This is tonight. This was supposed to be happening after a Frank Sidebottom gig, so obviously it’s all fucked to high heaven by this point. Come along and dance so it doesn’t turn out to be a total disaster.
SMASH CLUB aka The Return of the HypnoCops
Posted: June 25, 2010 by Hugh Platt in HypnoCops, LondonTags: Frank Sidebottem, HypnoCops, Smash Club
Sorry for getting all Tumblr on you
Posted: June 20, 2010 by Hugh Platt in UncategorizedTags: Gaahl, Gorogoroth
Exciting news tomorrow, etc
Can you think of a better way to acknowledge nearly a year of blog-silence, than to mark the occasion by donning a Slayer t-shirt, listening to South Of Heaven, and bellowing “SSSSSLLLLLAAAAYYYYYEEEERRRRR!” at the top of my lungs in celebration of the International Day of Slayer?
I think you’ll find the answer is “No, there’s no better way. Good work there, Hugh!” Carry on.
Ten Things Learnt At Bloodstock Open Air 2009
Posted: August 23, 2009 by Hugh Platt in RecommendedTags: 2009, Bloodstock, festival

1. Only cunts throw things at bands.
2. Frost takes black metal Very Seriously Indeed.
3. Watching bands from the side of the stage = rules all.
4. Don’t try to sing ‘Holy Diver’ in the Metal Karaoke if you only know it from the Killswitch Engage cover song.
5. Monster Energy drink is still the vilest fucking shit in the world, but when some bonehead breaks all the polystyrene cups for the coffee in the media centre, it’s the only source of festival caffiene going.
6. The Haunted, Moonspell, Anathema and Carcass still all fucking slay it live.
7. 90% of rock stars have bad teeth.
8. The most metal person in the world is a disabled child in a wheelchair who converted it to look like a viking longboat.
9. Bacon and egg baps have now surplanted chilli-cheese jacket potatoes as the king of festival food.
10. The best bit of ‘The Final Countdown’ isn’t the der der der-der, der-der der der-derrr keyboard bit, it’s the bit where the crowd shout “Venus!” back at Joey Tempest.
Ten Things Learnt At Sonisphere Festival 2009
Posted: August 8, 2009 by Hugh Platt in RantTags: Buckcherry, Cancer Bats, festival, Jagermeister, Sonisphere, The Defiled, Thrash Hits

1. Always, always, always double-check your recording equipment is working properly.
2. Champagne tastes even better when it’s stolen.
3. Cancer Bats are now definitely my favourite band from the last 5 years:
4. The Jagermeister Truck is the only bar stupid enough to turn down people offering money to buy drinks, simply because they don’t have any drinks tokens left.
5. ‘Mother’ by Danzig might be over 20 years old now, but it’s still the greatest rock’n'roll dancefloor filler of all time.
6. I am not DJ Shadow, no matter what my facial hair says to you. Remember that, and we will get along fine as long as you don’t keep calling me ‘Josh’.
7. As much as I think I’m pretty good at doing interviews even much hungover to fuckery, sometime I think it’d be a lot easier if I was a woman with a killer T&A combo:
8. Cunts who spike random girls’ drinks at festivals deserve to be hunted down and beaten to a bloody pulp by men with baseball bats. It doesn’t even make any sense – you planning on stalking them across the entire site till they’re fucked up enough for you to try to take advantage? Fucking retarded wannabe-rapist cunts, the lot of you.
9. To paraphrase Palahniuk, I can commit to tattoo designs, but I’m not ready to get married.
10. Whatever you do, when watching your mates’ band tear up the Jager Truck stage, don’t wander off for 30 seconds to take a phone call. As it’ll be during those 30 seconds that you’ll miss them giving you and Thrash Hits an onstage shout-out to the cheers of hundreds of people:
What I Done On My Holidays
Posted: June 30, 2009 by Hugh Platt in Thrash HitsTags: 2009, DevilDriver, Down, Download Festival, five finger death punch, God Forbid, Hardcore Superstar, interview, Pepper Keenan, Static X, Suicide Silence, Thrash Hits, Turbowolf, video
Some people spend their time off from work lounging around on sunny beaches. Some people spend their vacations snowboarding down glistening white alpine slopes. Some people explore exotic locations and take tedious photos of themselves posing next to ancient ruined monuments.
I get drunk in fields in the Midlands and talk shit at rock stars at heavy metal festivals. So far my Summer highlights have included….
1) Giving Pepper Keenan a reach-around.
2) Remincing about said reach-around with Turbowolf.
3) Insulting DevilDriver’s taste in Star Wars characters.
4) Being accused of being a rapist by Hardcore Superstar – and this was filmed BEFORE Pepper Keenan!
5) Talking titties with Doc from God Forbid.
6) Poking fun at Five Finger Death Punch’s ludicrously literal video treatements.
7) Comparing haircuts with Wayne from Static-X.
8) Debating animal fighting (and fucking) with Suicide Silence.
9) And trying to pay Dregen from the Backyard Babies to beat up an endangered species. Classy.
All on behalf of ThrashHits.com. There’s a whole load more of our video tomfoolery from the festival over on the Thrash Hits YouTube channel. It’s pretty damn badass, actually.
So good I bought it twice
Posted: June 25, 2009 by Hugh Platt in RecommendedTags: awesome, Read and Write, Turbowolf, vinyl

