CRUCIAL BLAST WEBSTORE: NEW ARRIVALS FOR SATURDAY, MARCH 13th 2010

Just a small new arrivals update this week, mainly made up of some older Earache titles that I'm stocking for the first time that collectors of the early 90's UK industrial/metal scene will be interested in, as well as some weirder shit from the Earache vaults...also have an amazing double disc from the Spanish avant-funeral-doom duo Of Darkness, who remind me of the first two Esoteric albums but with the addition of warped industrial and neo-classical elements, like a murky, mouldering hybrid of classic funeral/death doom (Esoteric, Thergothon, Evoken) and the twisted avant-blackness of Gnaw Their Tongues and newer Blut Aus Nord. Pretty killer!

Here's some of the other new titles and restocks that have come in:

the second issue of the fantastic new industrial/noise/avant-earbleed zine Special Interests...
a bunch of older Scorn titles - if you've only recently discovered the grim apocalyptic industrial dub of Mick Harris's post-Napalm Death project through the recent Earache reissue of Evanescence/Ellipsis, here's some more bleak, beat-heavy darkness...
the gorgeous brand-new art book of black metal logo art from legendary "LOrd Of The Logos" Christophe Szpajdel...
restocks of vinyl from Indricothere and Old Man Gloom...
a reissue of Skullflower's stunning psychdrone classic This Is Skullflower, out of print for years!
a bunch of 90's discs, some now hard-to-find, from infamous blurrcore/improv comedy grinders Anal Cunt...
a new "fanclub" 7" of rare Bad Brains tracks from the early 80's, including a never-before-released reggae track from the Rasta hardcore legends...
some new shred/jazz/thrash insanity from ugEXPLODE: the new Mick Barr/Nondor Nevai collab disc (ultra-spastic improv shred thrash!) and a new disc from the Weasel Walter Septet, who bust out a furious free-jazz/power prog assault...
a new split 7" of crushing sludge/doom from Thou and Haarp...

Of course, there's much more mutant heavy music to be had...keep reading below to check out all of the amazing new music that we have in this week's new arrivals list!

You can now click on the cover image for any title that we carry here at Crucial Blast to see a pop-up photograph of the actual item! Not all of our older titles that we have in stock have product photographs attached to them, but almost anything new that we get in stock will have this feature. The pop-up photo feature can be wonky (like most things) if you are using Internet Explorer, but works perfectly in Firefox and other browsers.

FEATURED RELEASE

OF DARKNESS The Empty Eye / Death 2xCD (Black Mass) 14.98

Until now, I'm guessing that few have heard the first two releases from the mysterious Spanish duo Of Darkness, since they were both self-released demos that were only modestly circulated through black/doom channels over the past couple of years, and despite attempts at giving them a more formal release have been largely unavailable until now. Thanks to Black Mass Records, fans of severely drugged death/doom can finally hear the collected recordings from Of Darkness, and it's some of the most awesomely fucked-up, hallucinatory doom that I've listened to since the first two Esoteric albums. I'm serious - when I first heard this band after Black Mass got in touch and turned me on to them, I was blown away by how horrific and psychedelic these recordings are; slow and crawling Lovecraftian blackdoom that the band layers with all kinds of droning keys, weird howling vocals, bizarre fragmented melodies and effects, strings, and molded into unpredictable arrangements that allow the glacial riffs to crumble away suddenly and without warning into vast spaces of pure blackness. One of the guys in Of Darkness also plays in the cool prog/folk/black metal band Lux Divina, whose latest album just came out on Ars Magna, but this is about as far from Lux Divina's folk-inflected prog as you can possibly get; this is monstrous, mind-melting deathdoom drenched in cadaverous fumes and ghastly black psychedelia, bestial black funeral rites from Beyond, somewhere between the glacial dread of bands like Evoken, Esoteric, Thergothon, Skepticism, Until Death Overtakes Me, and Worship, and the lysergic industrial-tinged horror of Blut Aus Nord, Gnaw Their Tongues, OS, Habsyll, Skitliv, and Slagmaur. Seriously fucking recommended if yer into utterly blackened, warped doom.
The first disc features the two song Death demo from 2004, the first track "Death" unfurling it's massive black wings over a half-hour sprawl of swarming black metal guitars over plodding glacial drums that are little more than a minimal metronomic pulse, thick waves of blackened doom, dissonant riffing, high-end metallic drone, impossibly deep and gaseous vokills drifting through dank, lightless catacombs, the sound seeming to warp slightly, the riffs and vocals slightly shifting in pitch, making this sound even more woozy and hallucinogenic. Bells toll in the distance as the riff changes into another grim doom dirge, more ambient than metal, but suffocating, heavy and dense. As the song progresses, the sound drops into fearsome stretches of psychedelic ambience with whooshing demonic vocals and weird flanging effects, then plunges back into the funereal gloom as electronic keys and choral voices emerge from the depths. Strange stretches of orchestral clatter and abstract strings surface, along with the chittering and clacking of what sounds like bats (!) and random screams and howls of torment appear for several minutes, and then become swept over with another black riff, another black wave of hellish black orchestral doom strewn with creepy pipe organs, harpsichords, and clusters of random piano notes. More like some super-slow abyssal black metal than doom metal at times, this is seriously evil and warped stuff. The other track off of the demo is even more abstract, starting with moaning and anguished shrieks drifting up out of the blackness, drenched in reverb, becoming more terrifying as the moans change into cackling and snarling vokills, and then the MASSIVE doom riff drops in, all crushing torpor and black majesty, the guitars subtly harmonized. More buzzing tremolo riffs appear, as well as passages where everything drops out except for the plodding drums and the ghostly shrieks.
But it's on the second disc, The Empty Eye, where Of Darkness really come into their own. Recorded in 2005 as their debut album but unreleased until now, the sound is WAY heavier, better recorded, but still just as hopelessly grim and dismal as before. The seven tracks move through massive monolithic doom riffs, psychotic snarling vokills, frenzied guttural gibberish, the minimal, sparse drums that are little more than a metronomic cymbal crash and heartbeat-like bass drum depth charge boomf every few seconds, and thick droning cinematic synths humming in the background. There's more of an industrial feel here too, with thick swathes of distorted noise sweeping into the creeping doomdirge, and strange electronic sounds woven into the decomposing riffs; metallic crashing sounds and swirling low-end drones manifest at the outer edges of the monotonous black crush, and weird processed spoken-word vocals recite christ-knows-what over sudden swells of abyssal black drone. Tolling bells, orchestral strings, multiple voices whispering at one, and frantic chanting drift above the static riffs, and all sorts of mysterious scraping and clanking and dragging noises can be heard in the distance; there's even what sounds like a xylophone that appears on one song, the clinking metallic notes chiming over a crushing epic doomdeath riff and booming tympani-like percussion. Imagine Esoteric being commissioned to score a psychedelic horror film, or Thergothon backed by a crew of chanting, muttering satanic high priests and acid-dosed synth players. Phenomenally fucked and soul-crushing avant-acid-blackdoom!

