heavy metal

For their new record, Judas Priest turned back the clock to time warp some of their ’70s prog-metal spirit into 2024.

Photo by Simon Reed

On their new album, Judas Priest brandish an Invincible Shield of righteous heavy metal.

When people talk about Judas Priest, the band’s biggest hits easily spring to mind, and rightfully so. “Breaking the Law,” “Living After Midnight,” “Heading Out to the Highway,” and “You’ve Got Another Thing Comin’” were the songs that made the iconic British metal band a household name in the ’80s. But long before such MTV-friendly anthems catapulted them into superstardom, and more recently, earned them a nod from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in the Musical Excellence category, Judas Priest cut a more progressive rug.

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Black-metal mensches: Misha Mansoor (left) and Mark Holcomb are the brain trust of Haunted Shores and two-thirds of Periphery’s guitar triumvirate.

Photo by Ekaterina Gorbacheva

The guitar daredevils—wielding their Jackson and PRS axes—bite into the seething darkness of black metal with their soul-searing new album, Void.

As two thirds of the triumvirate of guitarists that provides taste-making progressive metal juggernaut Periphery with its genre-shifting 6-, 7-, and 8-string assault, Misha Mansoor and Mark Holcomb are among the most influential players of their generation.

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Mustaine stands tall with the Gibson Custom Shop version of his signature Flying V EXP, which will become available in October.

Photo courtesy of Gibson

The Megadeth leader survived his most difficult challenge—throat cancer—to make a new thrash metal opus, The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!, with guitar foil Kiko Loureiro.

Megadeth’s leader Dave Mustaine was about to dive into making the band’s new album, The Sick, the Dying… and the Dead!, when he received a terrible diagnosis: throat cancer. “I was told by an oral surgeon just like he was ordering a cup of coffee. ‘Oh, you have cancer.’ I went out, sat in my car for a long time, and had tears down my face. I had just gone into a numbness,” he recalls.

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