of trade-off regulars tend to shrug off in exchange for the atmosphere and the tap board. (Tripadvisor) A working map of modern Polish beer The tap list is where Labeerynt becomes particularly useful to travelers. Rather than requiring visitors to tour breweries scattered across Poland, the bar gathers producers and styles from different regions into one cellar. An actual beer map on the wall of the pub. Pretty cool. Because the lineup rotates, no fixed list can represent the pub for long. A recently updated menu illustrated the breadth of its approach: beers from PINTA and PINTA Barrel Brewing, Trzech Kumpli, ReCraft, Lubrow, Nepo, Czarna Owca, Wąsowo and Piwne Podziemie appeared alongside Belgian beer from Brouwerij Huyghe. Styles ranged from pilsner and low-alcohol lager to hazy IPA, Berliner Weisse, fruit cider, wild ale and a flavored foreign extra stout. (ontap.pl — beer-to-date today) That is a revealing cross-section of contemporary Polish beer culture. Poland's modern craft movement has enthusiastically adopted American IPA, pastry stout, fruit sour and hazy-beer trends, but its best bars rarely restrict themselves to novelty or extreme flavors. Labeerynt's boards commonly place familiar pilsners and approachable session beers beside stronger, more experimental releases. My friend Paul had a "Califia" West Coast IPA from brewer Trzech Kumpli. One recent lineup, for example, included PINTA's 3.5% This Is Light, ReCraft's Fresh Pils and Czarna Owca's Obywatel Kociewski alongside the citrus wild ale After Hours and Piwne Podziemie's chocolate, coffee, hazelnut and vanilla Angelico Stout. Published prices generally ranged from about 15 to 22 złoty for 300 milliliters and 21 to 30 złoty for 500 milliliters, depending on strength and production cost. Those prices are only a snapshot and will change with the beers. (ontap.pl — beer-to-date today) I started with a "Cool Vibe" IPA from brewer Czarna Owca (Black Sheep) brewery, located an hour away from Gdansk. The rotating board also appears to maintain a connection with Piwne Podziemie — literally "Beer Underground." Labeerynt has listed beers under the combined designation "Piwne Podziemie/Labeerynt," including Koga IPA. Public information does not establish that Labeerynt owns a brewery of its own; the safer interpretation is that these are house-associated or collaborative beers brewed through Piwne Podziemie — which is itself worth knowing more about. Despite the shared "underground" branding, Piwne Podziemie is not a Gdańsk operation; it's based roughly 500 kilometers south in Chełm, brewing since December 2014 under Dariusz Piecuch, a homebrewer who cut his teeth on commercial-scale brewing in the United States before building a reputation in Poland for bold, experimental additions — tropical fruit, coffee, vanilla, cocoa — and its recurring smoked "Katastorfa" releases. (ontap.pl — beer-to-date today; Untappd) Care at the point of service A long tap list is meaningless when the beer is poorly stored or carelessly poured. Labeerynt's reputation is strengthened by repeated reports of staff who understand both the products and the mechanics of serving them. During their Gdańsk visit, Boak and Bailey observed a bartender carefully manipulating a Czech-style tap to create the correct foam texture. They reported that the beers they tried were well kept and appropriately served, singling out Piwne Podziemie's Coffeelicous Special, dispensed through an English-style beer engine, as one of the standout beers of their trip. (Boak and Bailey) Other travel accounts similarly praise the staff's ability to discuss styles and recommend bottles according to a customer's preferences. One reviewer recalled being presented with five possible bottled beers and receiving an explanation of each before choosing. Such service matters enormously in a bar selling unfamiliar products from dozens of breweries. It turns a chalkboard full of abbreviations into an approachable tasting experience. (Craft Beer Amethyst) Visitors who are not deeply immersed in craft beer should therefore resist choosing solely by alcohol percentage or an amusing name. Describing preferred flavors — dry, bitter, dark, tart, fruity, smoky or lager-like — will usually produce a more rewarding recommendation. Beyond the taps: Gdańsk's metal crowd At first glance, upon entering the pub and sitting down for a drink, I did not detect anything that would denote the establishment as being "metal," or even a "rock" bar. Then I journeyed into the back room… Labeerynt's appeal extends beyond beer, and that's how Fermented Metal came to visit the beer pub. Rock and heavy metal are recurring parts of its identity, reflected in its playlists, darker visual atmosphere and reputation among traveling music fans. Once I mentioned to our bartender our intent, the music playing in the background got a little louder and I could hear they were playing some obscure doom metal. The backroom is a tribute to metal Labeerynt's appeal extends beyond beer, and that's how Fermented Metal came to visit the beer pub. Rock and heavy metal are recurring parts of its identity, reflected in its playlists, darker visual atmosphere and reputation among traveling music fans. Once I mentioned to our bartender our article intent, the music playing in the background got a little louder and I could hear they were playing some obscure doom metal. The pub is listed by metal-oriented travel guides as a place to hear heavy music while drinking local beer, and customer accounts regularly mention rock or metal playing in the background. (Facebook) One international bar directory built specifically for touring metal fans sums it up plainly: "Nice small Bar. Good metal in the background and a lot of beer from the tap. Go there and enjoy nice local people with a good taste of beer and music." Independent Tripadvisor reviewers echo the same read, tagging it a "metal pub" without any prompting from the venue itself. Unlike a dedicated concert venue, Labeerynt does not need a stage or nightly bands to establish that connection. While further conversing with our bartender, we learned of the Mystic Festival, Gdańsk's major annual metal gathering. In the past, Labeerynt has promoted extended festival-week opening hours and explicitly welcomed Mystic attendees looking for somewhere to drink before and after the concerts. (Instagram) The festival itself has only grown since — the 2026 edition runs June 3–6 at the Gdańsk Shipyard, spanning four days and five stages with more than ninety bands. The festival grounds run their own "Mystic Village" with local food, craft beer and art installations, which makes Labeerynt's role clearer by contrast: it's the off-site alternative, a cellar bar away from the shipyard crowds where the same fans can settle in without a festival wristband. 2026 headliners included Megadeth, Mastodon, Behemoth, Anthrax and Saxon, with Electric Wizard, Eyehategod, Down, Blood Incantation, Carach Angren and Marduk covering the doom, sludge and black-metal end of the bill. For festival visitors, that makes the pub more than a convenient pre-show stop. It becomes part of Gdańsk's temporary metal ecosystem — a meeting place where international fans, Polish drinkers and local regulars cross paths away from the official festival grounds. Labeerynt is not known primarily for producing officially licensed band beers, nor does available evidence show a sustained program of brewery-and-band collaborations. Its heavy-music significance is cultural rather than commercial. The bar supports the scene through atmosphere, soundtrack and hospitality instead of treating metal as branding pasted onto an otherwise conventional venue. Why Labeerynt matters Gdańsk has no shortage of places selling beer. Visitors can drink historic-style brews, visit modern brewpubs, order internationally familiar lager beside the waterfront or explore other respected multitap bars. Labeerynt distinguishes itself by combining several qualities that do not always coexist: a serious rotating beer program, knowledgeable service, an unpretentious cellar-pub atmosphere and an authentic affinity for heavy music — backed up by a review record (4.5 stars, 240-plus ratings, a top-75 placement among Gdańsk's restaurants and bars) that's hard to fake over the years this place has been open. It does not feel engineered around a single trend. There are modern hazy IPAs and flavored stouts, but also pilsners, Czech and Belgian beer, cider and more restrained session-strength choices. There is metal on the speakers, but the venue does not resemble a themed attraction. There are tourists, particularly during festival season, yet the place retains the informal rhythms of a neighborhood pub. The result is a bar that rewards both exploration and repetition. A first visit offers the thrill of finding the entrance and decoding the tap board. A second visit reveals that the board has changed. By the third, the labyrinth no longer feels confusing. It feels like a refuge. For craft-beer travelers (like myself) — and especially for metal fans visiting Gdańsk (like myself), — Labeerynt is not merely somewhere to drink before the next destination. Make it your "end" destination, and enjoy reminiscing about your day over a cold beer with a good friend, and some heavy tunes. Drinking with Paul, a highly suggested activity.

The current lineup of Ūkanose: Vilius Garba, Herkus Daukantas, Simona Lukaševičiūtė, Jokūbas Giedraitis, Laurynas Tamaševičius, Adrija Zavackaitė, and Linas Petrauska I missed connecting with Ūkanose at the 2026 Kilkim Žaibu Festival for an interview. I thought I'd catch up with them during the "13:00–15:00 Meet the Bands at the Lecture Tent' , no bands showed up. However, I did get to see them live, and the crowd was electric, lots of energy! So, not getting an interview hit even harder, it felt like a professional failure.... Until, a day or so later, my phone started buzzing with a Lithuanian number I was fairly sure was spam. I did not answer on the first few calls, until I did. On the other end was Linas Petrauskas — guitarist and founding member of Ūkanose — tracking me down on his own initiative to make sure the interview happened anyway. Linas Petrauska: guitarist and founding member By then I had already relocated to Kaunas. Linas drove out to meet me at my hotel regardless, showing up a little after 11 p.m. despite having to be at work the next morning, and bought the first round before I could stop him. We took our beers outside, away from the noise of the hotel bar, and found a quiet corner against the backdrop of Kaunas at night. Linas, it turns out, is not only the guitarist of one of Lithuania's biggest folk metal exports — he also works in metal production by trade, and carries a more literal kind of metal in his own feet, the legacy of an old accident that has since limited how much he can throw himself into the historical reenactment scene he loves. It felt like an unusually fitting detail for a magazine with "metal" in its name twice over. Before we got anywhere near a formal question, we had already covered his early influences: Zpoan Vtenz, the shape-shifting Lithuanian black/folk act behind 1997's Gimė Nugalėt; Ha Lela's folk-inflected black metal; and Obtest, the Vilnius pagan-black metal outfit that has been flying the flag for Lithuanian heathen metal since 1992 — longer than almost anyone else in the scene, and still the country's most commercially successful black metal band. We talked, too, about what it meant to be a metalhead in a Lithuania still shadowed by organized crime, when the wrong T-shirt and long hair on the wrong street could get you "knocked on the head." It was against that backdrop, Linas told me, that Ūkanose's story really begins. Two Metalheads at a Pub Ūkanose formed in Vilnius in 2012, though the roots go back a year earlier, to a university lecture hall. I asked Linas what he remembers most clearly about the band's beginning. Linas:I vividly remember meeting up with Tadas Survila at the Apuokas pub to sing Lithuanian folk songs. We'd sit down in the basement with big mugs of beer and spend hours singing songs on all kinds of themes. Those evenings are some of my strongest memories from that time. I also remember our very first rehearsals as a band. At the beginning, we didn't even have a drummer—he joined about a month later. It was actually pretty funny because, at first glance, he looked much more like someone who was into rap or electronic music than metal or rock. We quickly realized we were completely wrong. As the saying goes, don't judge a book by its cover. In 2012, we played our first three concerts, and I have to say the parties after those shows were unforgettable. Simona Lukaševičiūtė – Violin & Vocals The Tadas Survila in question is the same musician Linas first sat next to on the first day of university, September 1, 2011 — a chance seating arrangement that, by Linas's account, became the whole reason Ūkanose exists. Linas:I first met Tadas on September 1, 2011, when I sat down next to him on our first day at university. He looked different from most of the other students, so I immediately thought, he's one of us. It wasn't until a few months later that I found out he was one of the founders and members of the well-known Lithuanian folk rock band Brėkšta. After I was kicked out of the band I was playing with at the time, Tadas asked me the very next day if I was still playing folk metal. I told him, 'I was until yesterday—but not anymore, because I got kicked out.' He suggested we sit down and talk about making music together. We quickly realized we had a lot in common: folklore, metal, history, mythology, paganism, beer, and simply having a good time together. Classic metal stance It took a while, Linas said, before he could put his finger on what the "Ūkanose sound" even was — and the moment he finally recognized it happened, fittingly, in someone else's rehearsal room. Linas:To be honest, I never really stopped to think about what the 'Ūkanose sound' was. It simply exists—it developed naturally over time. I do remember one moment that made me realize our sound had become recognizable. I was auditioning for another band that I later joined, Andaja, and when their keyboard player walked into the rehearsal room, she said, 'Play differently—I can hear Ūkanose, not Andaja.' At that moment, I thought, Aha... so we really do have a recognizable sound. That made me smile. Building the Ūkanose Sound Folk metal is a genre built on a wager: that centuries-old melodies and modern distortion actually belong together. I asked Linas how the band settled on its particular balance of the two. Linas:Lithuanian folk music is incredibly diverse, so finding the right balance has never really been a challenge. There are plenty of melodies that already sound heavy and powerful, while others are bright, lively, and joyful. I think Lithuanian folklore lends itself naturally to metal music. Many authentic folk melodies can easily be transformed into great black metal riffs. Our traditional music makes extensive use of minor keys and dissonant intervals, especially seconds, which fit surprisingly well within extreme metal. That synthesis shows up most explicitly on "1236," a track from the band's 2023 album Šiaurum Vėjum. The number refers to the Battle of Saulė, fought on September 22 of that year, when a coalition of pagan Samogitian and Semigallian forces annihilated the Livonian Brothers of the Sword — killing somewhere between 48 and 60 knights, including the order's master, and effectively ending it as an independent military force. Lithuania and Latvia now jointly mark the date as the Day of Baltic Unity. It is exactly the kind of victory Linas says the band feels compelled to keep alive in song. Linas:Of course, our songs tell stories about historical events, our battles, and our greatest victories. For example, our song '1236' is dedicated to commemorating the Battle of Saulė. We are proud of our homeland and we deeply love our country, its history, and its culture. Our nation is a nation of warriors that has fought for many centuries, but at the same time, we can see that our ancestors also knew how to celebrate and enjoy life. That is why our repertoire includes not only serious and melancholic songs, but also very joyful ones—songs that make people want to dance, sing, and celebrate together. It is also worth mentioning that we have many humorous folk songs about brewing alcohol, drinking, and what happens afterwards. Jokūbas Setkauskas Money, Motivation, and Seven Calendars No band survives fourteen years on inspiration alone. I asked what were the biggest challenges in keeping Ūkanose active during the first early years. Linas:During the first years, the biggest challenge was money. Everything was expensive, especially for students. We needed good instruments, and we also had to pay for rehearsal space. It was also difficult to keep everyone in the band motivated and interested after one setback or another. I think the hardest part was simply not giving up whenever we faced an obstacle. Ūkanose currently carries seven members — well above the standard metal-band headcount, and a logistical headache Linas doesn't pretend away. Linas:Having seven members in the band means we have to plan our concerts, tours, and all other activities more carefully. Seven people means seven separate calendars, because everyone has their own jobs, other activities, families, friends, and personal interests. We try to know about our upcoming events as early as possible—at least six months in advance, and sometimes even a year before a show—to understand whether it will happen or not. So far, I think this strategy has worked very well for us. That planning has paid off on stages well outside Lithuania. Despite singing almost entirely in Lithuanian, Ūkanose has built audiences across Poland, Germany, Latvia, Romania, and France. Linas:I believe that music is a universal language. We were pleasantly surprised that people are eager to come to our concerts and listen to us wherever we play. After the shows, people often come up to us and share what they liked, what caught their eye or ear, and ask what a particular song is about. The Lithuanian language is very melodic and naturally suited for singing, so we are no exception. For international listeners, hearing Lithuanian is a kind of unique experience. The Hottest Show of Their Lives When I asked Linas to name one of the most meaningful shows in the band's history, he didn't reach for a milestone release or a foreign capital. He reached back to the beginning, and