Track Samples:
Sample : Absence / Disappearance
Sample : Congregate
Sample : Death
Sample : The Eyeless

NEW ADDITIONS

ANAL CUNT 40 More Reasons To Hate Us CD (Earache) 12.98

For more than twenty years, Anal Cunt has prided itself on being the self-described "worst band in the world" and offending anyone and everyone that they possibly can. Like some kind of PC-baiting, ultra-confrontational musical/comedy act, these goofs have made an art form out of combining ridiculously short and noisy assaults of blurr and hardcore punk with offensive (and often hilarious) song titles, and enough transgressive subject matter to make your eyes water. It's like having the essence of all four issues of Answer Me! boiled down into twenty second blasts of tuneless improvised grindcore. You either love 'em or hate them, that's for sure, and you've got to give credit to a band that has managed to go down in history as one of the most notorious and controversial extreme music bands ever, right? Pretty crucial listening for fans of early Naked City and Boredoms, too, since AxCx was one of the few other bands of that era to blast through the conventions of extreme music to the same degree that those bands did. Anyways, we've stocked four of their Earache albums for the first time here at Crucial Blast, so now's a perfect opportunity for grind/noise/improv freaks to add these to their collection.
The 1996 album 40 More Reasons To Hate Us from Anal Cunt doesn't deviate from their patented style of tuneless, hyper-brutal grind and metal/hardcore parodies, at least compared to the more song-based direction that they started to take with Top 40 Hits, but there are a couple of things that make this album stand out from the rest of the AxCx catalog. First, 40 More Reasons... is noteworthy for being the only Anal Cunt album to feature Scott Hull of Pig Destroyer/Agoraphobic Nosebleed fame on guitar, and his chunky thrash-style riffs break through on a bunch of these songs (when the band isn't exploding into a blast of full-on Merzbow-strength noise, that is), resulting in some of Anal Cunt's heaviest jams thus far. Secondly, while I'm pretty sure that you wouldn't want to recommended this to your usual Pantera / Down / Superjoint Ritual fan, it is interesting to hear Phil Anselmo all over this album, playing guitar on "Van Full Of Retards", contributing backing vocals to almost half the songs, and playing guitar and singing on the absurd (and awesome, in a frontal-lobe damaged sort of way) cover of Manowar's "Gloves Of Metal". Aside from those two points, this collection of forty-two tracks is another hateful, ear-ripping grind/noise assault that shifts between their signature blurr-core assaults, the stoopid Sockeye-style falsetto vocals and sloppy punk, and CRUSHING grindcore, with a brain melting rendition of "Theme from Three's Company" lobbed like a frag grenade into the middle of it all. As always, half of the appeal of any Anal Cunt album is the song titles, which range from "You Looked Divorced" and "Al Stankus Is Always on the Phone With His Bookie" to "Johnny Violent Getting His Ass Kicked by Morrissey", "Van Full of Retards", and "Everyone in the Underground Music Scene Is Stupid". Pretty hilarious, as usual.

Track Samples:
Sample : Deche Charge Are a Bunch of Fucking Losers
Sample : Everyone in the Underground Music Scene Is Stupid
Sample : Gloves of Metal
Sample : I Hope You Get Deported
Sample : You Looked Divorced

ANAL CUNT Everyone Should Be Killed CD (Earache) 12.98

For more than twenty years, Anal Cunt has prided itself on being the self-described "worst band in the world" and offending anyone and everyone that they possibly can. Like some kind of PC-baiting, ultra-confrontational musical/comedy act, these goofs have made an art form out of combining ridiculously short and noisy assaults of blurr and hardcore punk with offensive (and often hilarious) song titles, and enough transgressive subject matter to make your eyes water. It's like having the essence of all four issues of Answer Me! boiled down into twenty second blasts of tuneless improvised grindcore. You either love 'em or hate them, that's for sure, and you've got to give credit to a band that has managed to go down in history as one of the most notorious and controversial extreme music bands ever, right? Pretty crucial listening for fans of early Naked City and Boredoms, too, since AxCx was one of the few other bands of that era to blast through the conventions of extreme music to the same degree that those bands did. Anyways, we've stocked four of their Earache albums for the first time here at Crucial Blast, so now's a perfect opportunity for grind/noise/improv freaks to add these to their collection.
The first full length slab of ultra-offensive song titles, hateful lyrics and brutal blasting grindnoise from Boston's infamous scumlords, 1994's Everyone Should Be Killed introduced a whole new audience to Anal Cunt's over-the-top comedic hate-filled blurrcore by way of new label Earache Records. The album is really raw and grungy sounding compared to later releases, and their sound was still pretty much the same chaotic, formless grindnoise of their early EPs (albeit quite a bit heavier), but this cruddy recording works in their favor; the micro-bursts of frenzied screaming, random vocal noises, tuneless blasts of distortion and improvised grindcore blast out of the speakers in a nuclear wave of filth, even though all of this sounds like it could have been recorded inside of a large oil drum. There's the notorious cover of EMF's "Unbelievable", and the ridiculous "Eddy Grant" (Eddy Grant cover)", some kind of homage to Boston SXE warriors Slapshot ("Choke Edge"), and what could be Anal Cunt's slowest and longest song ever, the crawling five and a half minutes of doom metal misery of "Song #5". And, of course, there are plenty of riotous song titles: "I'm Not Allowed to Like A.C. Any More Since They Signed to Earache", "I'm Wicked Underground", "Abomination of Unnecessarily Augmented Composition Monickers", "When I Think of True Punk Rock Bands, I Think of Nirvana and the Melvins", "Song Titles Are Fucking Stupid", "Brutally Morbid Axe of Satan". A noisecore classic!

Track Samples:
Sample : Blur Including New H.C. Song
Sample : Chapel of Gristle
Sample : I'm Wicked Underground
Sample : Music Sucks
Sample : Some More Songs
Sample : Some Songs

ANAL CUNT It Just Gets Worse CD (Earache) 12.98

ANAL CUNT Top 40 Hits CD (Earache) 12.98

For more than twenty years, Anal Cunt has prided itself on being the self-described "worst band in the world" and offending anyone and everyone that they possibly can. Like some kind of PC-baiting, ultra-confrontational musical/comedy act, these goofs have made an art form out of combining ridiculously short and noisy assaults of blurr and hardcore punk with offensive (and often hilarious) song titles, and enough transgressive subject matter to make your eyes water. It's like having the essence of all four issues of Answer Me! boiled down into twenty second blasts of tuneless improvised grindcore. You either love 'em or hate them, that's for sure, and you've got to give credit to a band that has managed to go down in history as one of the most notorious and controversial extreme music bands ever, right? Pretty crucial listening for fans of early Naked City and Boredoms, too, since AxCx was one of the few other bands of that era to blast through the conventions of extreme music to the same degree that those bands did. Anyways, we've stocked four of their Earache albums for the first time here at Crucial Blast, so now's a perfect opportunity for grind/noise/improv freaks to add these to their collection.
Anal Cunt's second album came out in 1995 and featured forty tracks that are divided up between blasting improvised grindnoise, brain-damaged punk, and fast, ripping hardcore, with a handful of ridiculous "covers" thrown in. When the band launches into their ultra-noisy blasts, they achieve that same Merbow / Incapacitants-level of sonic rumble as their earlier album, but at least half of Top 40 Hits is more song based, for whatever that's worth. The fucked-up punk rock stuff reminds me a lot of Ohio "tard-core" legends Sockeye, and indeed A.C. front man Seth Putnam can be seen in the booklet sporting a Sockeye shirt, so there's obviously some of that band's influence floating around here, as well as lots of brutal death metal riffing and other weirdness, but this album will probably always be best known for the completely bonkers covers that the band included. There's Rupert Holmes's "Escape (The Pina Colada Song)", Elton John's "I'm Still Standing", The Guess Who's "American Woman", the theme song from The A-Team, and the totally ridiculous "Stayin' Alive (Oi! Version)", all delivered via Anal Cunt's skull-wrecking psychosis. Other "hits": "Living Colour Is My Favorite Black Metal Band", "Benchpressing Effects on Kevin Sharp's Vocals", "Stealing Seth's Ideas: the New Book by Jon Chang", "Morbid Dead Guy", "Don't Call Japanese Hardcore Jap Core".

