October 29, 2025

Royal Wood Dear John (Cordova Bay Records) 3.5/5 Toronto-based artist Royal Wood’s ninth album, Dear John, marries gritty blues with smooth folky hope reminding me of stomping in spilled beer on sticky tavern floors during my undergrad—a cozy place. Dear John is a letter to the artist himself, beginning at “The End of the Road.” […]

Cemetery Moon Dominion of Ashes (Wulfhere Productions) 4/5 Connecticut black metal is alive and well. Initially a solo project launched in 2015 that turned into a full band in 2023, Cemetery Moon’s second full-length album, Dominion of Ashes, exceeds my expectations. The album fits into the black-metal glove perfectly, with deadly guitar progressions, powerful bass […]

Banquets Petty Relics (Black Numbers) 3/5 Banquets are a New Jersey four-piece indie-punk band who released their third album, Spit at the Sun, and played what they thought were their final performances in 2016. But they reunited in 2021 and now have made a return with Petty Relics—an album about getting older while still having […]

DFMK Playa Nuclear (Alternative Tentacles) 4.5/5 Hailing from Tijuana, DFMK has been active in the underground punk scene since 2009. Their newest LP, Playa Nuclear, brings the best of surf rock to mix with their hardcore punk roots and comes to a frothing head. Technical proficiency shines through early. DFMK has been refining their sound […]

What scares us is revealing—and as society evolves, so do our nightmares. The best horror films capture the anxieties of their time while tapping into fears so primal they remain terrifying decades later. Here are five that changed the genre forever. The Blair Witch Project (1999) Framed as a film studies project, The Blair Witch […]