As winter descends on Australia in 2008, metal fans shall brace themselves for a peerless union, featuring the absolute hottest heavy acts from each side of the Atlantic. One fervently reverent, the other fearlessly revolutionary, the tour heralds a dawning of a new age of metal as much as each band have brought a new language to the global metal tribe. We can only imagine what lies ahead for Wales' Bullet For My Valentine and California's Avenged Sevenfold and Atreyu, but Australia awaits glorious carnage.

Leading the new brigade of heavy metal in the UK, Bullet For My Valentine certainly know their stuff. Utilising the ferocious synchronized flourishes of classic '80s guitar slingers, the quartet construct impeccably catchy and granite-heavy sounds. The assured, majestic debut 'The Poison' of 2005 instantly marked the band as inheritors of British metal's flame.

Metal Hammer bowed to its power, giving them the 2006's Golden God Award for Best British Band. Kerrang! cheered 'Tears Don't Fall' as the Best UK Single of the year. Metallica demanded their support for the 'Sick Of The Studio 07' European and UK mini-tour. The US metal faithful rewarded them with a sold out headline tour last year.

In 2008 Bullet For My Valentine paid back the favour to their worldwide legion of fans, releasing 'Scream, Aim, Fire' with all the might and power we've now come to expect.

Equally versed in the untamed thrash of the past, but with dreams even grander than their extravagant songs suggest, are California's worshipped and reviled Avenged Sevenfold. Answering to no one but themselves, this quintet of hell-raisers whip up a firestorm of outrage with each release, from the melodically shameless crunching metalcore of their 2001 debut 'Sounding The Seventh Trumpet' to the gritty genre-thieving mayhem of their fourth, self-titled opus of 2007.

Divisive from their lurid beginnings in Orange County clubs, Avenged Sevenfold adopted the Misfits-style trappings of monster make-up and nicknames (in a nod to Danzig, their bassist's is Johnny Christ) and set out to destroy preconceptions and crowds. Their breakthrough single 'Bat Country' earned them approbation and a 2006 MTV Video Music Award for Best New Artist, curiously, eight years after they'd formed.

Now fans of heavy music are content with the fact that they'll never know where Avenged Sevenfold will go next. And that's just how the sinister mischief-makers have had it all along. Expect pandemonium.

If these pillars of Trans-Atlantic metal aren't enough, they'll be bringing 2008 Taste Of Chaos tourmates Atreyu along for the ride. The Californian quintet have been disgorging cut-throat metal squeals and hulking moshcore rhythms since the turn of the century, amassing a legion of devotees.  Atryeu's notoriously acrobatic performances will be the perfect cardiac jolt for this bold double-header