The King is a movie about the rise and fall of a young prosecutor who gets involved in organized crime and politics. The film is a mixture of a drama and a crime flick but it also includes a healthy dose of social criticism that shows us a corrupt country. The movie reminds me of similar South Korean movies such as Nameless Gangster and New World. The film also recalls elements of Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street in its better moments.

One of the movie's strengths is that its story is closely connected to historic events in South Korea. This makes the story more authentic. Another strong point is the acting. Jo In-sung portrays the main character perfectly and convinces as an ambitious young man from a poor village with a solid moral compass who slowly gets corrupted by older colleagues but realizes that power and wealth don't necessarily make him happy.

On the negative side, the movie is at least half an hour too long with a total running time above two hours. Especially the middle section lacks fresh ideas and includes too much repetition that harms the movie's flow. A more concise movie would have been even more efficient.

If you are interested in recent and contemporary South Korean history and society or if you like dramatic crime movies, you should give The King a chance. This film might have its flaws but it's overall enjoyable and clearly above average. It also includes a few truly memorable scenes such as the heavy opening car crash, the protagonist's first nasty party, the protagonist's tense split with his wife and the weird interview with the ambitious journalist at his seaside mansion.

Paradise Lost has often been described as a gothic metal institution and even though I'm a huge fan of this genre, I was unable to get into this band. I saw Paradise Lost in concert at the M'era Luna festival back in 2008 but found their performance lackluster. I listened to several songs but they weren't memorable enough to motivate me to check out an entire record. As you might guess by now, things have finally changed. I picked up the latest edition of the great German metal magazine Legacy that had a three-track compilation promoting Paradise Lost's new record Medusa. I immediately liked the new songs and decided to check out the entire release as soon as I could. Let me tell you that Medusa is one of the most brutal, intense and sinister gothic metal records I have ever come across.

This brave, pitiless and unique direction works right from the start. The band opens the album with a monster of epic proportions entitled ''Fearless Sky'' with a stunning length of eight and a half minutes. Commercial ambitions? Forget about that. Numbing occult organ sounds, melancholic guitar melodies, humming bass sounds, slow-motion drum beats that hit your soul and guttural growls set the tone for this great album. The opening song is already the perfect soundtrack to any sinister horror movie that takes itself serious. Title songs ''Medusa'' is another track of this kind with melancholic piano sounds, droning bass sounds, precise drumming and desperate guitar melodies that are this time accompanied by comforting yet mysterious clean vocals. The track unfolds a hypnotizing vibe drowning you into the darkness. This song is best enjoyed with your headphones on late at night. The mysterious and magic guitar sounds of ''No Passage for the Dead'' have almost an Arabian soundscape and contrast the particularly low growls. Paradise Lost manages to mix the sinister and sweet like very few bands on this output. If you are an innocent child, a deeply religious person or someone who thinks Evanescence are gothic metal, stay away from this beast of an album.

As if eight gripping songs weren't enough, the special edition includes two additional tracks and these aren't uninspired alternative versions that so many other bands have to offer but two more high-quality gothic metal monsters. The plodding and sinister ''Symbolic Virtue'' in particular manages to be emotionally profound, melodically catchy and yet musically simple. Other genre bands would chose this track as single but Medusa is so convincing that it's only a bonus track on this album which speaks volumes. The Japanese edition even features a third additional bonus track entitled ''Frozen Illusion'' which is a bleak, complex, slow-paced sinister death metal track that could come straight from the early nineties. It reminds me of the early years of Amorphis and Therion. If you've got some money to spend on an outstanding record, go and get this import version.

This album is like a drug for your heart, mind and soul. If you like to discover your dark side and embrace it to escape from reality, go and buy this record that is one of the few highlights of a rather underwhelming year concerning releases of metal records so far. Paradise Lost has finally managed to get my attention after all these years with a bang. Consider me a fan now.

Final rating: 95%

Verehrte Leserinnen und Leser!

Inzwischen verweile ich zwar schon wieder in Kanada, aber ich mochte noch einmal ein wenig deutsches Liedgut hier vorstellen. Vor wenigen Wochen habe ich das Lied beim Amphi Festival noch live gehort, nun mochte ich es euch auch hier mit einem ziemlich interessanten Video vorstellen, das aufzeigt, was in unserer Welt derzeit alles falsch lauft. Eisbrechers ''Was ist hier los?'' trifft den Nagel auf den Kopf und ist ganz nah am Puls der Zeit und dies nicht nur in Deutschland, sondern der gesamten Welt. Naturlich konnen in weniger als vier Minuten nicht alle Probleme dieser Welt gezeigt oder thematisiert werden, aber dieses Video ist ein sehr interessanter Denkanstoss. Eisbrechers neues Album ''Sturmfahrt'' wird am 25. August 2017 erscheinen.

Verehrte Leserinnen und Leser!

Kurz vor meiner Rückkehr nach Kanada gibt es hier noch ein wenig deutsches Liedgut auf die Ohren, mit dem am vergangenen Samstag Leverkusen von meinen Freunden und mir beschallt wurde. Viel Spaß damit und ein Hoch auf gute Freunde und meine schöne Heimat ;-)

This song is brought to you by David F. ;-)