Pigeonholing is a messy business, mostly because you end up being covered in useless feathered metaphors, and shit. And also, if you can neatly categorise music, it's probably boring as fuck anyway. And it's definitely not something you can do to Opium Lord; from the first sweet hit of 'The Calendri...

It would certainly be accurate to describe tonight’s epic, triple hammer blow of brutal goodness as an essential date in any 'true' death metal fanatic’s diary. And yet, from the bludgeoning, murkily primitive throes of Sweden’s iconic Entombed A.D. and Baest’s unrelenting, bass-laden carnage throug...

The Friday night beers have long been flowing profusely here at the Black Heart tonight and the venue’s close, windowless attic confines are all but plunged into a state of impenetrable darkness barely relieved by a few meagre beams of pallidly colourless light visibly straining against the present,...

Nearly…such a frustrating thing, and that is what this film is - frustrating.

It’s a fact that lots of people who say they like Stephen King have not read that many of his books, based on there being so much filler that the majority don’t mention. As with the remake of IT, the 2nd part followed the r...

For many a metal-head of a certain vintage, this pulverising slab of sumptuous, genre-smashing extreme metal has long occupied a unique place in the pitch-black annals of a movement that’s altered immeasurably since ‘Cruelty and the Beast’ first made its deliciously sinister, blood-soaked entrance i...

Devotees of death metal have long prided themselves on the total inaccessibility of the genre to the casual metal fan. The convoluted guitar acrobatics, aggressive, agile drum-work and various muscular techniques involved are reserved for the chosen few, those who take the time to understand and app...

When it comes to Mayhem, how far is it possible to separate the controversy from the music? Every note is infused with all the black malicious intent and scaly, stygian darkness of their origins – embodied in those grainy 90s’ shots of the band when they were corpse-pale, hateful youths, their empty...

It’s lingering there, inhabiting every inch of the ragged and unrelenting, brimstone-scorched entity better known as blackened Polish aggressors, Hate. The presence of something audibly greater and infinitely more powerful than ourselves. Something that far surpasses the feeble comprehension of our...

Death metal gigs are by their very nature a truly intense experience. However, Dark Matter have rarely witnessed such an outpouring of energy and passion both on and off stage as when the ‘A Vile Desolate Sands’ tour, headlined by Nile, hit UK shores. And as responsible journo types always ready to...

The backlash to the backlash, and so on. Some people just want to watch the world burn, so it might seem.

The world has changed, and so with that people’s reactions to art move in line. Before the film was even released, people were jumping on it being a danger to society, saying that if audience mem...