Craig Hogan

Hi! I am Craig and I am one of the 2 founding members of All About The Rock. My love for metal started about 25 years ago when I was around 8 years old. I remember going round to Rics house (Ric also writes for us) and he played me Bon Jovi (not very metal I know but we all started somewhere) “Slippery When Wet” LP and I was blown away by it.

From there we started to listen to Billy Idol and Def Leppard, I then remember in 1987 a new band came onto the scene called Guns n Roses and they released the magnificent ‘Appetite for Destruction‘ and pretty much turned my world of heavy metal into something else. It was awesome, exciting and packed full of shit hot guitar work courtesy of the (now) legendary Slash.

After that, for me the world of metal went even crazier because the next band I was exposed to was Slayer! The first album I heard I think was ‘Reign in Blood‘ and I was drawn in by the speed of the guitars and drums – it was like nothing I had heard before and from Slayer a whole new world and catalogue of music opened up to me – Metallica, Anthrax, Megadeth, Obituary, Sepultura, Pantera..

My first concert was in 1991 (I was 11) and it was Slayer on their ‘Decade of Agression‘ tour at the Manchester Apollo, Matt who co-owns the site took me to this gig (in fact, he took me to my first 3 gigs – the others being Anthrax and Pantera).

I literally live and breath heavy metal. As you have probably guessed I love the 80s and 90s thrash scene. I also love New York Hardcore, Punk and Death Metal.

Craig