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Conceptual band La Dispute has announced local supports for their No One Was Driving the Car Australian headline tour, which will be hitting our shores in October 2026. The band have also added a second show in Melbourne at 170 Russell on October 20, tickets are on sale now. La Dispute will be promoting their […]

The corporate homsars got ahold of this one, so it has different names like “Air Crash Investigators” outside the JCSA, but this is a collaboration between Canadian filmmakers, the Smithsonian, and National Geographic that takes a Forensic Files approach to technical failures in aviation.

Now, very little will displace Forensic Files as the best television program ever made, but Mayday: Air Disaster follows the same format: backtrack from the event to the diagnosis to ultimately show us what really went wrong.

Expect top-notch acting. These Canadian actors are probably dead from fent overdoses now, but they are quite talented, just not in the “Hollywood” way of being charismatic and vague. They act out not just the event, but the investigators who have to dig through the wreckage and find the cause.

In that lies the appeal of this show: it is really a detective series or a horror movie masquerading as a documentary. The unknown strikes and a plane goes down; the detectives move in to use forensic methods (and ruthless interrogations) to figure out who screwed up and where, then fix it.

You might notice that this completes the arc of not just horror, but westerns and detective fiction: something against which we are powerless appears, and we gradually learn enough to at least mostly defeat it. This also fits within the Forensic Files or American Detective world.

Watchers of this program could not be blamed if they never get on a plane again, but the richness of technical detail, the clarity of the logical analysis, and the bravery of the people involved create an almost theological faith in function over appearance.

Nothing else on television comes really close. This series is a confrontation between human solipsism and the whole of reality, and it shows us slowly winning the war against the limits in our heads.

Riot Fest claims actor William Shatner has made a long list of demands ahead of his performance on the final day of this year's festival. Continue reading…

The highly successful resurrection of THE KOVENANT sees them hurtling through Australia for the very first time with a special performance of their much-revered and critically acclaimed album Nexus Polaris. Featuring past and present members of Mayhem, Arcturus, Cradle Of Filth and Dimmu Borgir, this September, THE KOVENANT invite you on a trip through the […]

Metallica seem pretty blown away with Avatar's performances as support on a U.K. and European leg of the M72 tour. Continue reading…

The city of Birmingham has officially announced its inaugural 'Ozzy Day' celebrations, which will take place exactly one year after Ozzy's death in 2025. Continue reading…

Gojira have announced a fill-in for dummer Mario Duplantier for their upcoming festival performances after dealing with U.S. visa issues. Continue reading…

Yes that title sounds a little familiar, but what are Ghost doing with their latest concert film, '2 Big to Rig'? Continue reading…

The stories behind eight times bands were unable to perform after being accused of being connected to "Satanism." Continue reading…

So what do you look for in a beer? As a fan of German beers, I would say no taste of decomposition or fermentation; I want a nice clean product. As a fan of IPAs, I would say a nice crisp piquant bitterness.

Banger IPA gets very close. It has too much of the yeasty rotting pumpkin flavor of fermentation, which if you have ever swum in a lake with a corpse in it you recognize as the taste of the water, and is just a shade short of crisp with a tiny sliver of too much sweetness.

Otherwise, however, this beer offers quite a bit, including an 8.4% ABV that is not as punishing as some IPAs but sort of glorious in its own right, basically a wine-beer for alcoholics driving lawnmowers into town to avoid getting their sixth DUI.

The hazy/imperial variety of IPAs involves adding hops throughout the fermentation process, driving up the bitterness and alcohol (the two constants of modern life!) while driving out the marshy sugar-beverage flavor that we know from (say…) Budweiser or Tecate.

While everyone wants hipsters dead, these beers predated them, being an adaptation of the British Empire which decided to make beer for people who do not like sugar, salt, and fat added to everything. And on a cold day, no way I would kick one of these out of bed.