ISSUE NO. 16
November 2025
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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.

An Idea to Reduce Drugs and Violence in Prison

By Melissa

I have been in the system a long time. I believe that we as prisoners should be heard a lot more.

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Here at MCC we are limited to weight bags and medicine balls. We cannot purchase creatine or protein powders, training gloves or any other essential items that other prisoners at other centres can purchase.

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I just want to get back to my home state WA so I can do my time with my family support where I’m happy and have all my supports.

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Discovering Buddhism in Prison

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Buddhism teaches that pain is a part of being human, not a failure. Thoughts are not who you are, change is always possible because nothing is permanent. There is beauty in the idea that peace isn’t something you chase, it’s something you uncover when you stop clinging.

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Welcome to About Time

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

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