by Sebastian Kluth
Snarveien, better known as Detour, is a classic Norwegian horror movie. The story is quickly told. A young couple that illegally smuggles alcohol has to take a detour because of an accident and gets stranded on an abandoned road in the woods. Soon, strange...
La Isla Minima, also known as Marshland, is a Spanish thriller that has won ten Goya Awards, the Spanish equivalent of the Academy Awards. For once, this film truly deserves the praise it got. The story revolves around the mysterious disappearance of...
Amorphis hasn't released a physical greatest hits compilation in more than thirteen years when ''Chapters'' had been published. Since then, Amorphis had an important line-up change with the chasrismatic and versatile Tomi Joutsen taking Pasi Koskinen's...
Brazilian power metal Armored Dawn sextet surely knows a lot about music business and how to promote its material. The band's first promotional EP was released with numerous rock and metal magazines from all around the world. Pretty much any metal fan...
Therion’s mastermind Christofer Johnsson wouldn’t be himself if he didn’t try out a few new experiments with each record. The first release of the new millennium marks the addition of the Niemann brothers (consisting of guitarist Kristian [Sorcerer] and...
Rainy Dog is the second film in Takashi Miike's Black Society Trilogy that focuses on foreign gangsters with inner struggles that are trying to find a purpose in life. Despite a similar topic, Rainy Dog is very different from the first film Shinjuku Triad...
There are many things that could be discussed regarding Avenged Sevenfold's seventh studio record The Stage. I might mention that the band released this record without any big announcements and promotions and kept their upcoming release a well-kept secret...
There have been numerous stereotypical, repetitive and gruesome zombie movies since the beginning of the millennium and now South Korea has officially jumped on the bandwagon... and revolutionized the entire genre with the very best movie of its kind....
From a purely objective point of view, ''Yoga Hosers'' could be seen as one of the worst movies ever made. The story is extremely weak. The movie has several big plot holes. The acting performances are somewhere between average and terrible. The characters...
''Hacksaw Ridge'' is a superbly crafted anti-war movie and easily the best movie of its kind since the release of the South Korean war epic ''My Way'' five years earlier. This movie is based upon true events and tells the story of Seventh-day Adventist...
The epic South Korean blockbuster ''The Tiger: An Old Hunter's Tale'' is a mixture of a historical drama and an action-adventure movie. To fully understand this movie, you have to be aware of the fact that the tiger is a symbol associated with Korean...
Kna'an is a collaboration between Israeli Middle Eastern folk metal groups Amaseffer and Orphaned Land. The goal was to write a soundtrack for a German theater play about Abraham's journey to Canaan. Even though this initiative originally came from a...
After a career of more than thirty years and ten years after the last compilation, it's about time for a new greatest hits release. Stratovarius' simply titled "Best of" offers a balanced mixture of the band's catchy, saccharine and short singles like...
This limited Record Store Day live album by American thrash metal legend Metallica is a really interesting release. First of all, it's limited to twenty thousand copies in the world and includes a little certificate that gives you the feeling to own something...
Colour me surprised! I didn't like anything Lacuna Coil released since ''Karmacode'' ten years ago but the two new songs included as an exclusive version on German gothic magazine Sonic Seducer are quite promising. The excellent ''The House of Shame''...
Korsair is a Swedish progressive metal project around mastermind Anders Thonander who's playing bass and keyboards on the debut full length effort and who takes care of the programming and the ambitious lyrics that tell the story of two twins, two friends,...
''Infinite Entanglement'' is the first strike of a conceptual trilogy that goes back to Blaze Bayley's beloved space theme that already dominated his first solo outputs ''Silicon Messiah'' and ''Tenth Dimension''. This album sounds less diversified, emotional...
“Brave New World” has always been a mixed bag for me. Many songs on the album were still written with Blaze Bayley in the band. If I take into consideration how great Blaze Bayley’s first solo record “Silicon Messiah” turned out to be, I would have adored...
Metallica’s black album lacks so much originality that it isn’t even worth a proper name. The band kept only the worst parts of the great predecessor “…And Justice for All”, namely a very clinical production and the groove metal influences. Instead of...
Xiaoyu or Rain in English is a promising symphonic power metal quintet from Guangzhou in the People’s Republic of China. Founded back in 2005, the band released a first full length record in 2008 which can be loosely translated as “Forest Pavilion” and...
“Bruchstücke – Zehn Raritäten aus der In Extremo-Privatsammlung“ is a short compilation issued with the German Metal Hammer magazine in support of the "Kunstraub“ record and includes ten rare or unreleased tracks. While this collector’s item is a nice...
Two years after the outstanding self-titled debut from power metal and melodic rock supergroup Unisonic, the quintet is back in full strength with its sophomore output entitled Light Of Dawn. While many people I know didn’t appreciate the debut, it was...
On its third output entitled Symphony Masses: Ho Drakon Ho Megas, Therion slowly starts to sound the way that most fans of the band are used to. This album still features some death and gothic metal influences however, especially in the form of powerful...
The immortal Japanese heavy metal institution Loudness comes around with its twenty-eighth studio record in thirty-three years. The cover artwork and album title, The Sun Will Rise Again, reference the band’s breakthrough record Thunder In The East from...
Judas Priest is one of the most influential metal bands of all times that released many world class records between their blues, rock ‘n roll and progressive rock infused debut “Rocka Rolla” in 1974 and their aggressive and more speed and thrash metal...
