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There's been a real flurry of activity from the Skullflower camp lately, limited edition discs and LPs on labels like Turgid Animal and Noiseville, super limited cd-rs released by the band, European festival dates, even a U.S. date that saw Skullflower headlining the final night at this years No Fun Fest in Brooklyn ( which I sadly had to miss out on...). With all of this activity and the steady flow of new releases that has been coming out from the mighty 'Flower, the one thing that has been becoming more apparent in their music is an inceased fascination with the aesthetics of black metal, traces of which have been creeping into their music for some time now. Back when Tribulation came out in 2006, I could hear those trace elements of blackened buzz buried deep underneath all of the layers of caustic, skull-swallowing guitar roar that album was forged out of, but with the newer Skullflower stuff, and in particular this brand new album Malediction, that black metal influence isn't all that subtle anymore.
Released on Second Layer in a limited edition of 1000 copies, Malediction is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First, it's the first Skullflower album to come out with something approaching a full band in ages, with the core duo of Matt Bower and Lee Stokoe (also of Culver) now joined by a couple of other players. Second, one of those other players is Stuart Dennison, the original Skullflower drummer from the classic late 80's/early 90's era of the band, the era that gave us their essential IIIrd Gatekeeper and Xaman albums. Dennison's involvement here will probably make some of you old school Skullflower fans perk up yer ears, but make no mistake, this is still definitely 21st century Skullflower, the band sculpting massive walls of guitar-heavy blastdrone and nothing near to the crushing noise rock groove of the bands earlier material. But what really makes this album stand out is how Bower and friends have actually harnessed several aspects of black metal for the music on Malediction, delivering three lengthy tracks that follow the band into their most crushing, blackened recording of the past decade.
Three tracks, each running ten to twenty-four minutes in length, and made up of thick, thunderous walls of sound built from wailing, howling vocals drenched in fx, sheets of hypnotic feedback drone, grinding low-end guitar rumble, cello and violin, drums and crashing cymbals, and at first it's very similiar to the mighty amp-rivers of hellish high volume distorto-raga that Bower has explored lately, but as the guitars and drums slowly take shape on the first track "A'arab Zaraq - Ravens Of The Burning Of God ", sinister minor-key riffs coalesce under all of the skree and noise, and the drumming appears in stuttering bursts of speed and chaos, one second hammering out a crude blastbeat, the next unravelling in a cluster of free-jazz percussive clatter. It's like the blazing amp-mantras of the last few Skullflower discs draped over a PCP fueled improv-blastbeat assault that goes on and on and on...
But it's the second track, "Ghost Bitch Of Black Flame", that the band really approaches a kind of mutant free-noise black metal meltdown. Ten minutes of deafening roar sweeps over you as the band stacks endless space rock noodling and crushing buzzsaw ur-chord riffing over an avalanche of heavy drumming, a massive low-end undertow swirling around everything, hideous screamed vocals and gnashing teeth obscured behind a veil of fuzz, the sunblasted acid-rock of Orange Canyon Mind smeared across a cacophony of sub-Beherit riffslop and endless plodding percussion. Pretty goddamn awesome!
The final track "Drenched In Moonsblood (Waxing Gibbous)" is the calmest one on here, but that's pretty relative. The percussion is more muted, mainly huge swells of cymbals and distant tympani-like thunder echoing across a reddened wasteland of smeared organ tones, buried psych-guitar squiggles, howls of anguish drifting without direction, wailing spaced-out feedback, this ominous psychedelic dronescape sprawling out into infinity, dark and evil sounding, kind of an insane hell-vision cribbed from the older psych-drone modes the band found themselves in on albums like Obsidian Shaking Codex and Carved Into Roses.
Gorgeously packaged in a full color six-panel digipack with original artwork from Matt Bower, limited to 1000 copies. Highly recommended!!!
Track Samples:
Sample : Ghost Bitch Of Black Flame
Sample : Drenched In Moonsblood (Waxing Gibbous)
Sample : A'arab Zaraq - Ravens Of The Burning Of God

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This power-trio hails from Middletown, a small town that's just a couple of minutes down the road from Crucial Blast HQ here in Maryland, and while they have self-released a couple of discs since 2005, this is the first time that I've picked up their stuff to carry here at Crucial Blast. The band has been honing their brand of instrumental prog-sludge with these self released discs and tours along the East Coast, and with this new five song EP, Admiral Browning have really blossomed into something amazing. This is immensely heavy stuff that combines old school doom metal, prog, math rock, and psychedelia into a burly mass of complex, dizzying heaviness that doesn't really sound like anyone else. Fans of metallic riff-heavy instrumental bands like Karma To Burn, Suzukiton and Stinking Lizaveta will probably go berserk over this, but Admiral Browning doesn't sound like those bands. The doomy element is WAY heavier, the riffs huge and leaden like Saint Vitus, but from the crawling suarian doom the band leaps into spiralling shred, the guitars weaving from Greg Ginn style skronk to awesome Champs-like harmonies, angular math rock and spacey Floydian psychedelia. There's the massive Mastodon-meets-Saint Vitus crush of "Vortexer", the energetic guitar heroics of "Ol Martini Man" and even the campfire acoustic jam "No Good Stones". I love the way that the Maryland doom metal influence is so prominent here, while at the same time this is more than just doom, like other Maryland bands like Revelation and Life Beyond, these guys take that plodding Sabbath-influenced sound into proggier territory, though noone has done quite as heavily as Admiral Browning have with Magic Elixir. Recommended.
Nice digipack packaging, too.
Track Samples:
Sample : Vortexer
Sample : Ol Martini Man
Sample : No Good Stones

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Back with their second album for current label home Profound Lore, Amber Asylum delivers more of their atmospheric dark chamber music that I've been infatuated with since first hearing The Natural Philosophy of Love. Band leader and multi-instrumentalist Kris Force has led her group through several label changes and lineup fluctuations over the past decade, but that's never diminished the beautiful power of Amber Asylum's music, which is still some of the most haunting and moving chamber-ensemble music being made right now. Combining gothic atmosphere and neo-classical arrangements, the group is able to weave sounds that are as dark and grim as anything from Neurosis (a band that AA's Kris Force has collaborated with in the past), while possessing all of the fragile introspective beauty as the later Swans material. Bitter River features another ten tracks of moody chamber-rock formed with layers of piano, guitar, violins, synthesizers, cello, viola, flute and percussion, with Kris Force lending her haunting voice to a couple of songs. Their gothic chamber sound is infused with dark melodies that feel like they were culled from ancient folk songs, and elsewhere the band weaves a hazy veil of electronics and strings that creates a heavy psychedelic effect as Amber ASylum's music seems to waver like a heat mirage in the air. The album also features some cool guest appareances: Eric Wood from Bastard Noise/Man Is The Bastard contributes bass and oscillator to several songs on Bitter River, Chiyo from Noothgrush performs percussion on "Twilight" and "Auger Of Thrall", Sigridd Sheie (Hammers Of Misfortune) plays flute, and legendary Swans chantreuse Jarboe contributes some spoken word narration on the eerie fifteen-minute epic "Nocturne". As with every new album that Amber Asylum puts out, this is absolutely gorgeous, moody and cinematic and highly recommended. The beautiful six-panel digipack features artwork from David D'andrea and includes a foldout instert.
Track Samples:
Sample : Twilight
Sample : Nocturne
Sample : Mountain Haze
Sample : Bounding Main

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I reviewed a compilation cd here last year called Doomed To Death Damned In Hell that featured exclusive material from three Japanese doom-death bands. That compilation (which we still have in stock) was an awesome collection of fucked-up, ultra-heavy deathsludge that not only delivered some exclusive jams from one of my favorite current death metal bands, Coffins, but also introduced me to two bands that I immediately fell in love with, the sickening graveyard sludge of Grudge, and the wasted Frost-worship of Anatomia, who featured members of the cult Japanese death metal band Transgressor.
I've been keeping my eyes peeled for more stuff from both of those bands ever since, and while I haven't been able to find much else from Grudge, I finally located this 10" vinyl release from Tokyo's Anatomia. This limited edition EP came out on Nuclear War Now! and is actually a reissue of Anatomia's 2003 demo, with four tracks of warped, spaced-out deathsludge and a bonus cover of Repulsion's "Splattered Cadavers" that was previously unreleased. Like most of the other Japanese death/doom bands that I listen to, there's something vaguely weird about Anatomia's music. It's obviously rooted in early Celtic Frost and primitive American death metal, but there's that special x-factor that makes this more than just another blurt of slow-mo death metal. The riffs are stripped down, simple and plodding and heavy as fuck, but the guitarist is prone to veer into weird angular riffs while the bassist accompanies him with these odd dissonant basslines. The drumming, on the other hand, is totally barbaric, just lumbering sludgy dirges and splattery slo-mo double-kick thunder, and the vocals spew ragged vomitous roars across Anatomia's fetid sludge. Clouds of dank reverb drift through the recording, and smears of grimy dark ambience appear in between songs. The lyrics are indecipherable gore-soaked hallucintations, songs like "Morgue Of Cannibalism", "Funeral Feast" and "Drowned In Sewage" all speak for themselves, and the record artwork is awesome, with horrific Chris Moyen-esque visions of victims being consumed by amorphous corpse-blobs. Crushing, filthy, totally awesome death-dirge insanity along the lines of Coffins, early Incantation at their slowest, Autopsy, Grudge, etc.
Track Samples:
Sample : Morgue Of Cannibalism
Sample : Funeral Feast
Sample : Drowned In Sewage

