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The release of Advent Horizon’s fourth album, Falling Together, finds the band in an introspective mood. If you think that translates to sappy ballads and mordant MOR, you would be wrong. As heavy as any of their previous releases musically, the album looks inward lyrically to tackle matters of faith and belief and stepping outside of the rigid systems that require t...

As a film lover, I’ve long admired Werner Herzog’s astounding and often bizarre catalogue, ranging from fever-dream-like tales such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God to tributes like Nosferatu the Vampyre and unbelievable jaw-dropping visuals such as the famous hauling of a 320-ton steamboat over a muddy hill in Fitzcarraldo. While I’d previously associa...

Graeme Ginsberg’s second full‑length release under his If Not If banner arrived in late June, the follow up to 2023’s Structure. Across ten tracks, including the three‑part centrepiece Performance, Electricity confirms Grae...

In a world of playlists, where around 41% of people in UK haven’t listened to a full album for over a year, it’s easy to forget that sequencing a record is an artform in itself. Genesis always struck me as a band who understood this, so many of their LPs start and end really strongly with standout songs to open and close the album. The Bardic Depths, a band who came into exis...

Blindead 23 are a Polish band conjured from the ashes of Blindead, who it seems have gone their separate ways. Mateusz Smierzchalski (guitar) and Patryk Zwoliński (vocals) have regrouped however, and along with Roger Öjersson (ex-Katatonia: guitars, keys) and Pawal Jaroszewicz (Vitimas, ex-Vader, ex-Decapitated: drums), form the core of Blindead 23. They play some quite extre...