Retrofuturistic style and unsettling horrors can’t quite send ROUTINE into orbit

Picture the scene: you’re about to get up on stage to give a presentation or performance. Something feels off – you look down, and realise your shirt is missing; in fact, you have no clothes on at all

SFX’s time machine hurls us back to a random month once again

John Blair Killing the Dead Vampire epidemics from Mesopotamia to the New World 536pp. Princeton University Press. £30 (US $35). A dead body, as anyone who has sat with one will know, is an unsettling

Who wants to be scum anyway?

…with the sound of screaming. And where’s the noise coming from? Boundary-pushing next-gen deathcore trailblazers Paleface Swiss, the band rewiring metal for 2026