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A gorgeous brand-new vinyl reissue of Atavist's knockout 2007 album, released by Aurora Borealis on heavyweight 180 gram black vinyl in a matte-finish gatefold sleeve. Massive!
Atavist make their negatory nature clear with the inscription "no life worth living" that is printed in simple white lettering across the black panels of the inside of II: Ruined's massive digipack case, and yet they somehow find moments of intense beauty in their extended, single-minded quest for the all-devouring riff and total sonic catharsis. Atavist's second album has been issued by Profound Lore for North America, in an 8-panel digipack that features evocative photography of rotting buildings and urban decay, which perfectly capture the dank, depressing atmosphere that soaks into these seven tracks. They've foregone song titles and replaced them with roman numerals that signify each new chapter, although the final track is actually a cover of Grief's "I Hate The Human Race". The hallmarks of extreme sludge are in place on all of these tracks, massively detuned guitars, hideous riffage sustained into eternity, horrific mangled screams, an almost inpenetrable nihilistic worldview, but I think that Atavist's take on tectonic sludge is delivered with a sort of precision that sets them apart some....you can hear the influence of bands like Grief, Khanate, and Eyehategod in their riffs and gluey tempos, but the band plays each riff and delivers each drum strike with a methodical, controlled power, and tie some of the longer, 15+ minute pieces together with minimalist guitar drones and dusty acoustic strum, a pretty post-rock outro that finishes the fifth track, and some tranquil piano playing on the fourth track is contributed by Justin Greaves (of Crippled Black Pheonix, Electric Wizard, and Iron Monkey). Incredibly crushing and hateful sludge doom on par with fellow Brits Moss and Marzuraan, served up as a single suite of slow motion hatred like a black hole version of Corrupted's El Mundo Frio.

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We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.
There's probably only a few of you who will recognize the name Meldhkwis, but in the annals of satanic French ambient/industrial music, he's become infamous for creating soul-crushing black dronescapes under the name Dapnom. With his roots in the French black metal scene, Dapnom's recordings are intensely evil and bleak, taking the otherworldy dread and misery that the Les Legiones Noires evoked and channeling it through the minimal orchestral aesthetic of dark ambient pioneers like Lustmord and Raison D'Etre. The result is some of the most hellish dark ambience of the early 21st century, and any fans of black ambience that haven't heard Dapnom yet should go directly to the collaborative double CD that Dapnom released with Melek-Tha pronto.
Aside from Dapnom, however, Meldhkwis keeps busy with a handful of other projects that even more obscure and underground, like the mysterious Aymrev Erkroz Prevre. With Aymrev Erkroz Prevre, Meldhkwis strays from the severe isolationist evil of his main project and ventures into a murkier and more psychedelic territory. On this 2006 cassette, we're immersed in two half-hour long tracks, both untitled and each one taking up an entire side of the cassette. The sound is murky, everything indistinct and obscured by a thick, almost inpenetrable cloak of subterranean drone, but all around the vast Lustmordian drift there are ghostly strains of what might be distant orchestral strings, smears of backwards percussion and booming tympani echoing from far away, harrowing Goblin-esque strings, eerie synth tones and brief glimpses of demonic vocal utterances. Swells of heavy distorted riffage seep up from the earth, Sunn O)))-like blasts of detuned thunder that hover for a short time and then dissolve into the blackness. The whole experience is soaked with an oppressive nightmarish atmosphere, a soundtrack for black magic rites and midnight acid trips, those insistent drums bestowing a ritualistic energy to these fearsome murkscapes. Fantastic demonic ambience, highly recommended to fans of Kaniba, Black Seas Of Infinity, Melek-Tha, Sorc'henn, and Uno Actu.

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I have been trying to get ahold of this import LP for ages, but everytime the distributor had any listed, they instantly disappeared. At last though this record has been repressed and we've managed to grab a limited number of these for Crucial Blast, a recently released (2008) vinyl only album from the legendary Brainbombs released on the Lystring label, and limited to only 735 copies. What can I say? New BRAINBOMBS! Any of you who follow the Crucial Blast catalog updates know that this is one of my favorite bands, and up until this Lp came out, I thought that they were all done. Somehow they blurted out this new set last summer, and it's as heavy as anything from this gang of garage sludge thugs. If yer a Brainbombs addict too, it shouldn't take too much prodding to tell you that this is essential stuff, but heres the details: seven new songs, all of 'em from the band at their sludgiest and funkiest, each song a lumbering hypnotic drudge of blasting out-of-tune trumpet and deformed Stooges riffing, a single massive droning riff at the center of it all grinding onward incessantly, their power in repetition as they hammer that riff out over and over while the singer spews his bizarre misanthropic rants and murderous hallucinations. Most surprising moment is thesong "Stalker", which might be the "prettiest" Brainbombs song ever, a murky melodic jam with those brain damaged vocals softly speaking over it, like Brainbombs twisting an old 70's AM radio soft-rock hook into their own warped image. Other songs include "It's a Fucking Mess", "Behind a Tree", "Stinking Cocks", "Ooh What a Feeling", "Skinned Alive", "Turn to Shit", each song describing another atrocity performed at the hands of the singer, each song surrounded by menacing atmosphere and noisy filth, warped and crushing and oddly catchy in their own noxious way. Crucial.

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Here and gone in the space of couple of years, Come Lilies were a band from California that released a couple of discs that kocked a lot of socks off offa their respective owners feet, then broke up and faded into obscurity. Memento Mori was the third release from the band, originally released under their own imprint and then reissued over in Europe on Denovali, and this short but captivating disc is as dizzying a blast of instrumental metallic prog as anything that I've heard from Irepress or Mars Volta. Irepress is the reference point that keeps popping into my head as I listen to this, these guys have a similiar way of dishing out virtuosic prog rock and fusion alongside crushing metallic riffage and some really breathtaking cinematic rock passages and soaring melodies that would make any Mono fan weep. Compared to Irepress, however, Coma Lilies were a virtual orchestra on this EP, and the two main songs that are the focal point of this disc ("Memento Mori" and, uh, "Penis Envy") feature keyboards, piano, melodica, accordian, glockenspiel, samplers, mandolins, violin, programmed beats, cellos, trumpets, clarinets, turntables...whew! It's like a fusion of metallic prog and chamber music, and whenever the horn fanfares or dreamy fusion parts kick in, I'm definitetly transported to someplace else. Those first two songs are over eight minutes apiece and are the meat of the matter here, but afterwards the band blasts through six more experimental tracks that travel through more super-complex prog, dreamy post rock, short metallic eruptions that sound like Behold...The Arctopus contracted in short microbursts of energy, freaked out pan-genre spasms that come close to Naked City territory, short quirky jazz workouts, even some bizarre 8-bit robo-funk at the very end. It's close to a half hour of quirky, dramatic prog awesomeness, and the chops and songwriting are of such a high quality on this that I'm really stunned that I had never heard of these cats before, and that Zi had to be introduced to them through a French label. Anyone into lush modern prog with tendencies towards moments of crushing heaviosity should really look into these guys and this disc, and it's especially recommended to fans of Irepress.
Track Samples:
Sample : The Red Phone
Sample : Penis Envy
Sample : Memento Mori
Sample : Grab a Fork Micron (Circumcised)

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Not to be confused with the avant-rock band Dial that arose from the ashes of Jacqui Ham's influential no-wave group UT, this Dial is from New Zealand and carries a way bigger stick, weilding their grinding, midpaced metallic noise rock like a studded club smashing through skulls and pulping brains and leaving me altogether kinda winded after this disc's nineteen minutes are up. Damn! These guys first released this five song EP as a demo a while back, but it's now reissued on disc for the rest of the world thanks to those fine folks at Robotic Empire. Dig Am Rep? Drool over the neo-pigfuck/noise rock sound of bands like Hex Machine and Black Elk and the like as hard as I do? Well then, yer going to fucking LOVE THIS. Each one of these jams takes some old school hardcore riffage and pares it down to a ultra-distorted, hypnotic block of super-distorted punishment and proceeds to bulldoze yer face with it for a good three-to-five minutes. The drumming is so goddamn heavy it shakes the speakers, a massive, bludgeoning industrial Swans-style grind, the drummer hammering the skins in controlled slow motion precision, while vocalist Natalia Williams goes completely nuts, her high pitched snarl sounding like she's ready to slit your fucking throat and leave you to drain out in the gutter, you motherfucker, while angular crush and darkly poetic lyrics rain down and the onward machine pound of Dial's music just hammers you deeper into the filth. One of the most ferocious debuts I've heard, like some hyperheavy fusion of Rusted Shut and Unsane and Filth-era Swans, which means ultra recommended.
Track Samples:
Sample : Permanent Opium War
Sample : If You're Not Battling
Sample : Always At The Border

