by Sebastian Kluth
I discovered Mongolian folk rock band Hanggai back in 2012 when I was particularly interested in Chinese culture, history and music. I managed to purchase a rare copy of their excellent 2010 record He Who Travels Far. I never expected to get the chance...
Zhang Yimou's Coming Home is a thought-provoking, slow-paced and emotionally moving drama that tells the tragic story of a family torn apart by the Cultural Revolution. The movie is surprisingly critical of China's past, takes its time to introduce the...
Ladies and gentlemen! I attended a very entertaining hockey game between the current Stanley Cup Champions Saint Louis Blues and Ottawa Senators last Thursday night. Even though only 9204 people were in attendance, the atmosphere was intense. The Senators...
Spinning Man is a quite unconventional psychological and philosophical thriller which has its positive and negative sides. The story revolves around a young cheerleader who has gone missing. Witnesses have reported seeing a car next to her work place...
When I initially watched Overlord, I was expecting an average horror movie with a few shallow historical references. What I've got however is an atmospheric, gripping and mysterious horror film with appropriate references to the horrors of the Second...
The Street Fighter is a Japanese martial arts film that stands out with its rough fights and graphic brutality. Main character Tsurugi Takuma is a tough guy with quite a temper who is able to rip out his opponent's eyes, testicles and vocal chords. The...
It's incredible what new vocalist Rasmus Bom Andersen did to a band that seemed dead and gone and never managed to live up to its potential since its influential debut. The young Danish dynamite revitalized the old band that came back with a bang in form...
Throne of Blood is an epic historical drama by renowned director Kurosawa Akira and with charismatic lead actor Mifune Toshiro. The plot revolves around betrayal, conspiracy, greed, honour and megalomania. It is inspired by William Shakespeare's Macbeth...
Just a look at the great cover artwork recalls the works of Judas Priest three and a half decades ago and this is also exactly the sound Riot City is going for on its debut full length effort Burn the Night. The young quartet from Calgary offers eight...
Eluveitie is a folk metal band that has had its ups and down and experiments in the early stages of its career. The horrendous debut extended play Vên with its unbalanced genre mixture and terrible production was followed by the much smoother and more...
Violent Cop is the first directorial work of comedian and television host Takeshi Kitano. He wasn't even supposed to do this job but when the initially hired director pulled out of the project due to scheduling conflicts, Takeshi Kitano took over and...
Stahlmann is a Neue Deutsche Harte band in the key of Rammstein, Oomph! and Megaherz that has been around for eleven years now. The band has released six studio records in the past nine years and has played numerous festivals. The group's work ethic is...
Music videos have recently been going out of vogue and have traditionally been underused by metal bands and particularly by the genre's most popular groups. Metallica is overall a positive exception and this collection is actually quite entertaining with...
Greta is a very good psychological thriller that convinces with excellent actresses, gloomy atmosphere and sinister tension from start to finish. The film starts very quickly and the main plot is introduced in the first five minutes already which is a...
Vietnamese septet Black Infinity offers an entertaining mixture of melodic death and gothic metal on its debut full length record 666 Metal. The group around lead singer Nguyễn Tiến Hưng plays a broad spectrum from elegiac gothic rock ballads such as...
After a solid but overall less convincing fifth installment, the sixth entry in the psychological horror franchise is a step in the right direction without reaching the quality of the first four movies. The film has a strong moral side as the test subject...
The Wandering Earth is a Chinese science-fiction blockbuster based upon the critically acclaimed novella of the same name by award-winning author Liu Cixin. The movie convinces with stunning visual and sound effects that bring a dystopian world to live....
Krypteria was an imaginative symphonic gothic metal band that slowly faded away in the beginning of the decade. Four of the band members joined forces for a new group called And Then She Came. The eponymous debut released two years ago was already quite...
What do Johnny Cash, Gravity Kills, Sammy Hagar and Marilyn Manson have in common with Def Leppard? That's right, they have all covered Depeche's Mode ''Personal Jesus''. Def Leppard's version is actually one of the most decent cover versions because...
Swedish death metal veterans Unleashed released this extended play to promote its thirteenth studio record The Hunt for White Christ. The two most positive elements about this release are the imaginative cover artwork and the fact that this record came...
Italy's stunning doom metal quintet The Foreshadowing is back with an unusual digital single in support of the horror comic book series Paranoid Boyd. The song starts with a collage of ambient sounds and dialogues before heavy breathing leads to the actual...
Bad Times at the El Royale is one of the greatest Hollywood movies released this year. Set in a remote hotel on the California-Nevada border that has seen its best days decades earlier, the movie follows an intriguing set of characters that end up meeting...
If translated literally, 腐尸爱美丽 would be called Carrion Loves Beauty but the band goes under the name Twilight Blooming instead since the last two years. The record 远方, which literally translates to Distance, is known as Far Away and is the first studio...
Ladies and gentlemen! On the twenty-first day of my trip through Atlantic Canada, I took the ferry from Channel-Port aux Basques, Newfoundland to North Sydney, Nova Scotia and stayed in Sydney for the night. Highlights: Walking through Sydney in the early...
Usually, I'm not a big fan of animation movies but Isle of Dogs certainly deserves the praise it gets. I would even consider it the best animation movie since the brilliant Wall-E ten years ago. I predict this movie is going to win at least one Academy...
