Hi-de-hi, campers! The Hard Rock Hell festival opens its gates in Wales in December, and there’s a strong line-up brewing.

Independent contenders Hexagram steamroller their signed contemporaries with astonishingly strong Southern-tinged thrash on Rhymes For The Hated.

Portsmouth’s Enochian Theory are going it alone - no manager, no record label, doing it all themselves. Have they got what it takes to make it?

Gorerotted is dead, long live The Rotted – the London brutalists turn their backs on B-movies to explore the nihilistic horrors of their own lives on Get Dead Or Die Trying.

The video for Avenged Sevenfold’s forthcoming “Dear God” single is ready to watch via streaming media, like, er, now.

Metal Blade supergroup One-Way Mirror chuck some fine hooks into the metal mix on their industrial-tinged self-titled début.

Scar Symmetry’s third album Holographic Universe is the perfect compromise of heaviness and accessibility – melodic death metal never sounded so good.

Brighton’s metalcore bruisers Johnny Truant are putting some serious rubber on the road with a month-long headline tour of the UK.

Veteran titans of Bay Area thrash Testament invade London’s Oxford Street to sign copies of new album The Formation Of Damnation.

If your two favourite things are thrash metal and Arnie movies, there’s a good chance Austrian Death Machine are going to make you cream your pants.