Track Samples:
Sample : American Woman
Sample : Flower Shop Guy
Sample : I Liked Earache Better When Dig Answered the Phone
Sample : Living Colour Is My Favorite Black Metal Band
Sample : Old Lady Across the Hall With No Life

BAD BRAINS 171A Sessions 7 INCH VINYL (Cleopatra Cafe) 9.98

Super-limited "fanclub" release of what are apparently four unreleased tracks from the Rastafarian hardcore gods. The recording is surprisingly good for "lost" material such as this, really great actually, and according to the insert that comes with this, the three studio tracks featured here were recorded by the Bad Brains between 1981 and 1982 for a compilation of East Coast hardcore bands that never came together. Later versions of the songs ("Black Dots", "Send You No Flowers", "Redbone In The City") have appeared on the Black Dots collection that came out in the 90's, but the performance here is pretty damn ferocious, and the b-side, a previously never-before-released mutant reggae jam called "Recognize", is from a line performance in San Diego in 1985. The terrific sound quality makes this platter highly recommended for fans, but move quick - it's limited to five hundred copies.

Track Samples:
Sample : Black Dots
Sample : Redbone In The City
Sample : Send You No Flowers

BARR-NEVAI Labyrintha CD (ugEXPLODE) 14.98

Orthrelm/Ocrilim/Krallice guitarist Mick Barr and sonic weirdo Nondor Nevai have been collaborating on a series of full-lengths for awhile now, and Labyrintha is actually the third album that these guys have recorded and released together; it's the first to actually get an "official" release through ugEXPLODE however, as the previous two discs were released as super-limited CD-rs. It's pretty much what you'd expect from a team-up between guitarist Barr and drummer/vocalist Nevai: endless streams of tremolo shredding that pour forth over a chaotic, thrashing drum assault, all completely improvised, the two musicians raging through fields of densely clustered avant-speed-metal shredding and fucked-up vocal noise/feedback assaults and demented quasi-throat-singing exercises. Mick Barr's endless racing notes swarm over these tracks like hyper-dense flurries of electronic insect chirps, and fans of his work in Orthrelm/Octis/Ocrilim will love this; on the other hand, Nondor's berserk black-vomit vocalizations and stumbling, freeform blast beats and drumming chaos pulls this into a much more freaked-out and frayed-at-the-edges form of improv shredblast. Imagine the soundtrack for the old video game Galaga being performed by Sonny Sharrock while the drummer from Beherit goes into an extended shitfit. Or maybe some manic, PCP-fueled fusion of Torture Garden-era Naked City, Abruptum, and that Bonus Levels disc that featured nothing but Trey Azagthoth shredding that came with the limited edition version of Morbid Angel's Heretic. Totally fucked and maniacal avant/no-wave/thrash weirdness - Flying Luttenbachers fans, this is definitely for you. Comes in full color digipack packaging.

Track Samples:
Sample : Track 1
Sample : Track 2

INDRICOTHERE self-titled (BLACK VINYL) LP + CD (Gilead Media) 14.98

Back in stock, now on black vinyl.
OK, so the prehistoric elephant has been well mined by this point for heavy metal band names. You've got Wooly Mammoth, Mammatus, Mastodon, and Steel Mammoth right off of the top of my head, but there's a whole wealth of other prehistoric mammals on the books that are primed for metallization, species that seem to have been created solely to have their likenesses appropriated by bands who want to invoke their massive presence through, uh, brutal riffage. I've got to commend Colin Marston for using one of my personal favorites of the Oligocene bestiary as his own personal spirit guide, the giant rhino known as the Indricothere. Look it up - this animal was awesome. Thought to be the largest land mammal that ever lived, these beasts measured over 40 feet tall...do a google search for it if you want to bask in it's gargantuan majesty.
The psychedelic album cover that depicts a number of Indricothere set against an exploding stained-glass sunburst of vivid color and the bizarre artwork on the back cover that has a six-armed Kali-type Indricothere war god shredding on a Warr guitar suggests that this album is homage to the animal, a form of beast worship given via synapse-frying progressive death metal. Whatever the concepts are behind the music, this is a killer solo side project from the Behold...The Arctopus/Dysrhythmia member that is apparently made up of music that Colin wrote before Behold...The Arctopus took shape. The five tracks on the album (each one designated by a nonsequential roman numeral) are crazed technical death metal with all instruments performed by Colin, who uses spastic drum machine programming to create hyperspeed beats and chaotic time changes that would most likely be impossible to replicate with a human drummer,and combines these with his patented Warr guitar shredding and tapping, spiralling hypercomplex guitar lines around chugging cybernetic death metal riffs and dense solar blasts of melodic distortion that remind me of those blown-out, Sigur Ros-esque post rock passages on Infidel?/Castro!'s Bioentropic Damage Fractal. Indricothere's progtastic instrumental deathgrind isn't quite as convoluted and atonal as Behold...The Arctopus, but fans of the latter will still love this, as will fans of stuff like Gorguts, Negativa, Cynic, and Death's The Sound of Perseverance . Awesome tech death insanity combined with epic, melodic post-rock textures. Highly recommended. Comes with a cd version of the album.

