Under the needle

“Feeling good, London?” enquires Shining main man Niklas Kvarforth, brandishing a rapidly depleting bottle of Jack Daniel’s somewhere in the vague vicinity of the audience. “Don’t worry,” he assures with a devilishly disquieting grin. “That’s all about to change now.” And yet, despite the frontman formerly known as ‘Ghoul’s’ best concerted efforts to leave us all suitably shocked and appalled, there’s no hedging around the blatantly obvious fact that Shining are one hell of a

The annual inferno of blackened brilliance that is Incineration is about to hit Camden on Saturday and no doubt, like us, you’re bouncing off the walls with excitement - but the sheer amount of eye-wateringly exceptional acts crammed into this single day can feel daunting even to the most obsessively well-informed of fanatical metal-heads. But fear not, Dark Matter have got your leather-covered backs. We’ve sacrificed both sleep and sanity over the past few days to relentless

From brilliant, psychologically precarious scribes to ingenious compositional minds plagued by mental illness and addiction, it’s long been acknowledged that human suffering frequently breeds rare and exquisite works of art. And with its disquieting bouts of bludgeoning ultra-violence, coldly immersive atmospheres and rasping maniacal verses that audibly ooze raving lunacy, few albums originate from a more authentic place of raw and expansive emotion than Shining’s ‘X - Varg

SHINING'S NIKLAS KVARFORTH TALKS BLACK METAL AND SELF-DESTRUCTION As a famously troubled personality who’s long been famed for grisly acts of self-mutilation, violence and inflammatory behaviour, few musicians could be better equipped to shed some exploratory light on black metal’s self-destructive tendencies than infamous Shining frontman Niklas Kvarforth. From his life-altering exposure to the genre at the tender age of twelve to the emotionally draining making of forthcomi

Dark Matter explores black metal’s notorious, curious and always controversial ties with death and self-destruction Picked out in lurid pools of rapidly congealing crimson, black and scarlet, a semi-naked form slumps dead-eyed and lifeless over a bathtub generously dashed with gore, frozen forever in the final, pitiful throes of death. Slick and glistening against the cold, yellowish pallour of dated porcelain, each and every detail captured by an eye visibly savouring the ab