Under the needle

Whether it’s deranged, megalomaniac world leaders wilfully shunting us ever closer to a violent nuclear apocalypse or the rapidly accelerating erosion of the world’s natural resources at the hands – or rather carbon-laden feet – of a species visionary comedian Bill Hicks once rather aptly referred to as “a virus with shoes”, the prospect of our own fairly inevitable self-annihilation is one precious few of us are overly enamoured with. And yet, across its blackly absorbing we

From the inane, 30-second-long shorts we binge on TikTok to the frenzied work deadlines and daily preoccupations that plague our waking hours, humanity’s fixation with the fleeting and terminally trivial finds many of us hopelessly blind to anything beyond our own frequently blinkered and insular worldview – let alone all the infinite and unknowable mysteries of the cosmos. And then there are musical entities like Sworn, whose staggeringly expansive artistic vision not only d

With the gargantuan, sinew-shredding viscerality of Mayhem’s monumental headlining set still looming tangibly large as we awake to another day of prestigious, viciously engrossing sonic extremity, there’s no mistaking the proudly celebrated prominence of black metal bands operating within decidedly classic and quintessential territories this weekend. Yet, from the deathly, militaristic carnage of Kanonenfieber and the icily harrowing, undiluted catharsis of Bizarrekult throug

From grisly, ritualistic artefacts and intricately rendered occult artwork to specialist record stores and whole volumes dedicated to documenting black metal’s rich, delectably sinister sonic legacy, it’s hard to imagine a subgenre of music more deeply entrenched in culture and tradition than this notoriously frostbitten variant of extreme music. And with a full two days chock-full of DJ sets, album playbacks, live artist interviews and an expansive bill of artists spanning u

Beyond the many assorted memes and Instagram reels regularly seen rather mercilessly poking fun at what is, admittedly, a genre whose cartoonish, corpse-painted melodrama lends itself only too readily to such playful mockery, anyone with even a casual interest in black metal will attest that this notorious, ghoulishly subversive offshoot of extreme metal is in a pretty exciting place right now. Indeed, from the searing viscerality and sumptuous, melancholia-steeped atmospheri

With its visceral yet ghoulishly entrancing blend of icily corrosive riffing, weightily bludgeoning, obsidian-hued groove and sumptuously...

The numerous assorted pubs, clubs and dive bars dotted liberally around the bustling, somewhat unsavoury heart of Scarborough Town Centre...

From the ornately twisting, folk-steeped riffery of Blackbraid to the intensely caustic, melancholia-stricken throes of apocalyptic...

From coal-black, palpably viscous outpourings of unadulterated bile and synapse-scorching hatred to crippling expanses of...

With its rich, ink-black plethora of weightily pulverising brutality, tremolo-stricken hostility and suffocatingly thick,...