last month. Linas:It is difficult to choose just one particular performance. Some of the most memorable shows would probably be our very first concert, simply because it was the beginning of everything, the album release show for 'Šiaurum Vėjum', and Kilkim Žaibu 26/06/2026 (lots of 6's in there?), because it was unbelievably hot and we left every bit of our energy on stage. It felt like the audience truly appreciated it, because it became a huge celebration not only for us but also for everyone who was there. Kilkim Zaibu 2026 "Unbelievably hot" is an understatement. Kilkim Žaibu's 26th edition ran June 25–27 at the Lėnas lakeside in the Ukmergė district, on the grounds of the Antanas Smetona Manor Museum — the same weekend a record-breaking heatwave settled over Europe and pushed Lithuania to an all-time June temperature record of 36.3°C, breaking the previous mark of 35.7°C set in 2019. Every band on that bill was playing through the same air; Ūkanose simply appear to have made better use of it than most. This magazine caught the set firsthand: a 4 p.m. slot on the Perkūnas stage that Friday, June 26, which drew one of the largest crowds of the day. Live, Ūkanose builds its set around sutartinės and other traditional Lithuanian singing forms worked into heavy, guitar-driven arrangements, and the effect plays less like a standard metal set than a communal ritual — war songs and hymns to the natural world sitting alongside full-crowd singalongs, all of it in heat that by evening had most of the grounds looking for shade. "It was unbelievably hot and we left every bit of our energy on stage." — Linas Petrauskas, on Kilkim Žaibu 2026 Billed as the biggest Baltic-culture and extreme-metal festival in the region, Kilkim Žaibu 2026 stacked its bill with heavyweight international names — Carcass, Possessed, Samael, Impaled Nazarene, The Crown — alongside the homegrown folk-metal acts the festival was originally built to champion. Ūkanose, by Linas's own account and the festival's, remain one of the biggest draws in that latter category. But he was careful to draw a line between the festival shaping the band and the band simply being itself in front of a receptive crowd. Linas:Festivals like these help us grow and improve, but ultimately, we are the ones who shape our own identity by understanding where we are at this particular moment. Our identity is not formed by festivals themselves, but by our own interest in and connection to our culture, history, and folklore. Folklore Belongs to Everyone For a band this openly devoted to national heritage, I wanted to know how Linas squared preservation with reinvention — whether Ūkanose sees itself as a museum or something more alive. Linas:I believe that Ūkanose is not only about preserving culture, but also about expressing ourselves, sharing our own perspectives, and even teaching people something along the way. It is especially inspiring to see the younger generation singing Lithuanian folk songs. I think we are a connection between the past and the present—a bridge between different cultures and eras. A tree cannot grow and blossom without its roots. The same applies to culture—it cannot survive without its roots and history. Linas:Since folklore belongs to everyone, it belongs to us as well. It is alive, constantly evolving, and should never become stagnant. Sometimes we slightly rewrite traditional folk songs—for example, we take a few lines from the original folklore and write additional verses ourselves. The most important thing is to preserve and convey the emotion and the message that a particular song is meant to tell. Linas and the very talented Adrija Zavackaitė Dark Beer, Bright Future This is, after all, Fermented Metal, and Linas needed no prompting to talk beer. His answer arrived as its own small essay on Lithuanian brewing loyalty. Linas:My favorite beers are various types of beer from the Dundulis brewery and 'Raudonųjų Dobilų Alus' by Piniavos Alutis. I also have to mention the Jurgenborg beer from the Klausučiai brewery. This beer reminds me of where I come from—Jurbarkas. The only types of beer I do not drink are IPAs, APAs, and commercial beers. I prefer beer from smaller craft breweries because their products are always of better quality. "Dark beer — bright future." - From a friend of Linas Petrauskas Beer, it turns out, isn't even his first love. That distinction belongs to mead — specifically the homemade kind, tied to a living-history club Linas belongs to outside the band. Linas:Besides beer, I also really enjoy drinking mead. However, I only drink homemade mead—I never buy it in stores. The living history club Leitgiris, which I am also a member of, has several people who make traditional homemade mead. We also have a tradition of bringing this mead to festivals abroad where Ūkanose performs. I give it as a gift to the festival organizers on behalf of our band. There have even been cases where organizers invited us back for a second time and already knew what they would receive—they always say something nice about the mead we bring with us. The road stories, when they come, tend to involve considerably harder liquor. In 2021, Ūkanose played Germany's Wolfszeit Festival, where the local hosts got their first real look at Lithuanian drinking stamina. Linas:The Germans there, other bands, and festival staff were amazed by our ability to drink large amounts of alcohol and then continue having a great time as if nothing had happened. More than one German person said: 'We Germans drink a lot and we can handle a lot, but you Lithuanians are something else. I don't understand how much you can drink and still stay on your feet.' But we all understand that the amounts were not actually that extreme—the truth is simply that Germans are not used to Lithuanian-style partying. The best story, though, came from a Czech gas station en route to Slovakia's Winter Pagan Feast in Bratislava, and it involves the band's drummer, three bottles of Jägermeister, and a joke that got a bit out of hand. Linas:Our new flutist Adrija was joining us on her first trip with the band. As a joke, I told Adrija to keep an eye on our drummer Vilius so that he would not get into any trouble. When I came back from the restroom, I saw Vilius walking toward the place where I had just been, carrying three bottles of Jägermeister. My bandmates explained that Vilius had stumbled into the gas station and heard our vocalist Jokūbas and bassist Herkus telling the cashier to give them one bottle of Jägermeister. Vilius did not hesitate. He shouted across the entire gas station: 'Three bottles of Jägermeister, I will PAY!' The cashier looked completely confused, and the guys had no choice but to repeat the phrase Vilius had just shouted. It happened completely spontaneously, and the party only became even more energetic afterwards. The Road Ahead More than a decade in, I asked Linas where he thinks Ūkanose actually stands. His answer had none of the weariness you might expect from a band juggling day jobs, seven calendars, and a growing international footprint. Linas:I still feel that we are only at the beginning of our journey. I believe we have a lot more to say, and I want to believe that our story is only just starting. I dream of Baltic folklore being recognized all around the world, and I hope that Ūkanose can contribute to making that happen. The growing number of listeners shows that we are doing something right—that we are creating something that both our audience and we ourselves need. I asked what, after everything, keeps him committed to the band. Linas:Ūkanose is a way of life for me—a creation of my own that I live with every single day. It is something that could be compared to a home, a place that you always want to nurture and take care of. And in his wildest dreams, five or ten years from now? Linas:I would love for us to be playing at the biggest festivals in Europe and around the world, so that as many people as possible could discover our beautiful folklore. I would like to travel on worldwide tours and introduce people to Baltic culture, which is incredibly fascinating and full of unique stories. Linas told me that Ūkanose is working a new album, but it he would not rush it. He believes in taking the time to do things right, a mark of quality. Ūkanose's 2023 album Last Call in Kaunas Linas, a truly solid human being, believes in being humble and gracious. He is sending me an Ūkanose shirt since I missed the merch booth somehow - salt of the earth, as the saying goes. It was well past midnight by the time I finished my beer that Linas had so graciously bought me. Linas had to be up for work in a few hours. That, more than anything he told me about Ūkanose, seemed like the point: a band built on the same instinct that drove its guitarist out on a work night to track down a journalist he'd never actually met — because the story mattered enough to finish properly. Yours truly and Linas Petrauskas Ūkanose's catalog — including 2023's Šiaurum Vėjum and the earlier EP ...kai Griaudėjo Miškai... — is streaming now, and the band shows no sign of slowing its festival calendar. If you get the chance to see them live, take it — and bring your own mead, because they will already have theirs. Ūkanose | Vilnius, Lithuania | ukanose.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/Ukanose Influences and Inspiration Per Linas, additional music that needs a mention: Need to mention: Ugnelakis - Intro Po Dievu Skraiste Žalvarinis - Už stalo sėdau (Folk metal) Angis - Praeities Ženklai - 1. Ties Nežinomybe (Black Pagan metal) Notanga - Notanga 3000 Aistvara - Aistvara [2018](LTU)|Progressive Folk Metal Gyvata - O Jau Mano Mielas (Lithuanian folk song) (NEO folk) ANDAJA - Iš Atminties (FULL ALBUM) Lithuania (Pagan black) earlier Andaja - Perkūno Sutuoktinė (Official Lyrics Video) (Mythology rock/metal) LATER Donis su Kūlgrinda - Sotvaras [Full album] (neo folk) Žemaitiu ruoks by Atalyja (Neo folk) JUODVARNIS - Audra Prieš Tylą (The Storm Before Calm) (Pagan metal earlier) Prog metal now Girių Dvasios - Ratu [Full Album] (Folk ambient) Pagirnis (Lithuania) - Kai milžinai gyveno (Album 2024) (PAGAN BLACK) - young generation. Romuvos- The Return Back Home (Epic folk / Viking metal) LIETIS – „Oželis“ live at KILKIM ŽAIBU XX (Prog folk metal) Dega live @ kilkim zaibu, lithuania 06/21/2025 part 2 (doom folk metal) Oi Šermukšnio by Ugniavijas (Authentic folk)

Florence is a city that takes its traditions seriously. Renaissance frescoes, Brunelleschi's dome, leather markets older than most nations — it is not, on the surface, the kind of place you'd expect to find a bar named after a Motörhead album blasting heavy riffs from a basement in the Oltrarno. But here's the thing about Florence: scratch below the tourist surface and you find a city with a genuine underground pulse. Overkill Birreria, tucked away at Via degli Arcipressi 43 on the city's south side, is proof of exactly that. I arrived on a Saturday night around 10:30 pm. The sidewalk outside was already doing a brisk business — a loose congregation of denim jackets, tattoos, and cigarettes spilling into the warm Florentine night. Rather than join the outdoor crowd, I pushed inside to get a better feel for the place, and immediately clocked that I wanted to talk to whoever was running it. I asked the bartender directly: "Who's the owner?" The tall, bearded man on the other side of the bar didn't even blink. "I am the owner," he said. His name is Cristian, and he's been running Overkill for seven years. The Man Behind the Bar Cristian's path to Florence runs through Berlin — where he put in time behind bars before making the move to Italy — and through a few formative years working the Italian scene before he decided to open something of his own. The result was Overkill, a bar whose name pulls from one of the most ferocious albums in the Motörhead catalog: Overkill, released in 1979, the record that helped define what speed metal could be. The metal DNA here isn't just decorative. Cristian is a guitarist himself — "but admittedly not so good," he was quick to add with a grin. That kind of self-awareness is disarming, and it tells you something about the atmosphere he's cultivated. This isn't a theme bar constructed for tourists. It's a working musician's hangout that grew into something more. Overkill describes itself as "La tua Birreria Metal di Fiducia" — your trusted metal beer bar — and that dual identity, the craft beer bar and the metal venue, runs through everything here. The menu covers panini, fried food, and a rotating selection of beers alongside cocktails and shots built for the long haul of a metal night. The bar opens at 6 pm and, on Friday and Saturday, keeps going until 2 am. Owner, Cristian reveals his Angus tatto Motorhead beer and wine The Booze Program Cristian clearly takes the beer side of things as seriously as the music. On tap when I visited: Trooper Crew Progressive Lager, imported from Germany. It's the kind of well-chosen, unfussy pour that signals a bar owner who knows his audience — people who want something good in the glass but aren't here to swirl and sniff. And, its also the go to for Eddie's Dive bar on the latest Iron Maiden tour. On the horizon, he's working on sourcing Born to Lose Motörhead beer, another piece of the branded heavy metal beer universe that has grown up around the band's legacy. Motörhead's officially licensed beer catalog — spanning everything from IPAs to lagers — has become something of a collector's circuit for metal bars across Europe, and Christian is clearly plugged into that network. Whether Born to Lose makes it onto the taps at Overkill is still TBD, but the intent is there. After my Trooper Progressive lager, I was inclined to try a glass of the "Slipknot Iowa Whiskey", with some ice... A long way from Iowa... Slipknot No. 9 Iowa Whiskey Review Slipknot No. 9 proves that band-branded whiskey can offer more than a collectible bottle. Produced with Iowa’s Cedar Ridge Distillery, it is a 90-proof blend of three- to four-year-old straight bourbon and straight rye, giving the spirit a solid balance between corn sweetness and rye spice. The aroma opens with caramel, vanilla and light floral notes. On the palate, sweet corn, apple, toasted oak and milk chocolate are joined by cinnamon, pepper and a slightly herbal rye character. The finish is medium in length, warm and pleasantly spicy without becoming harsh. No. 9 is not an especially old or deeply complex whiskey, but it is approachable, flavorful and easy to drink neat or in a whiskey-forward cocktail. More importantly, the Iowa-made collaboration feels authentic to Slipknot’s roots rather than like a generic spirit carrying the band’s logo. It is a respectable everyday pour—and one of the stronger entries in the crowded field of musician-branded alcohol. The Art on the Walls Here is where Overkill surprises you in a way you won't see coming. Head downstairs and the murals covering the walls were not painted by some traveling graffiti crew or sourced from generic heavy metal clip art. They were made by a madonnara — a Florentine artist named Francesca Arsì. The term madonnara carries serious weight in Italian art history. Dating back to the 16th century, madonnari were itinerant folk painters who worked in chalk and charcoal, most often depicting sacred images of the Virgin Mary during religious festivals across Italy. The tradition is as Florentine as the Uffizi; artists still work the stones of via Calimala, just blocks from Piazza della Repubblica, keeping the craft alive on the city's streets. A skilled madonnara is someone deeply versed in classical figure painting, the iconography of Catholic devotion, and the discipline of rendering the Madonna with precision and reverence. That Francesca Arsì brought those skills into a metal bar — and that Cristian sought her out specifically — is one of the most genuinely interesting curatorial decisions I've come across in the bar world. The convergence of sacred Italian visual tradition and the profane noise of heavy metal isn't as jarring as it sounds. Florence has always known how to hold contradictions. The city that produced Dante's Inferno and Botticelli's angels can certainly make room for Motörhead murals painted with Madonna-grade craft. More on the Walls...and Ceiling The Menu As expected, the menu carries the theme of the bar. Listed are just a few examples of what you can expect. Classic burgers Hamburger Ozzy Osbourne — Beef burger with Emmental, crispy bacon, tomato, salad and barbecue sauce. Hamburger di Dio — Beef burger with cheddar, caramelized onions and guacamole. Hamburger Lemmy — Mixed veal, pork, chicken and mortadella patty with gorgonzola, scamorza, caramelized onions and smoked bacon sauce. Bomber — Mixed meat burger with crispy bacon, fried onion rings, salad and curry-mango sauce. Viaggio in Inghilterra — Truffle beef burger with crispy bacon, fried egg, salad and woodland-style sauce. Black Sabbath — Black charcoal bun with truffle beef burger, stracciatella, grilled zucchini, crispy onion and yellow-tomato sauce. Panino U.D.O. — Pretzel bun with chicken cutlet, cheddar, bacon, caramelized onion and curry-mango sauce. Specialty sandwiches Rammstein — ’Nduja beef burger with stracciatella, crispy onion, pickles and guacamole. Hellfire — ’Nduja beef burger with scamorza, fried egg, yellow-tomato sauce and Tabasco. Angus — Truffle beef burger with Emmental, sun-dried tomatoes, salad and woodland-style sauce. Cowboys from Hell — Mixed veal, pork, chicken and mortadella burger with stracciatella, grilled zucchini, caramelized onions and pumpkin cream. Babagoshka — Gorgonzola beef burger with crispy bacon, grilled zucchini and eggplant, crispy onion and guacamole; identified on the menu as the winner of the “Sagra dell’Hamburger 2024.” Araya — Pretzel bun filled with pulled pork, pickles and barbecue sauce. Master of Puppets — Boneless pork shank with caramelized onions and mustard.rino, grilled zucchini and eggplant, and yellow-tomato sauce. Rob Zombie — Vegan burger with grilled pecorino, grilled zucchini, tomato and woodland-style sauce. Mille Petrozza — Black charcoal bun with vegan burger, sun-dried tomatoes, pickles, crispy onion and pumpkin cream. Steve Sylvester — Pretzel bun with vegan burger, grilled zucchini and eggplant, crispy onion and barbecue sauce. Beers Maiori & Frucinu Pale Ale — A 5.2% pale ale from Birrificio Landbier, described as golden, opalescent and unfiltered, with floral and tropical-fruit notes. Mönchshof Original — A German pils from Kulmbach, noted for balanced bitterness. Starship — A 4.5% bitter from Olmaia, amber-colored with caramel, biscuit, bread-crust and dried-fruit notes. Tangerine — A 4.5% session IPA from Olmaia, light-colored and aromatic, with herbal, floral and citrus notes and a persistent bitter finish. Clausthaler — A 0.4% alcohol-free Keller beer, dry-hopped, cloudy and naturally fermented. Daura — A 5.4% gluten-free lager from Damm, with malt, bread and honey notes and a delicate hoppy finish. The Trooper — A hoppy IPA, listed at approximately 6% ABV, described as golden, floral and citrus-forward, with a firm but balanced bitterness. Martesana mead beer — A honey-based beer featuring chestnut-honey character; the visible listing indicates 7.3% ABV. Beer Roadie — A 4.8% festbier from La Foresta, described as a dark four-malt beer with pepper, cinnamon and chestnut-honey flavors. Crop Circle — 4.5% blanche/wheat beer with coriander and bergamot. Abbey Life — 9% tripel with malt, spice, dried-fruit and chestnut-honey notes. Overkill specialty cocktails Fire Fire — Mezcal, Motörhead amaro, dry Martini and lemon soda. Affinity Orange — Jack Daniel’s, Campari, Martini Bianco and orange soda. Ace of Spades — Motörhead vodka, ginger ale, triple sec and ACE fruit juice. Miami Ice — Vodka, gin, rum and blue curaçao. Shake Your Blood — A shaken cocktail with Motörhead vodka, triple sec, Martini Bianco and blood orange. Highway to Hell — Vodka, tequila, blue curaçao and lemon soda. The Real Dead One — “Latte di suocera,” absinthe and tonic. Mead Drakon “Gold” — 12% ABV, 200 ml; amber mead made with wildflower and chestnut honey, with a light cinnamon note. Drakon red mead — The name and full description are partly covered in the image, but it appears to be a red-fruit mead. A Real Dead One: “Latte di suocera,” absinthe and tonic. Growing the Empire Overkill isn't Cristian's only project anymore. He's since opened a second bar in nearby Prato — Florence's industrial neighbor about 20 kilometers to the northwest — called Painkiller. The name continues the heavy metal pharmaceutical theme (Judas Priest's Painkiller is one of the genre's defining records), and the Prato location has already established itself as a local destination, listed on the official Prato tourism site and specializing in burgers and beer. Two bars. Two metal-themed names. A growing footprint across Tuscany. Just Go Florence has no shortage of places to drink. What it has a shortage of is places with genuine identity — spots that exist because someone actually cared about the thing they built, not because they spotted a market gap. Overkill is the latter kind of place. It's lived-in, specific, and entirely itself: a metal bar run by a European with a Berlin education and a Florentine sensibility, staffed on busy Saturday nights by the owner himself, decorated by a painter who spent her career honoring the Virgin Mary. If you're passing through Florence and you've got any blood in your veins that responds to heavy riffs and cold German lager, head south of the Arno after dark. Via degli Arcipressi 43. Overkill opens at 6 pm. On weekends, they'll keep you until 2. Overkill Birreria Via degli Arcipressi 43, 50143 Florence, Italy Hours: Sun–Thu 18:00–00:00 | Fri–Sat 18:00–02:00 Phone: +39 371 434 4729 Overkill Birreria Via degli Arcipressi 43, 50143 Florence, Italy Hours: Sun–Thu 18:00–00:00 | Fri–Sat 18:00–02:00 Phone: +39 371 434 4729

There are beer releases, and then there are beer releases... . ... where you find yourself standing behind a stage at Lagunitas, waiting to perform air guitar under the spiritual supervision of Iron Maiden. On Saturday, June 6, 2026, Lagunitas Brewing Company hosted the official release party for Trooper West Coast IPA, its new collaboration with Iron Maiden's Trooper Beer brand, at the Lagunitas Taproom in Petaluma, California. The event had the essentials: first pours of the new beer, cans to-go, live music from Iron Maiden tribute band Maiden United, food specials, Trooper merch, and an air-guitar competition with a Fender guitar on the line. That is already a strong Saturday. But the real story was not just that Lagunitas released an Iron Maiden beer. The real story was that they made the release feel like a gathering. It was not a sterile brand activation or a random taproom promo with a famous logo pasted onto it. Lagunitas built a full Trooper atmosphere around the day: Iron Maiden visuals, an Eddie's Dive Bar banner, Maiden shirts everywhere, beer fans, metal fans, kids, dogs, and a taproom crowd that understood exactly why a West Coast IPA named Trooper needed to be celebrated loudly. I arrived just a few minutes before my scheduled 1 p.m. brewery tour, which meant I had enough time for one very important pre-tour task: get the beer. The Trooper West Coast IPA The Trooper West Coast IPA was pouring toward the back of the grounds, so I made my way over and ordered my first one. I was excited to try it, but the first impression hit before the first sip. As I raised the glass, the aroma jumped out: grapefruit, floral hop character, and that familiar West Coast IPA I came for the beer, but brought my own hat. Then came the drink: cool, bright, hoppy, and assertive, with that back-of-the-throat IPA hit that reminds you this is not pretending to be something soft and vague. At 6.6% ABV and brewed with Krush hops, Trooper West Coast IPA is very much an American expression of the Trooper beer universe. It carries the Iron Maiden identity, but it tastes like Lagunitas doing what Lagunitas does well: making a hop-forward beer with enough personality to stand on its own. That matters. Band-branded beers are common enough now that the novelty alone is not enough. Metal fans know when they are being marketed to, and beer fans know when a collaboration is only a label. This one made stylistic sense. Iron Maiden brought the mythology. Lagunitas brought the West Coast IPA credibility. The beer brought the bite. The Tour Begins: Waivers, Safety Glasses, and a Blonde Mullet Wig After that first Trooper, it was time for the brewery tour. Like most brewery tours, it began with practicalities: sign the waiver, wear safety glasses, and do not show up in open-toed shoes. I signed the waiver without reading it, which probably means I legally agreed not to challenge Eddie to a sword fight in the brewhouse. A permanent part of the old taproom? I will have to check on my next visit... From there, our guide Tyler led us into an upstairs space that looked like an old bar in the best possible way. The room was covered with Lagunitas history and memorabilia, the kind of wall-to-wall accumulation that feels earned rather than staged. It had the look of a room that had collected stories over years, which is exactly what a proper brewery space should feel like. According to Tyler, this room had served as part of Lagunitas' earlier taproom life after the company moved to Petaluma. He also told us the current facility had previously been some kind of medical-related factory or industrial site before Lagunitas turned it into a brewery. The bar itself, he said, was rebuilt using wood from a bowling alley. Across the room, an outward-tilted glass window looked down into the brewery, a detail that made the whole space feel like a strange and wonderful blend of clubhouse, production facility, and beer-soaked observation deck. Tyler was an excellent tour guide: funny, knowledgeable, and willing to tell stories that felt half historical record and half Lagunitas folklore. He also had the honor, or punishment, of wearing a terrible blonde mullet wig for the Trooper event. This made everything better. A brewery tour is always improved when the person explaining production history looks like he may have briefly escaped from an '80s arena-rock video. Drinking a Trooper West Coast IPA in the old taproom The tour tasting was woven into the experience rather than saved until the end. We were given three samples: flagship Lagunitas IPA, A Little Sumpin' Sumpin' Ale, and a mystery beer we had to guess. The mystery beer turned out to be Hop Stoopid, Lagunitas' big, bitter, 100-plus IBU hop bomb whose public beer records date back to 2007. Most brewery tours let you try the beers after the tour is over. Lagunitas makes the beer part of the tour itself, which is the correct approach. Beer tastes better when someone is telling you why it exists. Before the next part of the tour, our group were poured a Trooper West Coast IPA, which made it my second Trooper of the day. Thank you, Tyler. Inside the Brewhouse Next, we headed down into the main brewery area, where the scale of Lagunitas really started to sink in. I have visited a lot of breweries recently, across the United States and in the UK, and the Petaluma operation is bigger than most of the taproom breweries I have been to. Lagunitas may have a laid-back public personality, but once you walk through the production areas, it becomes obvious that this is a serious brewing facility. We moved through areas where Tyler explained parts of the brewing process, including grain handling and the whirlpool. One of the most interesting parts of the tour was the R&D area. Tyler talked about the collaboration between Bruce Dickinson and Lagunitas Brewmaster Jeremy Marshall, explaining that Dickinson had been looking for the right partner to create a West Coast IPA under the Trooper banner. According to Tyler's tour account, Dickinson had considered multiple breweries, but the match with Lagunitas clicked after he spent several hours with Marshall. Publicly, Lagunitas and Iron Maiden have said the creative spark between Dickinson and Marshall was immediate, and Dickinson praised Lagunitas as a "watchword for west coast brewing excellence." Jeremy Marshall and Bruce Dickinson Tyler explains that this is the R&D room Standing inside the brewery while hearing that story gave the collaboration more weight. It was no longer just a press release about a new beer. It became clear why Lagunitas was the right partner for this specific Trooper expression. If you are going to make an American Trooper beer and call it a West Coast IPA, you need a brewery with actual West Coast IPA history. The tour also included the less romantic but very real parts of brewing: tanks, smells, kegs, hoses, recycling, and logistics. Near the tanks, you could smell malt and beer in progress. Other smells were less beautiful, but that is brewing. Lagunitas also has a sustainability side, including recycling brewery byproducts for agricultural use, that goes out to local farmers. Beer may be fun in the glass, but getting it there involves a lot of labor, equipment, cleaning, hauling, and problem-solving. One detail I loved was seeing how kegs are moved. Full kegs are heavy, and Lagunitas uses equipment to help workers lift and move them safely, including suction-assisted handling and carts. It is the kind of behind-the-scenes detail that makes you appreciate every pint a little more. Someone had to brew it, package it, move it, and get it into your hand. Lagunitas' total annual brewing capacity reached roughly 600,000 US barrels (~700,000 hectoliters / ~70 million liters) Late for the Reservation, Still Right on Time By the time the tour ended, I was about 20 minutes late for my 2 p.m. table reservation. Fortunately, the taproom staff still took care of me. Food came next, starting with a very good mac and cheese starter. Later, I had a pretzel with beer-cheese sauce, which is exactly the kind of food you want while spending the afternoon drinking IPAs and listening to Iron Maiden songs outside. I also tried Pleasant Pils, Lagunitas' Italian-style pilsner, because as much as the day belonged to Trooper, the wider tap list was worth exploring. That is one of the advantages of holding a band-beer release at an actual brewery instead of a generic event space. You can come for the collaboration but still experience the broader identity of the place. Lagunitas had the Trooper event dialed in, but the taproom still felt like Lagunitas: casual, dog-friendly, busy, and full of little weird details. I sat there listening to Maiden United and looking around at the Trooper decorations, the special merchandise booth, and the giant Eddie's Dive Bar banner. That banner seemed like a nod toward the larger Trooper rollout and the Beer Roadie campaign tied to Iron Maiden's U.S. tour activity later in the year. The whole setup made the Petaluma event feel like the first chapter in a bigger summer story. The taproom had Iron Maiden themed specials for the day Early in the day, when I first heard music on the grounds, I thought the band had already started. Someone corrected me: "Oh no, I think they're just playing Maiden on the speakers." That pretty much sums it up. When the house music and the live tribute band are both Iron Maiden, confusion is inevitable and completely acceptable. The Air-Guitar Contest: A Bad Idea That Became a Good Story Then came the air-guitar contest. I was taking photos of the venue and the contest setup when I noticed that only a handful of people had signed up. The announcer started calling for more contestants. There were more slots available, and the crowd needed volunteers. This is when the dangerous part of the brain activates. I thought: Why not throw my hat into the ring? That is how I ended up behind the stage with the other contestants, preparing to perform invisible guitar at an Iron Maiden beer release party. Some people were clearly better prepared. Some had moves. Some had presence. Some looked like they had spent years waiting for this exact opportunity. I was not one of those people, but I gave it a shot. Victor was the victor.... The performances were fun, and several contestants did a much better job entertaining the crowd than I did. I did not win. I did not even place fifth (I'd to think I was 6th ...6th... 6th...). The winner, Victor, looked the part in what appeared to be a classic Piece of Mind-era Iron Maiden raglan tour shirt. He won the Fender guitar, and from what I saw, he earned it. As for me, I walked away with a free beer and a small cloth Lagunitas Trooper banner. That is not losing. That is field research. Heavy metal has always had room for participation over perfection. Sometimes you nail the solo. Sometimes you make the person after you look more impressive. Both are valuable contributions to the culture. Maiden United and the Fan Factor Maiden United provided the live Iron Maiden soundtrack for the day, and that choice was essential. A Trooper beer release does not need background music. It needs the world of Iron Maiden around it. A tribute band turns the beer from a product into a shared fan experience. That is also where the day felt most connected to Fermented Metal's mission. This was not just about what was in the glass. It was about how beer and heavy metal create community when they are given the right setting. Maiden United: Playing the song of the day Fermented Metal also had a chance to speak with a group of fans who had taken a rideshare all the way from San Francisco, roughly 50 miles or more depending on where they started. That was a smart move for a day built around beer, and it also showed the pull of the event. They were connected to the SF Bay Area Metal meetup group, organized by Suhneel, and they came out for the same reasons many of us did: Maiden, Lagunitas, beer, and the chance to be around other people who understood why that combination mattered. That is the part you cannot manufacture with a label alone. Metal fans show up. They wear the shirts. They bring friends. They compare stories. They take photos. They make the event into something bigger than the product. The crowd was also broader and more relaxed than someone outside metal might expect. Fans brought kids. People brought dogs. Lagunitas has a strong dog-friendly identity, and that casual taproom atmosphere helped keep the day from feeling overly commercial. It was festive without being forced. Big enough to feel special, loose enough to feel like a Saturday afternoon at a brewery. Lilou enjoying the party Why the Collaboration Works Trooper West Coast IPA works because it respects both sides of the collaboration. Iron Maiden brings one of the most recognizable visual and cultural identities in heavy metal. The Trooper brand already has a long history, beginning with the original Trooper beer launched with Robinsons Brewery in the U.K. and expanding into an international beer line over more than a decade. Lagunitas brings its own identity: Northern California brewing, hop-forward beer, and a personality built around music, humor, and taproom culture. The 6.6% West Coast IPA format makes sense because it is not trying to imitate the original British Trooper ale. It is an American Trooper expression. It speaks in a California hop language. Grapefruit, floral notes, bitterness, and resin belong here. This is not just Trooper wearing a new outfit; it is Trooper translated into West Coast IPA form. The release party worked for the same reason. Lagunitas did not just pour the beer and call it a day. They built an experience around it: tour, live music, special merch, food, air guitar, Eddie visuals, and fan gathering. It felt like a proper launch because it gave fans a reason to stay, talk, drink, listen, and participate. Turn it up! Final Pour By the end of the day, I had tasted the new Trooper West Coast IPA, taken the Lagunitas brewery tour, learned some brewery history, smelled the tanks, watched keg-handling equipment in action, eaten mac and cheese and a pretzel with beer-cheese sauce, tried Pleasant Pils, listened to Maiden United, interviewed metal fans from San Francisco, and entered an air-guitar contest I had no business entering. That is a successful release party. The Trooper West Coast IPA release at Lagunitas was fun because it understood the assignment. It treated the beer seriously, but it did not treat itself too seriously. It honored Iron Maiden's mythology without turning the day into a museum exhibit. It let Lagunitas be Lagunitas: big, weird, friendly, beer-focused, dog-friendly, and willing to put a tour guide in a bad blonde mullet wig for the sake of the bit. There was grapefruit on the nose, hop bite in the throat, Maiden on the speakers, Maiden on the stage, Eddie on the banner, dogs under the tables, fans in the crowd, and one very questionable air-guitar performance from the editor of Fermented Metal. In other words, it was exactly the kind of day this magazine exists to cover. The Trooper landed in Petaluma. Lagunitas made sure it arrived loud. 06/06/26: A longtime Maiden fan becomes a new Lagunitas brewery taproom fan.

