by Sebastian Kluth
The Snake Girl and the Silver-Haired Witch is essentially a gothic fairy tale that should appeal to older children, teenagers and young adults who like gloomy, imaginative and surreal stories that walk off the beaten path. The story revolves around joyful...
Over My Dead Body, originally known as Seisi Seisi Seisapsei, is a pitch-black satire from Hongkong criticizing the explosion of property prices and its consequences on middle-class citizens. The movie follows a group of residents of an apartment complex...
Baby Assassins is a Japanese action comedy film with unconventional plot and intriguing characters that surprised me very positively. The movie is not as immature as its title or movie poster might suggest and actually has much to offer for teenage and...
Roughly a year after the release of masterful extended play The Raging River, Swedish sextet Cult of Luna offers a full length effort with nine songs and a generous running time of sixty-nine minutes. The band's style is often described as atmospheric...
The Craft: Legacy follows the visionary fantasy drama The Craft that had been released twenty-four years ago. This movie seems to be a sequel through its first half before the story takes a twisted turn and connects with some events from the original...
Orphaned Land is a completely unique quintet from Israel that has been promoting understanding, peace and diplomacy for decades by now. The group offers a most fascinating mixture of epic heavy metal soundscapes, atmospheric doom metal passages and even...
This is the second instalment in Therion's Leviathan trilogy consisting of thirty-three songs released in three consecutive years in total. In retrospective, it was certainly a logical idea to release a whopping one hundred fifty minutes of new music...
Ishtar is one of the few South Korean metal bands that has shown great potential but hasn't had much success since its genre is still being overlooked and underestimated in its home country. The band has had a streak of two extended plays and two full...
Amethyst is a Swiss heavy metal quintet that has released its debut extended play Rock Knights digitally in December 2022, on cassette in March 2023, on CD in May 2023 and on vinyl in September 2023. This means that any collector can purchase this product...
One Take Only, also knows as Som and Bank: Bangkok for Sale, is a gangster drama from Thailand. Directed by renowned Oxide Chun Pang who would later on direct movies such as action films The Storm Warriors and Out of Inferno, horror films like The Eye...
Legendary German heavy metal quartet Grave Digger has certainly been very prolific throughout the past decade, releasing seven studio albums in the past ten years. However, the releases had significant ups and downs with atmospheric, creative and epic...
Challenging Progressive and Psychedelic Sounds with an Ominous Tone Less than a year and a half after the release of its predecessor, Japanese psychedelic rock, progressive rock, heavy metal, hard rock and doom metal trio Ningen Isu has released its fourteenth...
Raiga: The Monster from the Deep Sea is a Japanese monster movie that follows the dreadful Reigo: King of the Sea Monsters released roughy four years earlier. While the latter was disappointing regarding production values, plot and acting performances,...
I Am Waiting, originally known as Ore Wa Matteru Ze, is a Japanese film noir that mixes elements of a personal drama with gangster thriller segments. This was the first movie for promising young director Kurahara Koreyoshi and its lead actress Kitahara...
Gone with the Bullets, obviously a pun on Gone with the Wind, is a Chinese comedy-drama with romantic undertones, originally known as Yi Bu Zhi Yao. This film is the second part of a trilogy that started four years earlier with Let the Bullets Fly, originally...
A very good friend of mine, who is particularly intrigued by experimental bands walking off the beaten path, has recently been introducing me to Edmontonian quartet The Spruce Moose and its second record Pyramid Scheme. The first element that fascinated...
Amorphis has been my favourite band for more than a decade by now but even the most faithful fans must question the purpose of a release such as Queen of Time - Live at Tavastia 2021. The Finnish metal band had only just released the excellent live record...
A massive nine years after its last regular full length output The Perfect Cult, Swedish quintet Deathstars is finally back with fifth studio record Everything Destroys You. This highly entertaining record offers ten new songs with a compact total running...
Wrath of Daimajin is the third, final and best entry in the Japanese franchise about the ancient demon god who protects his disciples from cruel injustices. In this movie, a group of lumbermen have been kidnapped by the henchmen of an evil lord who is...
The King's Man is a prequel to the successful Kingsman movie series revolving around quirky spies defending the United Kingdom against all sorts of extraordinary criminals. This film here takes place around the First World War and includes numerous infamous...
French quartet Dagoba plays melodic death metal with dominant keyboard passages flirting with pop music in the key of Cyhra, The Halo Effet and contemporary In Flames on its eighth studio record By Night. Only few elements remind of the band's groove...
Return of Daimajin is the second film in the trilogy about the great demon god that combines elements of period dramas and giant monster movies. In this shortest movie of the series, an evil lord menaces, destroys and conquers two neighbouring villages...
Whenever Dutch innovator Arjen Anthony Lucassen releases a new record, it's a celebration day for progressive rock and metal fans around the world. At the age of sixty-one, the Dutch giant currently experiences a second spring as could be witnessed with...
The Killer Reserved Nine Seats, originally titled L'assassino ha riservato nove poltrone, is a giallo that combines elements of a psychological thriller with mild softcore pornography. The plot is closely inspired by the works of Agatha Christie which...
Voodoma is a gothic metal band from Düsseldorf that has been active for nearly two decades but that has been unfairly overlooked by large parts of both the gothic and the metal scene in Germany. Gotland is the group's seventh studio album and features...
