Matt Mills
Matt Mills covers heavy music with a mix of deep respect for metal’s history and a sharp eye for the most adventurous artists on today’s scene, using narrative, humour and close reporting to make extreme sounds accessible without sanding down their edge.
Heavy and extreme metal, from icons to innovators
Matt is online editor at Metal Hammer under the Louder masthead, and he is described as a resident Gojira obsessive who joined the team in 2017. Since then he has become a regular presence in Metal Hammer and Prog, happiest when interviewing the most forward-thinking artists heavy music can muster. His beat centres on heavy and extreme metal, but he moves easily between legacy acts and newer, experimental bands, treating both with the same detailed attention.
His work frequently returns to the giants of classic metal. He has reported on Iron Maiden in pieces ranging from their reflections on the toughest support acts they have ever had to follow to questions about whether they might stage a blockbuster retirement show in the vein of Black Sabbath. He has written about Black Sabbath and Ozzy Osbourne’s “final concerts,” framing their long-running farewell narrative within the broader history of metal’s elder statesmen. He also digs into the stories behind landmark songs, as in his feature on Mastodon’s Blood And Thunder, where he unpacks the origins and impact of one of modern metal’s defining tracks. Across these articles he treats established bands as living, changing subjects rather than fixed icons, focusing on decisions, pressures and creative choices.
At the same time, Matt’s stated preference for interviewing forward-thinking heavy artists shows up in his coverage of acts that challenge genre boundaries. He has written on Babymetal’s experience of intense backlash and online hate around the viral success of Gimme Chocolate!!, tracing how a hybrid pop-metal band navigated early hostility and later vindication. He has reviewed Heilung with a headline that insists their unusual sound and presentation are not mere clickbait, signalling his interest in ritualistic and experimental approaches to heaviness. This balance between heritage bands and innovators defines his metal coverage: he treats heavy music as a continuum, giving equal space to the genre’s past, present and future.
Features and stories that humanise heavy music
Matt stands out for features that bring human and sometimes humorous angles into extreme music environments. In a widely shared piece, he took his mum to one of Europe’s heaviest metal festivals, Bloodstock Open Air, and presented her candid, outsider reviews of the bands. The article uses the contrast between brutal music and a fresh pair of eyes to show how extreme metal looks and feels to someone encountering it for the first time, turning a niche festival into a relatable story. He applies a similar narrative approach in his account of “the band who made the worst metal album ever – on purpose,” telling the story of a group that deliberately created an unfinishable record and exploring what that kind of conceptual failure means inside heavy music.
His features are not limited to metal. In one assignment he was asked, as a 28-year-old music journalist, to review a 30-year-old Radiohead album, producing a retrospective that sets a canonical record against the perspective of a younger critic. This kind of piece shows his comfort with long-form, reflective writing that situates albums in their broader cultural moment rather than treating them purely as products. His Babymetal feature similarly examines the social dynamics around a viral song, focusing on how fans, detractors and the band’s own responses shaped its trajectory. Together, these stories show a reporter who uses narrative devices and character-driven detail to illuminate how artists, audiences and critics interact around heavy and alternative music.
New music curation and scene coverage
Alongside features and interviews, Matt plays a regular role in curating and covering new releases on Louder. He writes Metal Hammer’s Tracks Of The Week, including roundups such as “The 13 new metal songs you need to hear this week,” which move from Nightwish’s mega-symphonic single to Lordi’s tie-in songs, presenting a wide cross-section of current heavy tracks in one place. Within the masthead’s Tracks & Singles coverage, his byline appears on breaking news, comments, reviews and features about individual songs and short releases, indicating a steady engagement with the week-to-week life of the scene. This work positions him as a gatekeeper for listeners who want to keep up with new material without losing sight of the genre’s wider context.
He also covers live recognition and local milestones in metal. In one news story, he reported on Machine Head being awarded symbolic keys linked to an Albuquerque prison, turning a civic gesture into a moment in the band’s long relationship with their fanbase and the places they play. Articles like this connect heavy music to institutions and communities, showing how the scene operates beyond venues and record stores. Across reviews, news and roundups, his tone is direct and descriptive, foregrounding the music and its circumstances rather than inserting his own persona.
Position within Louder and the wider music press
Within Louder, Matt’s role as online editor for Metal Hammer and his regular contributions to Prog place him at the centre of the masthead’s heavy music coverage. His author bio emphasises his enthusiasm for interviewing artists who push heavy music forward, and his portfolio backs that up through repeated attention to bands that test genre limits while still engaging with its classics. Beyond Louder, his public professional profiles state that he writes about music for a range of outlets, including general-interest and culture publications, which suggests he is comfortable tailoring his voice to different readerships while keeping music as the focus. The through-line across these roles is a commitment to heavy and alternative music reported in clear, story-led prose, whether he is digging into a famous song’s origin, reviewing a new release or capturing how non-fans experience extreme sounds.
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