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At first when I opened up my copy of the new Public Flipper Limited double LP, I thought to myself, oh SHIT, the jacket is totally falling apart!. And then I realized that the gatefold sleeve for this new reissue actually doubles as a huge foldout gameboard for the "Flipper On Tour" game that makes up the bulk of the album's graphic design - brilliant! Just like the other recent Flipper vinyl reissues that Four Men With Beards have released, this is a knockout deluxe redux of Flipper's classic live album, pressed on 180 gram black vinyl - absolutely essential for turntable-owning Flipper freaks .
We've been waiting forever for this to happen! The first four Flipper albums have finally been reissued, and each one of these albums is a crucial chapter of this seminal San Francisco band. EVen if you've never heard Flipper, I bet that you've at least heard the name; these freaks have had an enormous influence on so much of the heavy, fucked-up punk and metal that we love over the past three decades. Flipper formed in 1979 in the midst of the burgeoning hardcore scene, but even though the band was eventually embraced by a cult following in hardcore, these mutants had little in common with the louder/faster aesthetic of punk as it headed into the 1980s. They were much more closely aligned with that weirdo San Francisco art punk scene of the late 70s that gave us other unclassifiable bands like Chrome and The Residents, but Flipper were heavier than everyone. Playing slow, bludgeoning atonal riffs and plodding super-heavy rhythms, Flipper were slower than anyone else in punk at the time, and their sheer heaviness and the nihilistic aura that surrounded the band and their music is what drew in the hardcore punks. In the decades that followed, Flipper turned into one of the most influential bands of the American underground, and you can trace their influence through the sloppy, misanthropic sludge rock of 80's bands like Drunks With Guns, Blight and Kilslug to the success of Nirvana and the Melvins, both citing Flipper as being one of their biggest influences. Especially the Melvins. Out of all of the bands that I listen to, the Melvins might be Flipper's most devout disciples (next to Rick Rubin's mid-80s band Hose); over the course of their career, the Melvins have covered tons of Flipper songs and have cited Flipper as one of their biggest influences since the beginning, and its pretty obvious when you listen to the crushing, plodding drumming and sludgy punk riffs on any of the Melvins's albums. And more recently, there has been a whole movement of fucked up noise/punk bands that are worshipping at the altar of Flipper, from Pissed Jeans to Brainbombs to Clockcleaner, they've all got that Flipper DNA coursing through their veins. Of course, nobody has ever surpassed the mighty, mysterious brain-damaged heaviness of Flipper themselves, and these new reissues are crucial for anyone who wants to hear the band at the height of their demented powers.
Only Flipper could put together a double live album and turn it into an experience as fucked up and drooling as their early studio releases. Originally released in 1986 as a vinyl only double LP on Subterranean, Public Flipper Limited is a direct shot at PIL and John Lydon, who the band accused of ripping off their Generic art and title concept for PIL's Album. It collects various live recordings from between 1980 and 1985 that capture the band at their most deranged, live on stage and wasted beyond belief, the songs furiously belted out into a murky, distorted clusterfuck with Will SHatter's hilarious stage ramblings showing up before almost every song. Which, of course, is exactly what made these guys so amazing. The setlist is loaded with the sludgy art-punk classics that you'd want to hear, including "Life", "Sex Bomb", "(I Saw You) Shine", "Love Canal" and onward, more than fifteen tracks of stumbling Flipper chaos. There's also some more obscure Flipper songs that are only found on this double album. Many of the recordings that Flipper used for this album were taken from soundboard tapes made by Tom Lyle (Government Issue) and a young Gregg Turkington, aka Neil Hamburger, both of whom were huge fans of the band back in the 80s.
Surprisingly, this reissue is the first time that Public Flipper Limited has ever been available on CD, and it's been assembled into a cool looking package just like the other reissues. Like the reissue of Gone Fishin, this new double CD release of Flipper Limited Live reproduces the original LP sleeve, which was designed to look like a board game complete with game pieces and game cards based on the chaos of a Flipper tour across the U.S. The booklet also has some liner notes from Steven Blush, the author behind the book American Hardcore. Recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Hard Cold World
Sample : Love Canal

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Now available on cd in a gatefold jacket with totally different artwork from the vinyl release.
The debut full length from Hallowed Butchery is simply astounding, not only because this album somehow manages to combine a myriad of styles as disparate as early 90's industrial, psychedelic freak folk, and avant-garde doom into something that is not only coherent and intensely progressive, but also because this is the product of just one guy. Hallowed Butchery is the solo "doom metal" project of a guy named Ryan Scott Fairfield from Maine, but you would probably never guess that just from hearing the music on Funeral Rites For The Living. The music on this album is so massive-sounding and epic, it's hard to imagine that there isn't a full band behind it. Fairfield has clearly absorbed a LOT of different sounds, which he has then processed back out into the otherworldly prog-doom of Hallowed Butchery. It's hard to call this doom, as there's lots of stuff here that isn't doom metal at all, but the overall vibe with the songs is definitely doomy and morose, with most of the songs imbued with a heavy sense of foreboding regarding the wilderness of Maine and environmentalism in general. Musically, he brings together a mix of styles that at first seems unwieldy; the songs move from stretched out expanses of tense avant-doom a la Khanate, with huge chunks of abstract riffage exploding amongst stretches of near silence, and overseen by some awesome over-the-top death metal growls, to gorgeous psychedelic folk songs that blend together flutes and acoustic guitar and dramatic male singing that definitely reminds me of the dark psych-folk like Comus and Incredible String Band. Sounds like a weird mix of sounds already, right? That's nothing. From there, Funeral Rites travels through massive celestial deathdoom accompanied by angelic chorales that suddenly shifts right back into the dark psych-folk strum without skipping a beat, then kicks into the chugging industrial metal of "Great North Woods", which sounds a little like a more blackened version of some of the newer Mortis material, mixed with some downcast piano playing, weird tribal grunts, and doleful singing, then morphs back into another folky coda at the end. "Back Asswards" is pure black industrial with droning orchestral strings buzzing over a lumbering industrial dirge, and blackened snarls raging over top. On "Kingdom (Within You)", we come back to more acoustic guitar, but here the music is much darker and melancholy, dark drones set against a grim melody, sounding somewhat like Steve Von Till's solo stuff before it dissolves into a cloud of psychedelic noise and mangled cassette-tape noise.
On the flipside, we come to the blackened doom of "The Kennebec", and again the vocals break into that AWESOME, vageuly processed death metal growl, while a sorrowful piano melody plays in the background, and whispered singing comes into view; the song veers back and forth between this calmer dark ambience and the crushing metallic sludge, enhanced by subtle electronic textures during the heavier parts and joined by warped synthesizers at the end. "Abolish The Pulpit" is even slower and heavier, a pummeling blackdoom behemoth layered with samples of ranting televangelists and alien ambience that at times slips into surreal Gnaw Their Tongues-like formlessness, which by the very end of the track disintegrates into an orgy of scraped strings, rattling percussion, vomiting vocals and totally unrecognizeable noises. Oof! "The Kennebec (Reprise)" is another short song, very Comus-like with the weird woodwind sounds and earnest singing, and then the album reaches the final track, a freakin' Neil Young cover of all things. It's a rendition of "After The Gold Rush" that really doesn't feel out of place, considering all of the twists and turns that we've gone through on this album, and it's played pretty straight at first, with just a smattering of effects on the guitar; here Fairfield is joined by a female vocalist, and the harmonized singing is pretty damn sweet. Halfway through though, the guitars suddenly crash in heavy and distorted, turning the song into a glorious gleaming metallic dirge for a moment before returning back to the song proper.
What an odd and amazing album. It's obviously a deeply personal collection of music, all the way down to the short explanations that Fairfield includes with the lyrics to each song, but this guys clearly knows what he's doing here, as each song flows perfectly into the next, and what would probably end up as a messy pastiche of different styles instead becomes a surreal voyage through some intense and crushing prog/doom weirdness. The label mentions Ahab, Comus, Earth, Khanate, and Nortt as reference points for the sounds contained on Funeral Rites For the Living, but that only scratches the surface of what's going on here. Highly recommended for the more adventurous doomanaut.
Track Samples:
Sample : Great North Woods
Sample : A Wake For The Human Race
Sample : After The Gold Rush

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Along with Savage Pencil, Brian Walsby is my favorite underground cartoonist, and while these issues of Manchild only come out about once a year or so, his collections of stories and observations are always top notch and I've got to get my hands on it as soon as it's out. Walsby has been around, getting into hardcore back in the 1980's and drumming for a bunch of killer bands (nardcore legends Scared Straight, Polvo, Patty Duke Syndrome with Ryan Adams, math rockers Shiny Beast) and producing memorable artwork for 7 Seconds and Melvins. Yeah, he's been around, and he brings his stories and ruminations on life, punk rock, growing older, relationships, bands, the "scene" and all of the absurd bullshit that goes along with it, and pop culture to life through his instantly recognizeable drawing style and sarcastic writing. His comics are smart, funny, often self-deprecating, and he manages to balance the cynicism that comes along with getting older with a sense of enthusiasm for music and art and friendship that, I gotta admit, I find pretty inspiring whenever I sit down and dig into one of his books.
Much of Walsby's comics take a satirical view of the punk/hardcore scene, and anyone that's grown up with hardcore since the 80's will find alot of seriously funny and biting examinations of hardcore and indie youth culture in these pages. Issue #4 is another 100 packed pages filled with stories about all of the bands that Walsby has played in, falling in love, spoofs on old school hardcore revivalism and straight edge, growing up in the Raleigh, NC punk scene, Jason Newstead, frequent references to how Voivod is one of the best metal bands of all time (which, of course, is inarguable), record collectors, celebrity culture, Raleigh coffehouses, working at a Whole Foods store, Mike Dean from Corrosion Of Conformity, a lengthy (and funny) tour diary from when Walsby toured with the Melvins as their merch guy, and much, much more. I love this stuff. His stories are awkward and honest, the humor is smart and snarky and the art is fantastic. Can't recommend his books enough.
And like the previous issue, this also comes with a bonus cd of music from Walsby's buddies in the Melvins, a 15 song disc called Pick Your Battles that features live sets from Gilman St. in 1989 (!) and from the Paradise Rock Club in Boston from 2008...both sound great, and the 1989 set is of particular interest to Melvins fans, a burly set that features Lori on bass as the band lumbers through some devestating versions of "Oven", "Koolegged", "Cranky Messiah", "Raise A Paw" and more.
Limited to 3000 copies.

