Comedy is strange old thing; it’s supposed to be funny ha-ha, but the laughs can often come from a dark place, as evidenced by Nick Helm’s latest show (which I saw at the Arts Depot in London). His mental health has been a backdrop to previous show, but No One Gets Out Alive is his most personal yet as he references the end of an important relationship some years ago, and charts how his television breakthrough proved to be a false dawn in his career.

The history of popular music is littered with bands who fulfilled everything needed to make it. Then fate kicked them in the teeth. Goofin’ good time Brit heavy rockers Dinosaur Pile-Up have had some rubbish luck.

Manticore was owned by Emerson, Lake and Palmer and their manager. The organisation provided the name for the band’s label. Apart from ELP and its individual members, the best-known signees to the imprint were Italian prog-rockers PFM and former King Crimson member Pete Sinfield. Despite this new album’s title, Motörhead were not with Manticore.

Swiss electro-rockers, Young Gods have been around for 40 years, but this in no way should suggest that they’ve gone soft in their old age. These days, vocalist Franz Treichler looks like the psychopathic Bob from David Lynch’s original Twin Peaks TV series and still exudes a certain malevolence – which is more than reflected in their new album Appear Disappear.

It has never been an exact science understanding when something will capture lightning in a bottle and go viral. Even less expected is for an anonymous metal band to become a social media sensation, but in early 2023 that's exactly what happened for Sleep Token.

Mark Morton is best known as a guitarist with US metallers Lamb of God. They’ve been going for three decades, established and successful, at the more extreme, thrashier end of the spectrum, but still achieving Top Five albums on the Billboard charts.

In October 1967, John Lee Hooker released a single titled “The Motor City is Burning.” The song commented on the civil unrest which had taken place in his Michigan home city of Detroit that July. “Oh, the motor city's burnin',” sang Hooker. “My home town burnin' down to the ground, Worser than Vietnam, Well, it started on 12th and Clairmont, this mornin'.”

Langenu are a black metal band. On stage at Estonia’s Tallinn Music Week, they are fearsome. Blood-vessel-burstingly intense. Tempering their force with twists into progressive, psychedelic-adjacent territory, they are a band any rock fan would dig.

Pigsx7 have hardly got a reputation for penning tender and soulful ballads, but Death Hilarious is a particularly aggressive and punishing album even by their standards. Taking cues from Black Sabbath’s heft, Motorhead’s “bend not stab” sound and soul shaking noise rock, their new album is the aural equivalent of being mugged by a gang of feral kids and being left feeling particularly battered by the experience.

The sticker on the front cover says “The heaviest proto-metal compilation ever released.” And considering the label behind Yeah Man, It's Bloody Heavy is Rise Above, founded by former Napalm Death and Cathedral frontman Lee Dorrian, this is not idle hubris.