Bands

The place where we celebrate the musicians responsible for all those glorious riffs, deafening drums, screaming solos and choruses that refuse to leave your head. 🎸🤘🔥

From rock and metal legends who have spent decades destroying stages around the world to rising stars, underground favourites and grassroots bands playing their first sweaty club shows, this section is all about the people making the music we love.

Because without the bands, there wouldn’t be much of a Riff Report. Unless you fancy several thousand words about festival chips and the price of a pint. 🍺

Here you’ll find band features, artist spotlights, biographies, interviews, career retrospectives, new-member announcements, reunions, anniversaries, emerging artists and plenty of deep dives into the stories behind some of rock and metal’s biggest names.

We’ll revisit the careers of legendary groups who helped shape rock history while keeping our ears firmly planted on the ground for the bands currently fighting their way through pubs, clubs, independent venues and festival stages.

And discovering those bands is half the fun.

There’s something brilliant about walking into a venue having never heard of the support act and leaving forty minutes later wondering why they aren’t already playing arenas. The rock and metal scene constantly produces incredible new talent, and The Riff Report is committed to giving grassroots and independent artists a platform alongside the giants of the genre.

Being a proudly Welsh publication, we’ve also got a particularly soft spot for bands flying the flag for Wales and its ridiculously healthy rock, metal and alternative scene. From established Welsh heavyweights to unsigned bands rehearsing somewhere above a pub and plotting world domination, we want to hear about them.

But our musical borders certainly don’t stop at the Severn Bridge.

We’ll bring you stories about bands from across the UK and around the world, covering everything from classic rock and traditional heavy metal to hard rock, punk, alternative, progressive metal, metalcore and whatever wonderfully noisy genre someone invents next.

Most importantly, this section celebrates the personalities, friendships, creativity and occasionally complete chaos behind the music.

Because bands aren’t just names printed across festival posters.

They’re the reason we travel hundreds of miles for gigs, spend ridiculous amounts of money on vinyl, proudly wear battle jackets covered in patches and somehow convince ourselves that we definitely need another black band T-shirt.

So whether you’re here to read about a rock legend, discover your new favourite band or find out what the next generation of riff-makers are cooking up, you’ve come to the right place.

Turn the amps up, grab your horns and get stuck in.

Legends. Rising stars. Grassroots heroes. Massive riffs.

This is The Riff Report Bands. 🎸🔥🤘