If you’ve spent 8 minutes or more in my company over the last 12 months, then you’ll no doubt have already heard me espouse the virtues of Bristol electro-rawkers, Turbowolf. After stumbling across them entirely by accident at Stag & Dagger 2008, checking them out for their name as much as anything else, I’ve become a convert.
Their latest single, ‘Read and Write’, came out last week, and it is 100% badass. My copy of the limited edition 7″ vinyl arrived today. I say “copy” I really mean “copies”, but that’s neither here nor there – this band is so good I’m buying extra copies of their releases to give to people to convert them.
Normally if there’s a band I want someone to pay attention to, I’ll fire them off a link to their MySpace page, or chuck them a cheeky mp3. But how often do you ignore recommendations like that? I’ve got a stack of them saved up for when I’m bored/hungover/hungry. Click click click, ho hum. But if someone gave me a frickin’ 7″ record, well, I’d make for damn sure I gave it a spin.
Not sure who’s getting the spare yet. To be honest, if you’re the kind of person who reads this blog, then you’re probably the kind of person who should be buying it yourself instead of expecting me to gift you this freebie. Get thee over to HMV.com, cheapskate, and order a copy.
The new Marilyn Manson video is a big pile a wank
Posted: May 14, 2009 by Hugh Platt in Rant, Thrash HitsTags: fucking stupid, Marilyn Manson, radio edit, The High End of Low

Go on – take a look at what the censors and suits have done to ‘Arma-Goddamn-Motherfuckin-Geddon’. Not only is it a bit of a shit video (who the FUCK came up with this treatment? “We’ll have a series of boring Manson headshots on rotate, few cuts to the band, then a stupid all-too-brief-final ruckss” THAT’S SHIT. Shit and cheap-looking), but of course it’s coupled with the ultimate musical brain-rape: the worst radio-edit ever made by man or beast.
Now, I understand the importance of having a radio edit when the very song you’re trying to sell has ‘Motherfuckin’ in the title, but this edit is going to put people off the new album. It’s not only the swear words that have been ham-fistedly removed with weird-sounding echoes, but a whole load of other words deemed “too controversial” by the censors. So words like ‘Kill’, ‘Suicidal’ and ‘Goddamn’, are find themselves included in the cull. Which as a result of ends up changing the chorus from this:
First you try to fuck it, then you try to eat it
If it hasn’t learnt your name, you better kill it before they see it
First you try to fuck it, then you try to eat it
If it hasn’t learnt your name, you better kill it before they see itIt’s Arma-goddamn-motherfuckin-geddon
FUCK. EAT-KILL, now do it again.
It’s Arma-goddamn-motherfuckin-geddon
FUCK. EAT-KILL, ET CETERA
to the following load of mumboing horse toss:
First you try to…, then you try to eat it
If it hasn’t learnt your name, you better…it before they see it
First you try to…, then you try to eat it
If it hasn’t learnt your name, you better…it before they see itIt’s Arma-(arma)-(arma)-geddon
….. EAT-(eat), now do it again.
It’s Arma-(arma)-(arma)-geddon
….. EAT-(eat), ET CETERA
Words can’t give the awfulness of this justice. Go and watch that motherfucker and tell me it’s not the worst cut’n'shut audio job you’ve ever heard. It makes the block-headedness of the infamous ‘This Is The New Hit’ edit sound positively subtle. And that’s not even taking in to account the fact that half the verses end up getting carved up too.
Is Manson even going to get much airplay on mainstream radio programming? People aren’t exactly going to be jamming the phone lines to request the Frankenstein-abortion of a radio edit. Will the video get much exposure on music TV channels? Well, I can’t see a video as blandly boring as the promo that’s been produced being a favourite with fans, casual viewers, programmers or pluggers. It’s going to get buried.
Shame too, as the original version is one of the best parts of The High End of Low, which is probably the best record Manson’s done in a decade. Oh yeah, it’s pretty damn good.