OF DARKNESS The Empty Eye / Death 2xCD (Black Mass) 14.98

OLD MAN GLOOM Seminar II: Holy Rites Of Primitivism Regressionis 2xLP (Magic Bullet) 19.98

Back in stock on black vinyl, with an etching on one side. The middle chapter of the ambitious triptych is one of the more intense explorations into monstrous metallic heaviness and subsonic drone from this super group featuring members of Isis, Cave In, Doomriders, Forensics, and Converge. When OMG's debut album Meditation In B came out, the band made it clear that they were intent on taking metalcore down some unknown routes, but I was still blown away when I finally heard this massive second album (which had been released simultaneously with the single track dronescape Seminar III: Zozobra ) when it came out. Huge blasts of chugging, apocalyptic dirge metal a la Neurosis wind their way through deep valleys of dark isolationist drone and pummeling metallic noise rock, resulting in a majestic and commanding sound that combines crushing metallic heaviness, cinematic rock, freeform amplifier meltdowns and dark drone compositions. The epic music is spread across two records, sixteen tracks shifting from hulking metalcore crush to quietly ominous soundscapes; the songs are amazingly well written, with huge riffs and swinging desert-baked hooks that sometimes approach a pummeling hybrid of Kyuss and Neurosis, and for an album that is as experimental as this is, OMG are capable of delivering songs that are as memorable as the best stuff from the members primary bands. And the drone/ambient sections are equally great, invoking the eerie metallic drift of artists like Organum and Carnioclast. Some of the standout tracks are the instrumental "Clenched Tight In The Fist Of God" with it's desolate slide guitar over a solemn strummed acoustic guitar and washes of radio static, the weirdly Danzig-like Mojave metal of "Deserts In Your Eyes", and "Three Ring Ocean Sideshow," which starts off from subtle electronic bleeps and builds into a crushing Skullflower-style tower of overdriven guitar feedback. OMG are like a pummeling fusion of Godflesh, Earth, Neurosis, and 70's riff rock, forged together into a crushing, psychedelic avant-metal behemoth. If yer into adventurous metal and havent heard this yet, it's highly recommended.
This is the North American double LP version of the album that came out on Magic Bullet a few years back. The records come in an elaborately printed full color gatefold jacket that is printed with metallic foil stamping.

OM God Is Good LP (Drag City) 19.98

Back in stock!
"2009 release. It's been years now just about two judging from the sun. OM have done their time in the desert and ever-changing are returned. Today they say God is Good. Are you surprised? Perhaps you've haven't understood what OM was saying to you. But perhaps you felt something It's true that the one way pursued by OM leads in many different directions. It is a mystic path. Songs come from innumerable sources filtering through the external and the internal. OM albums are rituals personal convictions transcripted into verse. Playing the music is visceral emotional a catharsis of soul and spirit." - Drag City

Track Samples:
Sample : Meditation Is The Practice Of Death
Sample : Cremation Chat II

PITCH SHIFTER Desensitized CD (Earache) 12.98

Forerunners of the industrial doom/sludge sound, Pitch Shifter started off in the British underground metal/noise scene of the early 90s as an unabashed bit of Godflesh worship, cloning the pounding Swans-influenced industrial rhythms, feedback-streaked riffing and apocalyptic vibe of Streetcleaner and dragged that sound into darker, heavier realms. After the band signed on to Earache, their crushing industrial dirge reached an apex of skull-battering heaviness with the remix/studio track collection Submit and the follow-up album Desensitized, and in my book both of these discs are crucial albums within the spectrum of ultra-heavy, dystopian mechanical sludge. After this period, the band would move into a more commercial techno/drum n' bass sound that I wasn't too keen on, but the 1991-1993 era is total crush. With all of the industrial-tinged doom that I've been listening to lately (Human Quena Orchestra, Black Sun, Hordes Of Satan, Vennt, Nevath, Wicked King Wicker, etc.), it was just a matter of time before I pulled out my early Pitch Shifter albums and gave them a fresh listen, and I've been rediscovering how much of a devastating listen these Earache titles still are. Neither of these discs have been carried here at Crucial Blast before, but both of these are essential listening for fans of industrial-influenced sludge.
1993's Desensitized finally saw Pitchshifter move beyond mere Godflesh worship into a more lush, more rocking industrial metal sound of their own. The twelve songs on the album are still seriously crushing and metallic and bottom-heavy, no doubt about it, but the riffs are catchier than before, and are in fact quite fucking awesome (as on the industrial-rock battering ram "Ephemorol"), the songs a bit faster paced and groovier, with sheets of churning chorus-heavy guitar swirling over the relentless tribal drumming and pounding mechanical crush, and a much heavier presence of electronic effects and synth-like layers of sound shooting through these chugging machine-metal mantras. All of this gives the songs a gloomy, psychedelic feel, and there's a post-punk quality to much of this that also makes this stand out from their previous work, which reminds me of the early 90's Ministry stuff as much as it does of Godflesh. Really, this album is one of the few to successfully pull off an amalgam of that super-heavy Godflesh sound and the more kinetic Wax Trax/Ministry style of industrial metal, forging it into an intense slab of pummeling, rhythmic fury. The last blast of pure thunderous mecha-crush before the band would evolve into a blend of nu-metal and techno/drum n' bass, Desensitized is crucial listening for fans of early 90's industrial metal.

Track Samples:
Sample : Diable
Sample : Ephemerol
Sample : Gatherer of Data

PITCH SHIFTER Submit CD (Earache) 9.98

Forerunners of the industrial doom/sludge sound, Pitch Shifter started off in the British underground metal/noise scene of the early 90s as an unabashed bit of Godflesh worship, cloning the pounding Swans-influenced industrial rhythms, feedback-streaked monolithic riffing and apocalyptic vibe of Streetcleaner and dragged that sound into darker, heavier realms. After the band signed on to Earache, their crushing industrial dirge reached an apex of skull-battering heaviness with the remix/studio track collection Submit and the follow-up album Desensitized, and in my book both of these discs are crucial albums within the spectrum of ultra-heavy, dystopian mechanical sludge. After this period, the band would move into a more commercial techno/drum n' bass sound that I wasn't too keen on, but the 1991-1993 era is total crush. With all of the industrial-tinged doom that I've been listening to lately (Human Quena Orchestra, Black Sun, Hordes Of Satan, Vennt, Nevath, Wicked King Wicker, etc.), it was just a matter of time before I pulled out my early Pitch Shifter albums and gave them a fresh listen, and I've been rediscovering how much of a devastating listen these Earache titles still are. Niether of these discs have been carried here at Crucial Blast before, but both of these are essential listening for fans of industrial-influenced sludge.
The first release for their then-new label Earache, 1992's Submit only partially moves beyond the heavy Godflesh influence that marked their early releases. The hypnotic down tuned riffing and (especially) the wailing feedback leads all still heavily smack of that early Godflesh sound, but at this point Pitch Shifter had begun to introduce more death metal elements (in the form of much deeper, more guttural death metal-style vocals, heavier sludgier riffs, bursts of speed that sometimes approached full-on thrash), and whenever the band would rest the grinding guitars and bellowing vokills for a moment, the stretches of purely percussive, mechanical drum-machine throb and samples could evoke the grimy clatter of 80's industrial in a way that Godflesh was rarely able to. Submit features a selection of re-recorded tracks from their debut Death Industrial 7" and the Peaceville album Industrial, a new instrumental track called "Silo", and live versions of "Deconstruction" and "Landfill". If you had an itch to hear a death metal version of Godflesh, then this is what you'd been waiting for.

