Steel beans

Amid the mayhem of his European tour, Joe takes time out to give us a guided tour around his 2025 live gear, delivers the lowdown on some of his more storied guitars, and tells us why his mighty multi-amp rig has to run at breaking point in order to make the earth move and those riffs resonate…

With their 2022 debut album, Cardinal Black showed the world how the budding guitar hero in their ranks could thrive in a band environment. Here, Chris Buck explains how its follow-up has taken his playing and songwriting to the next level

The genre-agnostic mastermind behind Zeal & Ardor gives us a tour of his quirky record collection

With 28 albums’ worth of songs to choose from, “hopefully there will be some surprises”.

Cradle Of Filth’s corpsepainted frontman on his skate punk roots, exploding basketballs, and 11th-century ghosts

Close harmonies, smooth grooves, infighting and ‘the bag’: making an album on stage