Interviews

There is little point in asking for creative freedom if you’re not prepared to use it. For Treasondom, that means writing what feels right, rejecting ideas that don’t work, refusing to add older songs just to make an album longer and having no particular expectations to meet. Formed in...

The best ideas don’t always come together straight away. For Rotheads, a song can begin with two unrelated riffs, take an unexpected turn and only find its final form after plenty of rehearsal. The Romanian death metal group, formed in 2014, followed this approach across the two albums, “Sewer...

The underground has never been short of people with opinions about how things should be done. Fewer are willing to spend decades actually doing them. Romanian promoter Coro has been at it since the late ‘90s, when Axa Valaha Productions meant a fanzine, a label and whatever else he...

After a period away from the stage, Olympus Mons, the Romanian doom metal group formed in 2018, returned to Quantic with a new drummer and renewed creative energy, while maintaining the same close connection with the people who have supported them over the years. Their journey took a significant...

The tour in support of “Shining”, the latest album by Finnish doom metal band Swallow the Sun, has also brought the band to Romania, giving fans the opportunity to experience the record’s emotionally charged atmosphere live. For guitarist and keyboardist Juha Raivio, “Shining” which was released in 2024, emerged...

Since its first edition in Sofia, Bulgaria, in 2015, Running Free Festival has grown from a one-day event into a meeting point for generations of metal fans from across the world. Organised by Metal Force HMC, the festival focuses on carefully selected underground bands, direct contact between artists and...

“You are what we live for!” These words capture the place music occupies in the lives of the members of the NWOBHM band Holocaust and the collective consciousness shared by people who come together through music, a connection that feels especially precious in a world full of turmoil. When...

When you think of Costin Chioreanu, a whole world of images comes to mind: album covers steeped in the atmosphere of the music they accompany, illustrations that seem to conceal stories of their own, and animations that give movement to strange, otherworldly visions. For decades, his work has moved...

For Alex Krull, music has always been a means of pushing beyond conventional boundaries. With Atrocity active since 1988 and Leaves’ Eyes formed in 2003, his work spans technical death metal, symphonic death metal and symphonic metal. On 5 October 2026, the two acts took to the stage at...