by Sebastian Kluth
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...
Ten years had passed between Japanese progressive power metal group Galneryus' first studio album and this wonderful release. The band had already accomplished much in those ten years, including the release of eight studio albums, nine extended plays...
American punk rock quartet The Offspring has taken nine years to release its tenth studio album Let the Bad Times Roll due to label issues, line-up changes and other activities such as singer, pianist, guitarist and bassist Dexter Holland becoming a doctor...
Only a few months after the release of the cover album Schicksalsmelodien, German Neue Deutsche Härte band Eisbrecher is back with its ninth studio album Liebe Macht Monster. The record includes fourteen brand-new tracks with a generous running time of...
Fake Island is a Japanese metalcore quartet founded three years ago in Tokyo. The group released its self-entitled extended play that very same year. This release included five tracks with a total running time of eighteen minutes. This year, the group...
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...
It's simply great to return to the cinema and watch a new movie for the first time in half a year due to the coronavirus pandemic. In addition to this, it's not just any movie but the new film by British cult director Christopher Nolan who has just celebrated...
Eyecatch Junction is the first official movie made by famous director Miike Takashi. Just like many of his later works, this obscure V-cinema flick from the early nineties vividly combines genres that seem to be incompatible for Western audiences. This...
Kung Fu League is a quirky Hong Kong action-comedy movie that goes back to the genre's golden era in the late eighties and early nineties. You will only fully appreciate this film if you are familiar with those movies as the four characters from the past...
After the experimental Godzilla vs. Hedorah with a visionary ecological message and children's movie All Monsters Attack, director Fukuda Jun directed his first film of the franchise in five years. The twelfth entry Godzilla vs. Gigan is one of the weakest...
German quartet Lacrimas Profundere has received quite some attention in the German gothic scene in the early years of the millennium and I remember several very good songs being included on samplers by magazines such as Sonic Seducer and Zillo back in...
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...
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...
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...
Willy's Wonderland is an absurd, creative and surreal horror movie with a few comedic elements. The story revolves around a nameless protagonist who gets stranded in an isolated town after a car accident. Since he cannot pay for repairs, he is given the...
BlutEngel is a German darkwave, Electronic Body Music and futurepop project by renowned vocalist, songwriter and programmer Chris Pohl who has been and is active in numerous other similar projects such as She Hates Emotions. The group is particularly...
Releasing a live album without an actual audience is a rather strange idea but then again, it fits with Katatonia's elegiac rock sounds. The Swedish quintet offers twenty songs with a total running time of just below one hour and a half. It focuses on...
Historical drama with depth and grit While everbody seems to be going crazy over Christopher Nolan's new science-fiction epic Tenet, I must admit that I have prefered Chinese historical military drama The Eight Hundred a little bit more. The movie tells...
Shinjuku Outlaw is a direct-to-video gangster movie directed by legendary Takashi Miike. This is only his eighth movie early in his career and the film doesn't have the content, effects and flow of later Yakuza masterpieces such as Shinjuku Triad Society...
Satan Kindergarten might sound like a slightly amusing band name but the Mexican quintet actually offers solid symphonic gothic metal on its debut El significado del dolor y su belleza which translates to The Meaning of Pain and its Beauty. The band convinces...
Godzilla vs. Megalon is the thirteenth entry in the Godzilla franchise and once again a family-friendly movie directed by Fukuda Jun. The film wasn't even supposed to be a Godzilla film in the first place and was intended to focus on the adventures of...
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...
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...
Back in the early years of the millennium, progressive metal veterans Dream Theater honoured several of their favourite bands by playing their records from start to finish. These renditions include Deep Purple's Made in Japan, Pink Floyd's Dark Side of...
Gamera, the Giant Monster was Daiei's answer to Toho's Godzilla franchise. Despite a low budget that also explains why the movie was still shot in black and white in the mid-sixties, this first film of the franchise was crafted with care, imagination...
