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BLOODY PANDA  Pheromone  LP   (Level Plane)   16.98
Pheromone IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

Now available on vinyl in a posh gatefold package, black vinyl in a limited edition of 500 copies.

Almost elegant and elegiac in their deathshroud ambience, Bloody Panda have finally issued their first official full length release with Pheremone,

a four-song disc that runs nearly forty minutes. I had heard the Panda previously via some demo recordings that the band was circulating throughout the out-

metal subterrane as well as the split LP they released last year with Kayo Dot, and fucking loved the band's blend of glacial angular doom and

singer Yoshiko Ohara's ghostly vocals, the gut rumbling funeral riffs and billowing church organs, like Skepticism merged with pitch-black Japanese graveyard

psychedelia. Pheromone actually includes the song "Fever" off of the Kayo Dot split, but the other three tracks ("Untitled", "Coma", and "Ice") are

all exclusive to this disc, all lengthy midnight crypt-rites that run around 10 minutes and evoke an icy underworld populated with lost souls and horrific

demons, driven by Yoshiko's mournful, otherworldly vocals sung in both English and Japanese, which remind me of a terminally doomed Nico, so sorrowful and

narcotic, like she's singing ancient alien incantations to quiet the spirits of the roving dead. The band, cloaked in executioners masks whenever the play

live, erect monstrous angular riffs, slabs of droning feedback, and subdued bits of post-rock that scrawl out statements of eternal regret and "self

deliverance"; these swirl together with the austere pipe organ drones and deep space synths, and are augmented by the amazing drumming from noted tabla

soloist Dan Wiess who provides a molten thrust to the band's plodding dirge with rhythms that veer into full-on prog-rock at times. An achingly beautiful

Pheromone's disc comes in a full color gatefold jacket with terrific creepy photogprahy from Bloody Panda organist Blake McDowell along with additional artwork and design from noted artist Stephen Kasner, as well lyrics and liner notes.