The Portal

Celebrating Black Sabbath's Final Show & More in This Week's Archive Dive

A message reaches The Portal hoist from deepest Wiltshire! “Like tens of thousands of other fans of the RIFF, I am making the trek to Aston Villa Park on Saturday to celebrate the rupturing modernist majesty of Black Sabbath, just a brisk stroll away from where their story began, some 58 years earlier. And that’s before we even mention the fact that current incarnations of Slayer, Metallica and Mastodon are playing,” says John Doran, and lo! our metal bucket has gone down and come up again with some archival goodness on all the above. There’s John’s essay on Sabbath and the birth of heavy metal, the strange story of Ozzy Osbourne’s egg beef with Bruce Dickinson, some reflections on Metallica’s Master Of Puppets, an interview with Mastodon and your guide to the best of Slayer beyond the hits. Away from this week’s unbeatable metal communion at Villa Park, an interview with Cluster as we’ve been listening to them as a sonic balm from the current infernal heatwave, a Baker’s Dozen from Tony Njoku, who has an excellent new album called All Our Knives Are Always Sharp out soon, Savage Pencil on the twisted underbelly of Edwardian culture, and finally Paul Flynn’ll get you in a sweat with his guide to five killer Hi-NRG bangers.