5 Bands That Are The New Faces Of UK Heavy Metal
Who's going to carry the torch?
Black Sabbath, Deep Purple, Judas Priest and Led Zeppelin paved the way for a new, heavier breed of music, known as the New Wave of British Heavy Metal. The likes of Iron Maiden, Motörhead, Def Leppard, Diamond Head and Venom all in their own way took the strong and often dark influences from the 60s and 70s and turned it into something new, and something that people still talk about.
However the sad reality is time waits for no one. In 2015, we lost the enigmatic Lemmy and thus Motörhead, Sabbath are due to retire (for real this time) later this year, and we're getting progressively less frequent activity from Judas Priest and Def Leppard. As much as metalheads owe to these bands, it may be time to look to the future and look for a New(er) Wave of British Heavy Metal.
This in itself is not without its own set of issues. We had no immediate response to nu metal (unless you count Kill II This and you really shouldn't), and our best metalcore efforts paled in comparison to the likes of Killswitch Engage with Bullet for My Valentine's star falling like an anchor.
These are bands then that will carry the torch for UK heavy metal, to keep the genre strong in the coming years and to forge their own name into the history books and to also provide the inspiration to rejuvenate the UK scene and to put our fair pebble back on the map.
5. TesseracT
In the mid to late 2000s, a bunch of virtuoso guitarists who grew up listening to way too much Meshuggah and SikTh started exchanging riffs and ideas on online forums. This was the birthing process of the phenomenon that would become 'djent'.
Ridiculous name aside, djent is a controversial brand of progressive metal music with characteristic palm-muted chords that acts as the angsty heavy music sibling of dubstep.
Though the djent scene has much of its origins in America with the likes of Periphery, Animals as Leaders and Born of Osiris, the UK hasn't exactly kept quiet, with the likes of Hacktivist and Monuments being spear-headed by Milton Keynes' TesseracT.
Blending djent with ambient atmosphere, TesseracT have acted as ever-maturing pioneers to the genre, earning praise from peers and critics alike, culminating in being awarded the 'Progressive Music Award for New Blood' by Prog Magazine in 2012.
The band have set themselves apart due to their evolving sound and their high-level of production, carried out by in-house by bassist Amos Williams and guitarist Acle Kahney.
This is all in spite of a revolving door of lead vocalists in their early years, a position now occupied by scene darling Dan Tompkins who is enjoying his second spell. TesseracT's reputation has grown enough to be invited to tour with the legendary Devin Townsend earlier this year.