The sacred word 'om' is spoken in different ways according to its context. Elongated, it can be stretched over multiple syllables. As a musical unit, OM work with building blocks that are similarly minimal, yet drawn out for maximum effect. And like the origins of their name, their heady, psychedelic music is heavily indebted to cultures which lie to the east.

Cartoon goth-metal boogieman Brian Warner and his gang return with their first album in three years, and their 10th in all. In Europe Marilyn Manson – the stage name of both the front man and the band - are rightly seen as an industrialised update of Alice Cooper’s horror-film showbiz rock but in the States the country’s more conservative elements really do seem to buy into their cabaret antichrist schtick.

Anyone remember gabber? It was a moment in the mid-Nineties when Dutch and New York dance music went as fast and loud as it could. In retrospect it was a bizarre anomaly but achieved brief cult popularity combining puerile juvenility, punk, avant-garde experimentalism and techno in a way that’s never been repeated. It was a bloody racket but the best of it had a real venomous sting and eventually appealed to the heavy rock community as much as ravers. The same can be said of Huoratron, AKA Finnish producer Aku Raski.

Biz Markie: The Biz Never Sleeps

Joe Muggs

To dubstep or not to dubstep, that was the question perplexing the nearly 5000 metalheads jammed into the Brixton Academy to see Korn.

Although the four days of Norway’s 15th by:Larm Festival were dominated by the presentation of the second annual Nordic Music Prize, there were plenty of other distractions: a sobering tour of Norwegian black metal’s infamous sites, a talk by legendary Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, what felt like millions of shows in millions of venues, and weather confounding all expectations of what Oslo ought to be like in February.

Justice – pronounce it “Joosteece”, for they are as French as they come – deconstruct the opposition between style and substance. Everything about them is preposterous, from the hipster facial hair via the rock-pig antics in their A Cross The Universe tour “documentary” DVD to the way that almost the entirety of their musical palette is cribbed from their countrymen and close associates Daft Punk.

It must have been difficult for Mexican acoustic instrumental guitar duo Rodrigo Sánchez and Gabriela Quintero to know where to go next. Initially discovered in Dublin as high-end buskers, they’ve built a career on energised acoustic pyrotechnics, combining complex Hispanic flourishes with heavy metal tics. It’s an invigorating concoction, especially live, and eventually they were courted by Hollywood, writing pieces for Puss in Boots and the last Pirates of the Caribbean film.