by Sebastian Kluth
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...
The album cover of Mystic Prophecy's Monuments Uncovered clearly shows that this cover album was all about having fun. It can't be compared to the band's regular outputs. As a cover album, it is overall average as it has as many weaknesses as strengths....
April Rain is a post-rock quartet from Saint Petersburg that has just released its eighth release in only five years with the stunning Mirror of Ether. The album includes ten songs with a total running time of fifty-nine minutes. Right from the start,...
Silver Talon is a young heavy metal sextet whose members have already played in quite a few bands such as speed metal group Spellcaster, power metal outfit Sanctifyre, thrash metal band Sabateur and gothic metal group Idle Hands. The sextet's first extended...
The Makarrata Project is the first studio album with new material released by Australian alternative rock band Midnight Oil. It's also the last release involving bassist and backing singer Bones Hillman who died a week after the album's official release....
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...
Graveyard of Honor is one of the best and most influential Japanese gangster movies ever made. If it had been more popular abroad, this movie might have the same reputation as The Godfather, Once Upon a Time in America and The Untouchables have today....
Partially based upon historical events, Bernard Rose's Samurai Marathon portrays how a Japanese lord sends his men on an exhausting run to get them prepared for a potential attack by Western forces after centuries of isolation. The movie follows different...
Ladybaby is one of the most intriguing idol groups that has gone through significant changes in its career. The band formed back in 2013 but only released its first official song two years later. This first single called ''Nippon Manju'' was an instant...
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...
Freaks is a fresh contemporary American-Canadian science-fiction drama. The story revolves around a seven-year old girl whose mother died in her early childhood and whose paranoid father overprotects her. As she grows older, she starts questioning her...
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...
The Universal Migrator I: The Dream Sequencer Floating in Space When I bought Ayreon's double-album The Universal Migrator Part I: The Dream Sequencer and The Universal Migrator Part II: Flight of the Migrator as a teenager one and a half decades ago,...
The Haunted, also known as The Tag-Along, is a highly entertaining Taiwanese horror movie. An elderly woman from a vast apartment complex has mysteriously disappeared and her worried best friend starts having strange visions and hearing weird noises....
Resident Evil: The Final Chapter is the sixth and last entry in the live action franchise based upon the famous Japanese video games. To be honest, the plug should have been pulled much earlier. While the first movie has been excellent, the four sequels...
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...
Schönberg is a Japanese symphonic power metal quartet. Its first record Splendid Rosa Birth ～華麗なるロサ、誕生～ comes around with thirteen songs, including five instrumental tracks, with a total running time of forty-four minutes. The entertaining record convinces...
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...
With the seventh entry in the franchise, entitled Ebirah, Horror of the Deep, the Godzilla movie series definitely enters adventure film territory. The beloved lizard also moves away from being considered a dangerous antagonist and becomes an earthly...
Godzilla vs. Hedorah is the eleventh entry in the franchise and certainly one of its most experimental and memorable films. New director Banno Yoshimitsu incorporated quite a few ideas into the film that were on the pulse of time in the early seventies...
Invasion of Astro-Monster is the most creative, diversified and entertaining entry in the franchise in the sixties along with cult movie Mothra vs. Godzilla. The story revolves around a Japanese and an American astronaut who encounter extraterrestrials...
This movie is a masterpiece. I have been a big fan of the Godzilla series since I was a child. When I discovered the original movie at the age of twelve, it was only the second movie in my life that truly impressed me after The Lion King. The movie hasn't...
The Captain is a Chinese action-drama inspired by real events that occurred less than a year and a half before this film was released. One has to admire how quickly, professionally and precisely the three production companies have written a tight script,...
German punk rock veterans Die toten Hosen have always been on the brave, creative and innovative side which helped them stay successful, relevant and energetic for four decades in a row. A punk double album, a single with French lyrics criticizing former...
The Witness is an excellent South Korean psychological thriller. The story revolves around a man who kidnaps a young woman who manages to escape but gets beaten to death in front of a modern apartment complex. A young family father witnesses the incident...
