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Exclusive: Nightrage Founder and Frontman Marios Iliopoulos, Greek’s Undisputed King of Melodeth, Gives His Most Epic Interview Ever

Posted in Interviews, Videos with tags Marios Iliopoulos, melodeth, Nightrage on 07/16/2026 by Kurt Orzeck

The Bad Penny revels in one of our favorite interviews to date: An all-encompassing conversation with Marios Iliopoulos, who founded Greek melodic death metal squad Nightrage in 2000 and has held the throne ever since. The reigning king leaves no stone unturned in providing the ultimate historical account of how heavy metal sowed its roots in Greece and developed there in the decades since.

From revealing previously unshared stories about the growth of extreme heavy metal in Greece to reflecting on past troubles and tribulations that he later vanquished to his staggering prolific output in Nightrage and beyond, Iliopoulos delivers what perhaps could be the greatest interview of his lifetime.

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Amorphis Bassist Says It’s Impossible for AI to Create ‘Real Metal Music’

Posted in Interviews, Videos with tags AI, Amorphis, Cemetery Skyline, Lorna Shore, Marvin Gaye, melodeth, melodic death metal, Octoploid, Olli-Pekka Laine, Scandinavian metal on 11/24/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Olli-Pekka Laine, founding bassist/backing vocalist of the greatest progressive metal band to ever come out of Finland – Amorphis – sums up the act in one word: “professional.”

“Amorphis is a really professional band, so we don’t actually [need to] rehearse that much,” he told The Bad Penny yesterday. “We only rehearse when we enter the studio, right before that, and before the shows, of course. But I’d say that we probably … rehearse … maybe one or two times a year, maximum.”

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Exclusive: Moonspell Vocalist Salutes Departed Tomas Lindberg of At the Gates, Says They Shared ‘Wild Nights’ Together

Posted in Exclusives, Interviews with tags At the Gates, Fernando Ribeiro, melodeth, melodic death metal, Moonspell, Scandinavian metal, Tomas Lindberg on 10/23/2025 by Kurt Orzeck

Many of us are still trying to cope with the sudden loss of Tomas “Tompa” Lindberg, arguably the best vocalist and lyricist in Scandinavian melodic death metal, last month. At the Gates, the band he led, helped pioneer one of metal’s best subgenres, also known as melodeth. Lindberg family, friends, bandmates, fans and anyone who reveres At the Gates are still processing and trying to make sense of his passing at age 52 due to a rare type of cancer called Adenoid cystic carcinoma.

Last week, Fredrik Andersson — who played drums for another legendary melodic death metal band, Amon Amarth, from 1997 to 2015 — expressed his admiration for Lindberg and shared an Irish wake laugh during an interview with The Bad Penny earlier this month.

On Thursday, we had the honor of finally interviewing Moonspell vocalist Fernando Ribeiro, one of the few melodeth vocalists that The Bad Penny had never interviewed before.

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