7 Best Metal Music Podcasts – Unleash Your Inner Metalhead
If you’re a true metalhead, then you have to admit one thing — you love talking about metal. There’s nothing to be ashamed of, as we all do it. It’s hard to love metal music and not talk about it to others.
That’s why plenty of headbangers create podcasts where they can talk about metal for hours. Fortunately, out of the many poorly produced shows and podcasts run by posers, there are a couple that truly stand out from the sea of mediocrity.
If you want to be sure you’re giving away your time to something worthy of a listen, consider trying some of the metal music podcasts below.
1. The MetalSucks Podcast
This is the official podcast of MetalSucks, a famous heavy metal news website. The podcast is run by Petar Spajic, Jozalyn Sharp, and Brandon Hahn, and their goal is to interview influential people from the sphere and talk about the latest happenings in the world of metal. It’s certainly great if you want to hear some interesting discussions with the people you appreciate and stay in the loop.
The podcast has around 500 episodes, and new ones typically come out every Monday morning. It’s a lot of episodes, and they’ve been coming out since 2013, making MetalSucks one of the oldest metal podcasts. If you want to start listening to them, you should try #327: Andy Williams, #307: Opeth’s Mikael Åkerfeldt, and #312: Will Putney.
2. The Jasta Show
The Jasta Show is led by a podcaster, musician, and former television host Jamey Jasta. He’s well known in the metal world as the lead singer of Hatebreed and Kingdom of Sorrow. Starting in 1991, he’s still going strong and has been hosting this by-weekly podcast since August 2014. Jasta constantly interviews notable musicians and other famous people from the metal world, but you’ll also learn many fascinating things about the genre.
New episodes come out every Monday and Thursday, and you can always listen to the latest 15 episodes for free. However, if you want more, you’ll have to subscribe to the GaS Digital Network. If you’re going to try it, listen to a few new episodes to see if you like it. Each is between one and two hours long, so there’s plenty of content.
3. Metal Up Your Podcast
If you love all things Metallica, then this is the show for you. The two hosts talk about all things Metallica, and this might not be interesting were it not for how influential the guys are. The hosts are two professional musicians — Ethan Luck, the multi-instrumentalist behind bands like Kings of Leon, The O.C. Supertones, Morgan Wade, and Clint Wells, guitarist for Rodney Atkins, Mindy Smith, Bob Schneider, and others.
The show has been on since 2017 and features more than 440 episodes. The length varies, but it’s usually above 1h 30m, which is perfect if you want to talk about Metallica properly. The show deserves your attention from the beginning, especially if you are a big fan of Metallica, so start from episode 1. You can also try Episode 317 – 2022: A Year In The Life Of Metallica and Episode 288 – Top 10 Metallica Deep Cuts, an episode with Clint and Ethan’s friends Michael Grosvenor and Angelo Gonzales.
4. Decibel Geek
Decibel Geek is the perfect show for everyone interested in old-school heavy metal and hard rock. The show discusses music from the 1960s to today, so it can be ideal for fans of the newer rock scene and aficionados of the old. It often features top 5 discussions, album reviews, and interviews with famous musicians.
The podcast has over 4609 episodes, and new episodes come out once a week. Each one is over an hour long, typically around an hour and a half, but you’ll sometimes get shows with more than two hours of awesome content. If you don’t know where to start with so much available, try parts one and two of the best and worst Metallica has to offer, Conversation with Munsey Ricci, and Marilyn Manson We Are Chaos album review.
5. Metal Matters
The show is no longer on, but it’s still quite popular in the community as new people keep discovering it all the time. It ended in May 2021 after 137 episodes. Metal Matters was a weekly podcast with two hosts — Fred Pessaro (content creator and event producer) and Michael Berdan (music artist). The latter took over for Mike Hill of the Season of Mist record label.
This Gimme Radio podcast was all about metal and any kind of extreme music, while the hosts discussed new and classic things and everything else related to metal. It’s worth a listen, even though you won’t get any new episodes once you’re done with the ones available. However, more than 130 hour-long podcasts are more than enough, and if you want to see why, check out the last episode, the first, and episode 89: Deep Cuts with J Bennet.
6. Phil’s Breakfast Metal
Some metal fans are more into the extreme forms of metal. They like the peculiar and the avant-garde. If you’re into something like that, you’ll definitely want to listen to Phil’s Breakfast Metal, where the hosts do deep dives and detailed discussions on albums many have missed, new exciting artists, and more.
The podcast is pretty sporadic, so expect one or two episodes per month, with occasional month-long breaks. However, almost every episode is an hour and a half long at least, so you’re in for a treat every time you listen, especially when you consider how knowledgeable Phil Wadey and Rob Cooper, the two hosts, are. If you want to test it out, try Episodes 1: Oceans Of Slumber, Bathory, Ihsahn, Voices, Obituary, 115: Thanks For Listening, 114: Dying Fetus & Misery Index, and 100: Opeth as it’s a 2h 30m episode on Opeth.
7. The Metal Hammer Podcast
You’ve likely heard about Metal Hammer, one of the longest-running (since 1983!) and one of the most popular metal magazines in the world. The same-named podcast is their official show, run by two editors of the UK magazine and online portal. If you like following metal news, you’ll want to subscribe to this show, where Eleanor Goodman and Merlin Alderslade talk about the latest, the biggest, and the hottest topics from all things metal.
The show has more than 200 episodes, and new ones come out every week. Despite that, every episode is quite long, usually between 40 minutes and an hour and a half, but generally shorter than an hour. The show started in 2009 but was off the air from 2013 to 2018. It’s been going strong ever since, and if you want to try it out, some of the best episodes are 197: The Legacy Of Every Time I Die, 181: The Big Review – The Metallica Blacklist, 183: Q&A Special – Festivals, Latin America & Metal Dogs, and 166: Trivium Hall Of Fame, an episode dedicated to a great band you’re likely familiar with, Trivium.