http://https://open.spotify.com/album/5s02KPkBjMkrz9zUJBWXDA?si=wm699T9KRDqFyL_7JogP3Q https //To say that this album is a reinvention if Black Metal, is to state the obvious at it’s most basic level// Coming off the front pages of Bandcamp, yet the dark recesses of Spotify, this album reinvents not only Black Metal, but each genre it touches. Blending together a potent mix of S...

Youth is at war with everything, including itself. When we young, we are desperate to be experts in people, and how their actions impose or reward us, and the extent to which we’re curtailed by sadness, locked down, tired of fitting in. There are two halves to self-definition – being yourself free of influence, or taking other personalities for people who ask you to do so. Billie Eilish is cau...

Great art so often comes from dark, restless places. Creative trailblazers channel inner turmoil into their work as a cathartic measure, exorcising demons through the stroke of a paintbrush or punch of a piano key.  But in Scott Hansen, we have an artist who oozes a rare sense of total contentment; a figure who’s found a way to open blissful aural floodgates and altruistically invited us to co...

In 1861, Charles Baudelaire – a rakish poet who changed hairstyles as often as hotel rooms – went for a walk in Paris. He passed cottages, shuttered shops, fields of wheat at the city’s edge, the spiced black smoke of hashish bars. Baudelaire was hounded by creditors, but these journeys had a more essential meaning. In his poem Le Soleil, he mentions tripping over the potential ahead, wanderin...

The director Gabriella Cowperthwaite on the 26th of July 2013 released Blackfish as a documentary that showed the story of Tilikum, a killer whale/orca that was held captive at SeaWorld Orlando, Florida. The documentary highlights the problems within the sea-park industry, the complex relationship between nature and man, how much we actually understand about these intelligent animals, and the d...

‘A word after a word after a word is power.’- Margaret Atwood. For many readers, The Handmaid’s Tale (2010) and Margaret Atwood’s creation of Gilead remains a dystopian society they still think about. It terrifies, when one thinks about the world globally, how close we are to having such a society on a smaller scale.I would say one of the only things preventing its birth is our awareness of our...

This is an educational graphic novel. It can be of use to someone experiencing anerexia or body dysmorphia, or someone witnessing it happen to another person. It's honest and holds nothing back. If you want to know what it's like, to be in that suffering person's head for a few moments, give this book a read.I'll recommend it to parents particularly, as it's important with these things that we ...

A word after a word after a word is power.’- Margaret Atwood. For many readers, The Handmaid’s Tale (2010) and Margaret Atwood’s creation of Gilead remains a dystopian society they still think about. It terrifies, when one thinks about the world globally, how close we are to having such a society on a smaller scale.I would say one of the only things preventing its birth is our awareness of ou...

Tyranny is an educational Graphic Novel, which can be of use to someone experiencing anerexia or body dysmorphia, or someone witnessing it happen to another person. It's honest and holds nothing back. If you want to know what it's like, to be in that suffering person's head for a few moments, give this book a read. I'll recommend it to parents particularly, as it's important with these things t...

Prefaced to this book is the following;‘On April 20, 1999, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold armed themselves with guns and explosives and walked into Columbine High School. They killed twelve students and a teacher, before taking their own lives. It was the worst school shooting in history.Dylan Klebold was my son.’This book is one mother’s dedication to trying to comprehend the one of the most t...

It really doesn’t take very long for Punisher to be tremendous. We’re in Kyoto, the monolithic hangover of old Japan, and have just left a temple that looked better in the brochure. Bored, senselessly bored, even a speed train can’t excite us. As friends depart, here’s something – a payphone. A brief call. In fewer than 10 lines, Phoebe Bridgers has locked us inside her head, and narrowed nimb...

This ideal destination borders on imagination and goes 20,000 leagues beyond - or rather below - what you would expect If you hope to swim with swishing tails, long for shimmering scales, and crave the freshest tuna known to mer-man Atlantis is for you We hold a five sea star review and have plenty of things to do Such as the Atlantis Museum of Art  Where you can listen to the largest siren son...

These 12 months have been momentous for me, and music became the single reliable thing I could take anywhere – something to cling onto, to break ice with, to carry like shrunk friends in a pocket for flights and walks home. I’ve never been more aware

This is the story of how I listened to this six-hour work in one sitting, and came closer to existential dread than I think I will ever want to. Ever.

If hell is other people, then heaven is missing them. As messy as our breakups, fallouts and moral scuffles can be, at least we know we care enough to think about those friends and partners we’ve lost. That’s clarity, maybe. Peace. We’re in love with a memory. We can reshape those relationships to suit who we are now. And now. And perhaps after a sad wank. On her second album, SZA builds hers...

I’ve never owned a diamond, won a Pulitzer or checked into a hotel that didn’t lose a star by the night I checked out. I don’t know what it’s like to sweep an awards show, blazing a trail hotter than a red carpet. I have never boosted a TV, jammed it in the trunk of a car and fled a copper siren. My bank balance remains decidedly off balance. I’ve never seen a jail, nor written about an inmate...

When life gives you Lemonade, what do you make next? A margarita will do. “That’s how I ball,” promises Beyoncé on the intro cut to her first full-length, solo, non-soundtrack album in six years. “Cleanse me of my sins / My unAmerican life.” It’s not a stretch to believe she wants to party again. The surprise on her much heralded return to the limelight is how much RENAISSANCE clamours to make...

There is no natural light in the Hayward Gallery. The artworks are illuminated in a soft, artificial glow, similar to the flat light of dusk. Gallery visitors creep around in the crepuscular gloom and I watch their shadows flit across the weave of Louise Bourgeois’ fabric children. These creations are curious and malformed. They invariably slouch or hang - anything but stand up straight - as...

  Crash’s cover makes me smile. You might prefer the deluxe take in which Charli XCX, crouched slightly further from us, is caked in blood, her hair in gore-licked strands. But I like the surreal perfection of Charli the popstar, unmarked and glamorous, cracking your windshield on a clear day. It’s as if we have driven into her unexpectedly and she’s none the worse for it. Actually, she’s comi...

After Magdalene, her opus on feminine strength, life proved to be more unforgiving than ever.

When a snake eats itself, it also cries for popcorn. The latest Spiderman outing, No Way Home, is meta even for Marvel. Marvellous?

Without him, part of hip hop’s journey to the mainstream wouldn’t have been as heartfelt or seductive...

According to Fitzgerald, there are no second acts in American lives. That’s probably true, unless you’re bigger than America. Kanye’s career has gone through so many ducks, pivots and sensational conclusions, we can’t help but look on as the next step could be the last, as rapt as we were almost 20 years ago. The first half of my quest to understand the man through his music brought us to 2010...

Great art so often comes from dark, restless places. Creative trailblazers channel inner turmoil into their work as a cathartic measure, exorcising demons through the stroke of a paintbrush or punch of a piano key.