By Fermented Metal Magazine staff — San Francisco, CA The Bill Forbidden — the band whose 1988 debut Forbidden Evil and 1990 follow-up Twisted into Form helped define the technical wing of Bay Area thrash — headlined the Great American Music Hall on Friday, May 29, 2026. Cynic played direct support. Oakland crossover/thrash outfit Doomsday went on second; Oakland thrash quartet Cultural Warfare opened. Doors 6, show 7, $40, 470-cap room on O’Farrell. In shape, the bill reads less like a routine club date than a deliberately constructed map of where the West Coast end of extreme metal has been and where it is now: two Oakland bands climbing through their first record cycles, a Florida-origin progressive landmark that still has no comp, and a Bay Area thrash institution actively writing its first new album in fifteen years. Each set earned its slot on the bill for a different reason. Cultural Warfare Cultural Warfare opened. The Oakland quartet — vocalist Jacques Serrano and bassist Pete Aguilar (both ex-Taunted), guitarist Billy Garoutte, drummer Kevin Doughty — has been operating out of the East Bay since the mid-2010s and is touring on the long tail of its 2018 LP Warmageddon (M-Theory Audio). The record was well-received in the modern thrash press: Metal Forces and Dead Rhetoric both placed it in the Testament/Defiance lineage, with reviewers pulling specifically on the Souls of Black–era production and Serrano’s range — equal parts rasp and clean tone, which is unusual in the modern Bay Area thrash field where most vocalists pick a lane and stay in it. Songs like “Witches Prayer” and “Shadow Priest” got the most specific notice. Live, that vocal flexibility is the differentiator: a 25-minute opening slot is a hard place to make any kind of impression, and Cultural Warfare’s hooks land faster than the genre average because Serrano isn’t burning the back row out on throat alone. Putting them in the leadoff position on a Forbidden bill is also a piece of community signaling. Cultural Warfare’s whole identity is rooted in respecting and extending the lineage Forbidden helped establish in the 80s — the Metallica/Exodus/Death Angel/Testament/Forbidden/Vio-lence axis is named explicitly in their own bio. The perfect band to get the night off to the right start. Doomsday Doomsday second. Oakland’s Doomsday are one of the Bay Area’s sharpest modern crossover/thrash bands, carrying the region’s long-running thrash legacy into a heavier, hardcore-driven present. Formed in 2018 by musicians connected to different corners of the Bay Area metal and hardcore scene, the band quickly developed a reputation for fast, physical songs built on divebombing leads, gang vocals, metallic hardcore tension, and old-school thrash aggression. Doomsday’s recorded path began with early singles and demos, including Agony Blossoms Fear // Soul Deprivation in 2021, Poisoned Disorder in 2021, and the Riff City Promo in 2022. Their wider breakthrough came with the 2022 EP Depictions of Chaos, released through Creator-Destructor Records. That record introduced the band’s core identity: a violent blend of Bay Area thrash, hardcore stomp, and influence from bands such as Slayer, Metallica, Sepultura, Iron Age, Power Trip, Nuclear Assault, and Exodus, but falling in with bands of the last decade such as Prowl, Inhuman Nature, Forced Neglect, and Necrot. The band followed with a self-titled EP in 2023 before releasing its debut full-length, Never Known Peace, on March 28, 2025. Recorded, mixed, and mastered by Zack Ohren at Sharkbite Studios, the album tightened Doomsday’s sound into ten compact tracks of riff-heavy crossover, balancing high-speed thrash with pit-ready breakdowns and sharp lead work. The album also featured guest solos by Andrew Lee of Ripped to Shreds. As of the Never Known Peace rollout, Doomsday’s lineup included Charlie D. on vocals, Eddie Vigil on drums, Ryan Calaveras on guitar, Glendon “G” Diaz on bass, and Robert “Big Rob” DeLorenzi on guitar. The band’s identity is rooted in both Oakland and the wider Bay Area tradition: heavy music that values riffs, live intensity, and community credibility over polish or trend-chasing. For Fermented Metal readers, Doomsday represents the current Bay Area underground at its most direct: a band that understands the region’s thrash history but filters it through modern hardcore urgency. Their slogan-like phrase “Riff City” is more than a throwaway line; it neatly captures what the band does best — fast songs, heavy hooks, and a sound built for the floor. Eddie Vigil with a sick back tat That is exactly the slot they filled on Friday: a 30-ish-minute set built to translate a 30-minute LP, with the floor visibly thicker than it had been for the opener and the pit doing the kind of organized stomping that the band’s song reward. The connection to Forbidden is not abstract — both bands are now Sharkbite/Ohren projects, and putting Doomsday in the room where the headliner is currently tracking its comeback record reads as more than coincidence. Charlie D of Doomsday, laying it down. Cynic Cynic in direct support. The Florida progressive-metal institution formed in Miami in 1987 around guitarist Paul Masvidal and drummer Sean Reinert, and broke wide with Focus (Roadrunner, September 14, 1993), the album that is, by broad critical consensus, one of the small handful of records that built the modern progressive-metal vocabulary. Fretless bass (Sean Malone), jazz-fusion drumming, vocoder-treated cleans alongside death-metal growls, atmospheric and harmonically literate guitar writing — Focus sounded like nothing else in 1993 and still doesn’t, and the through-line from it to almost every subsequent prog-death band of note is impossible to miss. What Cynic carries into a 2026 set is heavier than the music itself. Both Reinert and Malone died in 2020, leaving Masvidal as the catalog’s sole surviving founding member and the figure responsible for the band’s continued existence. The contemporary live band is his project, and the work it’s doing is custodial in the most literal sense — making sure Focus, Traced in Air (2008), Kindly Bent to Free Us (2014), and Ascension Codes (2021) continue to be heard as one body of work rather than as a sequence of nostalgia stops. On Friday, Cynic’s set was the bill’s stylistic disruption — clean tones and odd meters following 90 minutes of straight-ahead riff work, with the crowd shifting from a thrash mode into something more attentive and less physical. That’s the shape Cynic shows always take when programmed against a heavier headliner. The band is not on the bill to compete with Forbidden’s energy; it’s on the bill to remind the room how wide extreme metal’s harmonic vocabulary actually is. Headliner: Forbidden Forbidden closed. The current five-piece is Norman Skinner (vocals, since the 2023 reunion), founding guitarist Craig Locicero, second guitarist Jeremy Von Epp (officially announced November 19, 2025), bassist Matt Camacho, and drummer Chris Kontos. The band signed to BLKIIBLK Records on January 14, 2026 and is currently writing and pre-producing their first new album in fifteen years at Sharkbite Studios in Oakland with Zack Ohren producing — slated for a mid-2026 release. Forbidden, reborn: Von Epp (guitar), Kontos (drums), Camacho ( bass), Skinner ( vocals), and Locicero (guitar) Two originals, and the new guy A short refresher on the catalog the set was drawing from: Forbidden formed in early 1985 as Forbidden Evil, with drummer Jim Pittman and a young Robb Flynn on guitar; Flynn left in 1986 and the band shortened its name to Forbidden in 1987. Forbidden Evil (1988) is the band’s first canon entry and a record that any serious history of Bay Area thrash has to spend time on. Twisted into Form (1990) is the technical-thrash peak — the record cited most often when people argue that Forbidden was the most musically advanced of the second-wave Bay Area bands, the one whose guitar arrangements were doing things their peers weren’t. Distortion (1994) and Green (1997) closed out the band’s first run on GUN Records, with Green in particular pushing into alternative and groove territory in ways that divided the audience. They broke up in 1997, returned in 2007, went quiet again in 2012, and returned for good in 2023. The newest face on the bill belonged to Von Epp, and his story is worth the room. A Bay Area-bred guitarist who spent two decades with The Venting Machine (2002–March 2023, including the well-regarded 2017 LP Shackles Be Gone), released Black Abyss and Nyctophilia with heavy-rock outfit The Watchers, and built a national profile from 2022 onward as the lead guitarist for the Van Halen tribute Hot For Teacher, Von Epp was originally called in by Locicero as a fill-in when VOIVOD’s Daniel “Chewy” Mongrain — who had played and recorded with Forbidden for the prior eighteen months — hit scheduling conflicts on the 2024–25 festival run. Von Epp proved out the role at Aftershock in Sacramento and Grita Fest in Colombia, debuting the new tracks “Divided by Zero” and “Mutually Assured Dysfunction” on stages where every note is being filmed. The band’s public statement was unambiguous: “Jeremy needed to be in Forbidden full time and we all agreed. It made too much sense with the chemistry we have together.” Mongrain, who contributed to three new Forbidden songs before stepping out, was thanked at length and remains, per the band, “family forever.” Friday’s set worked exactly the part of the catalog the room had come for, classics like “Twisted Into Form,” “Chalice of Blood,” “Forbidden Evil,” and “Through Eyes of Glass” as part of the setlist. Skinner, now three years into the chair Russ Anderson held through the band’s classic period, is fronting a band that is no longer treating its reunion as a victory lap — the BLKIIBLK signing, the Sharkbite sessions, and the formalized Locicero/Von Epp twin-guitar pairing reframe everything about how to read these sets. The implication is that there will be new songs to play before the next tour cycle, and the band is essentially using the legacy material to warm the room for material that doesn’t exist yet in public. Camacho and Kontos Locicero remains the architect, but Friday was the first GAMH headliner since the Von Epp announcement, and the practical effect on the live mix was obvious: the Twisted into Form–era arrangements — written for two guitars by Locicero and a rotating cast that has included Glen Alvelais, Tim Calvert, Steve Smyth, and Mongrain — were back in their original configuration. Solos that on a single-guitar live show have to be either skipped or layered against a backing track were played in real time. Kontos is hitting harder than the records do; Camacho is locked in. There’s a version of this reunion in which the band is content to be a museum, and there’s a version in which it is treating itself as a still-active concern with a new five-piece chemistry to sell. Friday read clearly as the second. Ace and Danny from Reality Check TV interview Norman Skinner from Forbidden The Shape of the Night The reason this show is worth a long write-up rather than a short one is the legibility of its structure. Cultural Warfare and Doomsday are not interchangeable openers — they are bands the headliner’s lineage and current production team are directly invested in. Cynic isn’t on the bill to chase a Bay Area thrash audience; it’s on the bill because Masvidal’s catalog and Locicero’s catalog have always belonged in conversation, even if the genre maps have rarely put them on the same page. Forbidden is not closing as a heritage act; it’s closing as a band three months from finishing a record. That’s a real bill, in the old sense — assembled with a thesis, played in a room built for it. The next time Forbidden plays San Francisco, there will be new material in the set. We will be looking forward to it!

An afternoon at Ghost Town's Beer Garden in Laurel — a Fermented Metal field report from 3506 MacArthur Blvd. The first thing you notice walking into Ghost Town Brewing’s Laurel taproom on a Sunday afternoon isn’t the skull iconography or the stack of empty kegs with the Ghost Town logo on them — it’s the kids and dogs. There’s a toddler wobbling between picnic benches while her dad nurses a pint, and someone’s leashed pit bull naps under an umbrella. East Oakland’s loudest brewery has, somehow, become a family beer garden. A giant skeleton towers over the beer garden next to a fantastical mural of a "Death Knight". The death motif hangs over everything — the brewery’s whole brand leans into Oakland’s old “Ghost Town” nickname for a historically rough stretch of West Oakland — but at noon on a Sunday, with the gates open at 12 p.m. sharp, the vibe is closer to backyard barbecue than basement show (Ghost Town Brewing — Laurel, Yelp; Berkeleyside, May 2018). A Brewery That Started as a Side Hustle for a Metal Band To understand Ghost Town, you have to understand that it began as a financial hack for musicians. Co-founders Ryan Nosek, Sam Carr-Prindle, Jason Gehman, and Adam Hill were Bay Area bandmates who launched a one-barrel nano-brewery in 2012 to help pay the rent on their rehearsal space (Square — The Bottom Line). They never settled on a band name — they cycled through “Baby Arm,” “Tire Fire,” “HAG,” and what Nosek has cheerfully described as “a bunch of other garbage” (Berkeleyside, May 2018) — but the brewery name stuck. By 2018 they had a full taproom on Adeline Street in West Oakland, and in early 2021 they took over the former 4505 Burgers & BBQ space at 3506 MacArthur Blvd. for their first satellite location (Oaklandside, Jan. 2021; Hoodline, Jan. 2021). Five years on, The Oaklandside named the Laurel patio the East Bay’s best beer garden in its 2025 Nosh Awards, citing exactly the contradiction I’m sitting in: growlers, grub, and good times built around a death motif (Oaklandside, Dec. 2025). Gloomfang : The Hazy That Bites Back My buddy Peter orders at the bar by the door and starts with the Gloomfang. This is Ghost Town’s flagship Hazy IPA, a Yakima Chief Hops collaboration at 6.8% ABV built on EXP 638 and Krush — the latter formerly EXP 586, both proprietary varietals from the last few years. It pours the color of a cloudy mango lassi and smells of peach, plum, and sweet lime. The brewery’s own copy frames it as “a new, bizarre monster” born of “the perilous ongoing collaboration with Yakima Chief Hops,” which is a level of commitment to the bit I respect (Gloomfang, Untappd; Gloomfang Hazy IPA, BevMo). What sets it apart from the East Bay’s haze tide is that it actually has teeth — a bitterness on the back end that pulls the juice into focus instead of letting it dissolve into milkshake territory. Untappd users rate it just over a 4 across 600-plus check-ins (Gloomfang, BeerAdvocate). Mordant : An American IPA with a Sweet Tooth The natural follow-up is the Mordant, Ghost Town’s American IPA. It runs 6.7% ABV — fractionally lower than Gloomfang — and is hopped with Strata and Mosaic, two of the most fashionable American varieties of the past decade. The brewery’s tasting notes describe it as “a touch aggressive and bitter,” with rough edges “tempered by a sweetness that’s reminiscent of peak summer melons, peaches, strawberries, and citrus” — and that is exactly the seesaw the glass delivers (Mordant, BeerAdvocate; Mordant, Untappd). If Gloomfang flirts with the modern Hazy crowd, Mordant is the older sibling who never left the West Coast. It pours clearer, finishes drier, and stays bitter longer. The Strata gives it a pungent passionfruit-and-cannabis snap. With more than 1,400 Untappd ratings, it’s clearly the workhorse of the lineup — the IPA people order without thinking. Scumbag : Cream Ale for the Heroes After two IPAs you need a reset, and that is exactly the job of Scumbag. Scumbag is Ghost Town’s taproom-exclusive cream ale — the brewery’s own description calls it a “humble American Pseudo-Pilsner,” 4.6% ABV, “clean, crisp, and an insanely crushable” lawnmower beer that they pour as a $3 pint (Scumbag, Untappd; Scumbag, BeerAdvocate). On a 77-degree Oakland afternoon it disappears in roughly the time it takes to finish a paragraph. So where does the name come from? Honestly: Ghost Town hasn’t made the answer public anywhere I can find. The brewery has never published a formal origin story, and press coverage doesn’t dig into the etymology of individual beer names. A brewery Instagram post from late 2020 dedicates the beer “for all the heroes eating” — the gag being that a $3 cream ale is honest and anti-snob, and therefore in the Ghost Town worldview a kind of folk hero, even if the label calls it a scumbag (@ghosttownbrewing on Instagram). Until the founders publish the real story, that’s the best I can give you: the name is a punchline that flatters the drinker. The Atmosphere Covering one side of the interior wall carries the Skinner / Mala Mujer Arte / Amol mural — a comic-book death knight wreathed in lightning and tentacles, wielding a battle axe. It was painted in April 2021, around the time Ghost Town opened the Laurel taproom, by the three-artist team ( Oakland Murals). The choice of Skinner is not incidental. The Oakland-based artist has spent the past decade producing what he describes as a hybrid of comic-book line work, psychedelic pattern, and heavy-metal album art, with a client list that runs through Mastodon, Heavy Metal magazine, Adult Swim, Vans, and Fender (The Art of Skinner; Beyond Geek). The patio runs picnic-bench seating under shade umbrellas; the Oaklandside / Berkeleyside feature on the brewery's 2025 Nosh Award win calls the result a "skull-adorned beer garden," which is the right phrase — every sightline is doing the work, from rooftop signage down to the prop-grade skeleton imagery the brand has wrapped around itself since the West Oakland location opened in 2018. I witnessed a group of kids in the soccer uniforms scouring the grounds for items such as this... The food works the same theme at the menu level. The Laurel kitchen runs a hybrid pub-and-Mexican lineup — Cluckin Hell Sando, shrimp burger, fish tacos, beef-and-potato empanadas, Twisted Sister big ass pretzel — and lets the brewery's Metal motif carry the naming. Order the Altar of Sacri-Fries (a $-friendly bowl of fries) and you've already paid the joke its due. It's good food doing the thing more good food should do, which is take itself only as seriously as the room around it, and tasting damn good at the same time. "Eyehatecod", love it. ( April 2026) The Verdict Three beers in, with a paper boat of Altar of Sacri-Fries cooling and a Scumbag sweating onto the table, Ghost Town reads like the thing East Oakland figured out and the rest of the country missed: a brewery can be loud, weird, display morbid art, run by metal heads and still be the most welcoming place to spend a Sunday afternoon.. The Gloomfang is a hazy with a spine. The Mordant earns its bitterness. The Scumbag is a $3 lager that doesn’t insult your wallet and goes well with the Altar of Sacri-fries. Bring the kid. Bring the dog. Bring your old school metal Dad. Bring an appetite. The patio is open until 10. Ghost Town Brewing — Laurel. 3506 MacArthur Blvd., Oakland, CA 94619. Sun 12–10 p.m. Patio, kid- and dog-friendly. Order at the bar.

