Metallica and While She Sleeps among Heavy Music Awards winners

Metallica: winner of Best International Band at HMA18. Pic: Kreepin Deth/Wikimedia Commons

HMA is in its infancy, but they’ve taken big strides to recognise artists and charities that celebrate heavy music subcultures

This week saw the second annual Heavy Music Awards ceremony take place at London’s Koko. Kerrang! Radio presenter Sophie K hosted the evening’s festivities which included performances from The Fever 333, Milk Teeth, Black Peaks and Coldbones.

The highlights included Metallica picking up the award for Best International Band and While She Sleeps taking home Best Album for 2017’s You Are We , while the award for Best Festival went to France’s Hellfest Open Air. But the standout award went to the Sophie Lancaster Foundation. The charity received The H for their work challenging prejudice and intolerance towards people from alternative subcultures. In 2007, Sophie Lancaster was attacked along with her boyfriend Robert Maltby. The attack resulted in Sophie’s death while leaving Robert with life-changing injuries.

The finalists were nominated by a panel made up of music industry figures and HMA has partnerships with charities including Safe Gigs For Women, Nordoff Robbins and Love Music Hate Racism.

Heavy Music Awards winners in full:

Best UK Breakthrough Band
Milk Teeth

Best Festival
Hellfest Open Air

Best International Breakthrough Band
Knocked Loose

Best Album Artwork
Sikth, The Future In Whose Eyes? by Meats Meier

The H
Sophie Lancaster Foundation

Best Producer
Will Putney

Best Live Band
Gojira

Best International Band
Metallica

Best Photographer
Ed Mason

Best UK Band
Architects

Best Album
While She Sleeps, You Are We

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.