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Here's another rad black metal record that I just got turned on to while checking out the Nuclear War Now back catalog, a self-titled 12" from Germany's Pest that came out a year or so ago, a vinyl only release, and it's an awesome assault of cavernous blackthrash and weird ambience that pays homage to the second wave of Scandinavian black metal while at the same time forging their own brand of teutonic hysteria. This record features five tracks, a combination of reworked versions of songs that appeared on their debut album Ara from 1999 and brand new tracks, and as soon as the needle slips into "Es Lebe Der Tod" the Norwegian black metal influence is obvious, the sound a blackened whirlwind of buzzing riffs and scraped-throat howls, blasting drums and swirling dissonant leads, the primitive buzzsaw thrash of early Mayhem and Darkthrone channeled into chaotic blasts of cavernous roar. This strange reverberating atmosphere in Pest's music makes it sound like the band recorded their songs in a massive cathedral, the music echoing off of the walls and forming a massive wash of sound, low fi and raw but really powerful and immersive. On top of that, Pest throw in some interesting atmospheric touches that spin this out into left field, with chaotic blackened thrash assaults suddenly dissolving into washes of shadowy dark ambience, stretches of vast subterranean murk that suddenly explode into dissonant riffage, and wild psychotic laughter suddenly appearing out of nowhere. Then there's the song "Am Ende Des Weges" , which isn't black metal at all, but rather a dark instrumental piece with slowly waltzing accordian, piano and horn-like sounds lurching around blackened metallic chords like some warped nightmarish cabaret. On the flipside, Pest take samples of Popul Vuh's Nosferatu soundtrack and use them as interludes at the beginning and end of the side. There is a subtle kosmiche quality to Pest's music on this record beyond those samples though, with droning keyboards appearing throughout, hovering in the background behind the roaring reverb-drenched blackthrash like dark, threatening clouds.
The record comes in a black and white embossed jacket with a double sided poster/lyric insert.
Track Samples:
Sample : Inferno
Sample : Pest
Sample : Am Ende Des Weges

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Profundi's Omega Rising is finally back in stock after being out of print for awhile - and it's still one of my favorite pure black metal releases on Profound Lore.
Man, Profound Lore is very quickly becoming one of my favorite labels. Over the past year they've been knocking it out of the park with truly amazing releases from Asunder, Nachtmystium, Nadja, Portal, Thralldom...geez. Their catalog constantly looks like a who's who of some of the most progressive, sonically dense entities in extreme metal. And this debut album from Swedish one-man black metal project Profundi is equally powerful and warped; despite the loner status, though, this is far from the overloaded 4-track USBM atmospheres of Xasthur and Leviathan. Nah, The Omega Rising is symphonic in it's majesty, which blows my mind even harder that this was written, composed, and executed by just one dude. Fuck, he even created all of the artwork for the album. We're talking about one Jens Ryden, an extremely gifted multi-instrumentalist who had previously done time as the vocalist for the longrunning black/death outfit Naglfar. I'm not really familiar with that band, so I have no idea what elements might have transferred from his old gig, but his work here is awesome, delivering one of the most well-assembled and progressive blasts of blackened death metal action of recent days. Emperor and Dissection both appear to be influences, but Ryden takes that brand of darkly melodic black metal to new heights of frenzy by injecting it with huge, epic hooks and awesome stuttering thrash riffs, and every song is really catchy. Contrasting vocals are layered over each other to decidedly demonic result, in a way that few, if any, death metal or black metal bands have managed to achieve in the past. And the drumming shoots off into insane, spastic warp speeds often enough to blow your hair back at least a couple times per song. He uses church-organ style keyboards and effects masterfully here too, with lots of creepy funhouse organ runs and an especially crushing orchestral deathmarch that opens 'Out Of The Evening Mist'. But my favorite thing about this album besides the righteous songwriting that makes every one of these songs an unstoppably catchy headbanging thrash assault is the way that Jens Ryden perfectly channels the absolute SICKEST freaked-out whammy dive-bombs a la Hanneman/King, dropping those insane leads all over every track. AWESOME. Totally beautiful presentation for this album too, issued in a 6 panel digipack with a thick 24-page booklet and elegant, classical Satanic illustrations.
Track Samples:
Sample : Unanimation
Sample : The Omega Rising
Sample : Lifeless, Cold & Crimson

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This Canadian black/death metal band holds the distinction of being the only band that has ever shared a split EP with those Cthulian weirdos in Portal, which seems to be like a hard thing to pull off. I mean, Portal's warped trans-dimensional death metal is so magnificently fucked up that any band sharing a spolit with them would sound pretty conservative, right? I still haven't heard that split as it's been out of print for awhile, but after hearing the final album from Rites of Thy Degringolade, I'm thinking that they were one of the few bands that you could hook up with Portal and not have 'em pale in comparison. This bizarrely named band from Edmonton, Alberta released their third and final album An Ode To Sin in 2005, eight tracks of technical, extremely quirky blackened death metal that starts off with a short intro of pure Merzbowian noise, then erupts into a set of songs that combine crazy complex riffing and oddball guitar leads with totally insane drumming, raspy evil-sounding vocals and awesome songwriting that leads the album through chaotic blasting black metal, bizarre grooving sections, and brief passages of crushing sludgy doominess. The drumming on this album is seriously nuts, which often start off blasting at top speed or digging into a sinister groove, but then spin off into whacked out swirling walls of tribal tom action, super-tight stop/start rhythms, and endless fills that have me cross-eyed by the time that I get halfway into the disc. Seriously, the drumming is nuts, an octopoidal percussive attack that often sounds like there's multiple drum patterns being played at the same time. The guitars are similiarly whacked, one minute playing a righteous minor key black metal buzzsaw riff, the next suddenly veering off into weird Greg Ginn-esque skronk and wild dissonant almost no-wave riffs. This album is fucking amazing, and reminds me of a combination of that blasting Canadian black metal sound (Blasphemy, Axis Of Advance, Revenge, Conqueror) combined with the idiosyncratic progressive thrash of Voivod or maybe even bits of Hatewave-style death-wonk. It's awesome, bottom line, a mix of experimental guitar playing and freaked out drumming and total ferocious heaviness that ends up sounding pretty damn unique. Highly recommended! Includes an eight-page booklet.
Track Samples:
Sample : Totality's Reign
Sample : Release the Flies
Sample : In the Name of Rites

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This slab of psychotic mutant black/death is also available as a limited edition LP, limited to 800 copies and packaged in a heavy gatefold jacket with embossed metallic silver printing and a printed inner sleeve and an 11" x 17" poster of the cover art/band logo.
This Canadian black/death metal band holds the distinction of being the only band that has ever shared a split EP with those Cthulian weirdos in Portal, which seems to be like a hard thing to pull off. I mean, Portal's warped trans-dimensional death metal is so magnificently fucked up that any band sharing a spolit with them would sound pretty conservative, right? I still haven't heard that split as it's been out of print for awhile, but after hearing the final album from Rites of Thy Degringolade, I'm thinking that they were one of the few bands that you could hook up with Portal and not have 'em pale in comparison. This bizarrely named band from Edmonton, Alberta released their third and final album An Ode To Sin in 2005, eight tracks of technical, extremely quirky blackened death metal that starts off with a short intro of pure Merzbowian noise, then erupts into a set of songs that combine crazy complex riffing and oddball guitar leads with totally insane drumming, raspy evil-sounding vocals and awesome songwriting that leads the album through chaotic blasting black metal, bizarre grooving sections, and brief passages of crushing sludgy doominess. The drumming on this album is seriously nuts, which often start off blasting at top speed or digging into a sinister groove, but then spin off into whacked out swirling walls of tribal tom action, super-tight stop/start rhythms, and endless fills that have me cross-eyed by the time that I get halfway into the disc. Seriously, the drumming is nuts, an octopoidal percussive attack that often sounds like there's multiple drum patterns being played at the same time. The guitars are similiarly whacked, one minute playing a righteous minor key black metal buzzsaw riff, the next suddenly veering off into weird Greg Ginn-esque skronk and wild dissonant almost no-wave riffs. This album is fucking amazing, and reminds me of a combination of that blasting Canadian black metal sound (Blasphemy, Axis Of Advance, Revenge, Conqueror) combined with the idiosyncratic progressive thrash of Voivod or maybe even bits of Hatewave-style death-wonk. It's awesome, bottom line, a mix of experimental guitar playing and freaked out drumming and total ferocious heaviness that ends up sounding pretty damn unique. Highly recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Totality's Reign
Sample : Release the Flies
Sample : In the Name of Rites