Fermented Metal — Field Report I started my East Bay visit to see the Sepultura's "Celebration of Life Through Death" tour... ...early in the afternoon, stopping by Almanac Brewing in the Ghost Town neighborhood of Oakland. I ordered a nice black lager called “Friday the 13th,” played a couple rounds of Jaws and Godzilla pinball, then stepped outside to finish my beer — and found a tombstone in the patio with the name “Joan Crawford” carved into it. On closer inspection, the Blue Öyster Cult symbol was etched right under the name. I asked the bartender about it and we ended up trading trivia: she didn’t know the symbol was BÖC’s, and I didn’t know the rails located a few feet away from the brewery used to haul the stone that became the headstones for that whole part of town. Ghost Town — they made the coffins and the gravestones. Cheery. Totally metal. Maybe a little on par for seeing a band's farewell tour? See the BÖC’ symbols? Next stop: Ghost Town Brewing for a pint of “Dark Chapter” Czech dark lager. I sat there watching the projected 80's classic horror movie “Wax Works,” admiring the decor, then chased it with a “Helles Awaits,” two games of Addams Family, and a round of Iron Maiden pinball. Next time I’m getting a shirt there.... Next stop: Ghost Town Brewing for a pint of “Dark Chapter” Czech dark lager. I sat there watching the projected 80's classic horror movie “Wax Works,” admiring the decor, then chased it with a “Helles Awaits,” two games of Addams Family, and a round of Iron Maiden pinball. Next time I’m getting a shirt there.... A Dark Chapter A Lyft up to the UC Theatre dropped me into a line of battle jackets stretching halfway down the block, as the doors were just opening at 5:30. I ducked around the corner to Spats for a quick game of Medieval Madness before the gates opened. This dude was bummin...no tix. Tribal Gaze Drink bracelet on, beer in hand, I got to the floor right as Longview, Texas death-metallers Tribal Gaze kicked off the night. Vocalist McKenna Holland prowled the stage like he was looking for a fight, and the pit obliged. Backed by guitarists Quintin Stauts and Ian Kilmer, bassist Zachary Denton, and drummer Cesar “Ceezbone” De Los Santos, the band drew from their 2022 debut LP The Nine Choirs (Maggot Stomp) and last year’s Nuclear Blast follow-up Inveighing Brilliance. Tribal Gaze are still touring-circuit kids next to the legends sharing the bill, and they played like they knew it — and like they didn’t care. Biohazard Next, a real privilege: Brooklyn’s Biohazard, back in their reunited classic-era lineup of Billy Graziadei (vocals/guitar), Bobby Hambel (guitar), Evan Seinfeld (vocals/bass), and Danny Schuler (drums). The four original-era members regrouped in 2022 and have toured steadily since 2023. Their slot leaned on Urban Discipline (1992) and State of the World Address (1994), with “Punishment,” “Shades of Grey,” and “Tales from the Hard Side” landing hardest. Bringing East Coast attitude to the East Bay For a man in his late 50's, Evan Seinfeld didn’t look like the years had laid a hand on him — singing, pounding the bass, jumping up and down the whole set; the guy clearly keeps himself in shape. He taunted the crowd for not having half the energy of a Jersey audience, then whipped them into a frenzy anyway. Great to see the original lineup back on stage together. Ghost Tequila and Biohazard Ghost Tequila, the ghost-pepper-infused 100% blue agave spirit marketed as "The Perfectly Spicy®," has a direct line into the world of New York hardcore through Biohazard guitarist and vocalist Billy Graziadei. The brand itself was founded by Chris Moran, who first developed a ghost-pepper tequila shot while bartending at a Boston tequila bar in 2011. Moran later partnered with industry veteran David Gordon to scale the recipe into a national brand. The connection to Biohazard came years later: in September 2022, Graziadei — a founding member of Biohazard since 1988 — joined Ghost Tequila in the officially titled role of "Brand Badass," handling music-industry partnerships, artist relations, and on-the-ground brand presence at venues, festivals, and tours. The fit is logical. Biohazard reunited its classic lineup in 2022, the same year Graziadei signed on with Ghost, and resumed touring in 2023. That return to the road dovetailed with Ghost Tequila's push into the live-music space, which has since included partnerships with Citizens House of Blues Boston and MGM Music Hall at Fenway. Graziadei serves as a bridge between the spirit and the heavier end of the live-music ecosystem the brand wants to reach. For a magazine that lives at the intersection of metal and fermentation, the takeaway is clean: a Brooklyn hardcore lifer is putting his name behind a Boston-born chili-pepper tequila, and using his road experience to plug it into the venues his own band plays. After Biohazard, I ducked back over to Spats for a cocktail and to rest my dogs before the second half. Coming back, I noticed the merch line hadn’t shortened — it had actually stretched farther down the hall. The crowd was a beautiful cross-section: cynical and happy 60-year-old first-generation rockers, weekend metalheads, thrashers, face-painted and heavily garbed teenagers, and kids as young as seven or eight. The little ones were pointing out the merch shirts to their parents — grotesque monsters and skulls, eye candy for the fevered imagination of youth. And then Exodus took the stage.... Exodus The Bay Area thrash legends had the hometown advantage, and they used it. The current lineup — founding guitarist Gary Holt, longtime guitarist Lee Altus, bassist Jack Gibson, drummer Tom Hunting, and vocalist Rob Dukes, who rejoined in 2025 after an 11-year absence — is touring behind their 2026 album Goliath, the band’s first studio record since Dukes returned to the mic. WREX makes an appearance Late in the set, a masked figure swapped in for Lee Altus, kitted out in the wild-hair-and-mask getup of Wrex, Exodus’ mascot. Turned out to be Steve Brogden, Gary Holt’s guitar tech, taking a turn under the lights. During the closer, “Strike of the Beast,” a long-haired kid named Hanns got lifted out of the crowd and invited onstage by Altus to play part of the song; the kid and his dad have apparently had previous interactions with the band. The whole bit drew the biggest grin of the night out of Holt. Great fucking set! Welcome home, Exodus. Headliner: Sepultura’s Berkeley Farewell Sepultura’s current lineup — Derrick Green on vocals, Andreas Kisser on guitar, Paulo Jr. on bass, and Greyson Nekrutman on drums — is not a nostalgia act pretending time stopped in 1996. It is the final working version of a band that has survived reinvention, controversy, lineup changes, and the impossible burden of its own legacy. Green, Kisser, and Paulo Jr. anchor the frame; Nekrutman, just 23, now occupies one of the most scrutinized drum chairs in modern metal. The Setlist The 21-entry setlist, as documented on setlist.fm and tour aggregators after the show, deliberately spanned the band's entire catalog — Schizophrenia, Beneath the Remains, Arise, Chaos A.D., Roots, Against, Kairos, Quadra, and the April 2026 farewell EP The Cloud of Unknowing: 1. Beneath the Remains (Intro) 2. Inner Self 3. All Souls Rising 4. Desperate Cry 5. Kairos 6. Means to an End 7. Attitude 8. Against 9. Choke 10. The Place 11. Escape to the Void 12. Kaiowas (with percussion jam and fans pulled onstage) 13. Dead Embryonic Cells 14. Slave New World 15. Beyond the Dream 16. Territory 17. Refuse/Resist 18. Arise 19. Ratamahatta (abridged, preceded by a Nekrutman drum solo) 20. Roots Bloody Roots What the Set Was Arguing The most interesting thing about this setlist, viewed end-to-end, is its refusal to organize itself around any single era. The Cavalera-period anchors are all present — "Inner Self," "Desperate Cry," "Dead Embryonic Cells," "Territory," "Refuse/Resist," "Arise," "Ratamahatta," "Roots Bloody Roots" — but they're interleaved with Green-era material from Against and Kairos, and with three songs from a farewell EP that's barely a month old. The implicit argument is one that Sepultura have made in interviews for years and that fans have not always accepted: that the post-1998 catalog is part of the canon, not a separate appendix. "Beyond the Dream" landing at track 16 — three songs from the end of a farewell show — is the clearest gesture. Sepultura could have used that slot for any number of crowd-tested classics. They chose a song from an EP released six weeks before the tour reached Berkeley, with Green leaning into a cleaner vocal approach over a Kisser solo that has more in common with the band's Quadra phase than with the Roots tracks bookending it. The placement reads as deliberate: the farewell isn't only an inventory of what the band was. It's also a final assertion of what they still are. The opening sequence works the same way. "War Pigs" as a walk-on is a reverent nod to the Sabbath lineage that made the whole genre possible; "Beneath the Remains" as intro then bridges directly into Sepultura's own 1989 watershed. The crowd response to "Inner Self" suggested most of the room was prepared for that history. The response to "Beyond the Dream" suggested the band has earned the right to add new material to the same conversation. The Three Pillars That Still Carry the Show For all the catalog-spanning ambition, three songs continue to do most of the structural work in a Sepultura set: "Territory" remains one of the band's most durable songs because it functions as both a protest march and a pit-starter. Built on a single mid-tempo chug rather than thrash velocity, it's the song that most clearly anticipates the groove-metal movement Sepultura helped instigate. "Refuse/Resist" is the Chaos A.D. statement piece, and it survives every era because it never depended on speed. Its power comes from restraint, repetition, and the sense that the central riff is locking the crowd into a single pulse — exactly the property a farewell crowd needs. "Arise" reaches further back into the band's sharper death-thrash period, a reminder that before Sepultura became a groove institution, they were one of the bands making extreme metal sound more global, more technical, and more dangerous. Hearing it at the UC, more than three decades after release, was the closest the show came to historical argument: this band built the bridge between Brazilian extreme metal and the international scene that absorbed it. "Ratamahatta," "Kaiowas," and the Larger Contribution The Kaiowas percussion jam, with fans pulled onstage, is a tour-wide ritual on this run; the Berkeley version was no exception. It's worth saying plainly why "Kaiowas" and "Ratamahatta" matter beyond the obvious crowd-pleasing function. Both songs are central to Sepultura's actual cultural contribution to heavy music: the argument, made musically rather than rhetorically, that metal could absorb regional rhythm, percussion, language, and identity without flattening any of it into novelty. Brazilian metal had existed before Sepultura. Sepultura made it impossible to ignore — and made it audible to bands from Norway to Indonesia who then ran with the permission. "Ratamahatta," even in the abridged Berkeley version preceded by Nekrutman's drum solo, was the cleanest reminder of that legacy in the room. "Roots Bloody Roots," as the closer, remained what it has always been: blunt, communal, almost ritualistic, the unavoidable final exclamation mark. One of the night’s strongest crossover moments came when Biohazard’s Evan Seinfeld joined Sepultura onstage for “Slave New World.” It was more than a guest appearance: Seinfeld is credited as a co-composer on the song, and his presence gave the Berkeley performance a direct bridge between Sepultura’s Chaos A.D. era and Biohazard’s New York hardcore-metal legacy. In a show already framed as a farewell, the cameo underscored how deeply Sepultura’s influence ran through the early-’90s collision of thrash, hardcore, groove, and street-level aggression. Nekrutman, In Particular Replacing Casagrande under normal circumstances would have been daunting; doing it on a farewell tour, with the band's entire history being audited by fans in real time, is another thing entirely. In Berkeley the drum solo slotted in just before "Ratamahatta" was not a polite gesture. It was a statement that the band is not hiding their 23-year-old behind the arrangements. The mid-set placement, surrounded by some of the most rhythmically distinctive material in Sepultura's catalog, was the test most worth watching. He passed it. Epilogue What made the night insightful rather than merely sentimental was the way Sepultura’s different eras rubbed against each other. The Derrick Green-era material asks fans to acknowledge the band as a living institution, not a museum of the Cavalera years. The Arise, Chaos A.D., and Roots songs carry the historical gravity. The farewell EP material argues that the final chapter is still part of the story. That tension is Sepultura’s legacy in miniature: fracture and continuity, tradition and reinvention, brutality and rhythm. The timing gave the show a sharper edge, too. Just one day before the UC Theatre performance, Sepultura announced that their last-ever concert will take place November 7, 2026 at Mercado Livre Arena Pacaembu in São Paulo. That announcement reframed Berkeley not as another tour stop but as part of the countdown to the band’s final act. As a writer for Fermented Metal — and a longtime fan — the larger cultural point is this: Sepultura’s farewell isn’t only about a metal band ending. It’s about a global metal institution showing how scenes travel. Brazilian metal, New York hardcore, Bay Area thrash, Texas death metal, and a Berkeley all-ages crowd all occupied the same room for one night. That is the real achievement of Sepultura’s career. The band didn’t just export Brazilian heaviness; they helped make metal feel less US- and Euro-centric and more genuinely worldly. The Berkeley performance was not a wake. It was a last call with the amps still hot — a celebration of life through death, exactly as advertised. Obrigado! See Sepultura's whole set