Track Samples:
Sample : Dry Riser Inlet
Sample : New Flesh P.S.I. (Remix)

SCORN Colossus CD (Earache) 12.98

That double disc re-issue of Evanescence/Ellipsis that Earache out out at the end of '09 compelled me to dig up the rest of Scorn's Earache output so I could get them in the bins here at C-Blast; the earlier, heavier Scorn stuff is some of my favorite music from Mick Harris's long-running industrial dub project, and we've had a lot of our customers asking about the hard-to-find Scorn stuff ever since the reissue set was listed. Much of Scorn's early 90's catalog is out-of-print now, but I was able to get several of their albums, including the amazing Colossus, the Deliverance reissue, a few copies of the rare Gyral album, and the debut album Vae Solis, which has seemed to have slipped into obscurity in recent years. I hardly ever hear anyone talk about this particular album, which is surprising seeing as how it not only features the entire lineup of Napalm Death's a-side of Scum (Nic Bullen, Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick), but is also a crushing slab of post-Godflesh industrial dub metal that newer fans of Godflesh, Swans and Pitch Shifter should be going apeshit over. The rest of these albums are equally rad, if you're into this kind of dark, doom-laden industrial dub/trip-hop; along with Painkiller/Bill Laswell, Techno Animal and Ice, Scorn was one of the most fearsome practitioners of post-industrial dub in the 90's, fusing grim electronic ambience with dub-heavy break beats and spacey effects. All of these discs are big favorites of mine.
1994's Colossus is an absolute must-have if you're a fan of Scorn's seminal industrial dub; this is the album where former Napalm Death members Mick Harris and Nic Bullen fully shook off the thrash elements of their Vae Solis debut and immersed themselves fully in their bleak, often nightmarish apocalyptic dub soundscapes, combining distorted guitar and hypnotic bass lines with skittering programmed beats, pounding industrial rhythms and sampled percussion slathered in reverb and delay, the crushing mechanical break beats and dubby snare hits slithering and snaking across the fields of dystopian ambience and dark electronic textures. You can still hear hints of Godflesh in Scorn's sound on the album, but the crushing riffage has been almost completely replaced by a thick bass-driven throb, the sound much more spacious and bleak than before. These eleven tracks are lumbering, monolithic slabs of pulsating darkness, massive slow motion break beats and glacial snares hammering out a trance inducing groove through super-heavy tracks like the guitar-strafed "Crimson Seed", the black acid dub of "Scorpionic" and the delirious doom of "Nights Ash Black". A few passages of beatless industrial ambience arise (the coruscating metallic shimmer of "Sunstroke", and the dark isolationist expanse of "Little Angel", which moves the album briefly into Lull/Lustmord territory), but Colossus is mostly a massive beat-driven experience, sludgy and druggy and mesmerizing. A personal favorite.

Track Samples:
Sample : Blackout
Sample : Endless
Sample : Scorpionic

SCORN Deliverance CD (Earache) 12.98

That double disc re-issue of Evanescence/Ellipsis that Earache out out at the end of '09 compelled me to dig up the rest of Scorn's Earache output so I could get them in the bins here at C-Blast; the earlier, heavier Scorn stuff is some of my favorite music from Mick Harris's long-running industrial dub project, and we've had a lot of our customers asking about the hard-to-find Scorn stuff ever since the reissue set was listed. Much of Scorn's early 90's catalog is out-of-print now, but I was able to get several of their albums, including the amazing Colossus, the Deliverance reissue, a few copies of the rare Gyral album, and the debut album Vae Solis, which has seemed to have slipped into obscurity in recent years. I hardly ever hear anyone talk about this particular album, which is surprising seeing as how it not only features the entire lineup of Napalm Death's a-side of Scum (Nic Bullen, Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick), but is also a crushing slab of post-Godflesh industrial dub metal that newer fans of Godflesh, Swans and Pitch Shifter should be going apeshit over. The rest of these albums are equally rad, if you're into this kind of dark, doom-laden industrial dub/trip-hop; along with Painkiller/Bill Laswell, Techno Animal and Ice, Scorn was one of the most fearsome practitioners of post-industrial dub in the 90's, fusing grim electronic ambience with dub-heavy break beats and spacey effects. All of these discs are big favorites of mine.
Released in 1997, Deliverance was actually a collection of one of Scorn's earliest releases (the Deliverance 12" from 1992) and three remix versions of "Exodus" (from the Evanescence album) by the techno/dub collective Sabres Of Paradise. Released around the same time as their industrial/dub/thrash debut Vae Solis, the Deliverance 12" featured the stripped down, throbbing industrial-dub that Scorn would continue to experiment with throughout the 90's. The demonic processed goth-moans, watery snares, rumbling industrial break beats and waves of sinister dark ambience that sweep across the title track "Deliverance" sets the stage for the dark crushing dub that the group would explore on Colossus, while the following tracks mutate "Deliverance" into a series of more abstract soundscapes: "Deliverance Through Dub", like tht title suggests, is a skeletal dubbed-out reworking of the track that stretches out for almost twelve minutes, and "Delivered" is a spacious slab of dark ambient drift, industrial clatter and sparse beats almost totally devoid of vocals; "To High Heaven" takes the pounding skittering beat and piles on the distortion, blowing it out, creating a crushing speaker-shredding doom-dub blast, and "Black Sun Rising" jettisons the beats entirely, looping the vocals over and over into a hallucinatory noise-streaked dronescape. Scorn's endtime dub has rarely been as nightmarish sounding as it is here.
But the "Exodus" remixes from Sabres Of Paradise take this sound in a different direction, starting with the dreamy loopy dreamdrift of "Mix 1", an almost Tim Hecker-like smear of washed out melodic drone and blurred noise, through which emerge bits of ominous Tangerine Dream-like synth and sparse industrial percussion; the second remix is more dark ambient in tone, a short soundtrack-like bit of looped bass, minimal electronics, minor key synth, and creepy whispered vocals drifting across the background; and the fourth is a trancey techno mutation flecked with electronic orchestral hits and underwater effects.

Track Samples:
Sample : Black Sun Rising
Sample : Deliverance
Sample : Exodus [#][Sabres of Paradise Mix 1]

