CD: Bullet For My Valentine - Venom

Fifth from Welsh metal furies retains their muscle and lack of flab

Bullet For My Valentine retain their fury. Last time round, on 2013’s aptly named Temper Temper, frontman Matt Tuck was snarling about substance abuse affecting his band. This time, on their fifth studio album, he claims his enraged microphone onslaught results from pondering his dead-end origins in Bridgend, Wales, and the way he was dismissed at school for being a metaller. Be that as it may, the album also reeks of torment, indignation and pure fury at a love affair turned sour.

We Made It: Coracle Maker Malcolm Rees

WE MADE IT: CORACLE MAKER MALCOLM REES Discover a South Wales living craft tradition

We Made It heads to South Wales to discover a living craft tradition

Over the past few months of We Made It, we've explored some very traditional crafts, but few that have such a direct link to the distant past as this. Malcolm Rees is one of a handful of people in South Wales keeping the culture of coracle building and fishing alive, having grown up around generations who built and used the unique boats, which were once admired by Julius Caesar.

CD: Gwenno – Y Dydd Olaf

CD: GWENNO - Y DYDD OLAF Misty Welsh-language anti-totalitarian concept album

Misty, mostly Welsh-language anti-totalitarian concept album

An all-analogue space-rock, Krautrock-influenced, motorik-driven psychedelic ride on Saturn’s rings, Gwenno’s Y Dydd Olaf is a treat from start to end. Her sweet but dislocated vocals mesh with snappy bass guitar, bloopy synths and the otherworldly atmosphere of Ralph & Florian Kraftwerk.

{150}, National Theatre Wales/Theatr Genedlaethol Cymru

{150}, NATIONAL THEATRE WALES/THEATR GENEDLAETHOL CYMRU Bold and technically dazzling, the energy of Marc Rees’ Patagonian tale flags too often

Bold and technically dazzling, the energy of Marc Rees’ Patagonian tale flags too often

The brackets around {150} are ambiguous, almost apologetic. The 150th anniversary of Y Wladfa (The Colony), the semi-legendary "oasis of Welshness" in the Patagonian wilderness has given occasion in Wales for the celebration of a most unlikely story. One hundred and fifty men, women and children left their homes all over Wales and created a new life for themselves, against all the odds, at the other end of the world. Sixty-six came from the villages around Aberdare and Mountain Ash in a valley 15 miles north of Cardiff.

Keeping up with the Joneses

The epic story of Welsh Patagonia finds Wales's two national theatres collaborating

Gruff Rhys has called it the Great Welsh Media Gang-Bang. This year everyone who is anyone (who can get funding) has hopped on a plane for Argentina to follow in the footsteps of the 150 Welsh men, women and children who emigrated to Patagonia 150 years ago – broadcasters, musicians, politicians, journalists, comedians.

Violence and Son, Royal Court Theatre

VIOLENCE AND SON, ROYAL COURT THEATRE New play about fathers and sons is very hard to stomach, but impossible to forget

New play about fathers and sons is very hard to stomach, but impossible to forget

Titles can be warnings as well as come-ons. In Gary Owen’s new play about a teenager growing up in the Welsh Valleys, it’s not difficult to guess what the main theme of the play is. Stumbling out of the performance tonight I had the distinct impression that this is the most disturbing, even chilling, play of the year. Not only is it written with enormous skill, but what it has to say about men, and boys, feels both emotionally true and morally repellant. It’s a drama about truths that maybe I just don’t want to know about.

Super Furry Animals, O2 Brixton Academy

SUPER FURRY ANIMALS, O2 BRIXTON ACADEMY The most inventive band in pop pick up where they left off for an emotional return

The most inventive band in pop pick up where they left off for an emotional return

The timing of this tour, to celebrate the 15th anniversary of their self-released, lo-fi masterpiece Mwng, could not be more fitting. The album was inspired, in part, by Welsh language punk band Datblygu, and the left-wing political feelings that ran through that band’s work. Fast forward to now and London looks like an island of red surrounded by a sea of blue following the recent election – and there are a lot of people here aching for escape after Thursday's events.

Fitzwilliam Quartet, Hay Chamber Music Festival

FITZWILLIAM QUARTET, HAY CHAMBER MUSIC FESTIVAL New chamber festival is a refreshing antidote to second-hand books

New chamber festival is a refreshing antidote to second-hand books

If the thought of the annual trek to Hay-on-Wye for the literary festival in May fills you with as much gloom as it does me (and I don’t have to go as far as most of our readers), you might do worse than sample the town’s chamber music festival this weekend as a healthy change or at least a soothing antidote.

Man to Man, Wales Millennium Centre, Cardiff

MAN TO MAN Margaret Ann Bain faultless in Manfred Karge's ageless and grim parable, now a hit in Edinburgh

Margaret Ann Bain faultless in Manfred Karge's ageless and grim parable

There can be few modern plays as testing for a female actor as Manfred Karge’s Man to Man. When Tilda Swinton took it on at the Royal Court in 1987 and brought to the many roles of this one woman show her androgynous intensity it was the performance that made her name. Here in Cardiff for the Wales Millennium Centre’s revival, Margaret Ann Bain gives one of the most tireless and faultless performances a Welsh stage has seen in some time; a breathless, kinetically poetic 70 minutes that is never anything less than entirely captivating.