  We initiate a non-perturbative study of anisotropic, non-conformal and
confining gauge theories that are holographically realized in gravity by
generic Einstein-Axion-Dilaton systems. In the vacuum our solutions describe RG
flows from a conformal field theory in the UV to generic scaling solutions in
the IR with generic hyperscaling violation and dynamical exponents $\theta$ and
$z$. We formulate a generalization of the holographic c-theorem to the
anisotropic case. At finite temperature, we discover that the anisotropic
deformation reduces the confinement-deconfinement phase transition temperature
suggesting a possible alternative explanation of inverse magnetic catalysis
solely based on anisotropy. We also study transport and diffusion properties in
anisotropic theories and observe in particular that the butterfly velocity that
characterizes both diffusion and growth of chaos transverse to the anisotropic
direction, saturates a constant value in the IR which can exceed the bound
given by the conformal value.
