In no particular order:

• Album: Shearling - "Motherfucker I am both Amen and Hallelujah..." (2025)
  Absolutley ripping noise rock (by all means) from last year. Had seen it recommended a few times and stuck it on while building pedals one evening. It is in almost constant rotation since. Experimental, long form, one hour long song with plenty of variety and fury in there. Just totally class.
• Album: The Ruins of Beverast - "Tempelschlaf" (2026)
  If you know TROB, it is both exactly what you expect but also a surprise. A little more to the point than the last record, but still sprawling death-doom style stuff, atmospheric and heavy.
• Album: Ulver - "Neverland" (2025)
  Their own blurb desribing this as having a "punk" spirit has me in stitches every time I think about it. Lush, otherworldly, some absolute fever dreamscape of ambient electronica and psychedelia, practically genreless, completely addictive and beautiful.
• Album: Black Coral - "Dark Coasts" (2026)
  Huge thick drones. Overwhelming and oceanic textures. Should be oppressive but comes off meditative, very savage and begs for repeat listens. Had this on many walks and it feels like no time at all has passed when it is done, perfect to get lost in.
• Album: Otterans - "Hadean Copper" (2025)
  More big textures but leaning more on the noise and noise rock than straight drones. Guitar focused, gorgeous loops and passages pushed hard into anxious crumbling repetitions. Huge, satisfying raw sound, tons of atmosphere. Have had this on regularly since it came out.
• Album: Boris - "Boris Performing Flood" (2021)
  I know "Flood" well but think this is my favourite version of it yet, a live recording from 2012. Just perfect and massive sounding. Captures their live sound perfectly. This is also carried through since its first spin over Christmas and has laid the framework for how most of my listening went since.
• Album: The Grey - "KODOK" (2025)
  Obviously in anticipation of opening for these lads next month, I had been going back through their catalog and love this most recent album. Modern post-metal, usually instrumental but with some well suited guests on here. Savage stuff.
• Album: Fugazi - "Repeater" (1990)
  One I know anyway. Hadn't had it on in a few years, fell back into listening to it following from a first spin of Red Medicine - which I also loved, but the familiarity of Repeater kept it on loop all month. What's there to say here, it is just class, a vital record. I know little of them outside of this album. I get stuck in ruts of single albums by lots of bands but how much I also enjoyed Red Medicine proves I need to fix that.
• Album: Hard House Euphoria (Green) - CD1 / Tidy Boys (2001)
  I am going to need to find a version of this that isn't on youtube. I love this (and similar from the same era) and it was a constant through my teens but I hadn't listened to it in literal decades until this month. Great memories, straightforward but solid rave. Some absolute horrors in there but in general a great mix.
• Live Gig: Youth Code / King Yosef / Street Sects - 17/01/2026 - Kasbah, Dolans, Limerick
  Obviously love industrial but bar a few Street Sects songs, I wasn't familiar with these bands at all. All three were top class. Hammering electronics, no shortage of riffs. Obvious inspiration from the industrial classics (I can't argue here), all done their own way. King Yosef likely my favourite of the three on the night. Must actually go back on Bandcamp to each...
• Book: Paul Lynch - "Prophet Song" (2023)
  Sitting on the shelf for months but finally dove in. Couldn't put it down, as bleak as it was. A family falls into the sights of an authoritarian government coming to power, and it follows their own story through the backdrop of the country ultimately going to war with itself. Well written, well paced, recommended.
• Book: Stanislaw Lem - "Solaris" (1961)
  Whatever translation of it it is, looks like actually from 2011? Anyway, completely class, don't know how it took me this long to read it. A man travels to a new planet being researched, and finds the skeleton crew in the station living in a bizarre situation that he falls into himself. Concurrent stories about the crew's situation and the planet itself, with the histories of its exploration and research making up most of this book and being completely captivating. Loved it.
• Manga: Delicious In Dungeon (Vol 1, 2) (2017)
  I have read the whole thing as scans last year and loved it, devoured it, and have started into the physical copies for a slow re-read. Adventurer's party gets wiped out in a Dungeon but is saved by a last minute teleport out, ventures back in to save remaining party member, decides to eat everything they find instead of bringing food with them to save money and go back quickly. Significantly better than the premise would suggest, gorgeous art, story goes outlandish (in a good way) as it goes on. The first few setup everything nicely.
• Anime: Frieren - S2, EP1 - EP3 (2026)
  I loved the first season. The art, the pace, the story, all easy to dig into and addictive. Read the manga afterwards up to the point of S2 starting, and preferred them to the show, but held back on reading more since it started up again this month. First few episodes are great and similar feeling to S1, can't fault it, particularly excellent animation.
• Anime: To Your Eternity S1, S2 (2021)
  Sitting on the watchlist for a while, dove in seeing that S3 is ongoing. Really good, nice pace, unique story, good animation. Easy to get into with a plot that stays linked even as it goes on over 100s of years and regularly skips time.
• TV: Fallout - S2, EP3 - EP7 (2026)
  Look, I love New Vegas, it's one of the best games ever, I was always going to enjoy this. It's good and so far is better than S1. Hard to tell if I would enjoy it as much if I hadn't played the games to death, but it has me hooked.
• Film: Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre (2023)
  Terrible, laughably bad. Literally exactly what you expect and completely hamfisted. It doesn't even bother to story up how they assemble their team of master spies, it just lashes them together in the first five minutes then plows through a load of nothing for two hours. No I did not expect it to be good, I wanted to feel nothing so I suppose I got that out of it.
• Film: It's Never Over - Jeff Buckley (2025)
  Good documentary about the musician. I love Grace and some of Sketches... but outside of odds and ends I read about the death over the years I knew little about him creating the music. All of that was interesting, overall it was good.