Bring Me the Horizon review – boyband headbangers help vent teenage angst
Ahead of their forthcoming sixth album, the Sheffield pop-metal band provide catharsis but stop short of being true spokesmen for a troubled generation
Architects: Holy Hell review – addressing tragedy with gravity and defiance
The metal band’s moving first album since the death of founder Tom Searle has a heartfelt and anthemic feel
Slayer review – thrash legends unleash a barrage of malevolence
The LA four-piece’s final world tour delivers a furious rush of excitement in a celebratory sweep through 37 years of mayhem
Behemoth: I Loved You at Your Darkest review – Wagnerian satanic metal
Polish band’s 11th album is a romp that could appeal to more than hardcore metalheads
Deafheaven review – mixed-up metalheads gallop to the end of the world
The San Francisco band pull in dream-pop, post-rock and more for this fearsome, beautiful show
Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs: King of Cowards review – pulverising but accessible metal
The Newcastle quintet find no riff too monolithic on this excellent second album
Halestorm review – middle ground between rock fire and pop sugar
The Pennsylvanian rockers veer from sweet melody to industrial pummelling – all topped with Lzzy Hale’s lung-collapsing vocals
Iron Maiden review – Spitfires, hell and a rallying cry for freedom
The heavy metal heroes stage their most extravagant show to date, an anti-war opera full of pyrotechnics, swordfights and monastic chanting
Deafheaven: Ordinary Corrupt Human Love review – black metal with grey areas
By turning their outsider status – not quite metal, not quite indie, beholden to shoegaze and dreampop – into a virtue, Deafheaven have made a unique album
Deftones review – bat screeches, unfettered aggro and posh moshing
The US alt-metallers turn up the experimental static, shoegaze sludge and nu-metal roars to max for a showpiece gig that shows why they deserve reverence
Download festival review – Guns N’ Roses dominate metal’s biggest party
Marilyn Manson is a chilled-out entertainer, Avenged Sevenfold comfortably top the bill and Ozzy Osbourne feels the love during the metal marathon
Machine Head review – thrillingly brutal metal marathon
The pioneering rockers deliver a thunderous show that passes in a blur of flailing limbs, airborne beer – and furious politics
Five Finger Death Punch: And Justice for None review – single-minded angst rock
The Las Vegas band’s seventh album is carved from the same slabs of rock as their previous ones, and it sticks right to the point
Trivium review – heavy metal headbangers just wanna have fun
The veteran Florida foursome make faintly ridiculous music that incites a fevered response – even the stage banter prompts crowdsurfing
Andrew WK review – 12-step party programme from rock’s self-help guru
Adrenaline-fuelled anthems meet pop philosophy as the rocker mixes giddy hedonism with vulnerability