Inside Doom, the Philadelphia bar that turned the city's metal underground into a hospitality concept, and more... There is a black brick storefront on the 400 block of North 7th Street, just outside Center City, that looks like it has been waiting for you your whole life. Heavy velvet drapes part for an ornate, bone-trimmed chandelier, stained glass throws colored shadow on polished hardwood, and somewhere underneath the conversation, the sub-bass of an Electric Wizard side rolls through the room like a slow tide. The signage out front reads, simply, Doom. Eighteen months in, Doom is the closest thing the city has to a permanent address for the metal community — a bar built by people who actually listen to the music, decorated by people who draw it, and feeding people who came in off Spring Garden after the show ended. By Fermented Metal Staff / Interview conducted by Randall Wilburn— May 2026 The Long Slow Riff Seven years. That's how long Doom took from living inside Justin Holden's head to its existence on 7th Street. Holden had logged enough hospitality miles to see the next move laid out in front of him — climb into a corporate restaurant-director chair, accept the salary, stop dreaming — and decided he'd rather not. While he was running the floor at Royal Izakaya, a regular kept turning up at the bar: Will Yip, the Philadelphia-born producer whose name is on records by Title Fight, Turnstile, Circa Survive, and a long catalog of others. The two got to talking. Yip pushed the idea forward, signed on as business partner, and the math started to work. Yip's case for keeping the project in Philadelphia wasn't sentimental. It was economic. The city, unlike most of its East Coast peers, is still cheap enough that musicians and the people who feed and water them aren't mortgaging their lives to live there. You can feel that argument in the room. Doom is the kind of bar that could only really exist in a city with a working DIY scene still attached to it. Holden has talked openly about the bar's twin origin stories — a love of doom metal and a love of bars — and about a long-standing admiration for Chicago's Kuma's Corner, the original Black-Sabbath-burger temple. "It definitely gave me some confidence that a metal focused place that was also trying to do great food could work." Confidence, sure. But confidence isn't a buildout. "That was the time from idea to the execution," Holden says of the seven-year stretch, "with a lot of time spent working other jobs, finding partners, thinking about the concept, and looking for a space." The name was never really up for debate. "The name is in reference to Doom metal," Holden explains, "as I loved the idea of a bar that played only Doom metal. We do play lots of other subgenres but Doom is sort of the north star. A lot of the first metal bands I was into were Doom bands — Sabbath, Electric Wizard, Sleep. My brother also got me into a lot of old school death like Death, Morbid Angel, Carcass. I still listen to a lot of OSDM and all sorts of other stuff — when you work a lot and you work at a metal bar, there's lots of hours of metal! I also really like Conan, Bongripper, Graves at Sea, and there are a lot of great Philly bands — I like Bone Weapon, Grave Bathers, Ruby the Hatchet, Heavy Temple to name a few." You can chart the bar's sonic DNA from that list alone. Sabbath as foundation. Wizard and Sleep as the slow gravitational pull. The death-metal sidebar inherited from a brother's record collection. And the live, breathing layer underneath — the Philly bands Holden actually rubs elbows with — which is the part that explains why Doom feels like a clubhouse and not a theme park. The Room The Bone Chandelier: When first designing the bar, what Holden called, "The centerpiece.." Doom occupies two floors at 421 N. 7th Street in Callowhill — the former Loft District, an artistic-industrial pocket sandwiched between Northern Liberties and Chinatown. The address is no accident. The bar shares its block with Franklin Music Hall, the venue most Philadelphians knew as the Electric Factory, which means a measurable percentage of Doom's nightly traffic walks in still sweating from a show. Inside, the design splits the difference between gothic theater and DIY zine. Black walls, black bar, black napkins, black-and-red upholstery, soaring ceilings, custom stained glass, the aforementioned bone chandelier. Local art hangs (and sells) on the walls — the original interior pieces came from Philly tattoo and illustration heroes Doomed Future and Sea of Doom, with exterior signage hand-cut by Hand Over Fist Signs. Cathedral is the word everyone reaches for, and it isn't wrong. Critically, the music is loud enough to matter and quiet enough to talk over. Doom isn't a venue. It is a bar that takes the doom subgenre as its emotional palette — sonically rich, slow-moving, atmospheric — without imposing it on anyone trying to order a second round. The Food The kitchen at Doom belongs to Chef Ian Hunter, and the road that landed him on 7th Street has its own small Philly hospitality arc. Holden first crossed paths with him at a pop-up Hunter was running to preview a restaurant of his own. "The food rocked, and we had a lot of similar things we liked," Holden says, "Unfortunately that restaurant opened like a couple weeks before covid and couldn't really overcome that, at least in the iteration it was originally intended to be. But we always stayed in touch after that and eventually were able to work together." Vegan options are not afterthoughts. A BBQ jackfruit sandwich and seitan nuggets sit on the regular menu, not buried in a footnote. For a metal bar — a category historically allergic to anything green — that is a meaningful piece of programming. Rituals: Food and Drink, Doom style The Bar Program Six beers on draft, a deep bench of mezcal, rum, and whiskey, and a cocktail list that takes itself seriously without taking itself too seriously. The house signature is the Doom Me (pictured), a Black Manhattan in spirit — dark amaro, rye, a rhubarb shrub for an earthy lift, finished with a leafy garnish. The other talker is the Gintonic, a startlingly red G&T whose color comes from a house-made "blood" tonic. The list rotates a rotating cast of nerd-leaning callouts — a recent menu featured the Magic Missile, a Dark-and-Stormy variant subbing vodka for rum and named, of course, after the Dungeons & Dragons spell. photo credit: NICOLE GUGLIELMO, from theinfatuation.com The Community Calendar What separates Doom from "metal-themed restaurant" is that it actually programs the scene. The bar runs DJ nights, monthly movie screenings, and vendor markets. Heavy Metal Karaoke, hosted by Zakk Blakk, was a recurring event. The metalcore-focused Metal Night Philly Karaoke with DJ Dan von Doom and Rufus has also passed through. Two events from the last twelve months have gone beyond programming and become actual cultural moments: Split Thy Skull XXII (August 24, 2025) — the revival of the legendary Philadelphia barleywine festival that originated at Sugar Mom's in 1995 and lived for years at Tattooed Mom before going on hiatus. Doom partnered with Home Brewed Events (and got Tattooed Mom's blessing) to bring it back as a fundraiser for Circular Philadelphia. The pour list read like a dispatch from the gnarlier end of American craft: 3 Floyds, Human Robot, Imprint, New Trail, Vine Street, Widowmaker, Philadelphia Distilling, Art in the Age, ANXO Cider, BOTLD, The Vermouthery, Skurnik, and Doom's own house contributions. The fest's mission statement — "the gnarliest beverages in the world: intense mezcal, imperial stouts, funky rums, super hoppy beers, bitter amaros" — could double as Doom's bar-program manifesto. Miss American Vampire of Philadelphia (October 24, 2025) — the city's first vampire pageant, a deliberately campy revival of the 1970 Dark Shadows-era oddity. More than fifty hopefuls applied via Google Form, submitting vampiric backstories and talents. Thirteen finalists competed in costume parade, interview, and "dark art" categories before a panel of full-time goths and burlesque performers. Nora Morse took the crown; prizes included $100 cash, a custom set of fangs, and comic books donated by Atomic City Comics. The Inquirer and PhillyVoice both covered it. The room, by all accounts, was at capacity. Holden, "We're definitely doing another Vampire Pageant this October!" The Brewery and Band connections Doom's biggest gig to date is the partnership confirmed earlier this month: it is the official home base for Decibel Magazine's Metal & Beer Fest: Philly 2026, the festival's ninth edition, which took over the Fillmore on May 2–3, 2026, with Power Trip headlining Sunday (their first Philadelphia performance in seven years) and Municipal Waste closed Saturday with a celebration of The Art of Partying. Cryptopsy played a 30th-anniversary set of None So Vile; Cro-Mags revisited The Age of Quarrel for its 40th. The fest was all-ages for the first time, capped at 500 tickets per day. Doom offered beers from the 2026 Decibel Metal & Beer Fest Doom hosted the official Friday-night pre-party on May 1, took pre- and post-fest dinner traffic both Saturday and Sunday with the kitchen open til1 a.m., and closed the weekend with the Sunday-night after-party. The 3 Floyds-curated brewery lineup was in the building all weekend. Earlier in 2025, Doom and Vortex partnered on the unofficial after-party for Ministry's tour stop. Industry-Twitter still talks about it. Doom’s relationship with Attic Brewing ( no, not that one) feels like a natural extension of Philadelphia’s metal-and-beer ecosystem rather than a one-off tap handle. WXPN noted that Doom’s beverage program includes local collaborations, specifically citing “a recent tap from Attic Brewing made with Philly metal band Blasphemous,” placing the Germantown brewery inside Doom’s early identity as a heavy-music bar with serious local beer ties. The beer in question appears to be Dead and Still, a 7.4% black IPA brewed by Attic with Blasphemous, whom Attic described as “one of our favorite local underground metal bands and Attic regulars.” Attic released it around the band’s album To Lay Siege and Conquer, pairing the beer release with a listening party and band hang at the brewery. For Doom, carrying that collaboration helped connect three corners of the Philly underground: a new metal bar built beside Franklin Music Hall, a community-minded craft brewery with recurring Metal Monday programming, and a hometown extreme-metal band whose presence already overlaps with Attic’s taproom culture. Doom’s collaboration with Widowmaker Brewing strengthened the bar’s connection to the wider metal-adjacent craft beer circuit beyond Philadelphia. In April 2026, Widowmaker and Doom presented “Beer Is Not Doomed” at Doom Bar during the Craft Brewers Conference, built around the tapping of Beer Is Not Doomed, a West Coast IPA brewed as a collaboration between Widowmaker, Doom Bar, and Yakima Chief Hops. Widowmaker’s own listing describes the beer as a 7% West Coast IPA hopped with Mosaic, Mosaic Cryo, Mosaic Hyperboost, Idaho 7, and Idaho 7 Cryo, and identifies it directly as “a collaboration with Doom Bar in Philadelphia.” The event also turned Doom into a mini beer-fest hub, with guest breweries including Brujos, Burial, Fidens, Human Robot, North Park, Requiem, Twin Elephant, and Xul, plus DJ sets and a live performance by The Heavy Seventies playing retro and proto-metal covers. For Doom, the Widowmaker partnership helped position the bar not just as a local metal hangout, but as a gathering point where touring brewers, hop suppliers, heavy-music fans, and Philadelphia’s beer scene could meet under one very loud roof. An Attic Brewery collab What's Next? Holden and Yip have been deliberately careful about not over-promising on expansion. The publicly known horizon is the Decibel weekend in May and the next iteration of Split Thy Skull, presumably in the late summer. There is nothing in the public record about a second location, a label imprint, or a venue arm — and given how recently Doom opened, that restraint reads like the point. The bar is already doing the cultural work that most metal-themed concepts only gesture at. It doesn't need to scale to be the answer to the question of where the Philadelphia scene goes after the lights come up. For a metalhead, its one of the dark corners of the world you can grab a few great drinks, some great food, listen to some great music, and for a few hours, call home. Custom stained glass by Philadelphia artist Kristin Scholz, better known as Sea of Doom Open Wednesday through Sunday, 5 p.m.–2 a.m. 421 N. 7th St., Philadelphia, PA 19123. Inquiries: info@doom.bar.

