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Finished Bethany Hughes' Istanbul last week, really enjoyable read if you're into popular history. She covers a massive amount of time from Byzas to modern day Istanbul but still manages to make it breeze by.
To keep that buzz going and get a bit more involved I'm reading The Last Days of the Ottoman Empire by Ryan Gingeras. Obviously more focused and detailed, and enjoying it a lot already. Gets into to nitty gritty of the politicking around the end of one state and birthing of another.

Would love a new Dead Congregation album.

Gutted to have missed this, sold my ticket there last week. Seems like a fair few lads were in the same boat, just not able to make it work. Hope it was killer, looked like it. Glad it sold out so they have an incentive to come back!

Mad stuff. It's insane to me that these lads want to live in a place where everyone has a gun and is free to use it whenever and wherever they like... and THEN go around deliberately spewing the most hateful shit in public and expect to experience absolutely no blowback.

Ordered most of the Medieval Prophecy stuff and some of the new Final Agony releases. I didn't realise the Medieval Prophecy stuff was a pre-order 

You've got me there, it's not a preorder, mine is on the way.
I must have been thinking of the Malthusian!

Preordered the new Stangarigel lp from Medieval Prophecy, along with the Metafyzika Barbarstva repress. Very excited to hear the new one.

I've been reading loads lately so allow me to dump some of my thoughts here.

Currently reading Babel by RF Kuang. So far so good, a bit of a Phillip Pullman type low fantasy/alternate history feel to it.
Best novel I've read this year so far is Lapvona, by Otessa Moshfegh from a couple of years ago. Grim and miserable medieval stuff, intense and violent but also atmospheric and even at times a little funny. She lays it on thick and is sometimes cartoonish with her depictions of the feckless lord, clapping, engorging himself and drinking his way through a famine, but somehow it just works for me.

Also read Samantha Harvey's Orbital, winner of the man booker. For such a tiny book it felt so long. Some nice prose but far inferior to her earlier novel The Western Wind. I don't get why Orbital rose to the fore but there you go.

For non fiction Mesopotamia by Gwendolyn Leick and Assyria by Eckhart Frahm. Mesopotamian civilisations a bit of an obsession of mine recently. Assyria is a brilliant popular history book about that particular society, published last year. Gwendolyn Leicks book is older and more archaeologically focused, she picks 10 Mesopotamian cities and gives a detailed essay on each, from archaeological evidence to their historical significance and role, to their founding Myths and place within babylonian culture. Brilliant stuff.

The Language Puzzle by Steven Mithen. How we talked our way out of the stone age is the subtitle of this book, and that's essentially what it is. Trying to piece together the earliest possible traces of human speech and covers it with a degree of real academic, scientific rigour. Really interesting topic if you're into linguistics and prehistoric stuff. A bit much at times, I skimmed through the section where he describes in great detail the anatomy of the fucking ear canal of a chimpanzee - its entirely relevant to the study and he's a real scientist at work but I can just take yourbword for it Steven.

Final recommendation for history is The Boundless Sea by David Abulafia. This is basically a full global human history using the sea as its framing device. Don't know how else to summarise it, I guess be prepared to hear a lot about trade. Doesn't drone on endlessly about this battle or that armada, definitely more about seafaring, navigating, settling, trading, empire building and he moves through all of these time periods and every corner of the world at a decent enjoyable clip. Utterly fascinating and couldn't recommend it highly enough if these sweeping histories are your bag. Generally the less specific a history book the more skeptical I am, but this is a masterpiece.

Grave Infestation- Carnage Gathers
Havukruunu- Tavastland

Both of these in heavy rotation for the past couple of weeks, very promising start to the year.

It's still percolating for me but Blood Incantation, Death Like Mass and Spite are up there. I've bought practically nothing this year (one album since January!)
Will hopefully get to finally add those to the collection after Christmas.

Especially disappointing there's no Irish date as I was all prepared to see then in August 2020 I believe, in Limerick no less. Robbed!

Sounds like I need to listen to this Frogsword...

Canning in the brewery yesterday:

Stangarigel - Metafyzika Barbarstva
Stangarigel - Na Severa Sdrca
Malokarpatan - Vertumnus Caesar
Ares Kingdom - Return to Dust
Cultes des Ghoules - Spectres over Transylvania
Cultes des Ghoules - Henbane
Negative Plane - The Pact

A dipped into Enslaved's latest, some parts I really like  but some of the more progressive elements don't quite work for me, I'll give it a proper listen some other time.

Back on the Cultes des Ghoules today with Coven. While I might just about prefer Henbane musically for its more memorable haunting riffs, there is something very special about this album that keeps me being certain about that top spot. It is so incredibly realised as a concept.

To be fair, and I don't know anything about the legal system, but one of those three cases seems way more straightforward - and less serious - than the others.

The one in the airport I imagine is considerably complicated by a policeman being caught on camera trying to either kill or give serious brain damage to the guy who is lying down restrained.
The Southport attack is one of the most horrific and devastating crimes I can imagine, committed by a (then) underage person, some of the victims of which are still in critical condition - that already extremely serious case might get even more serious in the weeks and months to come as the full effects are made apparent. Those factors (the gravity, the age at the time, the ongoing uncertain condition of the other victims) probably make it more complicated.

Rioters being filmed (or filming themselves) causing criminal damage and assaulting police officers seems way more straightforward and 'easy' to get throught the system, no?

This whole thing has been depressing, seeing the likes of Rowling hop onto it and, even when proven wrong, seeming to just double down.

I've no informed opinions in trend athletes because I'm neither trans nor an athlete, but stuff like DSD I find comfusing in the sporting context. How can you try to regulate that? Do basketball players get disqualified for being too tall? Swimmers with unnaturally  long arms? Madness.

If she has a technical (as yet unmanifested) advantage because of her raised t levels, then.. tough? At least it's not something she can control. It would be way worse if she was deliberately training for years in an effort to unfairly steal an advantage over a less well prepared athlete.

Just finished The Heart in Winter by Kevin Barry, brilliant. Great prose and I flew through it. Back on a Discworld now, my usual always-on choice.

Recently finished The Hundred Years War on Palestine too by Rashid Khalidi. A very good overview of the process of settlement and population replacement from the early 20th century onward. While it's obviously written by a Palestinian with considerable personal connection to the events, it doesn't exactly read like a manifesto. He is quite scathing of the failings of various Palestinian leaderships and factions, for their own contributions to the whole miserable affair.

Simon Sebag Montefiores Jerusalem might be up next, or Peter Frankopan's Silk Roads.