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This slab of psychotic mutant black/death is also available as a super limited picture disc, with stark black/silver/white artwork on both sides, and packaged in a heavy gatefold jacket with embossed metallic silver printing and a printed inner sleeve and an 11" by 17" poster of the cover art and band logo. Limited to 200 copies.
This Canadian black/death metal band holds the distinction of being the only band that has ever shared a split EP with those Cthulian weirdos in Portal, which seems to be like a hard thing to pull off. I mean, Portal's warped trans-dimensional death metal is so magnificently fucked up that any band sharing a spolit with them would sound pretty conservative, right? I still haven't heard that split as it's been out of print for awhile, but after hearing the final album from Rites of Thy Degringolade, I'm thinking that they were one of the few bands that you could hook up with Portal and not have 'em pale in comparison. This bizarrely named band from Edmonton, Alberta released their third and final album An Ode To Sin in 2005, eight tracks of technical, extremely quirky blackened death metal that starts off with a short intro of pure Merzbowian noise, then erupts into a set of songs that combine crazy complex riffing and oddball guitar leads with totally insane drumming, raspy evil-sounding vocals and awesome songwriting that leads the album through chaotic blasting black metal, bizarre grooving sections, and brief passages of crushing sludgy doominess. The drumming on this album is seriously nuts, which often start off blasting at top speed or digging into a sinister groove, but then spin off into whacked out swirling walls of tribal tom action, super-tight stop/start rhythms, and endless fills that have me cross-eyed by the time that I get halfway into the disc. Seriously, the drumming is nuts, an octopoidal percussive attack that often sounds like there's multiple drum patterns being played at the same time. The guitars are similiarly whacked, one minute playing a righteous minor key black metal buzzsaw riff, the next suddenly veering off into weird Greg Ginn-esque skronk and wild dissonant almost no-wave riffs. This album is fucking amazing, and reminds me of a combination of that blasting Canadian black metal sound (Blasphemy, Axis Of Advance, Revenge, Conqueror) combined with the idiosyncratic progressive thrash of Voivod or maybe even bits of Hatewave-style death-wonk. It's awesome, bottom line, a mix of experimental guitar playing and freaked out drumming and total ferocious heaviness that ends up sounding pretty damn unique. Highly recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Totality's Reign
Sample : Release the Flies
Sample : In the Name of Rites

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1998's Vrresto has been out of print for a little while, but Skin Graft just repressed it and it's back again, ready to be discovered by fans of hardcore prog that haven't heard this craziness yet. Japanese bass and drum duo Ruins have been perfecting their warped Zeuhl influenced ultra-prog since the 80's, and by the time they got around to recording Vrresto, the then-current lineup of band leader and drum wizard Tatsuya Yoshida and bass player Hisashi Sasaki were well oiled and ready to demolish all with this dizzying 15 song set that's a perfect fusion of high speed hardcore aggression and insanely complex and confounding prog rock in the tradition of Magma. Previously released in France on Sonore, Skin Graft reissued this in 2004 with an improved mix and two bonus tracks, and it's an essential part of any Ruins fan's collection. At this point, Ruins were trafficking in some of their most energetic, spastic material, fusing acrobatic and insanely complex basslines to Yoshida's crazed drum freakouts, the two players seemingly going in a hundred directions at once while still able to lock into a devestating groove whenever they want to. The nonsensical lyrics, song titles and convoluted theatrical vocals all come from the Zeuhl school of French 70's prog rock, but the energy and speed behind tracks like "Savollodix" and "Dagdad" rivals that of the most furious thrashcore outfit. The songs on this album are less abrasive and more open to melody and palyfulness than previous records (even channelling some KISS-meets-The-Smurfs weirdness in "Zumn-Vigo"), but this stuff is still as spastic as ever. I think that this might also be the first Ruins album where they started using MIDI electronics with the bass, which adds a cool futuristic synth bite to a bunch of the songs. Some of their most manic stuff - totally essential for fans of the Ruins brand of hyperactive speed-prog!
Track Samples:
Sample : Savollodix
Sample : Kpaligoth
Sample : Ffenniko

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There's been a real flurry of activity from the Skullflower camp lately, limited edition discs and LPs on labels like Turgid Animal and Noiseville, super limited cd-rs released by the band, European festival dates, even a U.S. date that saw Skullflower headlining the final night at this years No Fun Fest in Brooklyn ( which I sadly had to miss out on...). With all of this activity and the steady flow of new releases that has been coming out from the mighty 'Flower, the one thing that has been becoming more apparent in their music is an inceased fascination with the aesthetics of black metal, traces of which have been creeping into their music for some time now. Back when Tribulation came out in 2006, I could hear those trace elements of blackened buzz buried deep underneath all of the layers of caustic, skull-swallowing guitar roar that album was forged out of, but with the newer Skullflower stuff, and in particular this brand new album Malediction, that black metal influence isn't all that subtle anymore.
Released on Second Layer in a limited edition of 1000 copies, Malediction is noteworthy for a couple of reasons. First, it's the first Skullflower album to come out with something approaching a full band in ages, with the core duo of Matt Bower and Lee Stokoe (also of Culver) now joined by a couple of other players. Second, one of those other players is Stuart Dennison, the original Skullflower drummer from the classic late 80's/early 90's era of the band, the era that gave us their essential IIIrd Gatekeeper and Xaman albums. Dennison's involvement here will probably make some of you old school Skullflower fans perk up yer ears, but make no mistake, this is still definitely 21st century Skullflower, the band sculpting massive walls of guitar-heavy blastdrone and nothing near to the crushing noise rock groove of the bands earlier material. But what really makes this album stand out is how Bower and friends have actually harnessed several aspects of black metal for the music on Malediction, delivering three lengthy tracks that follow the band into their most crushing, blackened recording of the past decade.
Three tracks, each running ten to twenty-four minutes in length, and made up of thick, thunderous walls of sound built from wailing, howling vocals drenched in fx, sheets of hypnotic feedback drone, grinding low-end guitar rumble, cello and violin, drums and crashing cymbals, and at first it's very similiar to the mighty amp-rivers of hellish high volume distorto-raga that Bower has explored lately, but as the guitars and drums slowly take shape on the first track "A'arab Zaraq - Ravens Of The Burning Of God ", sinister minor-key riffs coalesce under all of the skree and noise, and the drumming appears in stuttering bursts of speed and chaos, one second hammering out a crude blastbeat, the next unravelling in a cluster of free-jazz percussive clatter. It's like the blazing amp-mantras of the last few Skullflower discs draped over a PCP fueled improv-blastbeat assault that goes on and on and on...
But it's the second track, "Ghost Bitch Of Black Flame", that the band really approaches a kind of mutant free-noise black metal meltdown. Ten minutes of deafening roar sweeps over you as the band stacks endless space rock noodling and crushing buzzsaw ur-chord riffing over an avalanche of heavy drumming, a massive low-end undertow swirling around everything, hideous screamed vocals and gnashing teeth obscured behind a veil of fuzz, the sunblasted acid-rock of Orange Canyon Mind smeared across a cacophony of sub-Beherit riffslop and endless plodding percussion. Pretty goddamn awesome!
The final track "Drenched In Moonsblood (Waxing Gibbous)" is the calmest one on here, but that's pretty relative. The percussion is more muted, mainly huge swells of cymbals and distant tympani-like thunder echoing across a reddened wasteland of smeared organ tones, buried psych-guitar squiggles, howls of anguish drifting without direction, wailing spaced-out feedback, this ominous psychedelic dronescape sprawling out into infinity, dark and evil sounding, kind of an insane hell-vision cribbed from the older psych-drone modes the band found themselves in on albums like Obsidian Shaking Codex and Carved Into Roses.
Gorgeously packaged in a full color six-panel digipack with original artwork from Matt Bower, limited to 1000 copies. Highly recommended!!!
Track Samples:
Sample : Ghost Bitch Of Black Flame
Sample : Drenched In Moonsblood (Waxing Gibbous)
Sample : A'arab Zaraq - Ravens Of The Burning Of God

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We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.
Loner black metal mutant Luc Mertz is already well known to me thanks to his insanely prolific bedroom black metal band Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, but I didn't know anything about the other projects that he's involved in until we picked up these Infernal Kommando tapes recently. Once of the projects that I checked out and dug was Stigma Diabolicum, who I didnt know anything about but was instantly hooked by the couple of tracks that I was able to find of theirs online. I'm a sucker for pretty much anything along the lines of black ambience, and Stigma Diabolicum's murky ritualistic crypt-drones definitely deliver some serious evil vibes. It wasn't until I got the two cassettes that this project released on Infernal Kommando that I realized that this was just another alter ego of Mertz, here leaving behind his trademark brand of brain-damaged psychedelic blackpunk/noizeslop and unfurling monstrous slabs of doomy industrial dread across a series of twenty five tracks, each one titled "Zombified (ZLT 50 mg)", parts 1-25. There has always been an obvious old school noise/industrial element to ZBT's music, but here that influence comes to the fore, each track a surreal black blot of wavering electronic tones and slimy dungeon ambience, demonic groans and distant tribal percussion, a pitch black industrial death-ritual that sounds slurred and syrupy, like the tape player is slowing down as the batteries die, the hellish tribal pound oozing out like black tar from the speakers for more than forty-seven minutes. Obviously, the influence of Abruptum is felt here, but this shit is way more informed by early industrial than the improvised black metal of Abruptum, and actually comes much closer to the ultra-minimal coffin murk of some of the later Havohej material. It's excellent stuff, though anyone looking for anything resembling "black metal" certainly won't find it here. Released in 2005, this cassettes is the first in a set of two, and you'll find the Terror Inside II cassette also reviewed in this weeks new arrivals list.