SCORN Gyral CD (Earache) 12.98

Gyral IS CURRENTLY UNAVAILABLE FOR ORDER

That double disc re-issue of Evanescence/Ellipsis that Earache out out at the end of '09 compelled me to dig up the rest of Scorn's Earache output so I could get them in the bins here at C-Blast; the earlier, heavier Scorn stuff is some of my favorite music from Mick Harris's long-running industrial dub project, and we've had a lot of our customers asking about the hard-to-find Scorn stuff ever since the reissue set was listed. Much of Scorn's early 90's catalog is out-of-print now, but I was able to get several of their albums, including the amazing Colossus, the Deliverance reissue, a few copies of the rare Gyral album, and the debut album Vae Solis, which has seemed to have slipped into obscurity in recent years. I hardly ever hear anyone talk about this particular album, which is surprising seeing as how it not only features the entire lineup of Napalm Death's a-side of Scum (Nic Bullen, Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick), but is also a crushing slab of post-Godflesh industrial dub metal that newer fans of Godflesh, Swans and Pitch Shifter should be going apeshit over. The rest of these albums are equally rad, if you're into this kind of dark, doom-laden industrial dub/trip-hop; along with Painkiller/Bill Laswell, Techno Animal and Ice, Scorn was one of the most fearsome practitioners of post-industrial dub in the 90's, fusing grim electronic ambience with dub-heavy break beats and spacey effects. All of these discs are big favorites of mine.
1995's Gyral was the first with Mick Harris as the sole member following the departure of Nic Bullen, and the sound is appropriately sparse and skeletal, a reductionist version of the band's previous industrial dub sound. The pounding languid break beats are wound into looping circular mantras that anchor the dark, ominous ambient drift and electronic ether that float by, sonar pings and fragments of piano echoing through the shadows, percussive samples locked into air-tight tick-tock grooves, snares popping and leaving incandescent tracers dissolving against the blackness, the speaker-rattling bass coiling almost subliminally in the background. The whole atmosphere of Gyral is dreamlike and ambient, not quite as apocalyptic as releases like Deliverance, but definitely still quite sinister and bleak, with none of the vocals that were so prominent on prior albums. Eight tracks: "Six Hours One Week", "Time Went Slow", "Far In Out", "Stairway", "Forever Turning", "Black Box", "Hush", "Trondheim - G�vle". Gyral is an engrossing slab of industrial trip-hop/dark ambient dub, one of Harris's most hypnotic and heavy-lidded albums, and another personal favorite of mine from Scorn. SUPER LIMITED, I was only able to get a couple of copies of this album as it appears to have gone out of print, so move quick if you want to pick this up!

Track Samples:
Sample : Black Box
Sample : Six Hours On

SCORN Logghi Barogghi CD (Earache) 12.98

That double disc re-issue of Evanescence/Ellipsis that Earache out out at the end of '09 compelled me to dig up the rest of Scorn's Earache output so I could get them in the bins here at C-Blast; the earlier, heavier Scorn stuff is some of my favorite music from Mick Harris's long-running industrial dub project, and we've had a lot of our customers asking about the hard-to-find Scorn stuff ever since the reissue set was listed. Much of Scorn's early 90's catalog is out-of-print now, but I was able to get several of their albums, including the amazing Colossus, the Deliverance reissue, a few copies of the rare Gyral album, and the debut album Vae Solis, which has seemed to have slipped into obscurity in recent years. I hardly ever hear anyone talk about this particular album, which is surprising seeing as how it not only features the entire lineup of Napalm Death's a-side of Scum (Nic Bullen, Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick), but is also a crushing slab of post-Godflesh industrial dub metal that newer fans of Godflesh, Swans and Pitch Shifter should be going apeshit over. The rest of these albums are equally rad, if you're into this kind of dark, doom-laden industrial dub/trip-hop; along with Painkiller/Bill Laswell, Techno Animal and Ice, Scorn was one of the most fearsome practitioners of post-industrial dub in the 90's, fusing grim electronic ambience with dub-heavy break beats and spacey effects. All of these discs are big favorites of mine.
Scorn's last album for Earache, 1996's Logghi Barogghi was the second album from the Mick Harris solo version of Scorn, and continues in the largely instrumental dubscape direction that the project began with Gyral. The fourteen tracks are more experimental versions of Scorn's grim pounding dub, more spacious than ever, the echoing, throbbing beats treated with harsh effects and prominently pounding away at the forefront of the mix, while rattling dub effects and minimal drones writhe between the staccato rhythms. There are blown-out rhythms that foreshadow the grinding beats that dubstep would claim for itself a decade later, and more minimalist and subdued beatscapes, and descents into wheezing trip-hop with bleating trumpet-like samples stretched out into streaks of bizarre mewling ("Spongie"); "Out Of" is one of the most powerful tracks, a huge stuttering dubstep-like groove pushed into the red, layered with Mick's warped processed vocals and a fractured guitar melody, while "Black Box II" uncoils massive murky underwater doom-dub beneath a swirling black sky. The crushing "Nut" ranks as one of Scorn's heaviest, another distorted breakbeat and buzzing overdriven synth line, bass-heavy and ominous, and somewhat similar to Kevin Martin's Ice, and the minute-long title track even ventures into a mutant jungle seizure. The strangest of all of Scorn's Earache-era albums, this is still a highly recommended platter of heavy industrial dub.

Track Samples:
Sample : Black Box II
Sample : Look at That
Sample : Weakener

SCORN Vae Solis CD (Earache) 12.98

That double disc re-issue of Evanescence/Ellipsis that Earache out out at the end of '09 compelled me to dig up the rest of Scorn's Earache output so I could get them in the bins here at C-Blast; the earlier, heavier Scorn stuff is some of my favorite music from Mick Harris's long-running industrial dub project, and we've had a lot of our customers asking about the hard-to-find Scorn stuff ever since the reissue set was listed. Much of Scorn's early 90's catalog is out-of-print now, but I was able to get several of their albums, including the amazing Colossus, the Deliverance reissue, a few copies of the rare Gyral album, and the debut album Vae Solis, which has seemed to have slipped into obscurity in recent years. I hardly ever hear anyone talk about this particular album, which is surprising seeing as how it not only features the entire lineup of Napalm Death's a-side of Scum (Nic Bullen, Mick Harris, Justin Broadrick), but is also a crushing slab of post-Godflesh industrial dub metal that newer fans of Godflesh, Swans and Pitch Shifter should be going apeshit over. The rest of these albums are equally rad, if you're into this kind of dark, doom-laden industrial dub/trip-hop; along with Painkiller/Bill Laswell, Techno Animal and Ice, Scorn was one of the most fearsome practitioners of post-industrial dub in the 90's, fusing grim electronic ambience with dub-heavy break beats and spacey effects. All of these discs are big favorites of mine.
Scorn is mostly know for the dark, apocalyptic industrial-dub that Mick Harris and Nik Bullen pioneered with albums like Evanescence and Colossus, but when they first started out, they were an entirely different sounding band, a crushing mix of industrial thrash and sprawling, rumbling death-dub ambience that also featured none other than Justin Broadrick on guitar. Yep, on 1992's Vae Solis, Scorn was made up of Nik Bullen, Mick Harriss, and Justin Broadrick, the complete lineup on Napalm Death on the a-side of Scum! No grindcore here, though; the band used samplers and programmed beats along with massive bass and Broadrick's howling riffs to forge driving industrial dirges that combined the propulsive mechanistic crush of early Godflesh with more rocking tempos, pounding hip-hop/dub breaks, and long stretches of bleak industrial ambience. Harris's vocals alternate between the narcotized moan of later Scorn albums and a deep roar that evokes the Godflesh sound even further. The massive grinding riffs fall away in spots, revealing huge fields of reverb-soaked drone and rumble, and at other points the band slips into a slow, grueling dirge that sounds more like early Swans than anything. One of the album's most intense tracks is the crawling abject horror of "Deep In - Eaten Over and Over" , an 8+ minute sprawl of slow-motion industrial doom and looped vocals and thick layers of samples and effects that creates a suffocating feeling of dread. That's followed by the hypnosis of "On Ice", another epic track that shifts into a brooding synth-heavy industrial dub dirge of ominous bass lines, druggy vocals, sampled percussion, looped samples from The Wicker Man, and keening feedback guitar, a foreshadowing of the direction Scorn would take after this album. Compared to other earlier Earache albums, Vae Solis has become one of the more obscure titles, but this is ripe for rediscovery by fans of that UK industrial/dub/metal sound, Godflesh, Pitch Shifter, God, Ice, etc. The CD version of the album features four tracks that weren't on the original vinyl version: the slithering endtime mecha-dub of "Scum After Death (dub)", a Godflesh-esque dirge called "Fleshpile (edit)", the sinister soundtracky dronescape of "Orgy of Holiness" littered with gongs, choral effects and piano, and the robotic ethno-drone of "Still Life" that feels more like one of Harris's isolationist works under the Lull moniker. Recommended!

