Contributors: Lotte Brown, Úna Hamilton Helle, Stu Horvath Ild, Bekah Lunn, Menace Ruine, Mycologia, Oerheks, Panopticon, Peace Vaults, Returning, Tom Sewell, Andrew Walter, Wulvyr.

To order: becomingtheforest.bigcartel.com

We have essays on animist Norwegian stone customs, the torch lit (or not) corridors of Table Top Roleplaying, a long form poem about endless horizons and eight interviews with musicians and bands who have emerged from the fertile humus of contemporary black metal.

#BecomingtheForest interrogates the entangled relationship we humans have with our surroundings, inspired by the ecological strands of black metal, and this time we have truly gone underground, both in a musical and topographical sense.

BTF V has arrived from the printers!

This time we have truly been working in stone time and befittingly the issue is centered around the subsurface: what can be found in the ground under our feet, the rocks that act as conduits to the soil, the depths of the imaginary subterranean…

This weekend is the underground metal festival Life After Death in London and I’ll be there Sat to screen the #BecomingtheForest video mixtape Tangled Roots: The Origins of Black Metal. Expect fire, darkness, hiking, epic Vestland mountains and 70s animation! #blackmetal #ecology #researchpractice

Finally seen Ghostwatch, a fiction framed as a real poltergeist hunt broadcast live from a suburban London home as a BBC “Halloween special” & resulting in 1m phone-ins from the public & eventual outcry as people thought it was real. Do I know anyone who actually watched it live in 1992?

I refuse the faux patriotism of flags and exceptionalism. My love of my country comes from its common wealth of folklore. It is delight in walking hollow hills and hearing exhalation of sleeping dragons. Following wraith ways, stirring up stories alive in its ghost soil. – #CLNolan #Folklore

Radio Caroline, the Pirate Radio Ship That Rocked the British Music World (1965)

Happy last days of 2024 from Hallingdal, Norway!

Given the amount of time I’ve spent in Sam Smith pubs, reading this with great interest www.theguardian.com/news/2024/de...