Heavy metal’s decade-long booze boom produced beloved brands, quiet failures, and a blueprint for what craft collaboration can actually look like. Where are we at today? BY STAFF · FERMENTED METAL MAGAZINE · APRIL 2026 In a rickhouse somewhere... ... in the American whiskey belt, a row of bourbon barrels sits stacked in the dark. A battery of subwoofers — black, road-worn, the kind of gear a touring band would recognize — is pointed at the staves. When the programmable playlist kicks in, the barrels pulse. Not metaphorically. Physically. The low frequencies of Metallica’s catalogue, played loud enough to shake the wood, agitate the finished whiskey against the char. This is not a publicity stunt, although the marketing department is happy to let you believe it might be. It is the actual finishing process for Metallica’s Blackened whiskey, a brand that has, against the odds of novelty-licensing conventional wisdom, become one of the most credible craft spirits of the last decade. It has also become the most visible exhibit in a wider phenomenon that, since 2013, has turned heavy metal into one of the most reliable business partners that craft fermenters have. Beer, wine, whiskey — if it ferments, someone has put a pentagram on it. And for every Blackened or Trooper, there is a discontinued SKU gathering dust in a regional distributor’s warehouse, a reminder that the formula is not as simple as logo + liquid = sales. The genre that built its aesthetic on darkness, volume, and authenticity turns out to have an unusually strong set of shared values with the craft fermentation world. Both worship process. Both are suspicious of the mainstream. Both prize the small-batch, the ritual, the obsessive. But the collaborations that have survived a full album cycle — let alone a full decade — share something else, too: an actual artist in the room, and an actual producer who gives a damn about the liquid. The Benchmark When Iron Maiden released Trooper in May 2013 through the family-run Robinsons Brewery in Stockport, England, the deal looked, on paper, like every other novelty beer deal of the era. A legacy band with an aging fanbase. A regional brewery hoping for a volume boost. A bottle labeled with Eddie astride a galloping horse. The expected trajectory: a six-month pop, a year of declining reorders, and then the slow fade to retail irrelevance. That is not what happened. Bruce Dickinson — pilot, fencer, cancer survivor, and, as it turns out, a credible amateur beer enthusiast — worked on the recipe directly with Robinsons’ brewing team. The resulting beer was a session-strength premium bitter at 4.7 percent ABV, balanced toward honey and citrus rather than the aggressive hop-forward profile that was already becoming the craft beer standard. The early production run sold out in weeks. By May 2024, according to Robinsons and industry coverage in The Drinks Business, Trooper had sold more than 30 million pints in 60 countries. Robinsons now produces a growing Trooper family — Trooper 666, Sun and Steel (a sake-infused lager), Fear of the Dark (a stout), Hallowed (a Belgian), Red ‘N’ Black (a porter), and the 10th-anniversary Trooper X pale ale — and the brand has sustained itself across multiple countries, multiple distributors, and an entire generation of metalheads who have aged into the demographic that buys cases rather than singles. Trooper is the benchmark not because it is the most sophisticated collaboration in the space — it is not — but because it was the proof of concept. It demonstrated that a metal-branded beer could outlive the hype cycle, that a band could be a real recipe collaborator rather than a logo hire, and that the craft drinker and the metal drinker were, more often than the industry realized, the same person. The Sophistication If Trooper was the benchmark, Blackened was the sophistication. Launched in September 2018, Blackened was the final project of Dave Pickerell, the former Maker’s Mark master distiller who had earlier engineered WhistlePig’s rye renaissance. Pickerell died on November 1 of that year, only weeks after the whiskey reached market. He had called it, in interviews published by Revolver and The Bourbon Review, his true legacy. The project was not a vanity collaboration. Pickerell had pitched the band on a rotating blend of American whiskeys, finished in black brandy casks, with the final maturation stage put through a proprietary sonic enhancement process he called the Black Noise. The Black Noise is where the project separates itself from its peers. Each batch of Blackened is finished in a rickhouse wired with low-frequency transducers, playing a band-curated Metallica playlist into the staves. The company’s published theory is that the sub-bass vibrations agitate the liquid inside the cask, increasing the surface contact with the charred wood and accelerating extraction. Critics in the spirits press have expressed skepticism about the magnitude of the effect. Few have disputed that the resulting whiskey is, at minimum, a genuine craft product. Pickerell’s successor Rob Dietrich, formerly master distiller at Denver’s Stranahan’s, expanded the Blackened line after taking over. Blackened Rye, the Lightning, single barrel releases, and a Masters of Whiskey Series of collaborations — its first release, Blackened x Willett, is a cask-strength Kentucky straight rye finished in madeira casks, blended from Willett Family Estate rye and produced with Willett master distiller Drew Kulsveen — now anchor the brand. The flagship sits at a suggested retail price around the mid-forties. Limited releases have fetched considerably more on secondary. By volume Blackened is small compared to Trooper. By margin and by critical reception, it has become the model that everyone else wants to emulate. That is a problem for everyone else. The Middle Class Between the Trooper model — mass-market craft partnership with a regional brewery — and the Blackened model — artisanal spirits with a band that can bankroll its own barrels — sits the bulk of the current metal-fermentation landscape: the middle-tier collaboration. These tend to be limited releases, festival drops, anniversary editions, and one-off recipe partnerships with respected craft brewers. They are where most of the actual creative work is happening, and where the margin between “successful” and “quietly discontinued” is thinnest. Mastodon’s long relationship with Mikkeller, the Danish gypsy-brewing outfit, is the most durable of these. The pair have produced a rotating slate of limited releases — Mother Puncher, a Brettanomyces-fermented IPA with passion fruit first released in 2015; Sultan’s Curse, a bourbon-barrel-aged imperial stout brewed with dates, toasted pistachios, and cardamom, released in 2018; and the Czech pilsner Ancient Kingdom — that have moved through Mikkeller’s global bar network and stayed in sporadic rotation for close to a decade. Amon Amarth have worked with two very different breweries in two very different registers: 3 Floyds of Munster, Indiana, on a strong porter called Ragnarök, and later Bitburger on the limited-edition Simcoe-hopped export lager Nordic Gold, released around 2022. The Three Floyds collaboration in particular delivered the malt-forward weight that matches the band’s Viking iconography. Behemoth’s work with the Polish craft brewery Perun produced the Belgian-style Sacrum (6.2 percent ABV, 2015) and the American amber Heretyk; the band later crossed the Atlantic to brew the double IPA Wolf ov Siberia with Brooklyn’s Kings County Brewers Collective. Municipal Waste, who treat beer as brand DNA rather than as side hustle, brewed the Toxic Revolution oatmeal stout (8.5 percent ABV) with 3 Floyds in 2013, and followed it with the Divine Blasphemer porter at Cigar City in Tampa. Kvelertak, the Norwegian metal-punk band, have sold their own-label beer at European tour stops since at least 2011. The list of surviving, respectable, repeatable collaborations is longer than the casual drinker would guess. The common denominator is not genre loyalty. Some of these pairings cross fermentation cultures wildly — sludge-metal bands on hazy IPAs, thrash bands on pilsners. The common denominator is a specific kind of creative seriousness. When a band member can talk with genuine fluency about Saccharomyces pastorianus versus cerevisiae, or about the difference between a rye mash bill at 51 percent versus 95 percent, the collaboration tends to produce something worth drinking. When they cannot, it does not. The Graveyard Which brings us to the “not so lucky", which are not small in number. Slayer’s Reign in Blood Red, a California Cabernet Sauvignon named for the band’s 1986 album, was first introduced in 2012 as a 2010 vintage and is currently produced by Cypher Winery in Paso Robles. The liquid, by the accounts of wine writers who reviewed it, has been competent throughout. The commercial project, however, lost its biggest sell-through driver when Slayer concluded its farewell tour in 2019. Distribution has ridden an inconsistent arc since. Megadeth’s À Tout le Monde Belgian Saison, brewed in collaboration with Unibroue and released in 2016, had legitimate craft credentials — Unibroue is one of North America’s most respected Belgian-style producers — and moved significant volume in its initial release window. A 2019 follow-up, Saison 13, extended the line but has not itself become a perennial. Motörhead’s Shiraz, produced in southeastern Australia by Broken Back Winery and launched in 2010 on Lemmy Kilmister’s personal initiative, has outlived the band’s frontman but operates, in the post-Lemmy era, as a licensed estate wine rather than as a living collaboration. AC/DC’s wine portfolio with the Australian Warburn Estate, launched in 2011, has had a more stable run but operates more as straightforward celebrity licensing than as a collaboration with creative input. At the lower-profile end, the graveyard is larger still. Anthrax’s Wardance pale ale with Butternuts Beer & Ale (2014) was named for a line from “Indians,” moved through the Northeast on the back of an enthusiastic rollout, and is no longer in production. Hatebreed’s long-running Breedbrew line with Connecticut’s Witchdoctor Brewing, which survives as one of the few independent-metal beer programs with a coherent portfolio, is an exception rather than the rule. Most of the others — one-time festival exclusives, anniversary releases tied to album cycles, tour-market drops that were never meant to have a second pressing — are either out of circulation or distributed on a basis that is effectively equivalent. The pattern in the failures is instructive, and repeats regardless of subgenre: a licensing deal rather than a collaboration, a fermenter chosen for volume rather than fit, a band whose own trajectory was already past its commercial peak, or — in the worst cases — a liquid that simply was not good enough to justify a return purchase at the price the branding commanded. The Mechanics The economics underneath this category have shifted meaningfully since Trooper’s 2013 launch. A decade ago, the prevailing model was a conventional licensing deal: a band’s management company licensed the brand, a fermenter wrote a royalty check, a designer did a label, and a limited run went to retail. The band’s involvement, if any, was a photo shoot and a press release. The margin looked attractive until the second-year reorders did not materialize. The current model, in the collaborations that are working, looks much more like how craft fermenters collaborate with each other. The band member or members who actually care about beer, whiskey, or wine — and this set is not small; Dickinson, Scott Ian of Anthrax, Nergal of Behemoth, and various members of Mastodon and Municipal Waste, among others, have well-documented personal involvement in fermentation — are in the room for recipe development. The band’s equity in the product is often real equity, not a royalty. Distribution is handled by the fermenter’s existing network, which means the product is shelved alongside other craft product rather than in the novelty aisle. Pricing respects the fermenter’s existing tier. Blackened is the clearest example of this model taken to its logical endpoint. The product is owned by Sweet Amber Distilling, the band’s own spirits company, rather than licensed to an outside brand. The company controls the mash bill, the finishing, the marketing, and the pricing. The band is the ownership. Trooper operates closer to the classical model but has been unusually successful because Robinsons treats it as a flagship rather than a sideline, and because Dickinson continues to show up. Bruce Dickinson at Robinson's Unicorn Brewery. Photo provided by Rees Croasdell: Robinsons Brewery Visitor Centre Ambassador A third model has begun to emerge: the direct-to-consumer, members-club release. Bands with sufficiently committed fanbases — and a back-catalogue of limited releases worth collecting — are increasingly bypassing traditional distribution. Blackened’s batch releases and the allocations it sends direct to its mailing list are the most prominent example. Kvelertak and a handful of European metal acts have experimented with similar limited-allocation models through European craft networks. The implication is that the future of the category may not look like the shelf at a big-box liquor store. It may look like the mailing list for a highly specific subculture, with a few big commercial exceptions at the Trooper and Blackened tier. What You Are Actually Drinking Strip out the branding, the aesthetic, the logos that scowl back at you from the bottle, and a fair question remains: is the liquid good? The honest answer, across the category, is that it varies more than fans want to admit and more than detractors want to concede. The best products in the category would be good products without the branding. Blackened’s whiskey holds up under a blind tasting against craft American whiskey at its price point, and its Masters of Whiskey Series releases have drawn coverage in Whisky Advocate on their merits. Trooper is a competent premium bitter that would survive a CAMRA evaluation without the Eddie label. The Mastodon–Mikkeller releases have earned serious scores on the major beer-rating platforms. Behemoth’s Sacrum held its own in Polish craft beer press. These are not charity scores. The worst products in the category are novelty liquid with novelty prices, trading entirely on the merch-table impulse purchase. The listener who buys one of these with high expectations is the listener who gets turned off the category for life. That is a long-term problem for everyone operating in the space: a bad first bottle from one band sours the customer on the next band’s good bottle. The middle of the category — which is most of it — is pleasant-to-good product that is perfectly worth drinking at the fair price and perfectly dismissible at the hype price. Festival drops and tour-market releases typically fall here. That is not a scandal. That is, arguably, exactly the role a limited-edition collectible beverage should play in a fan’s year. It is a scandal when the pricing does not match. What It Means The thing that is easy to miss from outside the genre is that this is, as cross-industry collaborations go, healthy. Heavy metal and craft fermentation are two subcultures that, on the surface, share an aesthetic — black labels, baroque typography, a fondness for imagery that would alarm your grandmother — but actually share something more durable: a shared worship of process, small-batch attention, and the willingness to pay — and charge — a premium for it. For the musicians, a working fermentation partnership is a revenue line that does not depend on streaming economics. The loyalty of the metal listener, whose median willingness to buy a physical object attached to a band they love remains stubbornly high in a market where that willingness has collapsed almost everywhere else, translates cleanly to willingness to buy a bottle. For the fermenters, access to a subculture with a well-documented consumption habit and strong brand attachment is a growth lever that does not require national advertising. For the drinker, in the best case, it is a genuinely interesting bottle, a meaningful connection to a band they love, and a reason to pay attention to a small fermenter they otherwise would not have found. The category is now mature enough that it is starting to weed itself. The cynical licensing plays are getting called out faster, by a fanbase that is not naive. The novelty prices are getting rejected by a customer base that has lived through enough bad first bottles. The serious collaborations — the ones with an artist in the room and a producer who takes the liquid seriously — are building multi-release brands with staying power. A reasonable bet, looking at the next five years: the middle will thin, the top will consolidate, and the category will settle into something closer to a stable, long-running craft segment rather than a gold-rush opportunity. The Blackeneds of the world will continue to operate as artist-owned premium brands. The Troopers will continue to operate as flagship regional partnerships. The middle tier will look more like serious craft collaboration and less like licensing deal. And the graveyard will keep growing, as it should — because the shelves were never big enough for all of it, and the drinker was never going to tolerate bad liquid forever. Heavy metal, in its better moments, has always understood that authenticity is the only thing that survives. The fermenters working with it are learning the same lesson. Prost! ¡Salud! Cheers! Skål! 乾杯! ✶ ✶ ✶

Fermented Metal Magazine | Contributor - Tim McShane When Motörhead launched Bastards Lager in June 2012, it was more than a band beer with a loud label. It was the first serious attempt to turn the group’s hard-drinking mythology into an actual beer release, and it arrived with more structure behind it than a simple licensing stunt. The lager was named after the band’s 1993 album Bastards, brewed in Sweden by Krönleins Bryggeri, and initially sold through Systembolaget, Sweden’s state alcohol retail system. Inception: A Band, a Brand, and a Swedish Festival By the early 2010s, Motörhead had already dipped a steel-toed boot into the beverage trade. In 2010 the band released Motörhead Shiraz, produced with Australia's Broken Back Winery, followed by vodka and whisky SKUs. But none of those felt quite right for a band whose off-stage reputation was built, famously, on bourbon and cans of whatever was closest. A beer was the obvious gap, and Lemmy, Phil Campbell, and Mikkey Dee wanted it done properly rather than slapped onto a generic contract brew. The vehicle was Brands For Fans, the Swedish licensing agency founded by Sari H. Wilholm and Yvonne Wener that specialises in pairing rock acts with domestic producers. Brands For Fans had already brokered the Motörhead Shiraz deal, and it became the connective tissue between the band and the brewery. The name was a deliberate nod to Bastards, Motörhead's 1993 studio album — the first record with drummer Mikkey Dee and a fan-cherished entry in the catalogue. Choosing it for the maiden beer release signalled that this was a product for the faithful, not a tourist souvenir. How the Brewery Got Involved The brewing partner was Krönleins Bryggeri, a family-run independent in Halmstad on Sweden's west coast, founded in 1836. Krönleins had two qualities that mattered to the project: a long lager pedigree and the flexibility of an independent producer willing to develop a recipe to spec rather than rebadge an existing beer. The brewery is perhaps best known outside its own lineup for producing the house-branded beers sold at IKEA, giving it genuine experience with large licensed partnerships. Working with Brands For Fans and the band, Krönleins developed a 4.7% ABV pale lager built for the Motörhead audience — "fresh and fruity… with a wonderful character of light malt," in Yvonne Wener's description at launch, "easy to drink but with a hard rock edge." It arrived in 330 ml bottles, priced at SEK 19.90 a bottle, and was sold through Sweden's state alcohol monopoly Systembolaget, available by the 24-bottle case on special order. First-Edition Reach At launch, Bastards Lager was a Sweden-only release — a constraint the team was open about, while flagging hopes of a wider rollout. Motörhead and Brands For Fans billed it publicly as "the world's first real rock beer," a claim picked up by Blabbermouth, Loudwire, BraveWords, and The Drinks Business in the days around Sweden Rock 2012. Bastards Lager The band's first-edition official beer, launched in June 2012 at the Sweden Rock Festival in Sölvesborg. Whether or not that superlative holds up to strict scrutiny, the first edition did something more important: it proved that a properly brewed, band-backed lager could sell on the merits of the liquid, not just the logo — paving the way for Motörhead's later beer work, including the 2015 Röad Crew session pale ale with England's Camerons Brewery. Fact Sheet Product: Motörhead Bastards Lager (1st edition) Launch: June 2012, Sweden Rock Festival Brewery: Krönleins Bryggeri, Halmstad, Sweden (est. 1836) Licensor: Brands For Fans (Sweden) Style / ABV: Pale lager, 4.7% ABV Format: 330 ml bottle Original market: Sweden only, via Systembolaget Name origin: Album release Bastards (Motörhead, 1993) Motorhead Bastards Lager Metal Collection Image provided by Pontus. See "Metal Collection" article