Track Samples:
Sample : Heavy Blood
Sample : Lick Forever Dog
Sample : Spasm
Sample : Still Life
Sample : Suck and Eat You

SKULLFLOWER This Is Skullflower CD (VHF) 14.98

Track Samples:
Sample : Creaky Rigging
Sample : Glider

SPAZZTIC BLURR Befo Da Awbum CD (Earache) 12.98

The re-mastered reissue of this classic gonzo-thrash album from Spazztic Blurr is finally back in stock! Spazztic Blurr's 1988 self-titled album (also known as Befo Da Awbum) was one of Earache's earliest releases, and while the Portland, OR band was formed by two members of thrash metallers Wehrmacht, this side project was more aligned with the weirdo sounds of early Earache bands like Naked City, Old Lady Drivers, and Lawnmower Deth than the brutal grind/death/speed bands coming out of the UK. One of the first true comedy-thrash bands, the Blurr boys blasted out a genius fusion of absurd genre-hopping whiplash, virtuoso hyper speed thrash metal, and bizarre in-jokes that was way ahead of it's time, sarcastically commenting on the state of underground music in the late 80's while zipping from one musical concept to the next in the blink of an eye. The fourteen tracks bounce from Wehrmacht-style thrash played at insanely fast tempos to cheesy pop, stoopid between-song skits, acoustic guitar interludes, bizarre sound effects, surf rock, death metal, over-the-top guitar hero shredding, brain-damaged Christmas carols, rap, jazz, the music changing at a breakneck pace much in the same manner as early Naked City, but with nonsensical lyrics about singing the alphabet, Burger King, burritos, and the Flintstones. The drumming for the thrash parts is fucking awesome, Eric French blasting away at the same supersonic speeds that Wehrmacht was known for, the songs are unpredictable, everything flying by at 200 miles per hour. Amazing stuff if you don't mind a heavy dose of wacky humor with your metal - and essential listening for fans of Birdflesh, early Naked City, Exit 13, Crotchduster, Le Scrawl, early Boredoms, People, 7000 Dying Rats, Anal Cunt, and Mexican Power Authority. Sounds a whole lot like Wehrmacht crossed with Mr. Bungle, even though this album came out two years before Bungle's debut! Genius.

Track Samples:
Sample : Abc's
Sample : Bouge Jonzin
Sample : He Not-A-Home Me Marco

SPECIAL INTERESTS issue 2 MAGAZINE A5 (Freak Animal) 4.00

There's been a void in the extreme music underground small press since the decline of fanzines in the late 90's that is finally being filled by this fantastic little 'zine, Special Interests. Focusing on "power electronics, industrial noise, experimental, avant-garde, ambient", this 52 page digest was started up in '09 by Mikko Aspa (Northern Heritage/Freak Animal Records owner, and member of Deathspell Omega and Grunt) to cover both new and influential artists in the industrial underground, and so far this zine is shaping up to be the best of it's kind currently being published. Each issue of the half-size zine features stunning full-color artwork on the cover, and the black and white pages inside are filled with editorial commentary, in-depth interviews and articles on a variety of PE/noise/industrial/dark ambient artists as well as cutting-edge visual artists that have ties to the extreme music underground, lots of nicely reproduced photographs and artwork, lengthy and comprehensive reviews of both older classic releases and newer titles, articles on noise and industrial aesthetics, and plenty more to sink your teeth into. The writing is solid and well thought-out, all in English, and the interviews are extremely informative and entertaining to read. With other underground pubs only giving the most marginal coverage to the more caustic and abstract strains of industrial/noise, this rag steps up to the plate with an intelligent, confrontational, no-bullshit brand of writing and content that makes this essential for serious fans of the extreme electronics scene. Printed in fairly limited quantities, the first issue of Special Interests was sold out before I had a chance to pick it up, but starting with issue #2, we should have these in stock through Crucial Blast while supplies last.
Issue number two of Special Interests features a nightmarish full color collage from Kristian Olsson (Alfarmania), and is packed with interviews with Swedish dark ambient artist Jarl, former Blowhole leader Jeph Jerman, dronesludge solo unit Culver, blackened kosmiche dronelords Locrian, Power Electronics artists Vomit Arsonist and Praying For Oblivion, Mark Groves of Aussie avant-doomsters Whitehorse and noise group Absoluten Calfeutrail, legendary noise dadaists Smell & Quim, Finnish psych-noise occultist Haare, and visual artist Jukka Siikala. There's the meaty, detailed reviews section, and a cool section where a variety of artists (Howard Stelzer, Jean-Marie Onni, Andy Ortmann/Panicsville, Ilkka Vekka/Haare) are asked about their use of analogue cassettes and the aesthetics of cassette recording and releases. The issue is rounded out with a regular section called "The Essentials" where a handful of artists write about their top-ten (give or take) favorite releases, and another set of collage pieces from Kristian Olsson. There's plenty of stuff here to dig into, and with all of the enthusiastic writing and recommendations that are found in these pages, I've already put together a sizeable list of music and artists that I'm planning on investigating further just after reading this one issue. It's already become one of my new favorite zines.

SZPAJDEL, CHRISTOPHE Lord Of The Logos: Designing The Metal Underground ART BOOK (Die Gestalten Verlag) 45.00

The name Christophe Szpajdel might not be familiar to you, but just take one look at any one of the logos that he has designed over the past two decades and you'll instantly recognize his work. Szpajdel (that's pronounced "shpy-del") has been the preeminent designer of black metal and death metal logos going back to the early 90's when he created the logo for a little band called Emperor, and ever since he has been commissioned by legions of bands from around the world to create unique and highly detailed logos. Each logo that Szpajdel has designed (and there are literally thousands of them) is a wholly unique and exquisitely crafted piece of artwork, sometimes spiky and technological looking, or scratchy and distressed, or so ornate and complex that the band name itself is lost in a cryptic, abstract mass of art-deco inspired lines and shapes that are nigh-unreadable, but every single logo design has his signature style of obsessively rendered spikes and symmetry. Ever since discovering Szpajdel's massive body of logo artwork, I always thought that it would be fantastic if someone collected his work in a single book, and it's finally come about; the design agency and publisher Gestalten has just released Lord Of The Logos: Designing The Metal Underground, a collection of hundreds of Szpajdel's logos that reach all the way back to the early 90's, presented in the form of a black faux-leather prayer book with gold metallic embossing and high quality paper. Over 240 pages of black logo designs that range from the iconic, deceptively simple Emperor logo to logos from well-known bands like Wolves In The Throne Room, Velvet Cacoon, Lair Of The Minotaur, Throne Of Katarsis, Old Man's Child, Enthroned, Havohej, Abigail Williams, Lutomysl, Alestorm, Moonspell, Altar Of Plagues, Thou Shall Kill, Blood Cult, Candiru, and Thornspawn. And there are LEGIONS of logos for bands that I've never heard of before, many of which looks so cool that I'm compelled to search out their music simply based on how neat their logo is (like the amazing Panda Devil logo, which is complete with a satanic panda woven into the design!). Along with the high-quality reproductions of the logos, there's also dark, atmospheric landscape photos from Szpajdel scattered throughout the book, which fit perfectly with the black metal vibe and any one of which could easily make for a killer black metal album cover. Any death/black metal obsessed design geek will FLIP over this gorgeous volume - if you've ever found yourself discussing your "top 10 favorite black metal logos" with someone, easily lose yourself in the similarly intricate letterings and artwork of Voivod's Away, and regularly follow Stephen O'Malley's ideologic.org blog, this is an essential addition to your bookshelf.