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We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.
Here's the second cassette from Stigma Diabolicum, the satanic ritual industrial project of Luc Mertz (also known as the demented genius behind the French outsider bedroom black metal band Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), and it's once again a surreal, dreamlike drift through abstract industrial soundscapes and grinding subterranean ambience. As part two in the Terror Inside saga from 2005, this picks up where the first tape left off, featuring fifteen tracks that make up a single piece called "The Demented Man (ZLT Rules)". Just over forty minutes of hazy machine dread, distant voices drifting on black clouds of tape hiss and metallic percussion, urban noises melted into slow moving tidal forms, vague melodies rising out of the murk and forming into a shapeless miasma of distorted ambience, chaotic oscillator freakouts, far-off demonic roars, weird spaceship computer fx, creepy vibraphone melodies, ...it's equal parts isolationist dread a la Lustmord, grimy old-school industrial soundscape of the RRRecords school of thought, NWW weirdness, Abruptum-esque anguish, and the minimal avant-garde tomb-thrum of the more recent Havohej records. Totally fucked.

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This vinyl reissue of Thou's breakout debut album Tyrant was been in the works for awhile, and it's finally here, reissued by Southern Lord in a remastered limited edition vinyl release, 180 gram black vinyl, limited to 1500 copies, packaged with slightly different artwork but complete with the thick booklet of writings and artwork that accompanied the original.
Here's what I had to say last year when I wrote up the cd reissue on Gilead Media for the Crucial Blast catalog:
What the hell...this New Orleans based band seems to have come from out of nowhere, I hadn't even heard of them before a few months ago and it looks like they just put out their first demo only a year ago, but they've totally taken the doom/sludge metal underground by storm. All of a sudden, as soon as I first heard about the band, I saw that they had an LP repress of their debut album Tyrant being issued by Southern Lord in the next few months, an upcoming split EP with Leech on Kreation and another record slated for Gilead Media entitled The Retaliation of the Immutable Force of Nature, splits with Mohoram Atta, Black September, Haarp, Moloch and Human Intruder, and a full length being joint released on CD and LP by Level Plane and Autopsy Kitchen. Sheesh. Such a blizzard of activity from a band that I hadn't heard yet must account for sumthin'. But as soon as I heard their Tyrant LP, yeah, I gotta admit, I was blown away. I picked up a couple copies of the now out-of-print Tyrant LP from our pal Todd at God Is Myth based on his enthusiastic recommendation, and it immediately became one of my top doom metal records of the past year. It's doom, but dressed in some of the most breathtaking and elegiac melodies I've heard since Mono. The heavy stuff that Thou plays is brutal, a combination of chugging, rhythmically dense dirges with complex drum fills and wicked junkie solo freakouts, and super-slow chunks of blackened doom that reminds me of the mighty Warhorse, so heavy and viscous that the slower the riffs get, the more you feel like you are being sucked under by quicksand, a slow drag down into the muck that flattens all of the air out of your lungs. To top it all off, the singer has one hell of a sicko screech, a raspy raw-throated gargle flecked with blood-spittle as he shrieks the bleak, introspective lyrics. Nasty. However, this is just one side of Thou. The other face of the band is a dusky psychedelic post-rock outfit that breaks from the scathing blackened doom into amazingly gorgeous guitar ambience and lush, delay-soaked leads over gently strummed minor key chords that decays into the night, and the juxtaposition of the barbaric doom parts and these fx-laden indie blissouts are pretty powerful. Sure, I can't count how many bands blend post-rock and super-heavy, super-slow metal nowadays, we're chokin' on them, but I don't think that anyone is pulling it off the way that Thou does. These guys are masters of both modes, and while the pretty, epic parts are usually kept distinctly seperate from the doom metal, it all flows together perfectly. Songwriting is key here - Thou know how to write actual songs and put this together into a powerful, moving whole, and it sets them at the top of the heap when it comes to this kind of music. A perfect meeting of magnific fx-heavy Mogwai/Mono style rock and the punishing feedback-disease of Monarch, Burning Witch, Khanate, Minsk, Goatsblood,Eyehategod, and of course, Warhorse.
Like I said, this is one of the best doom albums of the past year, even though it goes beyond mere "doom" into something else, something way more beautiful and oppressive, dreamlike and fearsome. Highly recommended.

Track Samples:
Sample : Fucking Chained to the Bottom of the Ocean
Sample : I Was Ignored. And Judged. And Cast Down

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Back in stock!
Five gorgeous, expressive tracks of guitar-based drone bliss from German duo TROUM (ex- MAEROR TRI) that float on a MY BLOODY VALENTINE -esque cloud of ethereal distortion, looped melodies, and fuzzy atmosphere. Entirely created by guitar, this twenty-two minute disc features solo material from each member that melts together while offering a different set of nuances from other TROUM material (hense the "symbiosis" of this release). Ranging from short fragments of heavenly guitar and feedback to majestic melodies and expansive fields of skyreaching ambience and eerie minimal sketches, Symbiosis delivers everything we love about TROUM !! We especially love the circular acoustic guitars. Comes packaged in a simple but quite attractive handmade sleeve from Transgredient.
Track Samples:
Sample : Track 1
Sample : Track 5

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Wino's new solo album Punctuated Equilibrium is already one of the best heavy underground rock albums of '09 in my opinion, and Southern Lord has given the doommaster's album a truly deluxe vinyl release with this combination LP and 10" set. The packaging is absolutely beautiful, a heavy tip-on gatefold jacket with D'Andrea's gorgeous mystical artwork nice and large, a full color insert in one pocket, the 180 gram LP version in the other, and to top if off, this also features an exclusive 10" with four tracks that are not on the cd release. The ten inch is in a special customized pocket sleeve that is actually attached to the inside of the gatefold jacket, and these bonus tracks are as killer as anything on the LP, and include three originals, all heavy and proggy and with some awesome blazing synthesizer work on a couple of 'em, along with a stomping, soulful cover of Three Dog Night's "Chest Fever". Awesome!
If there's ever been a godfather of the underground Doom scene, it's Scott "Wino" Wienrich. Anyone that listens to doom metal and heavy underground rock probably has at least one album from one of his bands in their collection, and from The Obsessed to the mighty Saint Vitus through to his later work with Spirit Caravan, Place Of Skulls and The Hidden Hand, Wino's music has had a large hand in shaping the sound of heavy underground rock and metal. The abrupt breakup of The Hidden Hand in 2007 was a depressing turn of events as I had been a huge fan of the proggy direction that Wino's music was taking, but we finally have some new stuff from the master in the form of this new solo album, his first, as well as a new project called Shrinebuilder that has Wino playing with members of Neurosis and Om that will be releasing an album at some point in the next year. This solo album feels like a summation of Wino's career from the late 1970s through to the present, and there's something joyous in the way that these songs touch upon all of the different sides of Winos distinctive sound and his songwriting. Like with The Hidden Hand and Spirit Caravan, Wino is once again workin from a classic power trio lineup, here backed by the rhythm section of drummer Jean Paul Gaster (Clutch) and bassist Jon Black. Some of the riffs and songs that make up Punctuated Equilibrium have apparently been floating around in Wino's toolbox since as far back as the 1970s, according to the liner notes, and the ten songs touch on all of the different sides of Wino's music. There's the speed-fueled hardcore intensity of the title song that reminds me of how The Obsessed were able to effortlessly toss out a chunk of hardcore punk in the middle of a set of sullen, crushing doom metal, and the sprawling 70's style acid-metal and meandering Hendrix-style solo explorations of "Wild Blue Yonder", to grooving, wah-soaked doom rock and muscular riffing of "Secret Realm Devotion" (one of my fave tracks on this disc). "Smilin Road" is all heavy Southern blues-rock boogie swagger that reminds me a lot of the newer Clutch stuff, but then throws out some amazing ethereal solos at the end that have an epic prog-rock quality, and "Eyes Of The Flesh" is one the slowest songs I've heard from Wino in ages, a crushing dirge of grinding doom that Saint Vitus fans will flip out for. There are some cool tracks on here that throw out a little of the unexpected - the short, two minute instrumental "Water Crane" is a darkly beautiful glimpse of soaring jazz-fusion soloing over black tides of buzzing ambient distortion, almost Mahavishnu-like, and the instrumental "Gods, Frauds, Neo-Cons and Demagogues" combines a menacing, grooving doom riff with electronic noises, droning feedback, and a jumbled collage of soundbites from former President George W. Bush and other samples of right-wing media.
Fans of Wino's other band will hear elements of all of them on this solo album, but its clostest in feel to his newer, more proggy work with Spirit Caravan and The Hidden Hand. Fans of Wino in general though already know that this is pretty essential. Definitely a killer collection of songs from the doom legend, who by every right should be a housefold name in the metal underground. The disc is accompanied by beautiful artwork by the always-amazing David D'Andrea, whose mystical landscapes and floral hallucinations go nicely with Wino's heady, mystical rock, and the booklet contains cool linet notes written by Wino that discuss the songs and the creation of the album. Recommended!
Track Samples:
Sample : Eyes of the Flesh
Sample : Release Me
Sample : Wild Blue Yonder

