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...
Slaves to Fashion is an imaginative Norwegian heavy metal quintet that had the interesting idea to honour the development of its favourite genre of music by releasing ten singles throughout one year that would end up on the appropriately titled record...
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...
Few bands have gone through as many line-up changes as Annihilator. The first four studio albums alone featured four different lead vocalists. This is why it's not a bad idea at all to record some of the classics again with one single line-up as a potential...
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...
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...
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is the eighth main game in action-adventure video games series Yakuza by developers Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio and publishers Sega. For the first time in the franchise, this game focuses on role-playing video game fighting style where...
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...
Nightmare Alley is a gothic tale that unites drama, horror and thriller elements all at once. Directed by experienced veteran Guillermo del Toro, the movie has an ambitious running time of two and a half hours. This movie is based upon a novel published...
Alan Wake is a Finnish video game that was first released all the way back in 2010. The action-adventure game with horror elements quickly became a favourite, receiving positive reviews and obtaining the first spot in Time magazine's list of the top ten...
United Forces is a compilation by German power metal legends Helloween released with German Hard Rock magazine one month before the release of Helloween's self-titled album featuring three different singers and an intriguing combination of the band's...
Belfast is a sincerely humane drama that deserves all the acclaim and attention it has recently been getting. Inspired by director Kenneth Branagh's own childhood memories, this film tells the beginning of The Troubles, an ethno-nationalist conflict in...
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 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...
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,...
Just like their genre colleagues Katatonia, gothic metal pioneers Paradise Lost have decided to play a concert without audience during the ongoing pandemic, in this case at The Mill Nightclub in Bradford, West Yorkshire. The band has decided to play sixteen...
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...
Lost Not Forgotten Archives: The Majesty Demos (1985-1986) is the sixth release of Dream Theater's Lost Not Forgotten Archives that goes into its second year of existence. This collection of demos has been published for the first time nineteen years ago...
Lords of Black is a Spanish heavy metal quartet that deserves more acclaim, approval and attention than it has gotten so far. All four members have been or are still involved in numerous interesting bands and projects. Bassist Daniel Criado was once involved...
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...
Blacklight is another action thriller featuring a typecast Liam Neeson. This movie is exactly what you can expect and by the numbers. However, it convinces with great acting performances, interesting characters and solid pace. The story revolves around...
Experimental Armenian-American alternative metal quartet System of a Down hasn't released any new music for fifteen years due to internal disputes and numerous side projects. The current Nagorno-Karabakh war which is essentially a conflict between Azerbaijan...
The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes is the third entry in the survival horror video game series whose first season is going to conclude next year with The Dark Pictures Anthology: The Devil in Me. This is also the strongest entry in the series...
Hellryder is a side project by Grave Digger singer Chris Boltendahl and Grave Digger guitarist Axel Ritt. The quartet is completed by bassist Steven Wussow of Orden Ogan and Xandria fame as well as drummer Timmi Breideband who has played for Bonfire and...
Playful, dynamic and beautiful as the rabbit on the cover artwork Hoochie Koo is the thirteenth studio album by Japanese rock and metal trio Ningen Isu. It's the second release in the group's most consistent line-up that still exists as I'm writing this...
