Under the needle

It’s precisely 7pm on a Monday night, and the freshly-birthed drudgery of a new working week has had ample time to take effect – judging, at least, by the endless hordes of weary-looking Londoners jostling their way home through the hectic streets of a presently heaving Camden Town. So it’s with no small amount of amusing irony to note that the sizeable crowd of black-clad metal fans camped up outside The World’s End should be the ones looking so uncharacteristically cheery t

Of all the cruellest and most psychologically shattering of emotional states, nothing cripples the human spirit more brutally and absolutely than the tragic loss of a loved one. The quiet, shell-shocked numbness. The great, gaping void within that aches like some horrific incurable wound. The raw, gnawing grief slowly devouring the very fibre of your being from the inside out. Yet out of these agonising, tear-stricken moments of darkness come some of the most jaw-dropping and

On 20th December 2018, Finnish doom luminaries Swallow The Sun will be releasing a brand new EP by the name of ‘Lumina Aurea’ in the eagerly anticipated run-up to the band’s 7th studio album ‘When A Shadow Is Forced Into The Light’. Amassing 13 minutes of crushingly harrowing yet intricately crafted atmospherics, this epic slab comprises a tantalising taste of things to come, while in the same breath standing in its own right as a truly unique and multi-faceted body of work.

Longing to escape from the stresses and strains of city life for a weekend away in the wilderness with fellow metal friends? A glorious few days of booze, metal and the unavoidable hangover slowly creeping up behind you while the moonshine’s still swimming in your head? Korpiklaani can always guarantee a not dissimilar experience. Just add campfires, acoustic guitars and be sure to locate yourself in the middle of the forest for the best possible outcome. ‘Kulkija’ or, in Eng

Photo by Juuso Hirvonen On listening to the battering, madly accelerating ultra-violence and ghoulish multitude of gargling, grave-scented horrors that underline Wrathrone’s blackly expansive sound, it’s hard to conceive of this monstrous collective having started life as little more than a casual distraction among friends. And with vicious new opus ‘Reflections of Torment’ displaying fresh and unprecedented levels of stunning musicianship and deathly vision, Dark Matter disc