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We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.
The bulk of the cassettes that we got from Infernal Kommando are from that one man black metal project known as Zarach'Baal'Tharagh. I found out about Zarach'Baal'Tharagh after we picked up that collection of demos that At War With False Noise put out on cd a while back, and ever since then I've been looking for more of ZBT's utterly brain-damaged primitive black metal psychosis. The guy behind ZBT, Luc Mertz, has got to be one of the most prolific loner black metallers ever; according to Metal-archives.com, he's up to eighty demos as of this moment, with more surely on the way, and whats really wild is that so far everything that I've heard from this self-described " French master of bedroom black metal" has been amazing (and amazingly bizarre). This is exactly the sort of uber-fucked stumbling low-fi black metal mess that fans (like myself) of Furze, Striborg, Defuntos, Wormsblood, Alkerdeel, Raw Hatred and Tjolgtjar lust for.
I'm a big fan of ZBT's damaged black metal slop, both the noisy industrial-laced blacknoise experiments and the more riff-centric retardo blackthrash stuff, but it's when Zarach'Baal'Tharagh launches into the noxious, gnarly blackened punk that this one-man black metal band really rages. This 2006 cassette on Infernal Kommando is the most blackpunk-focused of all of the ZBT tapes that we just picked up from them, a six song collection ("Dark City", "Suck Your Bone", "Metal Bastard", "Hellmaster", "From Beyond", "Deadly Pale Face") that pays homage to Motorhead through raw, stumbling midpaced gruesomeness that combines simple three and four chord riffs with those distant trashcan drums and Luc Mertz's fucked up slobbering growls and swooping reptile screams, sounding alot like a totally drunk and wasted Venom recorded on a busted Tandy tape deck. Beneath the roiling tape hiss and the skummy sheen of the shitty production, this stuff is raging, definitely for fans of the really mangled end of the current wave of blackened noisepunk bands like Malveillance and Bone Awl and Ancestors. This being Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, there's alos lots of weirdness going on, swells of psychedelic fx, vocals warped into tea-kettle whistles, deep chanting that kinda sounds like Tuvan throat singing, weird dissonant chords, and lots of hideous blackened noise. It's the most "rocking" of all of the ZBT tapes we have though, that's for sure.

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We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.
The bulk of the cassettes that we got from Infernal Kommando are from that one man black metal project known as Zarach'Baal'Tharagh. I found out about Zarach'Baal'Tharagh after we picked up that collection of demos that At War With False Noise put out on cd a while back, and ever since then I've been looking for more of ZBT's utterly brain-damaged primitive black metal psychosis. The guy behind ZBT, Luc Mertz, has got to be one of the most prolific loner black metallers ever; according to Metal-archives.com, he's up to eighty demos as of this moment, with more surely on the way, and whats really wild is that so far everything that I've heard from this self-described " French master of bedroom black metal" has been amazing (and amazingly bizarre). This is exactly the sort of uber-fucked stumbling low-fi black metal mess that fans (like myself) of Furze, Striborg, Defuntos, Wormsblood, Alkerdeel, Raw Hatred and Tjolgtjar lust for.
Real Life Evil Dream is demo number forty-three from Zarach'Baal'Tharagh, and if you've heard anything else from this mutant, you know what to expect here. Twelve tracks that lean towards a more straightforward black metal sound at times, with simple buzzsaw riffing and junkyard drums clattering together in unholy blasts of noxious necro-punk. There's plenty of that trademark ZBT weirdness here though too, for sure. Songs are prefaced by long stretches of murky industrial noise and distant thunderous loops, and those insane swooping pterodactyl screams appear out of nowhere, sometimes showing up in the middle of a passage of almost total silence. There are loads of samples here too, strange field recordings and grunt-like vocal sounds, free-noise percussive meltdowns, recordings of breaking glass in some dark alleyway, weird unidentifiable noises, clusters of chaotic fx, abd lots of other strange aural hallucinations that swirl around these tracks. Another dose of demented outsider necro-psych genius!

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We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.
The bulk of the cassettes that we got from Infernal Kommando are from that one man black metal project known as Zarach'Baal'Tharagh. I found out about Zarach'Baal'Tharagh after we picked up that collection of demos that At War With False Noise put out on cd a while back, and ever since then I've been looking for more of ZBT's utterly brain-damaged primitive black metal psychosis. The guy behind ZBT, Luc Mertz, has got to be one of the most prolific loner black metallers ever; according to Metal-archives.com, he's up to eighty demos as of this moment, with more surely on the way, and whats really wild is that so far everything that I've heard from this self-described " French master of bedroom black metal" has been amazing (and amazingly bizarre). This is exactly the sort of uber-fucked stumbling low-fi black metal mess that fans (like myself) of Furze, Striborg, Defuntos, Wormsblood, Alkerdeel, Raw Hatred and Tjolgtjar lust for.
Here's "demo 49" in ZBT's colossal catalog of cassettes, a twenty-two track tape titled Skull Face Exhumations that was released in 2006 on Infernal Kommando. Each track is referred to as an "Exhumation", and these are some of ZBT's harshest recordings - skuzzy, super low-fi bursts of damaged atonal black metal riffing and screeching reptilian vocals over shambling blastbeats that are buried way back in the mix, a minimal barely-perceptible clang like someone's banging on a couple of oil drums half a mile away while insanely out-of-tune blackened riffs loop over and over. This stuff is then alternated with passages of pure old school industrial noise in the form of warbling feedback loops, clanking machine rhythms obscured by layers of grime and tape murk, swooping oscillator freakouts, and other weird electronic noises. Like some of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh's other tapes, this has the feel of hearing some diseased nth generation black metal demo taped over an old RRRecords noise cassette, the nauseous riffs and ridiculous high-pitched screams (almost like the bizarre pterodactyl screams from the old Fleurety demo) enmeshed with creepy minimal machine sounds and corroded aural grit.

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We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.
The bulk of the cassettes that we got from Infernal Kommando are from that one man black metal project known as Zarach'Baal'Tharagh. I found out about Zarach'Baal'Tharagh after we picked up that collection of demos that At War With False Noise put out on cd a while back, and ever since then I've been looking for more of ZBT's utterly brain-damaged primitive black metal psychosis. The guy behind ZBT, Luc Mertz, has got to be one of the most prolific loner black metallers ever; according to Metal-archives.com, he's up to eighty demos as of this moment, with more surely on the way, and whats really wild is that so far everything that I've heard from this self-described " French master of bedroom black metal" has been amazing (and amazingly bizarre). This is exactly the sort of uber-fucked stumbling low-fi black metal mess that fans (like myself) of Furze, Striborg, Defuntos, Wormsblood, Alkerdeel, Raw Hatred and Tjolgtjar lust for.
This 2006 cassette is the 38th "demo' from this uber-cult French black metal project, and it's as damaged and inebraited as the rest of the Zarach'Baal'Tharagh catalog. A single song titled "Dementia" that stretches out for more than 46 minutes, recorded low fi and skuzzy, the primtive recording swamped in murky production and tape hiss, but underneath all of that skuzz is a constantly evolving black metal epic that moves from abstract out-of-tune black dirge to punky mid-paced thrash, sprawling filthy ambience and ripping psychedelic leads, with Zarach'Baal'Tharagh mastermind Luc Mertz unleashing his oddball mix of pterodactyl screams and gargling vocals over it all. It's as if there are twenty different songs in here all glommed together into a single stinking pile of brain-damaged bedroom black metal. The recording sounds like it was probably mostly improvised, and the music meanders from one part to another, but as messy and chaotic and whacked out as this most definitely is, the genius of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh also means that the riffs are killer, the atmosphere is truly diseased, and listening to this black-psych epic is like crawling through an infernal scrapyard of slow dreamlike dirge, messed-up psychedelic leads and vocals that almost sound like Gibby Haynes from Butthole Surfers at times, stumbling blackpunk hypnosis, vast pits of reverby vocal noise and overloaded FX, everything clouded by the murky low-fi production but when it slips into one of those blackened grooves, it's fucking awesome.