THOU / HAARP Reincarnation Prayer 7 INCH VINYL (One Eye Records) 7.98

Man, are Thou prolific. It feels like they've been cranking something new out on an almost monthly basis; great for all of the sludge addicts who can't get enough of their intelligent, tectonic doom, challenging for me to try to stay on top of all of the stuff that these guys keep cranking out. Reincarnation Prayer is just one of several new vinyl releases to have come out from Thou, which they share with another sludgy Louisiana band called Haarp.
'Nawlins sludge metallers Haarp open it up with "Thinning", a lumbering, melodic crusher with huge angular riffing, scorched screaming vocals, and some neat lead guitar, and some serious death metal influences - the vocals shift into super-guttural death growls as the song slows from it's mid-paced pound into a crawling death dirge, and the guitarists lay on some evil chromatic riffing. Pretty cool stuff that's part Buzzoven/Eyehategod swamp sludge, and part putrid death metal slime.
On the flip, Thou drops another one of their two-ton doom hammers in the form of "Black Steel In The Hour Of Chaos", a six-minute slab of ultra slow sludge, one of the heaviest and slowest jams that I've ever heard from these guys, the riff glacial and blackly majestic, the slit-throat shrieks utterly blackened, the vibe apocalyptic, the riff SKULLCRUSHING. Fans of these guys won't be disappointed.
The record comes in a cool 7" x 7" sleeve with grim woodcut style artwork, and a twenty-four page booklet of high contrast black and white photography of urban decay from the New Orleans area and text bound into the jacket along with a silk-screened foldout poster. Limited to 1000 copies, and pressed on orange vinyl.

Track Samples:
Sample : THOU - Black Steel in the Hour of Chaos

ULTRAVIOLENCE Killing God CD (Earache) 7.98

One of the most prolific artists to be picked up by the Earache roster back when the legendary grind/death metal label began it's flirtations with hardcore techno and gabber in the mid-90's, Ultraviolence (aka Johnny Violent) released a shitload of EPs and albums through Earache up through the early oughts, but most of this material appears to now be out of print (as does the rest of Earache's hardcore/gabber catalog). When I raided the Earache vaults recently, I was interested in seeking out some of those 90's hardcore techno albums for the C-Blast shop (and for my own collection - I'm an unapologetic fan of this stuff, the faster the better!), but Ultraviolence's 1998 album Killing God was the only one that seemed to still be available. Where the debut album Life Of Destructor was a harsher, more apocalyptic slab of industrial gabber, Killing God is a much more accessible and melodic slice of hardcore techno, with orchestral strings, soulful rave-diva crooning, brief forays into cheesy house and lush bliss-pop loops all surfacing among the ultra-distorted synths, brutal Amen breaks, sampled screams and jackhammer gabber rhythms. Yep, it's still gabber, and there's plenty of pounding high-speed distorted kick drums blasting through these eleven tracks, there's just a bit more experimentation with melody and sampling going on (and even a blazing gabber cover of Black Sabbath's "Paranoid"!). Still sounds quite 90's, a real blast from the past, but fans of this era of UK gabber should definitely dig this. And if you dug that killer disc from DJ Immolation that I listed recently in the C-Blast shop, check this out!

Track Samples:
Sample : Bombs in My Head
Sample : Immolation
Sample : Masochist
Sample : Paranoid

UNIVERSE217 self-titled CD (Dupilcate Records) 10.98

We now have the original Dupilcate Records pressing of this rad avant-doom/prog EP, packaged in a regular jewel case with multiple matte-finish foldout inserts.
Doomy, proggy, depressive, ornate...all of these describe the music of Universe217, a strange Greek prog-doom band that released this full length in 2007, described by some as sounding like "Swans meets My Dying Bride", an interesting sounding mix to my ears for sure, but that's only part of what's going on with this disc, one of the stranger and more avant-garde albums that has come out on the Dutch Burning World label. The music is slow, heavy, and definitely very doomy sounding, the riffs massive and drenched in morose atmosphere, but also angular and winding, the band taking their dark heaviness into convoluted arrangements that often remind me of French prog rock. And then there's singer Tania, whose dramatic vocal style is really reminiscent of both Jarboe from Swans and Julie Christmas from Battle Of Mice/Made Out Of Babies; her singing gives the unique proggy doom metal an operatic touch. Not all of the album is slow and atmospheric; there's a couple of songs where the band kicks into a slightly higher gear and belt out some angular mid-tempo rock, or slips into mysterious jazzy atmospherics.
The first song is all slow, creeping doom, a tripped out funeral dirge with strange gurgling vocals and wailing operatic singing, all layered together as the song shifts into a long stretch of spacey ambience and muted muted acoustic guitars and glacial drums, moving through sprawls of murky black psychedelia into grim, ornate prog-doom, at times reminding me of a funeral doom band fronted by Diamanda Galas, Tania's rich, soulful voice transforming into ferocious screams at the drop of a hat. The following song is groovier, but just as dark, pulsating bass and psychedelic delayed vocals and jagged riffing, the proggy lurch suddenly erupting into a midpaced rocker that feels like an old darkwave post-punk jam, throbbing, propulsive, and seriously rocking before it ends up returning to slower metallic doom and lumbering angular heaviness, a kind of weird mathy gloom-rock.
The remainder of the album travels through more of those angular, proggy doom riffs, massive symphonic guitars and majestic doom metal, the layered sound becoming virtually orchestral at times; at others, Universe217 eases into slow swirling crawls through shadowy lounge music on "Swallow", a creeping abyssal torche song, and the dark nocturnal noir jazziness of "Harmless". The song "Nobody's Sincere" is another slab of exotic, jazz-flecked grimness, it's lush sonic textures formed from chiming mandolin-like drones, hand percussion, piano and accordians along with the dirgey drumming and undercurrent of lurching heaviness, resembling a jazzier, doomier Swans; and closer "I Dont Give A Damn" starts off with mesmeric Middle Eastern drones and swirling percussion before surging into crushing monstrous doom.

Track Samples:
Sample : Harmless
Sample : In Your Head
Sample : Swallow