Fermented Metal Magazine | Contributor - Tim McShane There is a street in the heart of Paris that has whispered jazz into the night for decades. The Rue des Lombards, threading through the 1st and 4th arrondissements just a stone’s throw from the Centre Pompidou, is a narrow artery of sound — home to Le Baiser Salé, Le Duc des Lombards, and the twin stages of Sunset/Sunside. Generations of Parisians have come here to hear trumpet solos bleed into the small hours. It is, in every sense, jazz country. And then there is number 26. Step through the door of Le Black Dog and the syncopated cool of the neighbourhood evaporates instantly, replaced by the crunch of down-tuned guitars, the sulphurous perfume of grilled Argentine beef, and the warm, conspiratorial darkness of a bar that has decided — emphatically, joyfully — that it belongs to a different tribe entirely. This is Paris’s most beloved heavy metal bar, a cathedral of riffs squatting defiantly on the city’s most storied music strip. I came to find out how it got here, what it offers, and why metalheads keep making the pilgrimage. Before the Dogs Came: A Jazz Street Address The Rue des Lombards takes its name from the Lombard money-lenders who settled in this quarter of medieval Paris. By the 20th century, the street had shed its mercantile identity and reinvented itself as a corridor of cool, mirroring the broader jazz migration that swept through Paris after the Second World War. American expatriate musicians found a city hungry for bebop and blues, and the clubs that opened along these narrow pavements became legendary gathering points. The address at number 26 sat squarely within this ecosystem — for much of the late 20th century it functioned as a conventional Parisian bar-café of the type that lines every arrondissement, serving wine and conversation to locals who arrived before the music started two doors down. Plaque de la rue des Lombards, Paris.( Chabe01) By the late 1990s, as Paris’s nightlife scene began fracturing into ever more specific tribes, the neighbourhood around Châtelet-Les Halles began attracting a younger, louder crowd. The city had long harboured a passionate underground metal community — French acts like Massacra, Loudblast, and Gojira were earning international reputations, while international touring bands routinely passed through — but this community had precious few dedicated spaces in which to congregate. Number 26 Rue des Lombards, in this context, was waiting for its destiny. The Transformation: October 2002 Le Black Dog opened its doors in October 2002, and the Rue des Lombards has never quite recovered. The concept was audacious by Parisian standards: a two-floor bar and restaurant dedicated entirely to heavy metal, planted on the city’s premier jazz strip. The name itself is widely taken as a wink — presumably a nod to Led Zeppelin’s 1971 thunderclap of a track and, more broadly, to the persistent, feral loyalty of the metal community itself. The transformation of the space was total. Where a conventional café had stood, the new owners installed what can only be described as a neo-industrial grotto. The interior exists somewhere between a factory floor and a medieval dungeon: red tables squat beneath hanging chains, animal bones and Western-style skull prints crowd the walls, and faux stone urns serve as table bases. On weekends, the basement level opens — a cramped, cave-like extension that pushes the capacity of the venue and, inevitably, the hearing of everyone inside it. The soundtrack was, from day one, non-negotiable. While Le Baiser Salé sends trumpet lines drifting across the cobbles, Le Black Dog answers with Sabbath, Slayer, Electric Wizard, and whatever the regulars have demanded. The contrast is not incidental — it is, for the bar’s devotees, a large part of the point. Metal, after all, has always thrived in opposition. Wall Art Events and the Gathering of the Tribe Over the past two decades, Le Black Dog has established itself as the de facto pre- and post-gig headquarters for metal fans converging on Paris. When a major act plays the Olympia or the Zénith, you will find the overflow — the patch-jacket faithful, the tour managers, the journalists, the band’s third guitarist nursing a pint — at Le Black Dog. Its central location, ten minutes on foot from most of the city’s major venues, makes it a natural rallying point. Beyond its role as an informal gathering hub, the bar has hosted a roster of dedicated metal events. Greek doom merchants Acid Mammoth have graced the venue’s cramped stage, filling the grotto with fuzz-drenched riffs that seemed to make the chains on the walls vibrate in sympathy. Battle Hymn of Metal nights — raucous communal celebrations of the genre’s canon — have become a recurring fixture, mixing crowd-sourced setlists with theatrical reverence. Album release parties, label showcase evenings, and impromptu jam sessions have all found a home within these walls. The atmosphere on such nights is somewhere between a congregation and a mosh pit: reverent, sweaty, and entirely alive. The bar also functions as a quiet meeting ground on ordinary weeknights — a place where local musicians decompress after rehearsal, tattoo artists drink after a long shift, and Parisian metalheads discover that the person on the next barstool is equally passionate about the third Mayhem album. It is, in the best tradition of great music bars, a community as much as it is a commercial venue. The Pour: Metal-Themed Beers and the Liquid Arsenal A bar is ultimately judged by what it puts in the glass, and Le Black Dog approaches this responsibility with the same commitment it brings to everything else. The tap selection rotates on a monthly basis, ensuring that regulars are rarely confronted with the same lineup twice. Craft ales share the menu with traditional Belgian and German imports, and the bar has made a point of incorporating mead and cider into its offerings — a nod to metal’s enduring romance with the ancient and the elemental. The naming philosophy for the drinks menu is, predictably, on-theme. Seasonal and rotating taps arrive with names drawn from metal imagery — ales branded with skulls and inverted crosses, stouts bearing the names of mythological catastrophes, IPAs marketed as though they could corrode the glass. It is a knowing wink to the regulars, and it works. The bar has also consistently offered vegan-friendly options alongside its meat-heavy food programme, a pragmatic acknowledgement that the contemporary metal community is broader and more varied than its leather-and-bullet-belt reputation might suggest. The food side of the operation is anchored by its Argentine restaurant, which takes its meat provenance seriously. Cuts arrive directly sourced from the Argentine pampas, and the menu items are named with the same dark wit applied to the drinks. The “Tant Pis Si j’en Crève” — roughly translatable as “Too Bad If It Kills Me” — is a 1kg false filet served with characteristic theatrical indifference to cardiological consequence. The “Peine de Mort,” a 600g ribeye whose name translates simply as “Death Penalty,” is equally unambiguous. Empanadas and spiced meatballs round out a menu that functions both as sustenance and as part of the bar’s broader personality. The Faithful Speak: Fan Commentary No account of Le Black Dog would be complete without the voices of those who return to it, season after season, album cycle after album cycle. The bar inspires a particular brand of devotion — part affection, part territorial pride, occasionally inflected with the grumbling realism of people who love something precisely because it refuses to be polished. “Best metal bar in Paris — no contest.” So begins one of the most-cited reviews of the bar online, and it sets the tone for the majority of fan responses. Visitors from across Europe and North America who have made the pilgrimage consistently describe Le Black Dog as an essential stop — a place that feels authentically dedicated to the music rather than costumed around it for tourist appeal. “It’s not a metal-themed bar,” one visitor from London noted. “It’s a metal bar. There’s a difference.” The regulars are, by most accounts, genuinely welcoming. “Metalheads are the best type of people,” reads one online review that has accumulated considerable agreement. “Walked in not knowing anyone. Walked out with three new friends and a recommendation for a show the following night.” This sense of instant community — a feature of metal culture more broadly, but one that Le Black Dog seems to actively cultivate — recurs across testimonials from visitors of wildly different backgrounds. Touring musicians who have passed through Paris speak of Le Black Dog with particular warmth. It is the kind of bar that exists in cities all over the world — the place where the band goes after soundcheck, where the rider runs out and someone starts a tab, where the conversation turns from set lists to record labels to the great unresolved arguments of the genre. For visiting acts, it functions as an instant connection to the local scene, a room where the enthusiasm of the audience is palpable and unfeigned. The Riff Endures I left Le Black Dog on a Thursday evening with the smell of grilled meat in my jacket and a reasonably priced Belgian dark ale warming its way through me. Out on the Rue des Lombards, a pianist inside Le Baiser Salé was picking out something slow and blue. The contrast — between the jazz that owns this street by birthright and the metal that has planted its flag defiantly within it — felt less like a conflict than like a conversation. Different languages, the same love of volume and feeling and the particular electricity of live music in a small room. Le Black Dog has been doing this for over twenty years now, and it shows no signs of capitulating to the neighborhood. It remains what it decided to become in October 2002: the place in Paris where the riff rules, the beef is serious, the beer rotates, and the community is real. On a street that has always understood that music is not decoration but necessity, that feels exactly right. LE BLACK DOG · 26 Rue des Lombards, 75004 Paris · Métro: Châtelet Hours · Mon–Thu 12:00–02:00 · Fri–Sat 15:00–05:00 · Sun 17:00–02:00 Established · October 2002 Speciality · Heavy metal bar & Argentine steak restaurant

Inside the Swedish archive of Pontus — a collector whose metal collection o f has spent more than a decade tracking the beers, wines, and spirits that metal bands put their name on, and the fan-made bootlegs that orbit around them. By the Fermented Metal staff | Interview conducted by editor Randall Wilburn Pontus (right) with Slayer’s Kerry King outside a show, holding bottles of the band’s signed “Reign In Blood” cabernet — one of the encounters that turned a casual interest into an archive. Pontus does not, by his own admission, drink much. He keeps a few beers in the fridge, likes a light lager, and will happily tell you the Motörhead pilsners are still the ones he reaches for. And yet, tucked into a corner of Sweden, he has built one of the more unusual reference libraries in heavy music — a shelf-after-shelf collection of the bottles, cans, and branded drinks that bands have put their logos on over the last forty years. The beverages, though, are just one wing of a much larger house. Pontus catalogues his full archive at metalcollection.se, a dense, lovingly maintained personal site that sprawls across vinyl and LPs grouped alphabetically from A to Z, CDs, CD singles, and 7-inches, deep band-specific pages for the acts he has followed longest — Megadeth, D-A-D, Jorn Lande, and many more — a genre index with its own stops for black metal and beyond, a setlists section thick with torn paper from shows across Sweden and abroad, a “Mixed stuff” drawer for everything that refuses to be categorized, and a photo archive that documents the decades he has spent turning up at gigs. Under all of that, filed as its own section, sits “Music Beverages & more” — the corner of the collection that first caught our eye. What began around 2012 as a pair of KISS wine bottles bought from a friend “because they looked cool” has become, whether Pontus intended it or not, a quiet act of preservation. Swedish spirits shops release band-branded runs. German webstores won’t ship to Stockholm. A Guns N’ Roses reference hides on a dusty American liquor-store shelf until someone is willing to drive between cities to find it. Every bottle is a small logistics problem and, eventually, an artifact. We reached out to Pontus to talk about how the collection started, what he still hunts for, where he finds fan-made oddities, and what this strange little niche of memorabilia says about the way metal fans hold onto the bands they love. He answered from Sweden, between spins of VAIN, Megadeth, and a new Gothenburg band he thinks sounds like a young Metallica. “Back then there wasn’t very much to collect and items were sometimes difficult to find.” — Pontus, on the early years of the archive HOW IT STARTED Pontus places the start of the collection at roughly 2012. “Back then there wasn’t very much to collect and items were sometimes difficult to find,” he says. The trigger was a pair of KISS wine bottles bought off a friend — purely an aesthetic decision. From there, the interest “slowly started to grow.” Today he describes himself as a semi-retired collector. “I hardly collect anymore but I buy some things now and then.” Sweden, he notes, is an unexpectedly fertile market: a handful of Swedish companies put out band-branded beer, wine, and spirits on a regular cadence. The hurdle is everything else. Rammstein’s web shop, for example, won’t ship to Sweden at all — so Pontus routes purchases through a German contact who buys the bottles and then mails them privately across the border. The collection, in other words, is also a network of favours. FESTIVAL ISSUE. Copenhell 2019 — a limited-run black lager released by Royal Beer to promote the Danish metal festival. The can’s “R.I.P.” nod to four-day tickets is pure festival marketing, and pure collector bait. THE FAN-MADE UNDERGROUND Not every bottle on Pontus’ shelves came from a label deal or a band webstore. A whole subcategory of his archive is fan-made — unofficial homebrews and custom-label pressings that circulate through the community. An Ozzy “Blizzard of Ozz” beer, for instance, was never an official release; a fan designed the label, bottled the beer, and put it into the wild. FAN MADE: A fan made "Blizzard of Ozz" bottle Pontus no longer owns. Sometimes you have to make room for the real stuff... “I have found some fan-made stuff on eBay and also in Facebook groups,” he says. “Some are very nicely made and some pretty bad.” It’s the kind of ecosystem collectors of any niche will recognize — an unofficial layer running alongside the licensed one, traded peer-to-peer, with quality that swings wildly between something that could pass for a real brewery release and something printed on a home printer. THE HUNT, AND WHAT HURTS TO HOLD Ask him which single bottle was hardest to find and the answer is immediate: Night Train. The $4 fortified wine Guns N’ Roses wrote a song about is famously cheap and, it turns out, famously regional. “A guy in the US went to a lot of stores before he finally found it,” Pontus says. Once the bottle was located, the real cost showed up in the shipping: postage from the US to Sweden, plus Swedish customs, made a bottle of inexpensive fortified wine into a logistical project. Guns N Roses Night Train - The cheap wine they made a song about “My rarest bottle today is a Motörhead beer signed by Lemmy, Phil, and Mikkey. Now it’s only Mikkey still alive of those three.” — Pontus That last line is the heart of the collection, and the reason a project like this stops being a hobby and starts being an archive. The bottle is a single object that passed through the hands of three specific men in a specific configuration — a configuration that will never exist again. Lemmy Kilmister and Philthy Animal Taylor are both gone; Mikkey Dee is still touring. The signatures are a timestamp. The bottle is what’s left. THE MOTÖRHEAD SHELF. From left: the Overkill 40th Anniversary pilsner by Cameron’s; a Motörhead Imperial Pale Ale; and three bottles of the Bastards line of “beer drinkers and hell raisers.” The bottle on the far right is signed — one of three Motörhead signatures (Lemmy, Phil, and Mikkey) on what Pontus now calls the rarest piece in the archive. WHAT’S STILL MISSING? For a collector to stop chasing something is almost a philosophical move, and Pontus has quietly made it. “Nothing today,” he says of active want-list items. The Megadeth wines used to be the whale — he wanted the full set — but the sheer volume of Mustaine Vineyards releases wore him out. One bottle still flickers on the horizon: a W.A.S.P. wine released in the late ’80s. “It would be nice to have,” he says, “but it costs way too much if you even find it.” File it under the collector’s version of a white whale: known to exist, almost never for sale, priced beyond reason when it does surface. MUSTAINE VINEYARDS Five bottles from Dave Mustaine’s California wine project — Symphony Interrupted Cabernet Sauvignon, Blood of the Hero Syrah, Kingmaker proprietary red, Hangar 18 Monterey red, and a Tempranillo Rosé. Pontus used to chase these; now, he says, “they have released so many of them I got tired of collecting.” WHAT DOES PONTUS DRINK? Despite the shelves, Pontus is a light drinker. “I don’t drink much but I like to have a few beers,” he says. The daily driver, when he pours one, is a Motörhead — “really good, if you like a light lager.” It’s a useful reminder that a collection built around alcohol is not necessarily a collection about drinking. For Pontus, the bottles are primarily objects: labels, eras, signatures, shipping receipts, stories about the guy in the US who drove between stores. WHERE TO DRINK METAL IN SWEDEN There aren’t many breweries in Sweden running dedicated metal programs, but the bar side of the scene is well-served. In Gothenburg, Pontus points to 2112 — the restaurant owned by former In Flames members, whose name will need no translation for Rush fans. In Stockholm, there’s Garlic & Shots, co-owned by Swedish musicians including members of Candlemass, serving garlic-intensive food and shot menus underneath a heavy-music aesthetic. D-A-D, IN TRIPLICATE Three cans from the long-running Danish rock band: two “Bad Craziness” official anniversary beers flanking the blue-can edition marking thirty years of D-A-D. A reminder that Scandinavia takes its band-branded beer more seriously than most. IN THE EARS Asked what he’s listening to, Pontus gives the kind of sprawling, list-heavy answer that outs a lifelong fan. He buys a lot of music. He still returns to the ’80s bands that shaped him — VAIN, Megadeth, HammerFall, KISS, In Flames, D-A-D, and Accept all make his all-time list — but his recent-listens log has teeth too. Top of the recommendation list: Bloodstain, a new Swedish band he describes as sounding “like a young Metallica,” and The Halo Effect, the supergroup built from former In Flames members fronted by Mikael Stanne of Dark Tranquillity. Beyond those, he rattles off a tour of the melodic and hard rock end of the Swedish scene: Eclipse, Dynazty, Crashdiet, Sister Sin, H.E.A.T., Crazy Lixx — a useful starter-pack for any reader of this magazine with a Spotify queue to feed. “I like to go back to the bands from the ’80s era, but there are many newer bands I also like.” — Pontus WHY IT MATTERS Pontus is unassuming about what he’s built. He might flinch at being called a "curator". But every shelf full of retired tour beer, every signed Motörhead ale that outlives two of the three signatories, every fan-made Blizzard of Ozz bootleg that slipped through a Facebook group — all of it is a record of how this music got woven into daily life. Metal fandom, as this archive quietly argues, is not just what you listen to. It’s what’s sitting unopened on the shelf, waiting for a reason. The full collection — beers, wines, spirits, fan-made oddities, and more — is catalogued on Pontus’ Metal Collection site, under the Music Beverages & more section. Maybe somebody who reads this, might just look him up and send him something new? A VAST COLLECTION, AND A MARSHALL FRIDGE "I have a Marshall fridge ( Motley Crue edition) signed by the whole band". Who needs Spotify when you have this collection? To see everything in Pontus's collection click on the image below