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We've picked up a bunch of different cassettes from the French black metal label Infernal Kommand for Crucial Blast, all of 'em filled with weird and freaked out occult black metal mutations and queasy psychedelic ambience scraped from the underbelly of the French BM underground. Some of the tapes that we've been able to get are from familiar freakazoids (like the brilliantly fucked one man black metal of Zarach'Baal'Tharagh), while others are new discoveries, from the pitch-black void-ambience of Aymrev Erkroz Prevre and the ritual industrial murk of Stigma Diabolicum, to the sadistic satanic power electronic/crypt-drone rites of Silcharde, Malvoisie's bizarre didgeridoo-fueled black metal hallucinations and the perverted blackgrind overload of Kratornas. All of this stuff is brilliant and fucked, the sort of damaged outsider black metal weirdness that we lust for constantly, and fellow fans of all things blackened and noisy and abstract should definitely check all of these titles out.
The bulk of the cassettes that we got from Infernal Kommando are from that one man black metal project known as Zarach'Baal'Tharagh. I found out about Zarach'Baal'Tharagh after we picked up that collection of demos that At War With False Noise put out on cd a while back, and ever since then I've been looking for more of ZBT's utterly brain-damaged primitive black metal psychosis. The guy behind ZBT, Luc Mertz, has got to be one of the most prolific loner black metallers ever; according to Metal-archives.com, he's up to eighty demos as of this moment, with more surely on the way, and whats really wild is that so far everything that I've heard from this self-described " French master of bedroom black metal" has been amazing (and amazingly bizarre). This is exactly the sort of uber-fucked stumbling low-fi black metal mess that fans (like myself) of Furze, Striborg, Defuntos, Wormsblood, Alkerdeel, Raw Hatred and Tjolgtjar lust for.
This cassette is a collections of a couple of different Zarach'Baal'Tharagh that had previously been released. Collected here are the Porn Of The Dead demo, the Hate cassette, and the Lunatic Improvised Rehearsal, all originally released between 2006 and 2007. The Porn Of The Dead material consists of siix tracks of some of the most far-out and noise damaged ZBT material that I've heard so far, which is really saying something. Actually, these tracks are only marginally "black metal" - there's minimal mosquito riffing and weird flanged-out screaming, but it's all smothered in harsh oscillating tones, murky Abruptum-esque dungeon clatter, and orgasmic groans and cricket-like chirping looped into surreal, bestial soundscapes. Way closer to low-fi industrial soundscapes than anything resembling black metal.
The Hate demo is actually the same tracks that appeared on the split with blacknoize thrashers DOG (whose 3" CD on Autopsy Kitchen we just reviwed/listed in last week's new arrivals list). Again, this stuff is more like some kind of psychedelic blacknoise industrial freakout than "metal", with six tracks of raw, repetitious deformed riffing and meandering Butthole Surfers-like acid guitar over murky black ambience, samples and field recordings, tortured screams and looped moaning, clanging minimal percussion...it's alot like Abruptum, but steeped in an ultra lo-fi cruddiness that sounds like someone recorded a bunch of awesome black metal thrash riffs over a disintegrating RRRecords noise cassette on a malfunctioning ghetto blaster. I'm not going near this stuff again until I've managed to get my hands on some choice blotter...
On the flipside, the Lunatic Improvised Rehearsal stuff is equally freaked. Despite it's title these tracks really don't sound any more improvised than anything else that ZBT has released, but I'll take his word for it. It starts off with "Lunacy", an almost a capella nigtmare of raging thrash riffs and choked super-distorted screams that cycle over an empty, drumless void, then moves on to the noisy Motorhead-like jam "Unfriendly" that suddenly turns toxic when the guitar plummets out of tune fifteen seconds in as those insane reptilian shrieks swoop overhead. The rest of these seven tracks likewise tread between gnarly repetitious blackened punk riffs and stumbling midpaced drumming and more abstract blacknoise wig-outs, at times remind me of a cross between Abruptum and a tenth-generation bootleg Bone Awl cassette that someone just peeled off the bottom of a dumpster.

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NEW RELEASES COMING SOON TO CRUCIAL BLAST:

PRETTY SOON:
BUTTHOLE SURFERS Live PCPPEP 12" (Alternative Tentacles)
UNO ACTU L'éveil de l'ombre CD-R (Infernal Kommando)

JULY 14TH:
NADJA & BLACK BONED ANGEL self-titled LP+DL / CD (20 Buck Spin)
YOB The Great Cessation CD (Profound Lore)

JULY 28TH
LEGION OF TWO Riffs 2xLP / CD (Planet Mu)

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NEW ARRIVALS IN STOCK, NOT REVIEWED:

AGALLOCH Pale Folklore CD (The End) 12.98
AGALLOCH The Mantle CD (The End) 12.98
AKIMBO City Of The Stars CD (Seventh Rule) 13.98
AKITSA Sang Nordique CD (Hospital) 14.98
AUFGEHOBEN Khora CD (Holy Mountain) 14.98
AUSTERITY PROGRAM Black Madonna CD (Hydra Head) 13.98
AVICHI The Divine Tragedy CD (Battle Kommand) 11.98
BAKER, AIDAN I Fall Into You CD (Basses Frequencies) 13.98
BARONESS Red Album CD (Relapse) 13.98
BASTARD NOISE w SIKHARA Tukano Khalkha CD (Genderless Kibbutz) 12.98
BEHEMOTHAUR Necroglacial Enema CD-R (Fauna Sabbatha) 10.98
BENIGHTED LEAMS Dhombrid Welkins CD (Supernal) 11.98
BERGRAVEN Dodsvisioner CD (Hydra Head) 13.98
BIRCHVILLE CAT MOTEL Seventh Ruined Hex CD (Important) 14.98
BLACK TO COMM Fractal Hair Geometry CD (Dekorder) 12.98
BLACK TO COMM Ruckwarts Backwards CD (Dekorder) 12.98
BLOOD OF THE BLACK OWL self titled CD (Bindrune) 11.98
BLUT AUS NORD Odinist CD (Candlelight) 13.98
BORIS + MERZBOW Rock Dream 2xCD (Southern Lord) 15.98
BOTCH We Are The Romans CD (Hydra Head) 12.98
CATACOMBS In The Depths Of R'lyeh CD (Moribund) 12.98
CIRCLE Arkades LP (Fourth Dimension) 22.98
CIRCLE Panic CD (Ektro) 12.98
CLOCKCLEANER Babylon Rules CD (Load) 11.98
CONVERGE No Heroes CD (Epitaph) 13.98
CULT OF LUNA SOmewhere Along The Highway 2xLP (Earache) 19.98
CULT OF LUNA Somewhere Along The Highway CD (Earache) 13.98
CUTTING PINK WITH KNIVES Populuxxe CD (Joly Roar) 14.98
DARUIN / TORTURING NURSE / STPOCOLO split CD-R (Neus-13) 6.98
DEAD C Harsh 70s Reality CD (Siltbreeze) 13.98
DEAD C Vain Erudite And Stupid 2xCD (Siltbreeze) 15.98
DEAD RAVEN CHOIR & MATT ROSIN Fire Mouth CD-R (Digitalis) 11.98
DEAD RAVEN CHOIR Cask Strength Black Metal 2xCD (Supernal) 14.98
DEAD RAVEN CHOIR My Firstborn Will Surely Be Blind CD (Aurora Borealis) 11.98
DEATHSPELL OMEGA Fas CD (Ajna) 14.98
DRUDKH Estrangement CD (Supernal) 15.98
DRUDKH Songs Of Grief And Solitude CD (Supernal) 15.98
EIKENSKADEN 665.999 CD (Tumult) 13.98
ELDRIG Kali CD (Supernal) 12.98
ELDRIG Mysterion CD (Supernal) 12.98
ELECTRIC WIZARD Witchcult Today CD (Candlelight) 13.98
ENSEPULCHERED Suicide In Winters Moonlight CD (Autopsy Kitchen) 9.98
ESOTERIC Subconscious Dissolution CD (Season Of Mist) 15.98
ETHEREAL WOODS Kenilsworth CD (Supernal) 12.98
ETHEREAL WOODS Thickthorn CD (Supernal) 12.98
FEAR FALLS BURNING Frenzy Of The Absolute CD (Conspiracy) 12.98
FLESHPRESS Pillars CD (Kult Of Nihilow) 11.98
FUNERAL MIST Devilry CD (Ajna) 14.98
FUNERAL MIST Salvation CD (Ajna) 14.98
FURZE Necromanzee Cogent CD (Candlelight) 10.98
FURZE Trident Autocrat CD (Candlelight) 10.98
FURZE Utd CD (Candlelight) 10.98
GHAST may the curse bind CD (Todestrieb) 11.98
GHAST / RAPE-X split CD (Obskure Sombre) 11.98
GHAST / YOGA split CD (Choking Hazard) 11.98
HALF MAKESHIFT L'anse Amort CD (20 Buck Spin) 11.98
HALF MAKESHIFT Omen CD (Profound Lore) 13.98
HARVEY MILK Courtesy And Good Will Toward Men 2xCD (Relapse) 16.98
HARVEY MILK Life...The Best Game In Town CD (Hydra Head) 13.98
HENNES SISTE HOEST s/t CD (Init) 10.98
HOMSELVAREG HomSelvareg CD (Van) 11.98
IRAN Moonboys CD (Tumult) 12.98
IRAN s/t CD (Tumult) 12.98
IRREVERSIBLE Sins CD (This Is Hero) 12.98
ISIS + AEROGRAMME In The Fishtank CD (Konkurrent) 11.98
ITS CASUAL Buicgl CD (The Friendly Hills Recording Company) 11.98
JAPANISCHE KAMPFHORSPIELE Rauchen Und Yoga CD (Bastardised) 11.98
JONES, MASON Midnight In The Twilight Factory CD (Monotremata) 10.98
KEIJI HAINO / KK NULL Mamono CD (Blossoming Noise) 14.98
KITES Hallucination Guillotine / Final Worship CD (Load) 11.98
KNEALE, CAMPBELL Pink Stalingrad CD (Celebrate Psi Phenomenon) 16.98
KRALLICE self titled CD (Profound Lore) 13.98
KRIEG The Black House CD (Red Stream) 11.98
LEVIATHAN Verrater 2xCD (Tumult) 15.98
LOVELY LITTLE GIRLS Glamorous Piles & Pu