ISSUE NO. 16
November 2025
Donate Here

Letters

How Metal and Punk Music Saved My Life

By
Aidan

Aidan writes from a prison in TAS.

Unsplash

Dear About Time,

My name is Aidan. I am 25 years old and would love to share my love of metal and punk and how it has helped change my mental attitude and helped me cope with the hardest parts of my life.

I was raised in a household of my mum and two sisters, and being the only male felt very lonely.

The only friend I found was music, namely death metal and hardcore punk. I grew up with a mother who was always blasting music at home or in the car. Whether it was Slayer or Madonna, Deicide or Portishead or Pantera or The Cure, she was playing it.

I remember our living room used to be filled with hundreds of CDs. My mum is where my love of music came from.

I was 11 when I got into my first band, which was Korn, with their self-titled debut album. I fell in love with the darkness and rawness of it, and the rest was history.

Being able to have CDs sent in has been a heaven sent. I have nearly 40 and would struggle severely without them.

Unsplash

Every time I have a rough day or feel crap, I will pop a CD in and hear the thundering drums, raw and sharp guitars and the intense, cathartic and highly emotive vocals. A lot of people don’t like it, and I understand that, but for me it’s a pure cathartic release and a purging of all the negative shit building up inside of me.

The metal and punk communities are full of some of the friendliest and most accepting people you’ll meet, and the biggest reason for this is that most of these people are the outcasts, the freaks and geeks, the people that don’t feel like they belong anywhere else and are also highly protective of each other.

If I didn’t have my music I would probably not even be alive right now. Metal and punk gave an outcast like me somewhere to belong and something to believe in.

The pure emotion and depth in this music is something I relate to on a deeper level. I know there would be others that can relate.

Some of my favourite bands include: Code Orange, Converge, Slayer, Suffocation, Napalm Death and many, many others.

Thank you for taking the time and letting me talk about something I love.

Dear About Time,

My name is Aidan. I am 25 years old and would love to share my love of metal and punk and how it has helped change my mental attitude and helped me cope with the hardest parts of my life.

I was raised in a household of my mum and two sisters, and being the only male felt very lonely.

The only friend I found was music, namely death metal and hardcore punk. I grew up with a mother who was always blasting music at home or in the car. Whether it was Slayer or Madonna, Deicide or Portishead or Pantera or The Cure, she was playing it.

I remember our living room used to be filled with hundreds of CDs. My mum is where my love of music came from.

I was 11 when I got into my first band, which was Korn, with their self-titled debut album. I fell in love with the darkness and rawness of it, and the rest was history.

Being able to have CDs sent in has been a heaven sent. I have nearly 40 and would struggle severely without them.

Unsplash

Every time I have a rough day or feel crap, I will pop a CD in and hear the thundering drums, raw and sharp guitars and the intense, cathartic and highly emotive vocals. A lot of people don’t like it, and I understand that, but for me it’s a pure cathartic release and a purging of all the negative shit building up inside of me.

The metal and punk communities are full of some of the friendliest and most accepting people you’ll meet, and the biggest reason for this is that most of these people are the outcasts, the freaks and geeks, the people that don’t feel like they belong anywhere else and are also highly protective of each other.

If I didn’t have my music I would probably not even be alive right now. Metal and punk gave an outcast like me somewhere to belong and something to believe in.

The pure emotion and depth in this music is something I relate to on a deeper level. I know there would be others that can relate.

Some of my favourite bands include: Code Orange, Converge, Slayer, Suffocation, Napalm Death and many, many others.

Thank you for taking the time and letting me talk about something I love.

Lessons from Bees

By Muhamed

Prison teaches people to hold back. To keep to themselves. To give as little as possible. To protect what little energy or hope they have left. When everything feels limited – time, freedom, trust – it makes sense to think that giving more will leave you with less. But the bee lives by a different rule.

Letters

ISSUE NO. 22

2 MIN READ

Albany Prisoners on Lockdowns

By Prisoners at Albany Prison, WA

We are not sure who to write to or who we can talk to about theses matters. We are hoping someone reads our letter and can point us in the right direction to have our voices heard.

Letters

ISSUE NO. 22

1 MIN READ

Rights for Foreign Prisoners

By Luiing

If foreign prisoners have been sentenced under same law as Australians, then it’s extremely important that they have right to be treat equally in their imprisonment – on humanitarian grounds.

Letters

ISSUE NO. 22

2 MIN READ

Not Cool: Heat and Overcrowding in TMCC

By Dane

The following is in response to the article by Denham Sadler titled “Sweltering Behind Bars: Stifling Heat in Australian prisons”.

Letters

ISSUE NO. 22

2 MIN READ

Welcome to About Time

About Time is the national newspaper for Australian prisons and detention facilities

Your browser window currently does not have enough height, or is zoomed in too far to view our website content correctly. Once the window reaches the minimum required height or zoom percentage, the content will display automatically.

Alternatively, you can learn more via the links below.

Donations via GiveNow

Email

Instagram

LinkedIn